Interesting - we now have a food and drink inflation indicator independent of HMG. Edit: divided by sypermarket.
Some very high figures, Ocado having least and Aldi/Lidl most (but still overall cheapest). But the least was 10.3, greatest 19.7% annually. This is going to have real impact independent of e.g. what Mr Sunak says.
The coal mine is another example, along with the shenanigans around the NIP, of the conservative government indulging in projects that impair the UK’s soft power and brand value way more than any conceivable financial benefit.
The mine will be tiny, produce mediocre coal and probably have a foreshortened useful economic life as met coal gets phased out of steel production in the next couple of decades. Makes no economic sense. Meanwhile - completely out of proportion to any environmental impact of the mine itself - it gives every country under pressure to reduce coal use the opportunity to point and shout hypocrite, and carry on as before.
The national brand wrecking equivalent of a brand like John Lewis cutting costs by using sweatshop child labour for its clothing.
I can't pretend to know about the economics of the mine or the likely trajectory of the steel industry. However, so long as no public money is at risk, I'm not all that fussed.
However, on the point about "optics", I'm sorry, but it's bollocks. If the rest of the world is so immature as to wilfully conflate coking coal and thermal coal, then we're fucked anyway.
There's been absolute hysteria over it. It comes across like those activists who wouldn't support even very green projects because they use carbon to be built or it will take too long.
I'm sorry but if one coal mine ruins the brand and works actions then the brand was already weak as hell and those using it as an excuse would have found something else to use.
When oil was previously ~£60 per barrel petrol prices were ~£1.43 per litre. Today they are ~£1.57 per litre. Neither the government nor opposition gives a shit about it and it is a huge source of our continued high inflation environment. Plus hitting forecourts is such an easy win for either party, everyone loathes them.
All South Koreans to become younger as traditional age system scrapped ... Koreans are deemed to be a year old when born and a year is added every 1 January. It’s this age most commonly cited by Koreans in everyday life.
A separate system also exists for conscription purposes or calculating the legal age to drink alcohol and smoke, in which a person’s age is calculated from zero at birth and a year is added on 1 January.
So someone born on 31 December turned 2 the next day? Confusing.
Personally I'm in favour of the new year reverting to sometime in March, end of winter. Yes, its unfair on the southern hemisphere, but we outnumber them.
Yougov have RefUK much higher than other pollsters at 8%, and most of that to the Tories share and they are on 30% even without any gains back from Labour
If the idea that a Labour government is inevitable takes firm hold, then I can see a lot of RefUK supporters simply sitting it out. Without the horse-race metaphor one needs a positive reason to vote for a party, and a lot of RefUk voters are, I suspect, pissed-off contrarians rather than wavering Tories (perhaps Pagan2 is a possible example). But I'm guessing - I don't know any at all.
While I think it is still in the balance whether Labour will get a majority, I'll be very surprised if the votes are not there for a stable Lab/LD coalition.
Reform could be a problem for the Tories. It's worth remembering that they stood down in Tory held marginals last time due to Brexit. They won't do so this time. And I also think that they'll this time be gathering votes exclusively from disillusioned 2019 Tory voters who were not recent converts from Labour. They won't poll 8% but I think they are quite capable of getting 5% pretty well exclusively at the Tories' expense.
When oil was previously ~£60 per barrel petrol prices were ~£1.43 per litre. Today they are ~£1.57 per litre. Neither the government nor opposition gives a shit about it and it is a huge source of our continued high inflation environment. Plus hitting forecourts is such an easy win for either party, everyone loathes them.
Free market economics innit?
It's not a free market though, the barrier of entry in that market is prohibitively high and it's allowed for effective cartel like price controls by the major players who no longer fear competition, having bought them all.
All South Koreans to become younger as traditional age system scrapped ... Koreans are deemed to be a year old when born and a year is added every 1 January. It’s this age most commonly cited by Koreans in everyday life.
A separate system also exists for conscription purposes or calculating the legal age to drink alcohol and smoke, in which a person’s age is calculated from zero at birth and a year is added on 1 January.
So someone born on 31 December turned 2 the next day? Confusing.
Personally I'm in favour of the new year reverting to sometime in March, end of winter. Yes, its unfair on the southern hemisphere, but we outnumber them.
Horses work like that, except they are born at zero.
When oil was previously ~£60 per barrel petrol prices were ~£1.43 per litre. Today they are ~£1.57 per litre. Neither the government nor opposition gives a shit about it and it is a huge source of our continued high inflation environment. Plus hitting forecourts is such an easy win for either party, everyone loathes them.
What was the pound/dollar exchange rate at that time? Serious question.
When oil was previously ~£60 per barrel petrol prices were ~£1.43 per litre. Today they are ~£1.57 per litre. Neither the government nor opposition gives a shit about it and it is a huge source of our continued high inflation environment. Plus hitting forecourts is such an easy win for either party, everyone loathes them.
What was the pound/dollