The trouble with being the party of pensioners and unproductive wealth (e.g. housing) is that those are both highly unproductive parts of the economy.
During the Tories time in power they have:
- Cut spending on most things other than pensions and healthcare (of course mostly for elderly people) to the bone. - Retained subsidies (e.g. on fuel next year, winter fuel allowance etc) for retirees - Maintained pensions in real terms while workers get a pay cut - Increased taxes significantly on working people
All of this results in a drag on economic growth and further falls in living standards for those in work. All while having no grand strategy to encourage investment and growth.
Pensioners may vote but you can't win an election with them alone. The Tories deserve to be tossed out of power for at least a decade.
To be fair, in a country with 70% home ownership, it's hard to work out how to democratically shaft such a large majority. There are no signs Starmer will.
Starmer and labour demanded the retention of the triple lock in the HOC the week before the Autumn statement
The triple lock was introduced by Cameron and Clegg and is supported by all parties including the SNP, evidenced by Blackford demanding Sunak confirmed it at the PMQs before the Autumn statement
There is no point Labour supporters objecting to the triple lock when their leader is 100% committed to it
As far as I can tell all Labour will do is change the guard and put up tax and the Wokery even more.
It's in the Labour draft manifesto:
A new, independent Woke bookshop in every town and village throughout the land.
They will remove all the (limited) brakes the Conservatives have currently applied.
In the longer term it provides a route back for them as there will eventually be a backlash.
I guess I'm curious as to why you were so worked up about this 'woke' bookshop in your town. I thought Tories were all in favour of small businesses being set up. It may or may not fail. But you actively want it to fail, which is odd for a Tory.
Meanwhile, on the Woke scale Starmer is pretty much in the middle, I'd have thought, and I don't see the next Labour government being captured by the extreme wokeites for one minute.
The next election looks gone, the Tories now own the cost of living crisis and especially with the mortgaged voter... the triple lock might help keep the core grey vote at least but it's a damage limitation exercise after the Kwasi/Truss economic joyride.
Rishi and Hunts goal is to restore some evidence of Tory competence and as part of the new detoxification project for the election after next whilst hoping something turns up as a game changing hail mary before 2024.
According to unconfirmed sources, Russia has given Ukraine an ultimatum. Either return to the negotiating table by the end of November, or Ukraine’s entire electricity grid will be decimated
The trouble with being the party of pensioners and unproductive wealth (e.g. housing) is that those are both highly unproductive parts of the economy.
During the Tories time in power they have:
- Cut spending on most things other than pensions and healthcare (of course mostly for elderly people) to the bone. - Retained subsidies (e.g. on fuel next year, winter fuel allowance etc) for retirees - Maintained pensions in real terms while workers get a pay cut - Increased taxes significantly on working people
All of this results in a drag on economic growth and further falls in living standards for those in work. All while having no grand strategy to encourage investment and growth.
Pensioners may vote but you can't win an election with them alone. The Tories deserve to be tossed out of power for at least a decade.
To be fair, in a country with 70% home ownership, it's hard to work out how to democratically shaft such a large majority. There are no signs Starmer will.
Starmer and labour demanded the retention of the triple lock in the HOC the week before the Autumn statement
The triple lock was introduced by Cameron and Clegg and is supported by all parties including the SNP, evidenced by Blackford demanding Sunak confirmed it at the PMQs before the Autumn statement
There is no point Labour supporters objecting to the triple lock when their leader is 100% committed to it
As far as I can tell all Labour will do is change the guard and put up tax and the Wokery even more.
It's in the Labour draft manifesto:
A new, independent Woke bookshop in every town and village throughout the land.
They will remove all the (limited) brakes the Conservatives have currently applied.
In the longer term it provides a route back for them as there will eventually be a backlash.
I guess I'm curious as to why you were so worked up about this 'woke' bookshop in your town. I thought Tories were all in favour of small businesses being set up. It may or may not fail. But you actively want it to fail, which is odd for a Tory.
Meanwhile, on the Woke scale Starmer is pretty much in the middle, I'd have thought, and I don't see the next Labour government being captured by the extreme wokeites for one minute.
I've lived here for my whole life. It's my hometown. I was excited about this new bookshop when I saw it, and then I went in - and I'm crushingly disappointed.
You don't expect to see a bit of Islington in rural Hampshire, so I can't say I wish them well, but if it isn't my cup of tea why should I go in there and support them?
I'm not trying to ban them or make them illegal. But it doesn't mean I'm rooting for them.
According to unconfirmed sources, Russia has given Ukraine an ultimatum. Either return to the negotiating table by the end of November, or Ukraine’s entire electricity grid will be decimated
The next election looks gone, the Tories now own the cost of living crisis and especially with the mortgaged voter... the triple lock might help keep the core grey vote at least but it's a damage limitation exercise after the Kwasi/Truss economic joyride.
Rishi and Hunts goal is to restore some evidence of Tory competence and as part of the new detoxification project for the election after next whilst hoping something turns up as a game changing hail mary before 2024.
That's my view for what its worth.
Probably true, and a hope that showing this approach leads to a general improvement, and they can push back even further big cuts or tax rises, and get credit for that.
I don't think people show gratitude like that - we're in for a long recession, and things felt bad even before then, and that's what people will remember, especially up against dangerous radical, er, Sir Keir Starmer.
According to unconfirmed sources, Russia has given Ukraine an ultimatum. Either return to the negotiating table by the end of November, or Ukraine’s entire electricity grid will be decimated
The Labour lead in 1997 on a GB basis was actually 13% - but two years earlier it had been regularly higher than 30% . The bigger Labour leads tended to be recorded by Gallup which no longer appears to be polling in the UK , but it it still shows that a significant Tory recovery did materialise despite the scale of the 1997 defeat.It might be argued that the economic backdrop makes that more difficult from here, but we need to recall other examples of strong pre-election recoveries by unpopular Governments. In Spring 1968 Wilson's Labour Government was trailing the Tories by 28% , yet it came as a big surprise when the Tories won the June 1970 election - albeit with a GB lead of just 2.5%. In Spring 1977 Callaghan's Government lagged by 25%, and whilst Labour went on to lose by 7.1% in May 1979 many believe Callaghan was likely to have been re-elected had he called an election in early Autumn 1978.
The trouble with being the party of pensioners and unproductive wealth (e.g. housing) is that those are both highly unproductive parts of the economy.
During the Tories time in power they have:
- Cut spending on most things other than pensions and healthcare (of course mostly for elderly people) to the bone. - Retained subsidies (e.g. on fuel next year, winter fuel allowance etc) for retirees - Maintained pensions in real terms while workers get a pay cut - Increased taxes significantly on working people
All of this results in a drag on economic growth and further falls in living standards for those in work. All while having no grand strategy to encourage investment and growth.
Pensioners may vote but you can't win an election with them alone. The Tories deserve to be tossed out of power for at least a decade.
To be fair, in a country with 70% home ownership, it's hard to work out how to democratically shaft such a large majority. There are no signs Starmer will.
Starmer and labour demanded the retention of the triple lock in the HOC the week before the Autumn statement
The triple lock was introduced by Cameron and Clegg and is supported by all parties including the SNP, evidenced by Blackford demanding Sunak confirmed it at the PMQs before the Autumn statement
There is no point Labour supporters objecting to the triple lock when their leader is 100% committed to it
As far as I can tell all Labour will do is change the guard and put up tax and the Wokery even more.
It's in the Labour draft manifesto:
A new, independent Woke bookshop in every town and village throughout the land.
They will remove all the (limited) brakes the Conservatives have currently applied.
In the longer term it provides a route back for them as there will eventually be a backlash.
I guess I'm curious as to why you were so worked up about this 'woke' bookshop in your town. I thought Tories were all in favour of small businesses being set up. It may or may not fail. But you actively want it to fail, which is odd for a Tory.
Meanwhile, on the Woke scale Starmer is pretty much in the middle, I'd have thought, and I don't see the next Labour government being captured by the extreme wokeites for one minute.
I've lived here for my whole life. It's my hometown. I was excited about this new bookshop when I saw it, and then I went in - and I'm crushingly disappointed.
You don't expect to see a bit of Islington in rural Hampshire, so I can't say I wish them well, but if it isn't my cup of tea why should I go in there and support them?
I'm not trying to ban them or make them illegal. But it doesn't mean I'm rooting for them.
There’s actually only one Waterstones in Islington. It’s a bit barren on the bookshop front, and actually not especially woke.
According to unconfirmed sources, Russia has given Ukraine an ultimatum. Either return to the negotiating table by the end of November, or Ukraine’s entire electricity grid will be decimated
I read about this a few days ago.....quite amazing that Ultimate Bet guy ends up with a dodgy crypto company. If I remember correctly a dodgy Full Tilt guy ended up running a company that I think was something like gaming integrity for online casinos.
And cherry on top, the person who previously tasked with bankruptcy administration for Enron is doing FTX.
I think when the dust settles, all the backstories, the political connections, the big players of traditional finance that put money in, plus all the celebs who endorsed it. Its going to be Theranos x100.
The trouble with being the party of pensioners and unproductive wealth (e.g. housing) is that those are both highly unproductive parts of the economy.
During the Tories time in power they have:
- Cut spending on most things other than pensions and healthcare (of course mostly for elderly people) to the bone. - Retained subsidies (e.g. on fuel next year, winter fuel allowance etc) for retirees - Maintained pensions in real terms while workers get a pay cut - Increased taxes significantly on working people
All of this results in a drag on economic growth and further falls in living standards for those in work. All while having no grand strategy to encourage investment and growth.
Pensioners may vote but you can't win an election with them alone. The Tories deserve to be tossed out of power for at least a decade.
To be fair, in a country with 70% home ownership, it's hard to work out how to democratically shaft such a large majority. There are no signs Starmer will.
Starmer and labour demanded the retention of the triple lock in the HOC the week before the Autumn statement
The triple lock was introduced by Cameron and Clegg and is supported by all parties including the SNP, evidenced by Blackford demanding Sunak confirmed it at the PMQs before the Autumn statement
There is no point Labour supporters objecting to the triple lock when their leader is 100% committed to it
As far as I can tell all Labour will do is change the guard and put up tax and the Wokery even more.
It's in the Labour draft manifesto:
A new, independent Woke bookshop in every town and village throughout the land.
They will remove all the (limited) brakes the Conservatives have currently applied.
In the longer term it provides a route back for them as there will eventually be a backlash.
I guess I'm curious as to why you were so worked up about this 'woke' bookshop in your town. I thought Tories were all in favour of small businesses being set up. It may or may not fail. But you actively want it to fail, which is odd for a Tory.
Meanwhile, on the Woke scale Starmer is pretty much in the middle, I'd have thought, and I don't see the next Labour government being captured by the extreme wokeites for one minute.
I've lived here for my whole life. It's my hometown. I was excited about this new bookshop when I saw it, and then I went in - and I'm crushingly disappointed.
You don't expect to see a bit of Islington in rural Hampshire, so I can't say I wish them well, but if it isn't my cup of tea why should I go in there and support them?
I'm not trying to ban them or make them illegal. But it doesn't mean I'm rooting for them.
Disappointment, I can understand. The rest of your reaction seems a bit mean spirited.
The trouble with being the party of pensioners and unproductive wealth (e.g. housing) is that those are both highly unproductive parts of the economy.
During the Tories time in power they have:
- Cut spending on most things other than pensions and healthcare (of course mostly for elderly people) to the bone. - Retained subsidies (e.g. on fuel next year, winter fuel allowance etc) for retirees - Maintained pensions in real terms while workers get a pay cut - Increased taxes significantly on working people
All of this results in a drag on economic growth and further falls in living standards for those in work. All while having no grand strategy to encourage investment and growth.
Pensioners may vote but you can't win an election with them alone. The Tories deserve to be tossed out of power for at least a decade.
To be fair, in a country with 70% home ownership, it's hard to work out how to democratically shaft such a large majority. There are no signs Starmer will.
Starmer and labour demanded the retention of the triple lock in the HOC the week before the Autumn statement
The triple lock was introduced by Cameron and Clegg and is supported by all parties including the SNP, evidenced by Blackford demanding Sunak confirmed it at the PMQs before the Autumn statement
There is no point Labour supporters objecting to the triple lock when their leader is 100% committed to it
As far as I can tell all Labour will do is change the guard and put up tax and the Wokery even more.
It's in the Labour draft manifesto:
A new, independent Woke bookshop in every town and village throughout the land.
They will remove all the (limited) brakes the Conservatives have currently applied.
In the longer term it provides a route back for them as there will eventually be a backlash.
I guess I'm curious as to why you were so worked up about this 'woke' bookshop in your town. I thought Tories were all in favour of small businesses being set up. It may or may not fail. But you actively want it to fail, which is odd for a Tory.
Meanwhile, on the Woke scale Starmer is pretty much in the middle, I'd have thought, and I don't see the next Labour government being captured by the extreme wokeites for one minute.
I've lived here for my whole life. It's my hometown. I was excited about this new bookshop when I saw it, and then I went in - and I'm crushingly disappointed.
You don't expect to see a bit of Islington in rural Hampshire, so I can't say I wish them well, but if it isn't my cup of tea why should I go in there and support them?
I'm not trying to ban them or make them illegal. But it doesn't mean I'm rooting for them.
The trouble with being the party of pensioners and unproductive wealth (e.g. housing) is that those are both highly unproductive parts of the economy.
During the Tories time in power they have:
- Cut spending on most things other than pensions and healthcare (of course mostly for elderly people) to the bone. - Retained subsidies (e.g. on fuel next year, winter fuel allowance etc) for retirees - Maintained pensions in real terms while workers get a pay cut - Increased taxes significantly on working people
All of this results in a drag on economic growth and further falls in living standards for those in work. All while having no grand strategy to encourage investment and growth.
Pensioners may vote but you can't win an election with them alone. The Tories deserve to be tossed out of power for at least a decade.
To be fair, in a country with 70% home ownership, it's hard to work out how to democratically shaft such a large majority. There are no signs Starmer will.
Starmer and labour demanded the retention of the triple lock in the HOC the week before the Autumn statement
The triple lock was introduced by Cameron and Clegg and is supported by all parties including the SNP, evidenced by Blackford demanding Sunak confirmed it at the PMQs before the Autumn statement
There is no point Labour supporters objecting to the triple lock when their leader is 100% committed to it
As far as I can tell all Labour will do is change the guard and put up tax and the Wokery even more.
It's in the Labour draft manifesto:
A new, independent Woke bookshop in every town and village throughout the land.
They will remove all the (limited) brakes the Conservatives have currently applied.
In the longer term it provides a route back for them as there will eventually be a backlash.
I guess I'm curious as to why you were so worked up about this 'woke' bookshop in your town. I thought Tories were all in favour of small businesses being set up. It may or may not fail. But you actively want it to fail, which is odd for a Tory.
Meanwhile, on the Woke scale Starmer is pretty much in the middle, I'd have thought, and I don't see the next Labour government being captured by the extreme wokeites for one minute.
I've lived here for my whole life. It's my hometown. I was excited about this new bookshop when I saw it, and then I went in - and I'm crushingly disappointed.
You don't expect to see a bit of Islington in rural Hampshire, so I can't say I wish them well, but if it isn't my cup of tea why should I go in there and support them?
I'm not trying to ban them or make them illegal. But it doesn't mean I'm rooting for them.
There’s actually only one Waterstones in Islington. It’s a bit barren on the bookshop front, and actually not especially woke.
The trouble with being the party of pensioners and unproductive wealth (e.g. housing) is that those are both highly unproductive parts of the economy.
During the Tories time in power they have:
- Cut spending on most things other than pensions and healthcare (of course mostly for elderly people) to the bone. - Retained subsidies (e.g. on fuel next year, winter fuel allowance etc) for retirees - Maintained pensions in real terms while workers get a pay cut - Increased taxes significantly on working people
All of this results in a drag on economic growth and further falls in living standards for those in work. All while having no grand strategy to encourage investment and growth.
Pensioners may vote but you can't win an election with them alone. The Tories deserve to be tossed out of power for at least a decade.
To be fair, in a country with 70% home ownership, it's hard to work out how to democratically shaft such a large majority. There are no signs Starmer will.
Starmer and labour demanded the retention of the triple lock in the HOC the week before the Autumn statement
The triple lock was introduced by Cameron and Clegg and is supported by all parties including the SNP, evidenced by Blackford demanding Sunak confirmed it at the PMQs before the Autumn statement
There is no point Labour supporters objecting to the triple lock when their leader is 100% committed to it
As far as I can tell all Labour will do is change the guard and put up tax and the Wokery even more.
It's in the Labour draft manifesto:
A new, independent Woke bookshop in every town and village throughout the land.
They will remove all the (limited) brakes the Conservatives have currently applied.
In the longer term it provides a route back for them as there will eventually be a backlash.
I guess I'm curious as to why you were so worked up about this 'woke' bookshop in your town. I thought Tories were all in favour of small businesses being set up. It may or may not fail. But you actively want it to fail, which is odd for a Tory.
Meanwhile, on the Woke scale Starmer is pretty much in the middle, I'd have thought, and I don't see the next Labour government being captured by the extreme wokeites for one minute.
I've lived here for my whole life. It's my hometown. I was excited about this new bookshop when I saw it, and then I went in - and I'm crushingly disappointed.
You don't expect to see a bit of Islington in rural Hampshire, so I can't say I wish them well, but if it isn't my cup of tea why should I go in there and support them?
I'm not trying to ban them or make them illegal. But it doesn't mean I'm rooting for them.
...
Er, these are rich middle-class Guardianista Liberals. They aren't going on the dole.
The trouble with being the party of pensioners and unproductive wealth (e.g. housing) is that those are both highly unproductive parts of the economy.
During the Tories time in power they have:
- Cut spending on most things other than pensions and healthcare (of course mostly for elderly people) to the bone. - Retained subsidies (e.g. on fuel next year, winter fuel allowance etc) for retirees - Maintained pensions in real terms while workers get a pay cut - Increased taxes significantly on working people
All of this results in a drag on economic growth and further falls in living standards for those in work. All while having no grand strategy to encourage investment and growth.
Pensioners may vote but you can't win an election with them alone. The Tories deserve to be tossed out of power for at least a decade.
To be fair, in a country with 70% home ownership, it's hard to work out how to democratically shaft such a large majority. There are no signs Starmer will.
Starmer and labour demanded the retention of the triple lock in the HOC the week before the Autumn statement
The triple lock was introduced by Cameron and Clegg and is supported by all parties including the SNP, evidenced by Blackford demanding Sunak confirmed it at the PMQs before the Autumn statement
There is no point Labour supporters objecting to the triple lock when their leader is 100% committed to it
As far as I can tell all Labour will do is change the guard and put up tax and the Wokery even more.
It's in the Labour draft manifesto:
A new, independent Woke bookshop in every town and village throughout the land.
They will remove all the (limited) brakes the Conservatives have currently applied.
In the longer term it provides a route back for them as there will eventually be a backlash.
I guess I'm curious as to why you were so worked up about this 'woke' bookshop in your town. I thought Tories were all in favour of small businesses being set up. It may or may not fail. But you actively want it to fail, which is odd for a Tory.
Meanwhile, on the Woke scale Starmer is pretty much in the middle, I'd have thought, and I don't see the next Labour government being captured by the extreme wokeites for one minute.
I've lived here for my whole life. It's my hometown. I was excited about this new bookshop when I saw it, and then I went in - and I'm crushingly disappointed.
You don't expect to see a bit of Islington in rural Hampshire, so I can't say I wish them well, but if it isn't my cup of tea why should I go in there and support them?
I'm not trying to ban them or make them illegal. But it doesn't mean I'm rooting for them.
There’s actually only one Waterstones in Islington. It’s a bit barren on the bookshop front, and actually not especially woke.
How many approved non-Woke bookshops are there in Islington? Just checking. (I don't mean the kind of bookshop that is neutral on this front, like specialist transport shops like the one that used to be in St Martin's Lane in London. I'm assuming here trhat the trains bit cancels out the petrolheads bit, obvs.)
According to unconfirmed sources, Russia has given Ukraine an ultimatum. Either return to the negotiating table by the end of November, or Ukraine’s entire electricity grid will be decimated
Like the V1 and V2 brought Churchill to the negotiating table in 1945?
He's not necessarily wrong. Putin is getting somewhere with his criminal and depraved "smash the infrastructure" tactic
"More than 10 million Ukrainians are without electricity after a barrage of Russian air attacks on the country’s energy infrastructure.
Conditions have led to many worrying about heating supplies during the dark winter months. Freelance journalist @normcos joins us from Kyiv."
"Russia-Ukraine war live: Kyiv power shortages ‘critical’ amid blackouts across Ukraine. Up to 40% of population facing hours-long outages after Russian attacks on infrastructure as freezing temperatures put additional strain on electricity grid."
According to unconfirmed sources, Russia has given Ukraine an ultimatum. Either return to the negotiating table by the end of November, or Ukraine’s entire electricity grid will be decimated
According to unconfirmed sources, Russia has given Ukraine an ultimatum. Either return to the negotiating table by the end of November, or Ukraine’s entire electricity grid will be decimated
The trouble with being the party of pensioners and unproductive wealth (e.g. housing) is that those are both highly unproductive parts of the economy.
During the Tories time in power they have:
- Cut spending on most things other than pensions and healthcare (of course mostly for elderly people) to the bone. - Retained subsidies (e.g. on fuel next year, winter fuel allowance etc) for retirees - Maintained pensions in real terms while workers get a pay cut - Increased taxes significantly on working people
All of this results in a drag on economic growth and further falls in living standards for those in work. All while having no grand strategy to encourage investment and growth.
Pensioners may vote but you can't win an election with them alone. The Tories deserve to be tossed out of power for at least a decade.
To be fair, in a country with 70% home ownership, it's hard to work out how to democratically shaft such a large majority. There are no signs Starmer will.
Starmer and labour demanded the retention of the triple lock in the HOC the week before the Autumn statement
The triple lock was introduced by Cameron and Clegg and is supported by all parties including the SNP, evidenced by Blackford demanding Sunak confirmed it at the PMQs before the Autumn statement
There is no point Labour supporters objecting to the triple lock when their leader is 100% committed to it
As far as I can tell all Labour will do is change the guard and put up tax and the Wokery even more.
It's in the Labour draft manifesto:
A new, independent Woke bookshop in every town and village throughout the land.
They will remove all the (limited) brakes the Conservatives have currently applied.
In the longer term it provides a route back for them as there will eventually be a backlash.
I guess I'm curious as to why you were so worked up about this 'woke' bookshop in your town. I thought Tories were all in favour of small businesses being set up. It may or may not fail. But you actively want it to fail, which is odd for a Tory.
Meanwhile, on the Woke scale Starmer is pretty much in the middle, I'd have thought, and I don't see the next Labour government being captured by the extreme wokeites for one minute.
I've lived here for my whole life. It's my hometown. I was excited about this new bookshop when I saw it, and then I went in - and I'm crushingly disappointed.
You don't expect to see a bit of Islington in rural Hampshire, so I can't say I wish them well, but if it isn't my cup of tea why should I go in there and support them?
I'm not trying to ban them or make them illegal. But it doesn't mean I'm rooting for them.
There’s actually only one Waterstones in Islington. It’s a bit barren on the bookshop front, and actually not especially woke.
How many approved non-Woke bookshops are there in Islington? Just checking. (I don't mean the kind of bookshop that is neutral on this front, like specialist transport shops like the one that used to be in St Martin's Lane in London. I'm assuming here trhat the trains bit cancels out the petrolheads bit, obvs.)
OK.
If they want to start a culture war in my home town I will do my best to fucking finish it.
These people need to be defeated. Woke is a cancer.
The trouble with being the party of pensioners and unproductive wealth (e.g. housing) is that those are both highly unproductive parts of the economy.
During the Tories time in power they have:
- Cut spending on most things other than pensions and healthcare (of course mostly for elderly people) to the bone. - Retained subsidies (e.g. on fuel next year, winter fuel allowance etc) for retirees - Maintained pensions in real terms while workers get a pay cut - Increased taxes significantly on working people
All of this results in a drag on economic growth and further falls in living standards for those in work. All while having no grand strategy to encourage investment and growth.
Pensioners may vote but you can't win an election with them alone. The Tories deserve to be tossed out of power for at least a decade.
To be fair, in a country with 70% home ownership, it's hard to work out how to democratically shaft such a large majority. There are no signs Starmer will.
Starmer and labour demanded the retention of the triple lock in the HOC the week before the Autumn statement
The triple lock was introduced by Cameron and Clegg and is supported by all parties including the SNP, evidenced by Blackford demanding Sunak confirmed it at the PMQs before the Autumn statement
There is no point Labour supporters objecting to the triple lock when their leader is 100% committed to it
As far as I can tell all Labour will do is change the guard and put up tax and the Wokery even more.
It's in the Labour draft manifesto:
A new, independent Woke bookshop in every town and village throughout the land.
They will remove all the (limited) brakes the Conservatives have currently applied.
In the longer term it provides a route back for them as there will eventually be a backlash.
I guess I'm curious as to why you were so worked up about this 'woke' bookshop in your town. I thought Tories were all in favour of small businesses being set up. It may or may not fail. But you actively want it to fail, which is odd for a Tory.
Meanwhile, on the Woke scale Starmer is pretty much in the middle, I'd have thought, and I don't see the next Labour government being captured by the extreme wokeites for one minute.
I've lived here for my whole life. It's my hometown. I was excited about this new bookshop when I saw it, and then I went in - and I'm crushingly disappointed.
You don't expect to see a bit of Islington in rural Hampshire, so I can't say I wish them well, but if it isn't my cup of tea why should I go in there and support them?
I'm not trying to ban them or make them illegal. But it doesn't mean I'm rooting for them.
There’s actually only one Waterstones in Islington. It’s a bit barren on the bookshop front, and actually not especially woke.
How many approved non-Woke bookshops are there in Islington? Just checking. (I don't mean the kind of bookshop that is neutral on this front, like specialist transport shops like the one that used to be in St Martin's Lane in London. I'm assuming here trhat the trains bit cancels out the petrolheads bit, obvs.)
OK.
If they want to start a culture war in my home town I will do my best to fucking finish it.
These people need to be defeated. Woke is a cancer.
LocalNewsGazette: Independent Bookshop subject to arson attack?
"Ukrainians urged to consider leaving country to save energy
Ukrainians should consider leaving the country to help save energy, the head of Ukraine’s biggest private energy firm has said.
Russian missile strikes have crippled Ukraine’s energy system, with authorities warning that Kyiv could face a “complete shutdown” of the power grid as winter sets in."
{Guardian live blog}
How can this really be "victory" if half of Ukraine has left? Will they ever return?
As I said, we must brace for 5m more refugees, and counting
I read about this a few days ago.....quite amazing that Ultimate Bet guy ends up with a dodgy crypto company. If I remember correctly a dodgy Full Tilt guy ended up running a company that I think was something like gaming integrity for online casinos.
And cherry on top, the person who previously tasked with bankruptcy administration for Enron is doing FTX.
I think when the dust settles, all the backstories, the political connections, the big players of traditional finance that put money in, plus all the celebs who endorsed it. Its going to be Theranos x100.
I'm still not quite clear about what the implications are for the rest of Crypto. If you have greater knowledge than myself on it, is it overall an Enron/Lehmans-type moment, or more like the early internet bubble of the later '90s , on the way to later profitability for the whole sector ?
Some of the underlying assumptions of Crypto - that it can function without regulatory oversight - seem to have been damaged, but on the other hand the industry also seems already half-built and quite resilient from its own networks, and from other points of view.
The trouble with being the party of pensioners and unproductive wealth (e.g. housing) is that those are both highly unproductive parts of the economy.
During the Tories time in power they have:
- Cut spending on most things other than pensions and healthcare (of course mostly for elderly people) to the bone. - Retained subsidies (e.g. on fuel next year, winter fuel allowance etc) for retirees - Maintained pensions in real terms while workers get a pay cut - Increased taxes significantly on working people
All of this results in a drag on economic growth and further falls in living standards for those in work. All while having no grand strategy to encourage investment and growth.
Pensioners may vote but you can't win an election with them alone. The Tories deserve to be tossed out of power for at least a decade.
To be fair, in a country with 70% home ownership, it's hard to work out how to democratically shaft such a large majority. There are no signs Starmer will.
Starmer and labour demanded the retention of the triple lock in the HOC the week before the Autumn statement
The triple lock was introduced by Cameron and Clegg and is supported by all parties including the SNP, evidenced by Blackford demanding Sunak confirmed it at the PMQs before the Autumn statement
There is no point Labour supporters objecting to the triple lock when their leader is 100% committed to it
As far as I can tell all Labour will do is change the guard and put up tax and the Wokery even more.
It's in the Labour draft manifesto:
A new, independent Woke bookshop in every town and village throughout the land.
They will remove all the (limited) brakes the Conservatives have currently applied.
In the longer term it provides a route back for them as there will eventually be a backlash.
I guess I'm curious as to why you were so worked up about this 'woke' bookshop in your town. I thought Tories were all in favour of small businesses being set up. It may or may not fail. But you actively want it to fail, which is odd for a Tory.
Meanwhile, on the Woke scale Starmer is pretty much in the middle, I'd have thought, and I don't see the next Labour government being captured by the extreme wokeites for one minute.
I've lived here for my whole life. It's my hometown. I was excited about this new bookshop when I saw it, and then I went in - and I'm crushingly disappointed.
You don't expect to see a bit of Islington in rural Hampshire, so I can't say I wish them well, but if it isn't my cup of tea why should I go in there and support them?
I'm not trying to ban them or make them illegal. But it doesn't mean I'm rooting for them.
There’s actually only one Waterstones in Islington. It’s a bit barren on the bookshop front, and actually not especially woke.
How many approved non-Woke bookshops are there in Islington? Just checking. (I don't mean the kind of bookshop that is neutral on this front, like specialist transport shops like the one that used to be in St Martin's Lane in London. I'm assuming here trhat the trains bit cancels out the petrolheads bit, obvs.)
OK.
If they want to start a culture war in my home town I will do my best to fucking finish it.
These people need to be defeated. Woke is a cancer.
That seems not wildly different from saying that in rural Hampshire, these folk should get back in the closet. How is opening a bookshop ‘starting a culture war’ ?
Former Anti-Abortion Leader Alleges Another Supreme Court Breach Years before the leaked draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, a landmark contraception ruling was disclosed, according to a minister who led a secretive effort to influence justices. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/19/us/supreme-court-leak-abortion-roe-wade.html
Again, I can see a way that Putin wins this. I wish it weren't so, but it is the case
If - and it is huge if - he has the missiles and drones to do the task, he can keep pounding and pounding Ukraine until the country is perpetually uninhabitable. Until "normal" human life becomes impossible there, and everyone tries to leave. At that point Ukraine will have already lost, in one sense, no matter how well its army performs
And then they will be forced to seek some kind of truce, and a temporary peace
The fact that senior Ukrainians are actually ASKING Ukrainians to leave feels important. Possibly a pivotal moment, and not in a good way
"Ukrainians urged to consider leaving country to save energy
Ukrainians should consider leaving the country to help save energy, the head of Ukraine’s biggest private energy firm has said.
Russian missile strikes have crippled Ukraine’s energy system, with authorities warning that Kyiv could face a “complete shutdown” of the power grid as winter sets in."
{Guardian live blog}
How can this really be "victory" if half of Ukraine has left? Will they ever return?
As I said, we must brace for 5m more refugees, and counting
Most of them will return - many already did after leaving the first time.
I think this is a question to which the answer is "No". In order for the Tories to do particularly badly, the Lib Dems need to be doing a bit better than they are doing at the moment. Harold Wilson reckoned that for Labour to do well in his day, the Liberals had to be over 10%, to hoover up enough Tory votes to give Labour the edge. That's not happening at the moment, and if an election was to be held soon there would be a swingback to the Conservatives - see the columnists in the Times, all rowing furiously behind Sunak & Co.
If the Tories were under 28%, and the Lib Dems over 12%, then the results could be brutal for the Conservatives, but at the moment the old reality is still in play - for the Conservative Party to be obliterated it will need to be buried at the crossroads with a stake through it's cold, unforgiving heart.
The Conservatives might not do very well at the next election simply because it might not get many votes.
What on earth is its appeal to people like me, and others who aren't pensioners?
They will control the borders and -
No wait. They won’t
They will counter Wokeness and -
Nope. They won’t do that
They will cut taxes and -
Nah
The answer is: zero. The Tories have zero appeal to anyone under 60
The only appeal they have at the moment is that at last they have one or two grown ups telling quite a bit of how it is. Not enough for me to vote for them, I am voting Labour, but the cause is not hopeless, quite, given the plethora of black swans there have been. Maybe there are more.
At some point attention must turn to a few elements of Labour philosophy. In particular, beyond rhetoric and retail tweaks, what is their fiscal policy for the next 5-10 year term- tax, spend, borrow, deficit, debt as a whole, and it what way is it different.
What do they offer non pensioners beyond pious words.
Post-Brexit plan. Single market or not. (It's binary - the thing politicians hate most. That's why it's there to make sure no-one can leave it....)
The trouble with being the party of pensioners and unproductive wealth (e.g. housing) is that those are both highly unproductive parts of the economy.
During the Tories time in power they have:
- Cut spending on most things other than pensions and healthcare (of course mostly for elderly people) to the bone. - Retained subsidies (e.g. on fuel next year, winter fuel allowance etc) for retirees - Maintained pensions in real terms while workers get a pay cut - Increased taxes significantly on working people
All of this results in a drag on economic growth and further falls in living standards for those in work. All while having no grand strategy to encourage investment and growth.
Pensioners may vote but you can't win an election with them alone. The Tories deserve to be tossed out of power for at least a decade.
To be fair, in a country with 70% home ownership, it's hard to work out how to democratically shaft such a large majority. There are no signs Starmer will.
Starmer and labour demanded the retention of the triple lock in the HOC the week before the Autumn statement
The triple lock was introduced by Cameron and Clegg and is supported by all parties including the SNP, evidenced by Blackford demanding Sunak confirmed it at the PMQs before the Autumn statement
There is no point Labour supporters objecting to the triple lock when their leader is 100% committed to it
As far as I can tell all Labour will do is change the guard and put up tax and the Wokery even more.
It's in the Labour draft manifesto:
A new, independent Woke bookshop in every town and village throughout the land.
They will remove all the (limited) brakes the Conservatives have currently applied.
In the longer term it provides a route back for them as there will eventually be a backlash.
I guess I'm curious as to why you were so worked up about this 'woke' bookshop in your town. I thought Tories were all in favour of small businesses being set up. It may or may not fail. But you actively want it to fail, which is odd for a Tory.
Meanwhile, on the Woke scale Starmer is pretty much in the middle, I'd have thought, and I don't see the next Labour government being captured by the extreme wokeites for one minute.
I've lived here for my whole life. It's my hometown. I was excited about this new bookshop when I saw it, and then I went in - and I'm crushingly disappointed.
You don't expect to see a bit of Islington in rural Hampshire, so I can't say I wish them well, but if it isn't my cup of tea why should I go in there and support them?
I'm not trying to ban them or make them illegal. But it doesn't mean I'm rooting for them.
There’s actually only one Waterstones in Islington. It’s a bit barren on the bookshop front, and actually not especially woke.
How many approved non-Woke bookshops are there in Islington? Just checking. (I don't mean the kind of bookshop that is neutral on this front, like specialist transport shops like the one that used to be in St Martin's Lane in London. I'm assuming here trhat the trains bit cancels out the petrolheads bit, obvs.)
OK.
If they want to start a culture war in my home town I will do my best to fucking finish it.
These people need to be defeated. Woke is a cancer.
That seems not wildly different from saying that in rural Hampshire, these folk should get back in the closet. How is opening a bookshop ‘starting a culture war’ ?
Casino is going to open up a shop next door selling pickelhaubes and signed copies of the new Anne Widdecombe romance.
The trouble with being the party of pensioners and unproductive wealth (e.g. housing) is that those are both highly unproductive parts of the economy.
During the Tories time in power they have:
- Cut spending on most things other than pensions and healthcare (of course mostly for elderly people) to the bone. - Retained subsidies (e.g. on fuel next year, winter fuel allowance etc) for retirees - Maintained pensions in real terms while workers get a pay cut - Increased taxes significantly on working people
All of this results in a drag on economic growth and further falls in living standards for those in work. All while having no grand strategy to encourage investment and growth.
Pensioners may vote but you can't win an election with them alone. The Tories deserve to be tossed out of power for at least a decade.
To be fair, in a country with 70% home ownership, it's hard to work out how to democratically shaft such a large majority. There are no signs Starmer will.
I'd have thought a similar proportion are employed, yet governments have had no issues shafting workers.
Mid- and high-income workers for sure.
Tax band freeze shafts all workers.
Pay rises way below inflation for nurses, teachers etc shafts ordinary workers.
Pensioners all protected nicely.
Tories = party of selfish old graspers, go to any members event and you realised how bad it is. Apparently young people don't do any work, anyone who doesn't have a house is blamed for, you know, living because in their day they didn't spend money on anything at all and existed on a diet of water and air. House prices going up are great because when they downsize it means more spending money. Social care costs should definitely fall on anyone but them and any suggestion that their money from the downsize can fund it is treated as literal theft, but at the same time the NHS is shit and having a system where people who can afford to pay extra can get priority treatment should replace it.
The last event I went to was pretty recent too, Tory members are basically all old and selfish. They will vote for whoever gives them more regardless of how badly the rest of the country suffers. They've worked hard and nobody else does now so they deserve more money, everyone else deserves to pay for it.
Again, I can see a way that Putin wins this. I wish it weren't so, but it is the case
If - and it is huge if - he has the missiles and drones to do the task, he can keep pounding and pounding Ukraine until the country is perpetually uninhabitable. Until "normal" human life becomes impossible there, and everyone tries to leave. At that point Ukraine will have already lost, in one sense, no matter how well its army performs
And then they will be forced to seek some kind of truce, and a temporary peace
The fact that senior Ukrainians are actually ASKING Ukrainians to leave feels important. Possibly a pivotal moment, and not in a good way
"Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium, atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant"
The trouble with being the party of pensioners and unproductive wealth (e.g. housing) is that those are both highly unproductive parts of the economy.
During the Tories time in power they have:
- Cut spending on most things other than pensions and healthcare (of course mostly for elderly people) to the bone. - Retained subsidies (e.g. on fuel next year, winter fuel allowance etc) for retirees - Maintained pensions in real terms while workers get a pay cut - Increased taxes significantly on working people
All of this results in a drag on economic growth and further falls in living standards for those in work. All while having no grand strategy to encourage investment and growth.
Pensioners may vote but you can't win an election with them alone. The Tories deserve to be tossed out of power for at least a decade.
To be fair, in a country with 70% home ownership, it's hard to work out how to democratically shaft such a large majority. There are no signs Starmer will.
Starmer and labour demanded the retention of the triple lock in the HOC the week before the Autumn statement
The triple lock was introduced by Cameron and Clegg and is supported by all parties including the SNP, evidenced by Blackford demanding Sunak confirmed it at the PMQs before the Autumn statement
There is no point Labour supporters objecting to the triple lock when their leader is 100% committed to it
As far as I can tell all Labour will do is change the guard and put up tax and the Wokery even more.
It's in the Labour draft manifesto:
A new, independent Woke bookshop in every town and village throughout the land.
They will remove all the (limited) brakes the Conservatives have currently applied.
In the longer term it provides a route back for them as there will eventually be a backlash.
I guess I'm curious as to why you were so worked up about this 'woke' bookshop in your town. I thought Tories were all in favour of small businesses being set up. It may or may not fail. But you actively want it to fail, which is odd for a Tory.
Meanwhile, on the Woke scale Starmer is pretty much in the middle, I'd have thought, and I don't see the next Labour government being captured by the extreme wokeites for one minute.
I've lived here for my whole life. It's my hometown. I was excited about this new bookshop when I saw it, and then I went in - and I'm crushingly disappointed.
You don't expect to see a bit of Islington in rural Hampshire, so I can't say I wish them well, but if it isn't my cup of tea why should I go in there and support them?
I'm not trying to ban them or make them illegal. But it doesn't mean I'm rooting for them.
There’s actually only one Waterstones in Islington. It’s a bit barren on the bookshop front, and actually not especially woke.
How many approved non-Woke bookshops are there in Islington? Just checking. (I don't mean the kind of bookshop that is neutral on this front, like specialist transport shops like the one that used to be in St Martin's Lane in London. I'm assuming here trhat the trains bit cancels out the petrolheads bit, obvs.)
OK.
If they want to start a culture war in my home town I will do my best to fucking finish it.
These people need to be defeated. Woke is a cancer.
That seems not wildly different from saying that in rural Hampshire, these folk should get back in the closet. How is opening a bookshop ‘starting a culture war’ ?
The trouble with being the party of pensioners and unproductive wealth (e.g. housing) is that those are both highly unproductive parts of the economy.
During the Tories time in power they have:
- Cut spending on most things other than pensions and healthcare (of course mostly for elderly people) to the bone. - Retained subsidies (e.g. on fuel next year, winter fuel allowance etc) for retirees - Maintained pensions in real terms while workers get a pay cut - Increased taxes significantly on working people
All of this results in a drag on economic growth and further falls in living standards for those in work. All while having no grand strategy to encourage investment and growth.
Pensioners may vote but you can't win an election with them alone. The Tories deserve to be tossed out of power for at least a decade.
To be fair, in a country with 70% home ownership, it's hard to work out how to democratically shaft such a large majority. There are no signs Starmer will.
Starmer and labour demanded the retention of the triple lock in the HOC the week before the Autumn statement
The triple lock was introduced by Cameron and Clegg and is supported by all parties including the SNP, evidenced by Blackford demanding Sunak confirmed it at the PMQs before the Autumn statement
There is no point Labour supporters objecting to the triple lock when their leader is 100% committed to it
As far as I can tell all Labour will do is change the guard and put up tax and the Wokery even more.
It's in the Labour draft manifesto:
A new, independent Woke bookshop in every town and village throughout the land.
They will remove all the (limited) brakes the Conservatives have currently applied.
In the longer term it provides a route back for them as there will eventually be a backlash.
I guess I'm curious as to why you were so worked up about this 'woke' bookshop in your town. I thought Tories were all in favour of small businesses being set up. It may or may not fail. But you actively want it to fail, which is odd for a Tory.
Meanwhile, on the Woke scale Starmer is pretty much in the middle, I'd have thought, and I don't see the next Labour government being captured by the extreme wokeites for one minute.
I've lived here for my whole life. It's my hometown. I was excited about this new bookshop when I saw it, and then I went in - and I'm crushingly disappointed.
You don't expect to see a bit of Islington in rural Hampshire, so I can't say I wish them well, but if it isn't my cup of tea why should I go in there and support them?
I'm not trying to ban them or make them illegal. But it doesn't mean I'm rooting for them.
There’s actually only one Waterstones in Islington. It’s a bit barren on the bookshop front, and actually not especially woke.
How many approved non-Woke bookshops are there in Islington? Just checking. (I don't mean the kind of bookshop that is neutral on this front, like specialist transport shops like the one that used to be in St Martin's Lane in London. I'm assuming here trhat the trains bit cancels out the petrolheads bit, obvs.)
OK.
If they want to start a culture war in my home town I will do my best to fucking finish it.
These people need to be defeated. Woke is a cancer.
That seems not wildly different from saying that in rural Hampshire, these folk should get back in the closet. How is opening a bookshop ‘starting a culture war’ ?
Casino is going to open up a shop next door selling pickelhaubes and signed copies of the new Anne Widdecombe romance.
I think this is a question to which the answer is "No". In order for the Tories to do particularly badly, the Lib Dems need to be doing a bit better than they are doing at the moment. Harold Wilson reckoned that for Labour to do well in his day, the Liberals had to be over 10%, to hoover up enough Tory votes to give Labour the edge. That's not happening at the moment, and if an election was to be held soon there would be a swingback to the Conservatives - see the columnists in the Times, all rowing furiously behind Sunak & Co.
If the Tories were under 28%, and the Lib Dems over 12%, then the results could be brutal for the Conservatives, but at the moment the old reality is still in play - for the Conservative Party to be obliterated it will need to be buried at the crossroads with a stake through it's cold, unforgiving heart.
The Conservatives might not do very well at the next election simply because it might not get many votes.
What on earth is its appeal to people like me, and others who aren't pensioners?
They will control the borders and -
No wait. They won’t
They will counter Wokeness and -
Nope. They won’t do that
They will cut taxes and -
Nah
The answer is: zero. The Tories have zero appeal to anyone under 60
The only appeal they have at the moment is that at last they have one or two grown ups telling quite a bit of how it is. Not enough for me to vote for them, I am voting Labour, but the cause is not hopeless, quite, given the plethora of black swans there have been. Maybe there are more.
At some point attention must turn to a few elements of Labour philosophy. In particular, beyond rhetoric and retail tweaks, what is their fiscal policy for the next 5-10 year term- tax, spend, borrow, deficit, debt as a whole, and it what way is it different.
What do they offer non pensioners beyond pious words.
Post-Brexit plan. Single market or not. (It's binary - the thing politicians hate most. That's why it's there to make sure no-one can leave it....)
This is why I think he will probably come round to proposing the Single Market. It would boost trade somewhat, and it would instantly solve the Northern Ireland problem, It would be clear blue water between him and the failed Tories, and it would be enormously popular with Remainers
The thorny issue is Free Movement, but the Tories have given him a huge Out there, because the Tories are also openly proposing large scale immigration and the Tories have failed to get a grip on the Dinghy People. So Free Movement feels like a big meh in comparison, what's the difference going to be?
The trouble with being the party of pensioners and unproductive wealth (e.g. housing) is that those are both highly unproductive parts of the economy.
During the Tories time in power they have:
- Cut spending on most things other than pensions and healthcare (of course mostly for elderly people) to the bone. - Retained subsidies (e.g. on fuel next year, winter fuel allowance etc) for retirees - Maintained pensions in real terms while workers get a pay cut - Increased taxes significantly on working people
All of this results in a drag on economic growth and further falls in living standards for those in work. All while having no grand strategy to encourage investment and growth.
Pensioners may vote but you can't win an election with them alone. The Tories deserve to be tossed out of power for at least a decade.
To be fair, in a country with 70% home ownership, it's hard to work out how to democratically shaft such a large majority. There are no signs Starmer will.
I'd have thought a similar proportion are employed, yet governments have had no issues shafting workers.
Mid- and high-income workers for sure.
Tax band freeze shafts all workers.
Pay rises way below inflation for nurses, teachers etc shafts ordinary workers.
Pensioners all protected nicely.
Tories = party of selfish old graspers, go to any members event and you realised how bad it is. Apparently young people don't do any work, anyone who doesn't have a house is blamed for, you know, living because in their day they didn't spend money on anything at all and existed on a diet of water and air. House prices going up are great because when they downsize it means more spending money. Social care costs should definitely fall on anyone but them and any suggestion that their money from the downsize can fund it is treated as literal theft, but at the same time the NHS is shit and having a system where people who can afford to pay extra can get priority treatment should replace it.
The last event I went to was pretty recent too, Tory members are basically all old and selfish. They will vote for whoever gives them more regardless of how badly the rest of the country suffers. They've worked hard and nobody else does now so they deserve more money, everyone else deserves to pay for it.
Polling on pensioner attitudes is terrifying.
All but small minority think the young (ie the under 60s) are simply decadent ingrates.
You have to ask where in hell do these attitudes arise from?
The trouble with being the party of pensioners and unproductive wealth (e.g. housing) is that those are both highly unproductive parts of the economy.
During the Tories time in power they have:
- Cut spending on most things other than pensions and healthcare (of course mostly for elderly people) to the bone. - Retained subsidies (e.g. on fuel next year, winter fuel allowance etc) for retirees - Maintained pensions in real terms while workers get a pay cut - Increased taxes significantly on working people
All of this results in a drag on economic growth and further falls in living standards for those in work. All while having no grand strategy to encourage investment and growth.
Pensioners may vote but you can't win an election with them alone. The Tories deserve to be tossed out of power for at least a decade.
To be fair, in a country with 70% home ownership, it's hard to work out how to democratically shaft such a large majority. There are no signs Starmer will.
I'd have thought a similar proportion are employed, yet governments have had no issues shafting workers.
Mid- and high-income workers for sure.
Tax band freeze shafts all workers.
Pay rises way below inflation for nurses, teachers etc shafts ordinary workers.
Pensioners all protected nicely.
Tories = party of selfish old graspers, go to any members event and you realised how bad it is. Apparently young people don't do any work, anyone who doesn't have a house is blamed for, you know, living because in their day they didn't spend money on anything at all and existed on a diet of water and air. House prices going up are great because when they downsize it means more spending money. Social care costs should definitely fall on anyone but them and any suggestion that their money from the downsize can fund it is treated as literal theft, but at the same time the NHS is shit and having a system where people who can afford to pay extra can get priority treatment should replace it.
The last event I went to was pretty recent too, Tory members are basically all old and selfish. They will vote for whoever gives them more regardless of how badly the rest of the country suffers. They've worked hard and nobody else does now so they deserve more money, everyone else deserves to pay for it.
Don't they have kids or grandkids? Don't they have kids who will tell them, Dad, it's shit, I'm still renting at the age of 40?
The Labour lead in 1997 on a GB basis was actually 13% - but two years earlier it had been regularly higher than 30% . The bigger Labour leads tended to be recorded by Gallup which no longer appears to be polling in the UK , but it it still shows that a significant Tory recovery did materialise despite the scale of the 1997 defeat.It might be argued that the economic backdrop makes that more difficult from here, but we need to recall other examples of strong pre-election recoveries by unpopular Governments. In Spring 1968 Wilson's Labour Government was trailing the Tories by 28% , yet it came as a big surprise when the Tories won the June 1970 election - albeit with a GB lead of just 2.5%. In Spring 1977 Callaghan's Government lagged by 25%, and whilst Labour went on to lose by 7.1% in May 1979 many believe Callaghan was likely to have been re-elected had he called an election in early Autumn 1978.
It's more likely that the 20/30/40% leads don't really exist.
Voters just find it a lot easier to say don't know, or that they'll vote for another party when it's nowhere near an election and it means almost nothing.
People talk about things like swingback, but I suspect if we really had an election tomorrow it would be Labour ahead in the low teens at most.
The trouble with being the party of pensioners and unproductive wealth (e.g. housing) is that those are both highly unproductive parts of the economy.
During the Tories time in power they have:
- Cut spending on most things other than pensions and healthcare (of course mostly for elderly people) to the bone. - Retained subsidies (e.g. on fuel next year, winter fuel allowance etc) for retirees - Maintained pensions in real terms while workers get a pay cut - Increased taxes significantly on working people
All of this results in a drag on economic growth and further falls in living standards for those in work. All while having no grand strategy to encourage investment and growth.
Pensioners may vote but you can't win an election with them alone. The Tories deserve to be tossed out of power for at least a decade.
To be fair, in a country with 70% home ownership, it's hard to work out how to democratically shaft such a large majority. There are no signs Starmer will.
I'd have thought a similar proportion are employed, yet governments have had no issues shafting workers.
Mid- and high-income workers for sure.
Tax band freeze shafts all workers.
Pay rises way below inflation for nurses, teachers etc shafts ordinary workers.
Pensioners all protected nicely.
Tories = party of selfish old graspers, go to any members event and you realised how bad it is. Apparently young people don't do any work, anyone who doesn't have a house is blamed for, you know, living because in their day they didn't spend money on anything at all and existed on a diet of water and air. House prices going up are great because when they downsize it means more spending money. Social care costs should definitely fall on anyone but them and any suggestion that their money from the downsize can fund it is treated as literal theft, but at the same time the NHS is shit and having a system where people who can afford to pay extra can get priority treatment should replace it.
The last event I went to was pretty recent too, Tory members are basically all old and selfish. They will vote for whoever gives them more regardless of how badly the rest of the country suffers. They've worked hard and nobody else does now so they deserve more money, everyone else deserves to pay for it.
Polling on pensioner attitudes is terrifying.
All but small minority think the young (ie the under 60s) are simply decadent ingrates.
You have to ask where in hell do these attitudes arise from?
"Then, in our 30s and 40s, the brain starts to shrink, with the shrinkage rate increasing even more by age 60. Like wrinkles and gray hair that start to appear later in life, the brain's appearance starts to change, too. And our brain’s physical morphing means that our cognitive abilities will become altered. The following changes normally occur as we get older"
The Labour lead in 1997 on a GB basis was actually 13% - but two years earlier it had been regularly higher than 30% . The bigger Labour leads tended to be recorded by Gallup which no longer appears to be polling in the UK , but it it still shows that a significant Tory recovery did materialise despite the scale of the 1997 defeat.It might be argued that the economic backdrop makes that more difficult from here, but we need to recall other examples of strong pre-election recoveries by unpopular Governments. In Spring 1968 Wilson's Labour Government was trailing the Tories by 28% , yet it came as a big surprise when the Tories won the June 1970 election - albeit with a GB lead of just 2.5%. In Spring 1977 Callaghan's Government lagged by 25%, and whilst Labour went on to lose by 7.1% in May 1979 many believe Callaghan was likely to have been re-elected had he called an election in early Autumn 1978.
It's more likely that the 20/30/40% leads don't really exist.
Voters just find it a lot easier to say don't know, or that they'll vote for another party when it's nowhere near an election and it means almost nothing.
People talk about things like swingback, but I suspect if we really had an election tomorrow it would be Labour ahead in the low teens at most.
You're really not detecting the mood? My extended family is quite rightwing (but also includes lefties)
All but one has disowned the Tories. My friendship group (admittedly more mixed from the start) is viscerally against the Tories
And it's not just disenchantment, it's sense of anger and a desire to see the Tories suffer. To punish them. A lust for revenge. That's not going to go away, it might actually grow with every day the Tories govern from here on, as people get even more irritated
I've never sensed anything like it. Bigger than 97, to my mind
Smarkets has Tories as 30% chance for most seats in the next GE. Wm Hill have it at 2/5. If PBers as a whole are right (are they ever wrong) backing Labour for most seats is finding money in the street.
Someone somewhere does not agree with the PB consensus. personally I think 30% chance is high, but I wouldn't yet put it below 20%.
The trouble with being the party of pensioners and unproductive wealth (e.g. housing) is that those are both highly unproductive parts of the economy.
During the Tories time in power they have:
- Cut spending on most things other than pensions and healthcare (of course mostly for elderly people) to the bone. - Retained subsidies (e.g. on fuel next year, winter fuel allowance etc) for retirees - Maintained pensions in real terms while workers get a pay cut - Increased taxes significantly on working people
All of this results in a drag on economic growth and further falls in living standards for those in work. All while having no grand strategy to encourage investment and growth.
Pensioners may vote but you can't win an election with them alone. The Tories deserve to be tossed out of power for at least a decade.
To be fair, in a country with 70% home ownership, it's hard to work out how to democratically shaft such a large majority. There are no signs Starmer will.
I'd have thought a similar proportion are employed, yet governments have had no issues shafting workers.
Mid- and high-income workers for sure.
Tax band freeze shafts all workers.
Pay rises way below inflation for nurses, teachers etc shafts ordinary workers.
Pensioners all protected nicely.
Tories = party of selfish old graspers, go to any members event and you realised how bad it is. Apparently young people don't do any work, anyone who doesn't have a house is blamed for, you know, living because in their day they didn't spend money on anything at all and existed on a diet of water and air. House prices going up are great because when they downsize it means more spending money. Social care costs should definitely fall on anyone but them and any suggestion that their money from the downsize can fund it is treated as literal theft, but at the same time the NHS is shit and having a system where people who can afford to pay extra can get priority treatment should replace it.
The last event I went to was pretty recent too, Tory members are basically all old and selfish. They will vote for whoever gives them more regardless of how badly the rest of the country suffers. They've worked hard and nobody else does now so they deserve more money, everyone else deserves to pay for it.
Don't they have kids or grandkids? Don't they have kids who will tell them, Dad, it's shit, I'm still renting at the age of 40?
Tried to tell my Dad, earlier - just doesn't get it. He's ok and his view is that he had it much harder in his day, and has earned it, and the young don't really work hard enough; that's just how life is.
I love him, but I don't really talk to him much about it on this subject. My mum is a little bit better.
Smarkets has Tories as 30% chance for most seats in the next GE. Wm Hill have it at 2/5. If PBers as a whole are right (are they ever wrong) backing Labour for most seats is finding money in the street.
Someone somewhere does not agree with the PB consensus. personally I think 30% chance is high, but I wouldn't yet put it below 20%.
The trouble with being the party of pensioners and unproductive wealth (e.g. housing) is that those are both highly unproductive parts of the economy.
During the Tories time in power they have:
- Cut spending on most things other than pensions and healthcare (of course mostly for elderly people) to the bone. - Retained subsidies (e.g. on fuel next year, winter fuel allowance etc) for retirees - Maintained pensions in real terms while workers get a pay cut - Increased taxes significantly on working people
All of this results in a drag on economic growth and further falls in living standards for those in work. All while having no grand strategy to encourage investment and growth.
Pensioners may vote but you can't win an election with them alone. The Tories deserve to be tossed out of power for at least a decade.
To be fair, in a country with 70% home ownership, it's hard to work out how to democratically shaft such a large majority. There are no signs Starmer will.
I'd have thought a similar proportion are employed, yet governments have had no issues shafting workers.
Mid- and high-income workers for sure.
Tax band freeze shafts all workers.
Pay rises way below inflation for nurses, teachers etc shafts ordinary workers.
Pensioners all protected nicely.
Tories = party of selfish old graspers, go to any members event and you realised how bad it is. Apparently young people don't do any work, anyone who doesn't have a house is blamed for, you know, living because in their day they didn't spend money on anything at all and existed on a diet of water and air. House prices going up are great because when they downsize it means more spending money. Social care costs should definitely fall on anyone but them and any suggestion that their money from the downsize can fund it is treated as literal theft, but at the same time the NHS is shit and having a system where people who can afford to pay extra can get priority treatment should replace it.
The last event I went to was pretty recent too, Tory members are basically all old and selfish. They will vote for whoever gives them more regardless of how badly the rest of the country suffers. They've worked hard and nobody else does now so they deserve more money, everyone else deserves to pay for it.
Polling on pensioner attitudes is terrifying.
All but small minority think the young (ie the under 60s) are simply decadent ingrates.
You have to ask where in hell do these attitudes arise from?
You get it in a small way from the age split in "working from home" polling.
Anyone under 60 - who, of course, lack the imagination to understand modern ways of working - thinks it's a skive, whereas everyone else realises you work just as hard on the WFH days, at your desk on calls all day long, or working on documents, just without the commute.
The real reason is that they didn't have this flexibility in their day, and are resentful that the generations to follow do, so they try and trash it.
The trouble with being the party of pensioners and unproductive wealth (e.g. housing) is that those are both highly unproductive parts of the economy.
During the Tories time in power they have:
- Cut spending on most things other than pensions and healthcare (of course mostly for elderly people) to the bone. - Retained subsidies (e.g. on fuel next year, winter fuel allowance etc) for retirees - Maintained pensions in real terms while workers get a pay cut - Increased taxes significantly on working people
All of this results in a drag on economic growth and further falls in living standards for those in work. All while having no grand strategy to encourage investment and growth.
Pensioners may vote but you can't win an election with them alone. The Tories deserve to be tossed out of power for at least a decade.
To be fair, in a country with 70% home ownership, it's hard to work out how to democratically shaft such a large majority. There are no signs Starmer will.
Starmer and labour demanded the retention of the triple lock in the HOC the week before the Autumn statement
The triple lock was introduced by Cameron and Clegg and is supported by all parties including the SNP, evidenced by Blackford demanding Sunak confirmed it at the PMQs before the Autumn statement
There is no point Labour supporters objecting to the triple lock when their leader is 100% committed to it
As far as I can tell all Labour will do is change the guard and put up tax and the Wokery even more.
It's in the Labour draft manifesto:
A new, independent Woke bookshop in every town and village throughout the land.
They will remove all the (limited) brakes the Conservatives have currently applied.
In the longer term it provides a route back for them as there will eventually be a backlash.
I guess I'm curious as to why you were so worked up about this 'woke' bookshop in your town. I thought Tories were all in favour of small businesses being set up. It may or may not fail. But you actively want it to fail, which is odd for a Tory.
Meanwhile, on the Woke scale Starmer is pretty much in the middle, I'd have thought, and I don't see the next Labour government being captured by the extreme wokeites for one minute.
I've lived here for my whole life. It's my hometown. I was excited about this new bookshop when I saw it, and then I went in - and I'm crushingly disappointed.
You don't expect to see a bit of Islington in rural Hampshire, so I can't say I wish them well, but if it isn't my cup of tea why should I go in there and support them?
I'm not trying to ban them or make them illegal. But it doesn't mean I'm rooting for them.
There’s actually only one Waterstones in Islington. It’s a bit barren on the bookshop front, and actually not especially woke.
How many approved non-Woke bookshops are there in Islington? Just checking. (I don't mean the kind of bookshop that is neutral on this front, like specialist transport shops like the one that used to be in St Martin's Lane in London. I'm assuming here trhat the trains bit cancels out the petrolheads bit, obvs.)
OK.
If they want to start a culture war in my home town I will do my best to fucking finish it.
These people need to be defeated. Woke is a cancer.
That seems not wildly different from saying that in rural Hampshire, these folk should get back in the closet. How is opening a bookshop ‘starting a culture war’ ?
It's not a bookshop, it's a wokeshop.
It seems to be getting woker the more you dwell on it, to the point I'm surprised they didn't ambush you on the way in to indoctrinate you.
Again, I can see a way that Putin wins this. I wish it weren't so, but it is the case
If - and it is huge if - he has the missiles and drones to do the task, he can keep pounding and pounding Ukraine until the country is perpetually uninhabitable. Until "normal" human life becomes impossible there, and everyone tries to leave. At that point Ukraine will have already lost, in one sense, no matter how well its army performs
And then they will be forced to seek some kind of truce, and a temporary peace
The fact that senior Ukrainians are actually ASKING Ukrainians to leave feels important. Possibly a pivotal moment, and not in a good way
The curious thing is that the Russians haven't started using the Iranian ballistic missiles they were supposed to be on the verge of receiving weeks ago. And even the number of Iranian drones that they've been using seem to have gone down, while they are so low on stocks of their own missiles that they're repurposing missiles that have been armed with nuclear warheads - i.e. they're cannibalising the stocks of their delivery systems for their nuclear deterrent. So what happened? Why didn't we see the expected barrage of Iranian ballistic missiles?
The trouble with being the party of pensioners and unproductive wealth (e.g. housing) is that those are both highly unproductive parts of the economy.
During the Tories time in power they have:
- Cut spending on most things other than pensions and healthcare (of course mostly for elderly people) to the bone. - Retained subsidies (e.g. on fuel next year, winter fuel allowance etc) for retirees - Maintained pensions in real terms while workers get a pay cut - Increased taxes significantly on working people
All of this results in a drag on economic growth and further falls in living standards for those in work. All while having no grand strategy to encourage investment and growth.
Pensioners may vote but you can't win an election with them alone. The Tories deserve to be tossed out of power for at least a decade.
To be fair, in a country with 70% home ownership, it's hard to work out how to democratically shaft such a large majority. There are no signs Starmer will.
I'd have thought a similar proportion are employed, yet governments have had no issues shafting workers.
Mid- and high-income workers for sure.
Tax band freeze shafts all workers.
Pay rises way below inflation for nurses, teachers etc shafts ordinary workers.
Pensioners all protected nicely.
Tories = party of selfish old graspers, go to any members event and you realised how bad it is. Apparently young people don't do any work, anyone who doesn't have a house is blamed for, you know, living because in their day they didn't spend money on anything at all and existed on a diet of water and air. House prices going up are great because when they downsize it means more spending money. Social care costs should definitely fall on anyone but them and any suggestion that their money from the downsize can fund it is treated as literal theft, but at the same time the NHS is shit and having a system where people who can afford to pay extra can get priority treatment should replace it.
The last event I went to was pretty recent too, Tory members are basically all old and selfish. They will vote for whoever gives them more regardless of how badly the rest of the country suffers. They've worked hard and nobody else does now so they deserve more money, everyone else deserves to pay for it.
Don't they have kids or grandkids? Don't they have kids who will tell them, Dad, it's shit, I'm still renting at the age of 40?
Then you get the mad statements like "you shouldn't have gone to university and moved to London, should you?" or guff about avocado toast. Or things like "we should build houses but only for local people". How? Internal passports?
Meanwhile, in other "the past is a different country and some people are desparate to move back there" news,
I think this is a question to which the answer is "No". In order for the Tories to do particularly badly, the Lib Dems need to be doing a bit better than they are doing at the moment. Harold Wilson reckoned that for Labour to do well in his day, the Liberals had to be over 10%, to hoover up enough Tory votes to give Labour the edge. That's not happening at the moment, and if an election was to be held soon there would be a swingback to the Conservatives - see the columnists in the Times, all rowing furiously behind Sunak & Co.
If the Tories were under 28%, and the Lib Dems over 12%, then the results could be brutal for the Conservatives, but at the moment the old reality is still in play - for the Conservative Party to be obliterated it will need to be buried at the crossroads with a stake through it's cold, unforgiving heart.
The Conservatives might not do very well at the next election simply because it might not get many votes.
What on earth is its appeal to people like me, and others who aren't pensioners?
They will control the borders and -
No wait. They won’t
They will counter Wokeness and -
Nope. They won’t do that
They will cut taxes and -
Nah
The answer is: zero. The Tories have zero appeal to anyone under 60
The only appeal they have at the moment is that at last they have one or two grown ups telling quite a bit of how it is. Not enough for me to vote for them, I am voting Labour, but the cause is not hopeless, quite, given the plethora of black swans there have been. Maybe there are more.
At some point attention must turn to a few elements of Labour philosophy. In particular, beyond rhetoric and retail tweaks, what is their fiscal policy for the next 5-10 year term- tax, spend, borrow, deficit, debt as a whole, and it what way is it different.
What do they offer non pensioners beyond pious words.
Post-Brexit plan. Single market or not. (It's binary - the thing politicians hate most. That's why it's there to make sure no-one can leave it....)
This is why I think he will probably come round to proposing the Single Market. It would boost trade somewhat, and it would instantly solve the Northern Ireland problem, It would be clear blue water between him and the failed Tories, and it would be enormously popular with Remainers
The thorny issue is Free Movement, but the Tories have given him a huge Out there, because the Tories are also openly proposing large scale immigration and the Tories have failed to get a grip on the Dinghy People. So Free Movement feels like a big meh in comparison, what's the difference going to be?
Much in this. Personally I have always opposed EU FOM because of the way it discriminates against everyone else, while making indiscriminate offers to EU folks. I support an open, patrolled level playing field.
But politically, to the Brexiteers who just hate Johnny Foreigner, it must now be obvious that the hated masses are coming here in droves and no force on earth can stop it. And to the ultra right racists EU ones are better than other ethnicities.
BTW joining SM would give our delightful SNP friends a really clear run at independence, because it would solve the Gretna issue (just up the road from me) as well as the RoI/NI one.
I think that what the rural home counties may need is neither a JR-Hartley-type bookshop smelling of pipesmoke, or an ultra-modern and austere one to devoted to trans issues, but a psychedelic-technicolour 1960's-style emporium, selling books on romantic, spiritual and global esoterica, and run by friendly chaps and girls who used to live on canal boats.
Or perhaps that's just the one I would visit, of a nice quiet Saturday.
A climate change protester has been arrested for trying to confront Sir David Attenborough as he dined at a Michelin-starred fish restaurant.
Emma Smart, an activist for the campaign group Animal Rebellion, allegedly caused a disturbance at the Catch at the Old Fish Market in Weymouth, Dorset.
She was asked to leave the venue before being dragged out and detained by police.
Mrs Smart said: 'The Catch is a symbol of excess and inequality in today's world, Weymouth has average wages amongst the lowest in the UK and is at huge risk of sea level rises.
'Yet this restaurant still continues business as usual amongst the worst cost-of-living crisis many will ever experience.
'Sir David is in a unique position to tell the truth about the biodiversity crisis.
'He has the chance to leave a legacy of love, care, and of being the forerunner of a better world.'
The trouble with being the party of pensioners and unproductive wealth (e.g. housing) is that those are both highly unproductive parts of the economy.
During the Tories time in power they have:
- Cut spending on most things other than pensions and healthcare (of course mostly for elderly people) to the bone. - Retained subsidies (e.g. on fuel next year, winter fuel allowance etc) for retirees - Maintained pensions in real terms while workers get a pay cut - Increased taxes significantly on working people
All of this results in a drag on economic growth and further falls in living standards for those in work. All while having no grand strategy to encourage investment and growth.
Pensioners may vote but you can't win an election with them alone. The Tories deserve to be tossed out of power for at least a decade.
To be fair, in a country with 70% home ownership, it's hard to work out how to democratically shaft such a large majority. There are no signs Starmer will.
I'd have thought a similar proportion are employed, yet governments have had no issues shafting workers.
Mid- and high-income workers for sure.
Tax band freeze shafts all workers.
Pay rises way below inflation for nurses, teachers etc shafts ordinary workers.
Pensioners all protected nicely.
Tories = party of selfish old graspers, go to any members event and you realised how bad it is. Apparently young people don't do any work, anyone who doesn't have a house is blamed for, you know, living because in their day they didn't spend money on anything at all and existed on a diet of water and air. House prices going up are great because when they downsize it means more spending money. Social care costs should definitely fall on anyone but them and any suggestion that their money from the downsize can fund it is treated as literal theft, but at the same time the NHS is shit and having a system where people who can afford to pay extra can get priority treatment should replace it.
The last event I went to was pretty recent too, Tory members are basically all old and selfish. They will vote for whoever gives them more regardless of how badly the rest of the country suffers. They've worked hard and nobody else does now so they deserve more money, everyone else deserves to pay for it.
Don't they have kids or grandkids? Don't they have kids who will tell them, Dad, it's shit, I'm still renting at the age of 40?
Tried to tell my Dad, earlier - just doesn't get it. He's ok and his view is that he had it much harder in his day, and has earned it, and the young don't really work hard enough; that's just how life is.
I love him, but I don't really talk to him much about it on this subject. My mum is a little bit better.
It's odd, as there are some who go too far in the other direction, and would defer all their opinions to their grandkids because they have to think of the future and I guess that's easier, but that is a smaller group obviously.
But by and large it is as described, it does seem to be as simple as taking the view that they have worked hard and so deserve, essentially, anything, and therefore anyone who has not worked as long does not.
The Labour lead in 1997 on a GB basis was actually 13% - but two years earlier it had been regularly higher than 30% . The bigger Labour leads tended to be recorded by Gallup which no longer appears to be polling in the UK , but it it still shows that a significant Tory recovery did materialise despite the scale of the 1997 defeat.It might be argued that the economic backdrop makes that more difficult from here, but we need to recall other examples of strong pre-election recoveries by unpopular Governments. In Spring 1968 Wilson's Labour Government was trailing the Tories by 28% , yet it came as a big surprise when the Tories won the June 1970 election - albeit with a GB lead of just 2.5%. In Spring 1977 Callaghan's Government lagged by 25%, and whilst Labour went on to lose by 7.1% in May 1979 many believe Callaghan was likely to have been re-elected had he called an election in early Autumn 1978.
It's more likely that the 20/30/40% leads don't really exist.
Voters just find it a lot easier to say don't know, or that they'll vote for another party when it's nowhere near an election and it means almost nothing.
People talk about things like swingback, but I suspect if we really had an election tomorrow it would be Labour ahead in the low teens at most.
Very big leads do tend not to quite materialise on Polling Day. We saw that in both Blair Lanslide wins in 1997 and 2001 with the vote margin generally a fair bit smaller than predicted by most pollsters. Again in 1983 the final week of the campaign saw Tory leads in the range of 21% - 23% - Thatcher's winning GB margin proved to be 15.2%.
The trouble with being the party of pensioners and unproductive wealth (e.g. housing) is that those are both highly unproductive parts of the economy.
During the Tories time in power they have:
- Cut spending on most things other than pensions and healthcare (of course mostly for elderly people) to the bone. - Retained subsidies (e.g. on fuel next year, winter fuel allowance etc) for retirees - Maintained pensions in real terms while workers get a pay cut - Increased taxes significantly on working people
All of this results in a drag on economic growth and further falls in living standards for those in work. All while having no grand strategy to encourage investment and growth.
Pensioners may vote but you can't win an election with them alone. The Tories deserve to be tossed out of power for at least a decade.
To be fair, in a country with 70% home ownership, it's hard to work out how to democratically shaft such a large majority. There are no signs Starmer will.
I'd have thought a similar proportion are employed, yet governments have had no issues shafting workers.
Mid- and high-income workers for sure.
Tax band freeze shafts all workers.
Pay rises way below inflation for nurses, teachers etc shafts ordinary workers.
Pensioners all protected nicely.
Tories = party of selfish old graspers, go to any members event and you realised how bad it is. Apparently young people don't do any work, anyone who doesn't have a house is blamed for, you know, living because in their day they didn't spend money on anything at all and existed on a diet of water and air. House prices going up are great because when they downsize it means more spending money. Social care costs should definitely fall on anyone but them and any suggestion that their money from the downsize can fund it is treated as literal theft, but at the same time the NHS is shit and having a system where people who can afford to pay extra can get priority treatment should replace it.
The last event I went to was pretty recent too, Tory members are basically all old and selfish. They will vote for whoever gives them more regardless of how badly the rest of the country suffers. They've worked hard and nobody else does now so they deserve more money, everyone else deserves to pay for it.
Polling on pensioner attitudes is terrifying.
All but small minority think the young (ie the under 60s) are simply decadent ingrates.
You have to ask where in hell do these attitudes arise from?
You get it in a small way from the age split in "working from home" polling.
Anyone under 60 - who, of course, lack the imagination to understand modern ways of working - thinks it's a skive, whereas everyone else realises you work just as hard on the WFH days, at your desk on calls all day long, or working on documents, just without the commute.
The real reason is that they didn't have this flexibility in their day, and are resentful that the generations to follow do, so they try and trash it.
WFH should never have become a culture war issue. It's appropriate for some teams and organisations but not for others.
The trouble with being the party of pensioners and unproductive wealth (e.g. housing) is that those are both highly unproductive parts of the economy.
During the Tories time in power they have:
- Cut spending on most things other than pensions and healthcare (of course mostly for elderly people) to the bone. - Retained subsidies (e.g. on fuel next year, winter fuel allowance etc) for retirees - Maintained pensions in real terms while workers get a pay cut - Increased taxes significantly on working people
All of this results in a drag on economic growth and further falls in living standards for those in work. All while having no grand strategy to encourage investment and growth.
Pensioners may vote but you can't win an election with them alone. The Tories deserve to be tossed out of power for at least a decade.
To be fair, in a country with 70% home ownership, it's hard to work out how to democratically shaft such a large majority. There are no signs Starmer will.
I'd have thought a similar proportion are employed, yet governments have had no issues shafting workers.
Mid- and high-income workers for sure.
Tax band freeze shafts all workers.
Pay rises way below inflation for nurses, teachers etc shafts ordinary workers.
Pensioners all protected nicely.
Tories = party of selfish old graspers, go to any members event and you realised how bad it is. Apparently young people don't do any work, anyone who doesn't have a house is blamed for, you know, living because in their day they didn't spend money on anything at all and existed on a diet of water and air. House prices going up are great because when they downsize it means more spending money. Social care costs should definitely fall on anyone but them and any suggestion that their money from the downsize can fund it is treated as literal theft, but at the same time the NHS is shit and having a system where people who can afford to pay extra can get priority treatment should replace it.
The last event I went to was pretty recent too, Tory members are basically all old and selfish. They will vote for whoever gives them more regardless of how badly the rest of the country suffers. They've worked hard and nobody else does now so they deserve more money, everyone else deserves to pay for it.
Polling on pensioner attitudes is terrifying.
All but small minority think the young (ie the under 60s) are simply decadent ingrates.
You have to ask where in hell do these attitudes arise from?
You get it in a small way from the age split in "working from home" polling.
Anyone under 60 - who, of course, lack the imagination to understand modern ways of working - thinks it's a skive, whereas everyone else realises you work just as hard on the WFH days, at your desk on calls all day long, or working on documents, just without the commute.
The real reason is that they didn't have this flexibility in their day, and are resentful that the generations to follow do, so they try and trash it.
I dislike WFH not because I think it is a skive - I don't care - but because I think it is obviously less efficient. See my many problems with the Inland Revenue this year, which they explicitly admit are partly down to WFH
WFH is also really bad for cities. And it further atomises people. Hopefully we will find a fruitful middle path. Eventually
The Labour lead in 1997 on a GB basis was actually 13% - but two years earlier it had been regularly higher than 30% . The bigger Labour leads tended to be recorded by Gallup which no longer appears to be polling in the UK , but it it still shows that a significant Tory recovery did materialise despite the scale of the 1997 defeat.It might be argued that the economic backdrop makes that more difficult from here, but we need to recall other examples of strong pre-election recoveries by unpopular Governments. In Spring 1968 Wilson's Labour Government was trailing the Tories by 28% , yet it came as a big surprise when the Tories won the June 1970 election - albeit with a GB lead of just 2.5%. In Spring 1977 Callaghan's Government lagged by 25%, and whilst Labour went on to lose by 7.1% in May 1979 many believe Callaghan was likely to have been re-elected had he called an election in early Autumn 1978.
It's more likely that the 20/30/40% leads don't really exist.
Voters just find it a lot easier to say don't know, or that they'll vote for another party when it's nowhere near an election and it means almost nothing.
People talk about things like swingback, but I suspect if we really had an election tomorrow it would be Labour ahead in the low teens at most.
You're really not detecting the mood? My extended family is quite rightwing (but also includes lefties)
All but one has disowned the Tories. My friendship group (admittedly more mixed from the start) is viscerally against the Tories
And it's not just disenchantment, it's sense of anger and a desire to see the Tories suffer. To punish them. A lust for revenge. That's not going to go away, it might actually grow with every day the Tories govern from here on, as people get even more irritated
I've never sensed anything like it. Bigger than 97, to my mind
Why are these 20-30% leads more real than the 30-40% leads that Blair had?
It's possible the Tories are heading for oblivion, but it would be an historical outlier for the polling to stick at these kind of leads and be reflected on polling day.
The trouble with being the party of pensioners and unproductive wealth (e.g. housing) is that those are both highly unproductive parts of the economy.
During the Tories time in power they have:
- Cut spending on most things other than pensions and healthcare (of course mostly for elderly people) to the bone. - Retained subsidies (e.g. on fuel next year, winter fuel allowance etc) for retirees - Maintained pensions in real terms while workers get a pay cut - Increased taxes significantly on working people
All of this results in a drag on economic growth and further falls in living standards for those in work. All while having no grand strategy to encourage investment and growth.
Pensioners may vote but you can't win an election with them alone. The Tories deserve to be tossed out of power for at least a decade.
To be fair, in a country with 70% home ownership, it's hard to work out how to democratically shaft such a large majority. There are no signs Starmer will.
I'd have thought a similar proportion are employed, yet governments have had no issues shafting workers.
Mid- and high-income workers for sure.
Tax band freeze shafts all workers.
Pay rises way below inflation for nurses, teachers etc shafts ordinary workers.
Pensioners all protected nicely.
Tories = party of selfish old graspers, go to any members event and you realised how bad it is. Apparently young people don't do any work, anyone who doesn't have a house is blamed for, you know, living because in their day they didn't spend money on anything at all and existed on a diet of water and air. House prices going up are great because when they downsize it means more spending money. Social care costs should definitely fall on anyone but them and any suggestion that their money from the downsize can fund it is treated as literal theft, but at the same time the NHS is shit and having a system where people who can afford to pay extra can get priority treatment should replace it.
The last event I went to was pretty recent too, Tory members are basically all old and selfish. They will vote for whoever gives them more regardless of how badly the rest of the country suffers. They've worked hard and nobody else does now so they deserve more money, everyone else deserves to pay for it.
Polling on pensioner attitudes is terrifying.
All but small minority think the young (ie the under 60s) are simply decadent ingrates.
You have to ask where in hell do these attitudes arise from?
You get it in a small way from the age split in "working from home" polling.
Anyone under 60 - who, of course, lack the imagination to understand modern ways of working - thinks it's a skive, whereas everyone else realises you work just as hard on the WFH days, at your desk on calls all day long, or working on documents, just without the commute.
The real reason is that they didn't have this flexibility in their day, and are resentful that the generations to follow do, so they try and trash it.
I dislike WFH not because I think it is a skive - I don't care - but because I think it is obviously less efficient. See my many problems with the Inland Revenue this year, which they explicitly admit are partly down to WFH
WFH is also really bad for cities. And it further atomises people. Hopefully we will find a fruitful middle path. Eventually
I'm not a fan of it myself, and think I personally am more inefficient that way. I think some employers have not got a good enough culture or support to make it work brilliantly, particularly for newer employees, and people were a little to eager to jump in with the view that life had changed forever. But there are obviously advantages when done right and its not inherently bad, but I think people will bemoan some of the aftereffects as you suggest.
A climate change protester has been arrested for trying to confront Sir David Attenborough as he dined at a Michelin-starred fish restaurant.
Emma Smart, an activist for the campaign group Animal Rebellion, allegedly caused a disturbance at the Catch at the Old Fish Market in Weymouth, Dorset.
She was asked to leave the venue before being dragged out and detained by police.
Mrs Smart said: 'The Catch is a symbol of excess and inequality in today's world, Weymouth has average wages amongst the lowest in the UK and is at huge risk of sea level rises.
'Yet this restaurant still continues business as usual amongst the worst cost-of-living crisis many will ever experience.
'Sir David is in a unique position to tell the truth about the biodiversity crisis.
'He has the chance to leave a legacy of love, care, and of being the forerunner of a better world.'
If only Sir David would ever mention anything about biodiversity, the land, the seas. He should try and get on the telly to amaze and enthuse the public on the subjects. He might even be ok at it.
The Labour lead in 1997 on a GB basis was actually 13% - but two years earlier it had been regularly higher than 30% . The bigger Labour leads tended to be recorded by Gallup which no longer appears to be polling in the UK , but it it still shows that a significant Tory recovery did materialise despite the scale of the 1997 defeat.It might be argued that the economic backdrop makes that more difficult from here, but we need to recall other examples of strong pre-election recoveries by unpopular Governments. In Spring 1968 Wilson's Labour Government was trailing the Tories by 28% , yet it came as a big surprise when the Tories won the June 1970 election - albeit with a GB lead of just 2.5%. In Spring 1977 Callaghan's Government lagged by 25%, and whilst Labour went on to lose by 7.1% in May 1979 many believe Callaghan was likely to have been re-elected had he called an election in early Autumn 1978.
It's more likely that the 20/30/40% leads don't really exist.
Voters just find it a lot easier to say don't know, or that they'll vote for another party when it's nowhere near an election and it means almost nothing.
People talk about things like swingback, but I suspect if we really had an election tomorrow it would be Labour ahead in the low teens at most.
You're really not detecting the mood? My extended family is quite rightwing (but also includes lefties)
All but one has disowned the Tories. My friendship group (admittedly more mixed from the start) is viscerally against the Tories
And it's not just disenchantment, it's sense of anger and a desire to see the Tories suffer. To punish them. A lust for revenge. That's not going to go away, it might actually grow with every day the Tories govern from here on, as people get even more irritated
I've never sensed anything like it. Bigger than 97, to my mind
Why are these 20-30% leads more real than the 30-40% leads that Blair had?
It's possible the Tories are heading for oblivion, but it would be an historical outlier for the polling to stick at these kind of leads and be reflected on polling day.
Everything about the 2020s is unprecedented, sadly. I don't see why UK elections should be the exception
Prepare for Tory oblivion, or something close to it
A climate change protester has been arrested for trying to confront Sir David Attenborough as he dined at a Michelin-starred fish restaurant.
Emma Smart, an activist for the campaign group Animal Rebellion, allegedly caused a disturbance at the Catch at the Old Fish Market in Weymouth, Dorset.
She was asked to leave the venue before being dragged out and detained by police.
Mrs Smart said: 'The Catch is a symbol of excess and inequality in today's world, Weymouth has average wages amongst the lowest in the UK and is at huge risk of sea level rises.
'Yet this restaurant still continues business as usual amongst the worst cost-of-living crisis many will ever experience.
'Sir David is in a unique position to tell the truth about the biodiversity crisis.
'He has the chance to leave a legacy of love, care, and of being the forerunner of a better world.'
If only Sir David would ever mention anything about biodiversity, the land, the seas. He should try and get on the telly to amaze and enthuse the public on the subjects. He might even be ok at it.
He's actually gotten some stick for years from that angle. But given a) he's always spoken about the natural world and b) he's been much more explicir in the last 20 years about the threats to it, it's clearly just a stunt to (successfully) gain attention.
The trouble with being the party of pensioners and unproductive wealth (e.g. housing) is that those are both highly unproductive parts of the economy.
During the Tories time in power they have:
- Cut spending on most things other than pensions and healthcare (of course mostly for elderly people) to the bone. - Retained subsidies (e.g. on fuel next year, winter fuel allowance etc) for retirees - Maintained pensions in real terms while workers get a pay cut - Increased taxes significantly on working people
All of this results in a drag on economic growth and further falls in living standards for those in work. All while having no grand strategy to encourage investment and growth.
Pensioners may vote but you can't win an election with them alone. The Tories deserve to be tossed out of power for at least a decade.
To be fair, in a country with 70% home ownership, it's hard to work out how to democratically shaft such a large majority. There are no signs Starmer will.
I'd have thought a similar proportion are employed, yet governments have had no issues shafting workers.
Mid- and high-income workers for sure.
Tax band freeze shafts all workers.
Pay rises way below inflation for nurses, teachers etc shafts ordinary workers.
Pensioners all protected nicely.
Tories = party of selfish old graspers, go to any members event and you realised how bad it is. Apparently young people don't do any work, anyone who doesn't have a house is blamed for, you know, living because in their day they didn't spend money on anything at all and existed on a diet of water and air. House prices going up are great because when they downsize it means more spending money. Social care costs should definitely fall on anyone but them and any suggestion that their money from the downsize can fund it is treated as literal theft, but at the same time the NHS is shit and having a system where people who can afford to pay extra can get priority treatment should replace it.
The last event I went to was pretty recent too, Tory members are basically all old and selfish. They will vote for whoever gives them more regardless of how badly the rest of the country suffers. They've worked hard and nobody else does now so they deserve more money, everyone else deserves to pay for it.
Polling on pensioner attitudes is terrifying.
All but small minority think the young (ie the under 60s) are simply decadent ingrates.
You have to ask where in hell do these attitudes arise from?
You get it in a small way from the age split in "working from home" polling.
Anyone under 60 - who, of course, lack the imagination to understand modern ways of working - thinks it's a skive, whereas everyone else realises you work just as hard on the WFH days, at your desk on calls all day long, or working on documents, just without the commute.
The real reason is that they didn't have this flexibility in their day, and are resentful that the generations to follow do, so they try and trash it.
I dislike WFH not because I think it is a skive - I don't care - but because I think it is obviously less efficient. See my many problems with the Inland Revenue this year, which they explicitly admit are partly down to WFH
WFH is also really bad for cities. And it further atomises people. Hopefully we will find a fruitful middle path. Eventually
It really depends on the details of the job.
Before the pandemic I often worked in highly distributed teams with colleagues in Poland, Ukraine, Spain, US, etc. Sometimes I'd choose to work in an office, to be around other people, but there was no compelling reason related to the work to have me do so.
If different people's work involves dealing with physical documents, or a detailed level of collaboration with others that is hard to facilitate remotely, then working in an office might be desirable or necessary. There shouldn't really be a problem with deciding this on a case by case basis in relation to the work that is required. And even for the people who can work from home all the time, some time spent working in a communal hub can be valuable for a bunch of other reasons.
Somehow it's become a bit of an expression of power by some managers. Quite adversarial, rather than working out how to make the best of the available options.
The Labour lead in 1997 on a GB basis was actually 13% - but two years earlier it had been regularly higher than 30% . The bigger Labour leads tended to be recorded by Gallup which no longer appears to be polling in the UK , but it it still shows that a significant Tory recovery did materialise despite the scale of the 1997 defeat.It might be argued that the economic backdrop makes that more difficult from here, but we need to recall other examples of strong pre-election recoveries by unpopular Governments. In Spring 1968 Wilson's Labour Government was trailing the Tories by 28% , yet it came as a big surprise when the Tories won the June 1970 election - albeit with a GB lead of just 2.5%. In Spring 1977 Callaghan's Government lagged by 25%, and whilst Labour went on to lose by 7.1% in May 1979 many believe Callaghan was likely to have been re-elected had he called an election in early Autumn 1978.
It's more likely that the 20/30/40% leads don't really exist.
Voters just find it a lot easier to say don't know, or that they'll vote for another party when it's nowhere near an election and it means almost nothing.
People talk about things like swingback, but I suspect if we really had an election tomorrow it would be Labour ahead in the low teens at most.
You're really not detecting the mood? My extended family is quite rightwing (but also includes lefties)
All but one has disowned the Tories. My friendship group (admittedly more mixed from the start) is viscerally against the Tories
And it's not just disenchantment, it's sense of anger and a desire to see the Tories suffer. To punish them. A lust for revenge. That's not going to go away, it might actually grow with every day the Tories govern from here on, as people get even more irritated
I've never sensed anything like it. Bigger than 97, to my mind
Why are these 20-30% leads more real than the 30-40% leads that Blair had?
It's possible the Tories are heading for oblivion, but it would be an historical outlier for the polling to stick at these kind of leads and be reflected on polling day.
Everything about the 2020s is unprecedented, sadly. I don't see why UK elections should be the exception
Prepare for Tory oblivion, or something close to it
The unprecedented 2024 election would be the one where the Tories win from here.
But if Tory oblivion - or even significant losses - are nailed on, William Hill has free money to hand out to you. (2/5 Labour most seats).
The trouble with being the party of pensioners and unproductive wealth (e.g. housing) is that those are both highly unproductive parts of the economy.
During the Tories time in power they have:
- Cut spending on most things other than pensions and healthcare (of course mostly for elderly people) to the bone. - Retained subsidies (e.g. on fuel next year, winter fuel allowance etc) for retirees - Maintained pensions in real terms while workers get a pay cut - Increased taxes significantly on working people
All of this results in a drag on economic growth and further falls in living standards for those in work. All while having no grand strategy to encourage investment and growth.
Pensioners may vote but you can't win an election with them alone. The Tories deserve to be tossed out of power for at least a decade.
To be fair, in a country with 70% home ownership, it's hard to work out how to democratically shaft such a large majority. There are no signs Starmer will.
I'd have thought a similar proportion are employed, yet governments have had no issues shafting workers.
Mid- and high-income workers for sure.
Tax band freeze shafts all workers.
Pay rises way below inflation for nurses, teachers etc shafts ordinary workers.
Pensioners all protected nicely.
Tories = party of selfish old graspers, go to any members event and you realised how bad it is. Apparently young people don't do any work, anyone who doesn't have a house is blamed for, you know, living because in their day they didn't spend money on anything at all and existed on a diet of water and air. House prices going up are great because when they downsize it means more spending money. Social care costs should definitely fall on anyone but them and any suggestion that their money from the downsize can fund it is treated as literal theft, but at the same time the NHS is shit and having a system where people who can afford to pay extra can get priority treatment should replace it.
The last event I went to was pretty recent too, Tory members are basically all old and selfish. They will vote for whoever gives them more regardless of how badly the rest of the country suffers. They've worked hard and nobody else does now so they deserve more money, everyone else deserves to pay for it.
Polling on pensioner attitudes is terrifying.
All but small minority think the young (ie the under 60s) are simply decadent ingrates.
You have to ask where in hell do these attitudes arise from?
You get it in a small way from the age split in "working from home" polling.
Anyone under 60 - who, of course, lack the imagination to understand modern ways of working - thinks it's a skive, whereas everyone else realises you work just as hard on the WFH days, at your desk on calls all day long, or working on documents, just without the commute.
The real reason is that they didn't have this flexibility in their day, and are resentful that the generations to follow do, so they try and trash it.
You ignore those of us who "consume" office work and who have been told by offices using WFH that that's the reason why such-and-such a service isn't available or waiting times are so unusually long. This applies both in the public sector (e.g. dealings with the taxman) and in things like the distribution of car parts.
You haven't characterised well the attitudes of those of us who are negative about WFH. I'm no dog in the manger and I'm all for the lower ranks skiving. I just think a) the government and the private sector are using WFH to cut their costs at the expense of the "consumers", and b) many Jerkers From Home are completely up themselves and it's good when someone tells them so. That's not because those of us who criticise them are so horribly ignorant and stupid about their oh-so-hard lives at the coalfaces they call their desks. Nor is it because we're resentful either, because who on earth would actually choose to do office work in their home if they could avoid it?
The trouble with being the party of pensioners and unproductive wealth (e.g. housing) is that those are both highly unproductive parts of the economy.
During the Tories time in power they have:
- Cut spending on most things other than pensions and healthcare (of course mostly for elderly people) to the bone. - Retained subsidies (e.g. on fuel next year, winter fuel allowance etc) for retirees - Maintained pensions in real terms while workers get a pay cut - Increased taxes significantly on working people
All of this results in a drag on economic growth and further falls in living standards for those in work. All while having no grand strategy to encourage investment and growth.
Pensioners may vote but you can't win an election with them alone. The Tories deserve to be tossed out of power for at least a decade.
To be fair, in a country with 70% home ownership, it's hard to work out how to democratically shaft such a large majority. There are no signs Starmer will.
Starmer and labour demanded the retention of the triple lock in the HOC the week before the Autumn statement
The triple lock was introduced by Cameron and Clegg and is supported by all parties including the SNP, evidenced by Blackford demanding Sunak confirmed it at the PMQs before the Autumn statement
There is no point Labour supporters objecting to the triple lock when their leader is 100% committed to it
As far as I can tell all Labour will do is change the guard and put up tax and the Wokery even more.
It's in the Labour draft manifesto:
A new, independent Woke bookshop in every town and village throughout the land.
They will remove all the (limited) brakes the Conservatives have currently applied.
In the longer term it provides a route back for them as there will eventually be a backlash.
I guess I'm curious as to why you were so worked up about this 'woke' bookshop in your town. I thought Tories were all in favour of small businesses being set up. It may or may not fail. But you actively want it to fail, which is odd for a Tory.
Meanwhile, on the Woke scale Starmer is pretty much in the middle, I'd have thought, and I don't see the next Labour government being captured by the extreme wokeites for one minute.
I've lived here for my whole life. It's my hometown. I was excited about this new bookshop when I saw it, and then I went in - and I'm crushingly disappointed.
You don't expect to see a bit of Islington in rural Hampshire, so I can't say I wish them well, but if it isn't my cup of tea why should I go in there and support them?
I'm not trying to ban them or make them illegal. But it doesn't mean I'm rooting for them.
There’s actually only one Waterstones in Islington. It’s a bit barren on the bookshop front, and actually not especially woke.
How many approved non-Woke bookshops are there in Islington? Just checking. (I don't mean the kind of bookshop that is neutral on this front, like specialist transport shops like the one that used to be in St Martin's Lane in London. I'm assuming here trhat the trains bit cancels out the petrolheads bit, obvs.)
OK.
If they want to start a culture war in my home town I will do my best to fucking finish it.
These people need to be defeated. Woke is a cancer.
That seems not wildly different from saying that in rural Hampshire, these folk should get back in the closet. How is opening a bookshop ‘starting a culture war’ ?
It's not a bookshop, it's a wokeshop.
Doesn't sound like my kind of bookshop, either. But so what ?
Just back from Tory (or is it soon to be Labour?) Romford. Busy but not spectacularly so - about what'd you expect. Interesting to see the usual churn of units in the shopping centres - couple of new eateries opening - but still a ot of gaps especially in those areas a little off the well-trodden paths.
Andrew Rosindell would be toppled on a 19% swing which isn't far off some of the polls we've seen and in 1997 Labour took the seat on a 15.6% swing.
To try to answer the header question, the Conservatives would have to do worse than 1997 to lose Romford which is the 100th safest Conservative seat.
The swing from Conservative to Labour in the most recent polls has ranged from 15% with Opinium (due to poll tonight and one of our number thinks the Conservatives will be 31% or higher), 16.5% with R&W and IPSOS Mori and 17.5% with YouGov.
So, if these swings are accurate, Rosindell clings on in Romford but the Conservatives are around 120 seats nationally so worse than 1997.
As an aside, I thought most of the 92-97 polling had been widely discredited because of the sampling and methodology which were introduced following the "disaster" of the 1992 election and the infamous "shy Tory syndrome. That explains the apparent difference between some of the 30%+ gaps in the polls and the 13% gap on the day.
Could the same happen again? There is the possibility if the result appears in the bag, some Labour supporters simply won't bother to vote and that may give the Conservatives a chance in some areas to hold off LD challenges which will be reliant for their success on Labour supporters voting tactically.
The trouble with being the party of pensioners and unproductive wealth (e.g. housing) is that those are both highly unproductive parts of the economy.
During the Tories time in power they have:
- Cut spending on most things other than pensions and healthcare (of course mostly for elderly people) to the bone. - Retained subsidies (e.g. on fuel next year, winter fuel allowance etc) for retirees - Maintained pensions in real terms while workers get a pay cut - Increased taxes significantly on working people
All of this results in a drag on economic growth and further falls in living standards for those in work. All while having no grand strategy to encourage investment and growth.
Pensioners may vote but you can't win an election with them alone. The Tories deserve to be tossed out of power for at least a decade.
To be fair, in a country with 70% home ownership, it's hard to work out how to democratically shaft such a large majority. There are no signs Starmer will.
I'd have thought a similar proportion are employed, yet governments have had no issues shafting workers.
Mid- and high-income workers for sure.
Tax band freeze shafts all workers.
Pay rises way below inflation for nurses, teachers etc shafts ordinary workers.
Pensioners all protected nicely.
Tories = party of selfish old graspers, go to any members event and you realised how bad it is. Apparently young people don't do any work, anyone who doesn't have a house is blamed for, you know, living because in their day they didn't spend money on anything at all and existed on a diet of water and air. House prices going up are great because when they downsize it means more spending money. Social care costs should definitely fall on anyone but them and any suggestion that their money from the downsize can fund it is treated as literal theft, but at the same time the NHS is shit and having a system where people who can afford to pay extra can get priority treatment should replace it.
The last event I went to was pretty recent too, Tory members are basically all old and selfish. They will vote for whoever gives them more regardless of how badly the rest of the country suffers. They've worked hard and nobody else does now so they deserve more money, everyone else deserves to pay for it.
Polling on pensioner attitudes is terrifying.
All but small minority think the young (ie the under 60s) are simply decadent ingrates.
You have to ask where in hell do these attitudes arise from?
I think it is a total lack of understanding of the difference in experience from their cheap housing, cheap debt, subsidized university degrees with unemployment benefit in the vacation, increased life expectancy, defined benefit pensions etc. etc.
I'm sure they know that it is "different" but I suspect that they have no idea how the cumulative life course effects build up.
David Willets wrote an extremely good piece on the subject a while back. The Tories promptly binned all thinking in that area.
I just think a) the government and the private sector are using WFH to cut their costs at the expense of the "consumers"
My private sector employer certainly doesn't seem to be achieving cost savings from WFH -- they're running the same expensive office buildings they did before, only now half the desks are unoccupied on any given day...
The trouble with being the party of pensioners and unproductive wealth (e.g. housing) is that those are both highly unproductive parts of the economy.
During the Tories time in power they have:
- Cut spending on most things other than pensions and healthcare (of course mostly for elderly people) to the bone. - Retained subsidies (e.g. on fuel next year, winter fuel allowance etc) for retirees - Maintained pensions in real terms while workers get a pay cut - Increased taxes significantly on working people
All of this results in a drag on economic growth and further falls in living standards for those in work. All while having no grand strategy to encourage investment and growth.
Pensioners may vote but you can't win an election with them alone. The Tories deserve to be tossed out of power for at least a decade.
To be fair, in a country with 70% home ownership, it's hard to work out how to democratically shaft such a large majority. There are no signs Starmer will.
Starmer and labour demanded the retention of the triple lock in the HOC the week before the Autumn statement
The triple lock was introduced by Cameron and Clegg and is supported by all parties including the SNP, evidenced by Blackford demanding Sunak confirmed it at the PMQs before the Autumn statement
There is no point Labour supporters objecting to the triple lock when their leader is 100% committed to it
As far as I can tell all Labour will do is change the guard and put up tax and the Wokery even more.
It's in the Labour draft manifesto:
A new, independent Woke bookshop in every town and village throughout the land.
They will remove all the (limited) brakes the Conservatives have currently applied.
In the longer term it provides a route back for them as there will eventually be a backlash.
I guess I'm curious as to why you were so worked up about this 'woke' bookshop in your town. I thought Tories were all in favour of small businesses being set up. It may or may not fail. But you actively want it to fail, which is odd for a Tory.
Meanwhile, on the Woke scale Starmer is pretty much in the middle, I'd have thought, and I don't see the next Labour government being captured by the extreme wokeites for one minute.
I've lived here for my whole life. It's my hometown. I was excited about this new bookshop when I saw it, and then I went in - and I'm crushingly disappointed.
You don't expect to see a bit of Islington in rural Hampshire, so I can't say I wish them well, but if it isn't my cup of tea why should I go in there and support them?
I'm not trying to ban them or make them illegal. But it doesn't mean I'm rooting for them.
There’s actually only one Waterstones in Islington. It’s a bit barren on the bookshop front, and actually not especially woke.
How many approved non-Woke bookshops are there in Islington? Just checking. (I don't mean the kind of bookshop that is neutral on this front, like specialist transport shops like the one that used to be in St Martin's Lane in London. I'm assuming here trhat the trains bit cancels out the petrolheads bit, obvs.)
OK.
If they want to start a culture war in my home town I will do my best to fucking finish it.
These people need to be defeated. Woke is a cancer.
That seems not wildly different from saying that in rural Hampshire, these folk should get back in the closet. How is opening a bookshop ‘starting a culture war’ ?
It's not a bookshop, it's a wokeshop.
It seems to be getting woker the more you dwell on it, to the point I'm surprised they didn't ambush you on the way in to indoctrinate you.
Here are their "what are we reading?" recommendations from their website:
"Ash": CALL ME BY MY NAME by Andre Aciman (Romance/ Lit-fic / LGBTQ) - moving story of a growing, passionate, obsessive love affair.
"Lee": NATIVES- RACE AND CLASS in the RUINS of EMPIRE (socio-political) by Akala. A fascinating insight into race and class in modern Britain from poet and hip-hop artist Akala. A great mix of the personal and the political.
"Ella": THE HATE YOU GIVE (YA urban fiction) by Angie Thomas - pacy, moving account of a black boy shot dead by the police, and the fallout for the community, his family and friends
"Lou": OUR MISSING HEARTS by Celeste Ng - It's a story about the power - and limitations - of art to create change in the world, the lessons and legacies we pass onto our children, and how any of us can survive a broken world with our hearts intact. (this one is basically an anti-nationalist/Trump book)
The trouble with being the party of pensioners and unproductive wealth (e.g. housing) is that those are both highly unproductive parts of the economy.
During the Tories time in power they have:
- Cut spending on most things other than pensions and healthcare (of course mostly for elderly people) to the bone. - Retained subsidies (e.g. on fuel next year, winter fuel allowance etc) for retirees - Maintained pensions in real terms while workers get a pay cut - Increased taxes significantly on working people
All of this results in a drag on economic growth and further falls in living standards for those in work. All while having no grand strategy to encourage investment and growth.
Pensioners may vote but you can't win an election with them alone. The Tories deserve to be tossed out of power for at least a decade.
To be fair, in a country with 70% home ownership, it's hard to work out how to democratically shaft such a large majority. There are no signs Starmer will.
Starmer and labour demanded the retention of the triple lock in the HOC the week before the Autumn statement
The triple lock was introduced by Cameron and Clegg and is supported by all parties including the SNP, evidenced by Blackford demanding Sunak confirmed it at the PMQs before the Autumn statement
There is no point Labour supporters objecting to the triple lock when their leader is 100% committed to it
As far as I can tell all Labour will do is change the guard and put up tax and the Wokery even more.
It's in the Labour draft manifesto:
A new, independent Woke bookshop in every town and village throughout the land.
They will remove all the (limited) brakes the Conservatives have currently applied.
In the longer term it provides a route back for them as there will eventually be a backlash.
I guess I'm curious as to why you were so worked up about this 'woke' bookshop in your town. I thought Tories were all in favour of small businesses being set up. It may or may not fail. But you actively want it to fail, which is odd for a Tory.
Meanwhile, on the Woke scale Starmer is pretty much in the middle, I'd have thought, and I don't see the next Labour government being captured by the extreme wokeites for one minute.
I've lived here for my whole life. It's my hometown. I was excited about this new bookshop when I saw it, and then I went in - and I'm crushingly disappointed.
You don't expect to see a bit of Islington in rural Hampshire, so I can't say I wish them well, but if it isn't my cup of tea why should I go in there and support them?
I'm not trying to ban them or make them illegal. But it doesn't mean I'm rooting for them.
There’s actually only one Waterstones in Islington. It’s a bit barren on the bookshop front, and actually not especially woke.
How many approved non-Woke bookshops are there in Islington? Just checking. (I don't mean the kind of bookshop that is neutral on this front, like specialist transport shops like the one that used to be in St Martin's Lane in London. I'm assuming here trhat the trains bit cancels out the petrolheads bit, obvs.)
OK.
If they want to start a culture war in my home town I will do my best to fucking finish it.
These people need to be defeated. Woke is a cancer.
That seems not wildly different from saying that in rural Hampshire, these folk should get back in the closet. How is opening a bookshop ‘starting a culture war’ ?
It's not a bookshop, it's a wokeshop.
Doesn't sound like my kind of bookshop, either. But so what ?
It's in my hometown, and I don't want that sort of shit here.
The trouble with being the party of pensioners and unproductive wealth (e.g. housing) is that those are both highly unproductive parts of the economy.
During the Tories time in power they have:
- Cut spending on most things other than pensions and healthcare (of course mostly for elderly people) to the bone. - Retained subsidies (e.g. on fuel next year, winter fuel allowance etc) for retirees - Maintained pensions in real terms while workers get a pay cut - Increased taxes significantly on working people
All of this results in a drag on economic growth and further falls in living standards for those in work. All while having no grand strategy to encourage investment and growth.
Pensioners may vote but you can't win an election with them alone. The Tories deserve to be tossed out of power for at least a decade.
To be fair, in a country with 70% home ownership, it's hard to work out how to democratically shaft such a large majority. There are no signs Starmer will.
I'd have thought a similar proportion are employed, yet governments have had no issues shafting workers.
Mid- and high-income workers for sure.
Tax band freeze shafts all workers.
Pay rises way below inflation for nurses, teachers etc shafts ordinary workers.
Pensioners all protected nicely.
Tories = party of selfish old graspers, go to any members event and you realised how bad it is. Apparently young people don't do any work, anyone who doesn't have a house is blamed for, you know, living because in their day they didn't spend money on anything at all and existed on a diet of water and air. House prices going up are great because when they downsize it means more spending money. Social care costs should definitely fall on anyone but them and any suggestion that their money from the downsize can fund it is treated as literal theft, but at the same time the NHS is shit and having a system where people who can afford to pay extra can get priority treatment should replace it.
The last event I went to was pretty recent too, Tory members are basically all old and selfish. They will vote for whoever gives them more regardless of how badly the rest of the country suffers. They've worked hard and nobody else does now so they deserve more money, everyone else deserves to pay for it.
Polling on pensioner attitudes is terrifying.
All but small minority think the young (ie the under 60s) are simply decadent ingrates.
You have to ask where in hell do these attitudes arise from?
I think it is a total lack of understanding of the difference in experience from their cheap housing, cheap debt, subsidized university degrees with unemployment benefit in the vacation, increased life expectancy, defined benefit pensions etc. etc.
I'm sure they know that it is "different" but I suspect that they have no idea how the cumulative life course effects build up.
David Willets wrote an extremely good piece on the subject a while back. The Tories promptly binned all thinking in that area.
There's a few Willets lectures on the tube around this issue.
To move the question into more speculative and interesting areas, the question becomes the point a disaster becomes a catastrophe and then an existential threat.
Three scenarios:
First, if they return with just 100 MPs, the Conservatives will still be His Majesty's Loyal Opposition, the Conservative Party leader will be the leader of the opposition and, most significantly, the only viable alternative Government will be a Conservative or Conservative-led Government. That was the case in 1997 and remained the case, with one brief tantalising hint of something different, until 2010.
Second, let's say it's even worse for Rishi Sunak and his party and they win just 40 MPs - the likelihood then is they will be outnumbered by the SNP which would in theory make the parliamentary leader of that party the leader of the Official Opposition but how would that work for England or England and Wales only issues? Could we accept the leader of the SNP being the first to respond to a UK Budget for example or would the clamour for an English Parliament become irresistible?
The fact would remain the SNP are constrained by the number of seats they contest and can never lead a UK Government so by default the Conservatives (even if third in the Commons) would remain the opposition party best positioned to lead an alternative Government.
Third, the nightmare scenario is if the Conservatives poll 20% and tactical voting means they are either wiped out or return fewer MPs than the Liberal Democrats. At that point it becomes existential as the LDs could argue (convincingly I'm less certain) they would be the party able to lead a viable alternative Government. As we know, legitimacy comes not from vote shares but from seats in the Commons - if the Conservatives had fewer seats than the LDs the fact would be they would be the fourth or fifth party in the Commons.
Let me say I think the third scenario is hugely unlikely, the second scenario on the edge of credibility and the first the most likely.
The trouble with being the party of pensioners and unproductive wealth (e.g. housing) is that those are both highly unproductive parts of the economy.
During the Tories time in power they have:
- Cut spending on most things other than pensions and healthcare (of course mostly for elderly people) to the bone. - Retained subsidies (e.g. on fuel next year, winter fuel allowance etc) for retirees - Maintained pensions in real terms while workers get a pay cut - Increased taxes significantly on working people
All of this results in a drag on economic growth and further falls in living standards for those in work. All while having no grand strategy to encourage investment and growth.
Pensioners may vote but you can't win an election with them alone. The Tories deserve to be tossed out of power for at least a decade.
To be fair, in a country with 70% home ownership, it's hard to work out how to democratically shaft such a large majority. There are no signs Starmer will.
I'd have thought a similar proportion are employed, yet governments have had no issues shafting workers.
Mid- and high-income workers for sure.
Tax band freeze shafts all workers.
Pay rises way below inflation for nurses, teachers etc shafts ordinary workers.
Pensioners all protected nicely.
Tories = party of selfish old graspers, go to any members event and you realised how bad it is. Apparently young people don't do any work, anyone who doesn't have a house is blamed for, you know, living because in their day they didn't spend money on anything at all and existed on a diet of water and air. House prices going up are great because when they downsize it means more spending money. Social care costs should definitely fall on anyone but them and any suggestion that their money from the downsize can fund it is treated as literal theft, but at the same time the NHS is shit and having a system where people who can afford to pay extra can get priority treatment should replace it.
The last event I went to was pretty recent too, Tory members are basically all old and selfish. They will vote for whoever gives them more regardless of how badly the rest of the country suffers. They've worked hard and nobody else does now so they deserve more money, everyone else deserves to pay for it.
Polling on pensioner attitudes is terrifying.
All but small minority think the young (ie the under 60s) are simply decadent ingrates.
You have to ask where in hell do these attitudes arise from?
The basic problem is that those people have received a huge capital gain on their main home, and quite often on other properties that they happen to have owned, and ever so easily reach the conclusion that somehow they have ‘earned’ this money, rather than just been unreasonably lucky.
I just think a) the government and the private sector are using WFH to cut their costs at the expense of the "consumers"
My private sector employer certainly doesn't seem to be achieving cost savings from WFH -- they're running the same expensive office buildings they did before, only now half the desks are unoccupied on any given day...
There are lots of businesses that are in the process of getting shot of their excess office space, though. It'll be a couple of years (and lease break points) before it all shakes through the system.
The trouble with being the party of pensioners and unproductive wealth (e.g. housing) is that those are both highly unproductive parts of the economy.
During the Tories time in power they have:
- Cut spending on most things other than pensions and healthcare (of course mostly for elderly people) to the bone. - Retained subsidies (e.g. on fuel next year, winter fuel allowance etc) for retirees - Maintained pensions in real terms while workers get a pay cut - Increased taxes significantly on working people
All of this results in a drag on economic growth and further falls in living standards for those in work. All while having no grand strategy to encourage investment and growth.
Pensioners may vote but you can't win an election with them alone. The Tories deserve to be tossed out of power for at least a decade.
To be fair, in a country with 70% home ownership, it's hard to work out how to democratically shaft such a large majority. There are no signs Starmer will.
Starmer and labour demanded the retention of the triple lock in the HOC the week before the Autumn statement
The triple lock was introduced by Cameron and Clegg and is supported by all parties including the SNP, evidenced by Blackford demanding Sunak confirmed it at the PMQs before the Autumn statement
There is no point Labour supporters objecting to the triple lock when their leader is 100% committed to it
As far as I can tell all Labour will do is change the guard and put up tax and the Wokery even more.
It's in the Labour draft manifesto:
A new, independent Woke bookshop in every town and village throughout the land.
They will remove all the (limited) brakes the Conservatives have currently applied.
In the longer term it provides a route back for them as there will eventually be a backlash.
I guess I'm curious as to why you were so worked up about this 'woke' bookshop in your town. I thought Tories were all in favour of small businesses being set up. It may or may not fail. But you actively want it to fail, which is odd for a Tory.
Meanwhile, on the Woke scale Starmer is pretty much in the middle, I'd have thought, and I don't see the next Labour government being captured by the extreme wokeites for one minute.
I've lived here for my whole life. It's my hometown. I was excited about this new bookshop when I saw it, and then I went in - and I'm crushingly disappointed.
You don't expect to see a bit of Islington in rural Hampshire, so I can't say I wish them well, but if it isn't my cup of tea why should I go in there and support them?
I'm not trying to ban them or make them illegal. But it doesn't mean I'm rooting for them.
There’s actually only one Waterstones in Islington. It’s a bit barren on the bookshop front, and actually not especially woke.
How many approved non-Woke bookshops are there in Islington? Just checking. (I don't mean the kind of bookshop that is neutral on this front, like specialist transport shops like the one that used to be in St Martin's Lane in London. I'm assuming here trhat the trains bit cancels out the petrolheads bit, obvs.)
OK.
If they want to start a culture war in my home town I will do my best to fucking finish it.
These people need to be defeated. Woke is a cancer.
That seems not wildly different from saying that in rural Hampshire, these folk should get back in the closet. How is opening a bookshop ‘starting a culture war’ ?
It's not a bookshop, it's a wokeshop.
It seems to be getting woker the more you dwell on it, to the point I'm surprised they didn't ambush you on the way in to indoctrinate you.
Here are their "what are we reading?" recommendations from their website:
"Ash": CALL ME BY MY NAME by Andre Aciman (Romance/ Lit-fic / LGBTQ) - moving story of a growing, passionate, obsessive love affair.
"Lee": NATIVES- RACE AND CLASS in the RUINS of EMPIRE (socio-political) by Akala. A fascinating insight into race and class in modern Britain from poet and hip-hop artist Akala. A great mix of the personal and the political.
"Ella": THE HATE YOU GIVE (YA urban fiction) by Angie Thomas - pacy, moving account of a black boy shot dead by the police, and the fallout for the community, his family and friends
"Lou": OUR MISSING HEARTS by Celeste Ng - It's a story about the power - and limitations - of art to create change in the world, the lessons and legacies we pass onto our children, and how any of us can survive a broken world with our hearts intact. (this one is basically an anti-nationalist/Trump book)
It's a Wokeshop.
Young Adult Fiction is a cesspit of Wokeness, and not a happy place
All the writers and editors try to OutWoke each other, and well known authors can be cancelled for the tiniest transgressions. Brutally competitive
The only people enjoying it all are the Sensitivity Readers
Woke is the end of art, essentially, wherever it goes
The trouble with being the party of pensioners and unproductive wealth (e.g. housing) is that those are both highly unproductive parts of the economy.
During the Tories time in power they have:
- Cut spending on most things other than pensions and healthcare (of course mostly for elderly people) to the bone. - Retained subsidies (e.g. on fuel next year, winter fuel allowance etc) for retirees - Maintained pensions in real terms while workers get a pay cut - Increased taxes significantly on working people
All of this results in a drag on economic growth and further falls in living standards for those in work. All while having no grand strategy to encourage investment and growth.
Pensioners may vote but you can't win an election with them alone. The Tories deserve to be tossed out of power for at least a decade.
To be fair, in a country with 70% home ownership, it's hard to work out how to democratically shaft such a large majority. There are no signs Starmer will.
Starmer and labour demanded the retention of the triple lock in the HOC the week before the Autumn statement
The triple lock was introduced by Cameron and Clegg and is supported by all parties including the SNP, evidenced by Blackford demanding Sunak confirmed it at the PMQs before the Autumn statement
There is no point Labour supporters objecting to the triple lock when their leader is 100% committed to it
As far as I can tell all Labour will do is change the guard and put up tax and the Wokery even more.
It's in the Labour draft manifesto:
A new, independent Woke bookshop in every town and village throughout the land.
They will remove all the (limited) brakes the Conservatives have currently applied.
In the longer term it provides a route back for them as there will eventually be a backlash.
I guess I'm curious as to why you were so worked up about this 'woke' bookshop in your town. I thought Tories were all in favour of small businesses being set up. It may or may not fail. But you actively want it to fail, which is odd for a Tory.
Meanwhile, on the Woke scale Starmer is pretty much in the middle, I'd have thought, and I don't see the next Labour government being captured by the extreme wokeites for one minute.
I've lived here for my whole life. It's my hometown. I was excited about this new bookshop when I saw it, and then I went in - and I'm crushingly disappointed.
You don't expect to see a bit of Islington in rural Hampshire, so I can't say I wish them well, but if it isn't my cup of tea why should I go in there and support them?
I'm not trying to ban them or make them illegal. But it doesn't mean I'm rooting for them.
There’s actually only one Waterstones in Islington. It’s a bit barren on the bookshop front, and actually not especially woke.
How many approved non-Woke bookshops are there in Islington? Just checking. (I don't mean the kind of bookshop that is neutral on this front, like specialist transport shops like the one that used to be in St Martin's Lane in London. I'm assuming here trhat the trains bit cancels out the petrolheads bit, obvs.)
OK.
If they want to start a culture war in my home town I will do my best to fucking finish it.
These people need to be defeated. Woke is a cancer.
That seems not wildly different from saying that in rural Hampshire, these folk should get back in the closet. How is opening a bookshop ‘starting a culture war’ ?
It's not a bookshop, it's a wokeshop.
It seems to be getting woker the more you dwell on it, to the point I'm surprised they didn't ambush you on the way in to indoctrinate you.
Here are their "what are we reading?" recommendations from their website:
"Ash": CALL ME BY MY NAME by Andre Aciman (Romance/ Lit-fic / LGBTQ) - moving story of a growing, passionate, obsessive love affair.
"Lee": NATIVES- RACE AND CLASS in the RUINS of EMPIRE (socio-political) by Akala. A fascinating insight into race and class in modern Britain from poet and hip-hop artist Akala. A great mix of the personal and the political.
"Ella": THE HATE YOU GIVE (YA urban fiction) by Angie Thomas - pacy, moving account of a black boy shot dead by the police, and the fallout for the community, his family and friends
"Lou": OUR MISSING HEARTS by Celeste Ng - It's a story about the power - and limitations - of art to create change in the world, the lessons and legacies we pass onto our children, and how any of us can survive a broken world with our hearts intact. (this one is basically an anti-nationalist/Trump book)
It's a Wokeshop.
This does all sound a bit predictable, even if the last book does sound a bit more open-ended and with some potential. As mentioned earlier, I personally look to small independent bookshops for the obscure, the esoteric, or the unpredictable. You can find some quite extraordinary stuff in some of these tiny shops, even if many have become larger, more streamlined, and more organised now.
The trouble with being the party of pensioners and unproductive wealth (e.g. housing) is that those are both highly unproductive parts of the economy.
During the Tories time in power they have:
- Cut spending on most things other than pensions and healthcare (of course mostly for elderly people) to the bone. - Retained subsidies (e.g. on fuel next year, winter fuel allowance etc) for retirees - Maintained pensions in real terms while workers get a pay cut - Increased taxes significantly on working people
All of this results in a drag on economic growth and further falls in living standards for those in work. All while having no grand strategy to encourage investment and growth.
Pensioners may vote but you can't win an election with them alone. The Tories deserve to be tossed out of power for at least a decade.
To be fair, in a country with 70% home ownership, it's hard to work out how to democratically shaft such a large majority. There are no signs Starmer will.
I'd have thought a similar proportion are employed, yet governments have had no issues shafting workers.
Mid- and high-income workers for sure.
Tax band freeze shafts all workers.
Pay rises way below inflation for nurses, teachers etc shafts ordinary workers.
Pensioners all protected nicely.
Tories = party of selfish old graspers, go to any members event and you realised how bad it is. Apparently young people don't do any work, anyone who doesn't have a house is blamed for, you know, living because in their day they didn't spend money on anything at all and existed on a diet of water and air. House prices going up are great because when they downsize it means more spending money. Social care costs should definitely fall on anyone but them and any suggestion that their money from the downsize can fund it is treated as literal theft, but at the same time the NHS is shit and having a system where people who can afford to pay extra can get priority treatment should replace it.
The last event I went to was pretty recent too, Tory members are basically all old and selfish. They will vote for whoever gives them more regardless of how badly the rest of the country suffers. They've worked hard and nobody else does now so they deserve more money, everyone else deserves to pay for it.
Polling on pensioner attitudes is terrifying.
All but small minority think the young (ie the under 60s) are simply decadent ingrates.
You have to ask where in hell do these attitudes arise from?
You get it in a small way from the age split in "working from home" polling.
Anyone under 60 - who, of course, lack the imagination to understand modern ways of working - thinks it's a skive, whereas everyone else realises you work just as hard on the WFH days, at your desk on calls all day long, or working on documents, just without the commute.
The real reason is that they didn't have this flexibility in their day, and are resentful that the generations to follow do, so they try and trash it.
I dislike WFH not because I think it is a skive - I don't care - but because I think it is obviously less efficient. See my many problems with the Inland Revenue this year, which they explicitly admit are partly down to WFH
WFH is also really bad for cities. And it further atomises people. Hopefully we will find a fruitful middle path. Eventually
That's because plenty of public sector workers do fuck all in the office, but they have to be *seen* to be doing something in the office, so sullenly answer a phone call, or an email, as their manager overlooks their shoulder, but can easily do fuck all at home (with no-one to supervise) and get away with it.
It is absolutely not the case in the private sector, where in professional services people can focus on documents, research, client meetings, 1:1s and virtual workshops without being dog-tired from commuting five days a week.
The Labour lead in 1997 on a GB basis was actually 13% - but two years earlier it had been regularly higher than 30% . The bigger Labour leads tended to be recorded by Gallup which no longer appears to be polling in the UK , but it it still shows that a significant Tory recovery did materialise despite the scale of the 1997 defeat.It might be argued that the economic backdrop makes that more difficult from here, but we need to recall other examples of strong pre-election recoveries by unpopular Governments. In Spring 1968 Wilson's Labour Government was trailing the Tories by 28% , yet it came as a big surprise when the Tories won the June 1970 election - albeit with a GB lead of just 2.5%. In Spring 1977 Callaghan's Government lagged by 25%, and whilst Labour went on to lose by 7.1% in May 1979 many believe Callaghan was likely to have been re-elected had he called an election in early Autumn 1978.
It's more likely that the 20/30/40% leads don't really exist.
Voters just find it a lot easier to say don't know, or that they'll vote for another party when it's nowhere near an election and it means almost nothing.
People talk about things like swingback, but I suspect if we really had an election tomorrow it would be Labour ahead in the low teens at most.
You're really not detecting the mood? My extended family is quite rightwing (but also includes lefties)
All but one has disowned the Tories. My friendship group (admittedly more mixed from the start) is viscerally against the Tories
And it's not just disenchantment, it's sense of anger and a desire to see the Tories suffer. To punish them. A lust for revenge. That's not going to go away, it might actually grow with every day the Tories govern from here on, as people get even more irritated
I've never sensed anything like it. Bigger than 97, to my mind
Why are these 20-30% leads more real than the 30-40% leads that Blair had?
It's possible the Tories are heading for oblivion, but it would be an historical outlier for the polling to stick at these kind of leads and be reflected on polling day.
Everything about the 2020s is unprecedented, sadly. I don't see why UK elections should be the exception
Prepare for Tory oblivion, or something close to it
That would be the one upside for all the grief and misery we’ve endured since Cameron got his majority.
That you’re suggesting a Tory wipeout is the one fly in our ointment.
It would be so much better if you would cast the Curse of Leondamus over Sunak by predicting that he will surprise us all on the upside….
The trouble with being the party of pensioners and unproductive wealth (e.g. housing) is that those are both highly unproductive parts of the economy.
During the Tories time in power they have:
- Cut spending on most things other than pensions and healthcare (of course mostly for elderly people) to the bone. - Retained subsidies (e.g. on fuel next year, winter fuel allowance etc) for retirees - Maintained pensions in real terms while workers get a pay cut - Increased taxes significantly on working people
All of this results in a drag on economic growth and further falls in living standards for those in work. All while having no grand strategy to encourage investment and growth.
Pensioners may vote but you can't win an election with them alone. The Tories deserve to be tossed out of power for at least a decade.
To be fair, in a country with 70% home ownership, it's hard to work out how to democratically shaft such a large majority. There are no signs Starmer will.
Starmer and labour demanded the retention of the triple lock in the HOC the week before the Autumn statement
The triple lock was introduced by Cameron and Clegg and is supported by all parties including the SNP, evidenced by Blackford demanding Sunak confirmed it at the PMQs before the Autumn statement
There is no point Labour supporters objecting to the triple lock when their leader is 100% committed to it
As far as I can tell all Labour will do is change the guard and put up tax and the Wokery even more.
It's in the Labour draft manifesto:
A new, independent Woke bookshop in every town and village throughout the land.
They will remove all the (limited) brakes the Conservatives have currently applied.
In the longer term it provides a route back for them as there will eventually be a backlash.
I guess I'm curious as to why you were so worked up about this 'woke' bookshop in your town. I thought Tories were all in favour of small businesses being set up. It may or may not fail. But you actively want it to fail, which is odd for a Tory.
Meanwhile, on the Woke scale Starmer is pretty much in the middle, I'd have thought, and I don't see the next Labour government being captured by the extreme wokeites for one minute.
I've lived here for my whole life. It's my hometown. I was excited about this new bookshop when I saw it, and then I went in - and I'm crushingly disappointed.
You don't expect to see a bit of Islington in rural Hampshire, so I can't say I wish them well, but if it isn't my cup of tea why should I go in there and support them?
I'm not trying to ban them or make them illegal. But it doesn't mean I'm rooting for them.
There’s actually only one Waterstones in Islington. It’s a bit barren on the bookshop front, and actually not especially woke.
How many approved non-Woke bookshops are there in Islington? Just checking. (I don't mean the kind of bookshop that is neutral on this front, like specialist transport shops like the one that used to be in St Martin's Lane in London. I'm assuming here trhat the trains bit cancels out the petrolheads bit, obvs.)
OK.
If they want to start a culture war in my home town I will do my best to fucking finish it.
These people need to be defeated. Woke is a cancer.
That seems not wildly different from saying that in rural Hampshire, these folk should get back in the closet. How is opening a bookshop ‘starting a culture war’ ?
It's not a bookshop, it's a wokeshop.
It seems to be getting woker the more you dwell on it, to the point I'm surprised they didn't ambush you on the way in to indoctrinate you.
Here are their "what are we reading?" recommendations from their website:
"Ash": CALL ME BY MY NAME by Andre Aciman (Romance/ Lit-fic / LGBTQ) - moving story of a growing, passionate, obsessive love affair.
"Lee": NATIVES- RACE AND CLASS in the RUINS of EMPIRE (socio-political) by Akala. A fascinating insight into race and class in modern Britain from poet and hip-hop artist Akala. A great mix of the personal and the political.
"Ella": THE HATE YOU GIVE (YA urban fiction) by Angie Thomas - pacy, moving account of a black boy shot dead by the police, and the fallout for the community, his family and friends
"Lou": OUR MISSING HEARTS by Celeste Ng - It's a story about the power - and limitations - of art to create change in the world, the lessons and legacies we pass onto our children, and how any of us can survive a broken world with our hearts intact. (this one is basically an anti-nationalist/Trump book)
It's a Wokeshop.
After the BLM protests you couldn't move in my Waterstones without bumping into a book about race.
I have heard the movie Call me by my name is good, but I find that hard to believe as it stars Timothee Chalamet, who's been terrible in every other thing I've seen him in, be in Little Women or Dune.
The trouble with being the party of pensioners and unproductive wealth (e.g. housing) is that those are both highly unproductive parts of the economy.
During the Tories time in power they have:
- Cut spending on most things other than pensions and healthcare (of course mostly for elderly people) to the bone. - Retained subsidies (e.g. on fuel next year, winter fuel allowance etc) for retirees - Maintained pensions in real terms while workers get a pay cut - Increased taxes significantly on working people
All of this results in a drag on economic growth and further falls in living standards for those in work. All while having no grand strategy to encourage investment and growth.
Pensioners may vote but you can't win an election with them alone. The Tories deserve to be tossed out of power for at least a decade.
To be fair, in a country with 70% home ownership, it's hard to work out how to democratically shaft such a large majority. There are no signs Starmer will.
I'd have thought a similar proportion are employed, yet governments have had no issues shafting workers.
Mid- and high-income workers for sure.
Tax band freeze shafts all workers.
Pay rises way below inflation for nurses, teachers etc shafts ordinary workers.
Pensioners all protected nicely.
Tories = party of selfish old graspers, go to any members event and you realised how bad it is. Apparently young people don't do any work, anyone who doesn't have a house is blamed for, you know, living because in their day they didn't spend money on anything at all and existed on a diet of water and air. House prices going up are great because when they downsize it means more spending money. Social care costs should definitely fall on anyone but them and any suggestion that their money from the downsize can fund it is treated as literal theft, but at the same time the NHS is shit and having a system where people who can afford to pay extra can get priority treatment should replace it.
The last event I went to was pretty recent too, Tory members are basically all old and selfish. They will vote for whoever gives them more regardless of how badly the rest of the country suffers. They've worked hard and nobody else does now so they deserve more money, everyone else deserves to pay for it.
Polling on pensioner attitudes is terrifying.
All but small minority think the young (ie the under 60s) are simply decadent ingrates.
You have to ask where in hell do these attitudes arise from?
You get it in a small way from the age split in "working from home" polling.
Anyone under 60 - who, of course, lack the imagination to understand modern ways of working - thinks it's a skive, whereas everyone else realises you work just as hard on the WFH days, at your desk on calls all day long, or working on documents, just without the commute.
The real reason is that they didn't have this flexibility in their day, and are resentful that the generations to follow do, so they try and trash it.
I dislike WFH not because I think it is a skive - I don't care - but because I think it is obviously less efficient. See my many problems with the Inland Revenue this year, which they explicitly admit are partly down to WFH
WFH is also really bad for cities. And it further atomises people. Hopefully we will find a fruitful middle path. Eventually
That's because plenty of public sector workers do fuck all in the office, but they have to be *seen* to be doing something in the office, so sullenly answer a phone call, or an email, as their manager overlooks their shoulder, but can easily do fuck all at home (with no-one to supervise) and get away with it.
It is absolutely not the case in the private sector, where in professional services people can focus on documents, research, client meetings, 1:1s and virtual workshops without being dog-tired from commuting five days a week.
I've worked in plenty of private sector jobs where there are whole floors of buildings 50% full of people doing almost sweet f.a. Wandering around with some paper to photocopy was about the busiest they got.
I just think a) the government and the private sector are using WFH to cut their costs at the expense of the "consumers"
My private sector employer certainly doesn't seem to be achieving cost savings from WFH -- they're running the same expensive office buildings they did before, only now half the desks are unoccupied on any given day...
There are lots of businesses that are in the process of getting shot of their excess office space, though. It'll be a couple of years (and lease break points) before it all shakes through the system.
The public sector and local authorities in particular are in a similar position.
However, most Councils don't just have administrative buildings - the majority are public facing premises which may have libraries or CABs or are places where families with issues can meet with social workers or child protection workers or where vulnerable adults can meet social workers in peace and calm.
There is a recognised and continuing need for these public-facing environments where the public can interact with the Council at whatever level.
The other side of the "public building" requirement is the forum for elected Members to meet not just at full Council meetings but at the various scrutiny and committee meetings which are the framework of the democratic process. This includes meetings with external bodies, local business forums, the Police, the NHS and a myriad of other public bodies.
The Council Office is therefore evolving from a primarily administrative building to a networking building wherein a much smaller supporting administrative staff operates.
The trouble with being the party of pensioners and unproductive wealth (e.g. housing) is that those are both highly unproductive parts of the economy.
During the Tories time in power they have:
- Cut spending on most things other than pensions and healthcare (of course mostly for elderly people) to the bone. - Retained subsidies (e.g. on fuel next year, winter fuel allowance etc) for retirees - Maintained pensions in real terms while workers get a pay cut - Increased taxes significantly on working people
All of this results in a drag on economic growth and further falls in living standards for those in work. All while having no grand strategy to encourage investment and growth.
Pensioners may vote but you can't win an election with them alone. The Tories deserve to be tossed out of power for at least a decade.
To be fair, in a country with 70% home ownership, it's hard to work out how to democratically shaft such a large majority. There are no signs Starmer will.
I'd have thought a similar proportion are employed, yet governments have had no issues shafting workers.
Mid- and high-income workers for sure.
Tax band freeze shafts all workers.
Pay rises way below inflation for nurses, teachers etc shafts ordinary workers.
Pensioners all protected nicely.
Tories = party of selfish old graspers, go to any members event and you realised how bad it is. Apparently young people don't do any work, anyone who doesn't have a house is blamed for, you know, living because in their day they didn't spend money on anything at all and existed on a diet of water and air. House prices going up are great because when they downsize it means more spending money. Social care costs should definitely fall on anyone but them and any suggestion that their money from the downsize can fund it is treated as literal theft, but at the same time the NHS is shit and having a system where people who can afford to pay extra can get priority treatment should replace it.
The last event I went to was pretty recent too, Tory members are basically all old and selfish. They will vote for whoever gives them more regardless of how badly the rest of the country suffers. They've worked hard and nobody else does now so they deserve more money, everyone else deserves to pay for it.
Polling on pensioner attitudes is terrifying.
All but small minority think the young (ie the under 60s) are simply decadent ingrates.
You have to ask where in hell do these attitudes arise from?
You get it in a small way from the age split in "working from home" polling.
Anyone under 60 - who, of course, lack the imagination to understand modern ways of working - thinks it's a skive, whereas everyone else realises you work just as hard on the WFH days, at your desk on calls all day long, or working on documents, just without the commute.
The real reason is that they didn't have this flexibility in their day, and are resentful that the generations to follow do, so they try and trash it.
I dislike WFH not because I think it is a skive - I don't care - but because I think it is obviously less efficient. See my many problems with the Inland Revenue this year, which they explicitly admit are partly down to WFH
WFH is also really bad for cities. And it further atomises people. Hopefully we will find a fruitful middle path. Eventually
That's because plenty of public sector workers do fuck all in the office, but they have to be *seen* to be doing something in the office, so sullenly answer a phone call, or an email, as their manager overlooks their shoulder, but can easily do fuck all at home (with no-one to supervise) and get away with it.
It is absolutely not the case in the private sector, where in professional services people can focus on documents, research, client meetings, 1:1s and virtual workshops without being dog-tired from commuting five days a week.
I've worked in plenty of private sector jobs where there are whole floors of buildings 50% full of people doing almost sweet f.a. Wandering around with some paper to photocopy was about the busiest they got.
I think you’ve solved Britain’s productivity puzzle.
1997 had the Tories sinking under multiple waves of corruption allegations, But because Britain is Britain it wasn't called corruption. It was called "sleaze" instead. And never forget that the Sun backed Blair.
There's little or no talk of corruption now, and there don't seem to be any indications that the Scum will back Starmer.
What have we got, then? Polls show that many in the population think the Tory administration in the middle of its term (if in this context one can think of it as a single administration) consists of a bunch of lying tossers. Big deal.
If that was "lying corrupt tossers" rather than lying tossers, the idea that the Tories were headed for 1997-style electoral defeat would have more weight.
Those who went from Labour to UKIP to the Conservatives are kinda loose cannony. I agree with that. Perhaps they may realise that their lives haven't improved after Brexit. But Tommy Robinson isn't going to follow in the footsteps of Pauline Hanson and scoop up an appreciable amount of voteshare. The party that manages to tip the deck of the ship so that the cannon rolls in its direction is likely to be the Tory party, ably assisted by the Sun.
Why is it that Tories wee themselves at the tiniest spot of bother? It's ironic given that that's exactly what they accuse other people of being like, people who didn't play so much rugby at school. Tories have no character or backbone.
The trouble with being the party of pensioners and unproductive wealth (e.g. housing) is that those are both highly unproductive parts of the economy.
During the Tories time in power they have:
- Cut spending on most things other than pensions and healthcare (of course mostly for elderly people) to the bone. - Retained subsidies (e.g. on fuel next year, winter fuel allowance etc) for retirees - Maintained pensions in real terms while workers get a pay cut - Increased taxes significantly on working people
All of this results in a drag on economic growth and further falls in living standards for those in work. All while having no grand strategy to encourage investment and growth.
Pensioners may vote but you can't win an election with them alone. The Tories deserve to be tossed out of power for at least a decade.
To be fair, in a country with 70% home ownership, it's hard to work out how to democratically shaft such a large majority. There are no signs Starmer will.
Starmer and labour demanded the retention of the triple lock in the HOC the week before the Autumn statement
The triple lock was introduced by Cameron and Clegg and is supported by all parties including the SNP, evidenced by Blackford demanding Sunak confirmed it at the PMQs before the Autumn statement
There is no point Labour supporters objecting to the triple lock when their leader is 100% committed to it
As far as I can tell all Labour will do is change the guard and put up tax and the Wokery even more.
It's in the Labour draft manifesto:
A new, independent Woke bookshop in every town and village throughout the land.
They will remove all the (limited) brakes the Conservatives have currently applied.
In the longer term it provides a route back for them as there will eventually be a backlash.
I guess I'm curious as to why you were so worked up about this 'woke' bookshop in your town. I thought Tories were all in favour of small businesses being set up. It may or may not fail. But you actively want it to fail, which is odd for a Tory.
Meanwhile, on the Woke scale Starmer is pretty much in the middle, I'd have thought, and I don't see the next Labour government being captured by the extreme wokeites for one minute.
I've lived here for my whole life. It's my hometown. I was excited about this new bookshop when I saw it, and then I went in - and I'm crushingly disappointed.
You don't expect to see a bit of Islington in rural Hampshire, so I can't say I wish them well, but if it isn't my cup of tea why should I go in there and support them?
I'm not trying to ban them or make them illegal. But it doesn't mean I'm rooting for them.
There’s actually only one Waterstones in Islington. It’s a bit barren on the bookshop front, and actually not especially woke.
How many approved non-Woke bookshops are there in Islington? Just checking. (I don't mean the kind of bookshop that is neutral on this front, like specialist transport shops like the one that used to be in St Martin's Lane in London. I'm assuming here trhat the trains bit cancels out the petrolheads bit, obvs.)
OK.
If they want to start a culture war in my home town I will do my best to fucking finish it.
These people need to be defeated. Woke is a cancer.
That seems not wildly different from saying that in rural Hampshire, these folk should get back in the closet. How is opening a bookshop ‘starting a culture war’ ?
It's not a bookshop, it's a wokeshop.
It seems to be getting woker the more you dwell on it, to the point I'm surprised they didn't ambush you on the way in to indoctrinate you.
Here are their "what are we reading?" recommendations from their website:
"Ash": CALL ME BY MY NAME by Andre Aciman (Romance/ Lit-fic / LGBTQ) - moving story of a growing, passionate, obsessive love affair.
"Lee": NATIVES- RACE AND CLASS in the RUINS of EMPIRE (socio-political) by Akala. A fascinating insight into race and class in modern Britain from poet and hip-hop artist Akala. A great mix of the personal and the political.
"Ella": THE HATE YOU GIVE (YA urban fiction) by Angie Thomas - pacy, moving account of a black boy shot dead by the police, and the fallout for the community, his family and friends
"Lou": OUR MISSING HEARTS by Celeste Ng - It's a story about the power - and limitations - of art to create change in the world, the lessons and legacies we pass onto our children, and how any of us can survive a broken world with our hearts intact. (this one is basically an anti-nationalist/Trump book)
It's a Wokeshop.
After the BLM protests you couldn't move in my Waterstones without bumping into a book about race.
I have heard the movie Call me by my name is good, but I find that hard to believe as it stars Timothee Chalamet, who's been terrible in every other thing I've seen him in, be in Little Women or Dune.
What are you talking about? Chalamet is fantastic in Dune. The tent scene is chilling. Also great in The King.
Odesa has not had any leccy for four days. Try and imagine going four days without electric power
"people blocked the road to Tairova (Vuzovsky district) Odessa, due to the fact that there has been no electricity in the city for four days. The grid is past the point of reroute and quick repairs."
Comments
Meanwhile, on the Woke scale Starmer is pretty much in the middle, I'd have thought, and I don't see the next Labour government being captured by the extreme wokeites for one minute.
Rishi and Hunts goal is to restore some evidence of Tory competence and as part of the new detoxification project for the election after next whilst hoping something turns up as a game changing hail mary before 2024.
That's my view for what its worth.
I suspect the Ukrainian grid has already been decimated - they’d be happy enough with 90% of it still running
You don't expect to see a bit of Islington in rural Hampshire, so I can't say I wish them well, but if it isn't my cup of tea why should I go in there and support them?
I'm not trying to ban them or make them illegal. But it doesn't mean I'm rooting for them.
Without you.
I don't think people show gratitude like that - we're in for a long recession, and things felt bad even before then, and that's what people will remember, especially up against dangerous radical, er, Sir Keir Starmer.
Edit: beaten by Carlotta.
And cherry on top, the person who previously tasked with bankruptcy administration for Enron is doing FTX.
I think when the dust settles, all the backstories, the political connections, the big players of traditional finance that put money in, plus all the celebs who endorsed it. Its going to be Theranos x100.
The rest of your reaction seems a bit mean spirited.
Seb, you have a small head 🤣 Pleasure to swap helmets with you mate, you’re a legend. I hope you enjoy your last F1 race
https://twitter.com/GeorgeRussell63/status/1593214201753108480
"More than 10 million Ukrainians are without electricity after a barrage of Russian air attacks on the country’s energy infrastructure.
Conditions have led to many worrying about heating supplies during the dark winter months.
Freelance journalist
@normcos
joins us from Kyiv."
"Russia-Ukraine war live: Kyiv power shortages ‘critical’ amid blackouts across Ukraine.
Up to 40% of population facing hours-long outages after Russian attacks on infrastructure as freezing temperatures put additional strain on electricity grid."
https://twitter.com/NargisWalker/status/1593908509522788352?s=20&t=2tbPCv-Cxl6RZbBVz2a5Lg
Imagine enduring a Ukrainian winter with no power. Millions are facing that. Also water, gas, everything else
At the very least we should expect another enormous wave of refugees
But this is terrorism on a population wide basis. Russia isn’t a state sponsor of terrorism; it is a terrorist state.
But it can still work
If they want to start a culture war in my home town I will do my best to fucking finish it.
These people need to be defeated. Woke is a cancer.
"Ukrainians urged to consider leaving country to save energy
Ukrainians should consider leaving the country to help save energy, the head of Ukraine’s biggest private energy firm has said.
Russian missile strikes have crippled Ukraine’s energy system, with authorities warning that Kyiv could face a “complete shutdown” of the power grid as winter sets in."
{Guardian live blog}
How can this really be "victory" if half of Ukraine has left? Will they ever return?
As I said, we must brace for 5m more refugees, and counting
Some of the underlying assumptions of Crypto - that it can function without regulatory oversight - seem to have been damaged, but on the other hand the industry also seems already half-built and quite resilient from its own networks, and from other points of view.
How is opening a bookshop ‘starting a culture war’ ?
Years before the leaked draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, a landmark contraception ruling was disclosed, according to a minister who led a secretive effort to influence justices.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/19/us/supreme-court-leak-abortion-roe-wade.html
Alito, again.
If - and it is huge if - he has the missiles and drones to do the task, he can keep pounding and pounding Ukraine until the country is perpetually uninhabitable. Until "normal" human life becomes impossible there, and everyone tries to leave. At that point Ukraine will have already lost, in one sense, no matter how well its army performs
And then they will be forced to seek some kind of truce, and a temporary peace
The fact that senior Ukrainians are actually ASKING Ukrainians to leave feels important. Possibly a pivotal moment, and not in a good way
At some point attention must turn to a few elements of Labour philosophy. In particular, beyond rhetoric and retail tweaks, what is their
fiscal policy for the next 5-10 year term- tax, spend, borrow, deficit, debt as a whole, and it what way is it different.
What do they offer non pensioners beyond pious words.
Post-Brexit plan. Single market or not. (It's binary - the thing politicians hate most. That's why it's there to make sure no-one can leave it....)
We’ll see who’s laughing then.
The last event I went to was pretty recent too, Tory members are basically all old and selfish. They will vote for whoever gives them more regardless of how badly the rest of the country suffers. They've worked hard and nobody else does now so they deserve more money, everyone else deserves to pay for it.
Agricola. Tacitus.
The thorny issue is Free Movement, but the Tories have given him a huge Out there, because the Tories are also openly proposing large scale immigration and the Tories have failed to get a grip on the Dinghy People. So Free Movement feels like a big meh in comparison, what's the difference going to be?
All but small minority think the young (ie the under 60s) are simply decadent ingrates.
You have to ask where in hell do these attitudes arise from?
Voters just find it a lot easier to say don't know, or that they'll vote for another party when it's nowhere near an election and it means almost nothing.
People talk about things like swingback, but I suspect if we really had an election tomorrow it would be Labour ahead in the low teens at most.
https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/public-health-now/news/changes-occur-aging-brain-what-happens-when-we-get-older#:~:text=By the age of 6,appearance starts to change, too.
Might be a correlation between percentage loss and propensity to vote for Liz Truss.
Edit: alcohol too plays its part although the literature is best avoided by some of our most addled reactionary PB'ers
All but one has disowned the Tories. My friendship group (admittedly more mixed from the start) is viscerally against the Tories
And it's not just disenchantment, it's sense of anger and a desire to see the Tories suffer. To punish them. A lust for revenge. That's not going to go away, it might actually grow with every day the Tories govern from here on, as people get even more irritated
I've never sensed anything like it. Bigger than 97, to my mind
Someone somewhere does not agree with the PB consensus. personally I think 30% chance is high, but I wouldn't yet put it below 20%.
I love him, but I don't really talk to him much about it on this subject. My mum is a little bit better.
https://twitter.com/TpyxaNews/status/1593950372753801218
Anyone under 60 - who, of course, lack the imagination to understand modern ways of working - thinks it's a skive, whereas everyone else realises you work just as hard on the WFH days, at your desk on calls all day long, or working on documents, just without the commute.
The real reason is that they didn't have this flexibility in their day, and are resentful that the generations to follow do, so they try and trash it.
Meanwhile, in other "the past is a different country and some people are desparate to move back there" news,
https://twitter.com/Samfr/status/1593612566919774208
But politically, to the Brexiteers who just hate Johnny Foreigner, it must now be obvious that the hated masses are coming here in droves and no force on earth can stop it. And to the ultra right racists EU ones are better than other ethnicities.
BTW joining SM would give our delightful SNP friends a really clear run at independence, because it would solve the Gretna issue (just up the road from me) as well as the RoI/NI one.
Or perhaps that's just the one I would visit, of a nice quiet Saturday.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11447039/Eco-zealot-arrested-tried-confront-Sir-David-Attenborough-ate-fish-restaurant.html
A climate change protester has been arrested for trying to confront Sir David Attenborough as he dined at a Michelin-starred fish restaurant.
Emma Smart, an activist for the campaign group Animal Rebellion, allegedly caused a disturbance at the Catch at the Old Fish Market in Weymouth, Dorset.
She was asked to leave the venue before being dragged out and detained by police.
Mrs Smart said: 'The Catch is a symbol of excess and inequality in today's world, Weymouth has average wages amongst the lowest in the UK and is at huge risk of sea level rises.
'Yet this restaurant still continues business as usual amongst the worst cost-of-living crisis many will ever experience.
'Sir David is in a unique position to tell the truth about the biodiversity crisis.
'He has the chance to leave a legacy of love, care, and of being the forerunner of a better world.'
But by and large it is as described, it does seem to be as simple as taking the view that they have worked hard and so deserve, essentially, anything, and therefore anyone who has not worked as long does not.
Today’s Omnisis
SNP 48%
SLab 24%
SCon 13%
WFH is also really bad for cities. And it further atomises people. Hopefully we will find a fruitful middle path. Eventually
They sell books on Gender Critical Theory. No, I have no idea either.
(There are other books as well as Archbold and Chitty on Contract, though none so full of facts, jokes and riddles).
It's possible the Tories are heading for oblivion, but it would be an historical outlier for the polling to stick at these kind of leads and be reflected on polling day.
Prepare for Tory oblivion, or something close to it
Some of that stuff is as woke as hell, and none of it is a parable on the evils of inflation.
Before the pandemic I often worked in highly distributed teams with colleagues in Poland, Ukraine, Spain, US, etc. Sometimes I'd choose to work in an office, to be around other people, but there was no compelling reason related to the work to have me do so.
If different people's work involves dealing with physical documents, or a detailed level of collaboration with others that is hard to facilitate remotely, then working in an office might be desirable or necessary. There shouldn't really be a problem with deciding this on a case by case basis in relation to the work that is required. And even for the people who can work from home all the time, some time spent working in a communal hub can be valuable for a bunch of other reasons.
Somehow it's become a bit of an expression of power by some managers. Quite adversarial, rather than working out how to make the best of the available options.
Britain knows what it means to fight for freedom.
We are with you all the way @ZelenskyyUa 🇺🇦🇬🇧
Британія знає, що означає боротися за свободу.
Ми з вами до кінця @ZelenskyyUa 🇺🇦🇬🇧[VIDEO]
https://twitter.com/rishisunak/status/1593961630303670272
But if Tory oblivion - or even significant losses - are nailed on, William Hill has free money to hand out to you. (2/5 Labour most seats).
You haven't characterised well the attitudes of those of us who are negative about WFH. I'm no dog in the manger and I'm all for the lower ranks skiving. I just think a) the government and the private sector are using WFH to cut their costs at the expense of the "consumers", and b) many Jerkers From Home are completely up themselves and it's good when someone tells them so. That's not because those of us who criticise them are so horribly ignorant and stupid about their oh-so-hard lives at the coalfaces they call their desks. Nor is it because we're resentful either, because who on earth would actually choose to do office work in their home if they could avoid it?
But so what ?
Just back from Tory (or is it soon to be Labour?) Romford. Busy but not spectacularly so - about what'd you expect. Interesting to see the usual churn of units in the shopping centres - couple of new eateries opening - but still a ot of gaps especially in those areas a little off the well-trodden paths.
Andrew Rosindell would be toppled on a 19% swing which isn't far off some of the polls we've seen and in 1997 Labour took the seat on a 15.6% swing.
To try to answer the header question, the Conservatives would have to do worse than 1997 to lose Romford which is the 100th safest Conservative seat.
The swing from Conservative to Labour in the most recent polls has ranged from 15% with Opinium (due to poll tonight and one of our number thinks the Conservatives will be 31% or higher), 16.5% with R&W and IPSOS Mori and 17.5% with YouGov.
So, if these swings are accurate, Rosindell clings on in Romford but the Conservatives are around 120 seats nationally so worse than 1997.
As an aside, I thought most of the 92-97 polling had been widely discredited because of the sampling and methodology which were introduced following the "disaster" of the 1992 election and the infamous "shy Tory syndrome. That explains the apparent difference between some of the 30%+ gaps in the polls and the 13% gap on the day.
Could the same happen again? There is the possibility if the result appears in the bag, some Labour supporters simply won't bother to vote and that may give the Conservatives a chance in some areas to hold off LD challenges which will be reliant for their success on Labour supporters voting tactically.
I'm sure they know that it is "different" but I suspect that they have no idea how the cumulative life course effects build up.
David Willets wrote an extremely good piece on the subject a while back. The Tories promptly binned all thinking in that area.
"Ash": CALL ME BY MY NAME by Andre Aciman (Romance/ Lit-fic / LGBTQ) - moving story of a growing, passionate, obsessive love affair.
"Lee": NATIVES- RACE AND CLASS in the RUINS of EMPIRE (socio-political) by Akala. A fascinating insight into race and class in modern Britain from poet and hip-hop artist Akala. A great mix of the personal and the political.
"Ella": THE HATE YOU GIVE (YA urban fiction) by Angie Thomas - pacy, moving account of a black boy shot dead by the police, and the fallout for the community, his family and friends
"Lou": OUR MISSING HEARTS by Celeste Ng - It's a story about the power - and limitations - of art to create change in the world, the lessons and legacies we pass onto our children, and how any of us can survive a broken world with our hearts intact. (this one is basically an anti-nationalist/Trump book)
It's a Wokeshop.
That's what.
'Have the Boomers Pinched Their Children’s Futures? - with Lord David Willetts'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuXzvjBYW8A
Three scenarios:
First, if they return with just 100 MPs, the Conservatives will still be His Majesty's Loyal Opposition, the Conservative Party leader will be the leader of the opposition and, most significantly, the only viable alternative Government will be a Conservative or Conservative-led Government. That was the case in 1997 and remained the case, with one brief tantalising hint of something different, until 2010.
Second, let's say it's even worse for Rishi Sunak and his party and they win just 40 MPs - the likelihood then is they will be outnumbered by the SNP which would in theory make the parliamentary leader of that party the leader of the Official Opposition but how would that work for England or England and Wales only issues? Could we accept the leader of the SNP being the first to respond to a UK Budget for example or would the clamour for an English Parliament become irresistible?
The fact would remain the SNP are constrained by the number of seats they contest and can never lead a UK Government so by default the Conservatives (even if third in the Commons) would remain the opposition party best positioned to lead an alternative Government.
Third, the nightmare scenario is if the Conservatives poll 20% and tactical voting means they are either wiped out or return fewer MPs than the Liberal Democrats. At that point it becomes existential as the LDs could argue (convincingly I'm less certain) they would be the party able to lead a viable alternative Government. As we know, legitimacy comes not from vote shares but from seats in the Commons - if the Conservatives had fewer seats than the LDs the fact would be they would be the fourth or fifth party in the Commons.
Let me say I think the third scenario is hugely unlikely, the second scenario on the edge of credibility and the first the most likely.
But that would still be a really good outcome for them.
Long way to go to the next GE.
All the writers and editors try to OutWoke each other, and well known authors can be cancelled for the tiniest transgressions. Brutally competitive
The only people enjoying it all are the Sensitivity Readers
Woke is the end of art, essentially, wherever it goes
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jun/15/torn-apart-the-vicious-war-over-young-adult-books
It is absolutely not the case in the private sector, where in professional services people can focus on documents, research, client meetings, 1:1s and virtual workshops without being dog-tired from commuting five days a week.
That you’re suggesting a Tory wipeout is the one fly in our ointment.
It would be so much better if you would cast the Curse of Leondamus over Sunak by predicting that he will surprise us all on the upside….
I have heard the movie Call me by my name is good, but I find that hard to believe as it stars Timothee Chalamet, who's been terrible in every other thing I've seen him in, be in Little Women or Dune.
However, most Councils don't just have administrative buildings - the majority are public facing premises which may have libraries or CABs or are places where families with issues can meet with social workers or child protection workers or where vulnerable adults can meet social workers in peace and calm.
There is a recognised and continuing need for these public-facing environments where the public can interact with the Council at whatever level.
The other side of the "public building" requirement is the forum for elected Members to meet not just at full Council meetings but at the various scrutiny and committee meetings which are the framework of the democratic process. This includes meetings with external bodies, local business forums, the Police, the NHS and a myriad of other public bodies.
The Council Office is therefore evolving from a primarily administrative building to a networking building wherein a much smaller supporting administrative staff operates.
There's little or no talk of corruption now, and there don't seem to be any indications that the Scum will back Starmer.
What have we got, then? Polls show that many in the population think the Tory administration in the middle of its term (if in this context one can think of it as a single administration) consists of a bunch of lying tossers. Big deal.
If that was "lying corrupt tossers" rather than lying tossers, the idea that the Tories were headed for 1997-style electoral defeat would have more weight.
Those who went from Labour to UKIP to the Conservatives are kinda loose cannony. I agree with that. Perhaps they may realise that their lives haven't improved after Brexit. But Tommy Robinson isn't going to follow in the footsteps of Pauline Hanson and scoop up an appreciable amount of voteshare. The party that manages to tip the deck of the ship so that the cannon rolls in its direction is likely to be the Tory party, ably assisted by the Sun.
Why is it that Tories wee themselves at the tiniest spot of bother? It's ironic given that that's exactly what they accuse other people of being like, people who didn't play so much rugby at school. Tories have no character or backbone.
"people blocked the road to Tairova (Vuzovsky district) Odessa, due to the fact that there has been no electricity in the city for four days. The grid is past the point of reroute and quick repairs."
https://twitter.com/squatsons/status/1593664275721375744?s=20&t=5b8BMDtX6phBQm1d2mvtqw
At some point - if this continues - Ukraine will be forced to seek peace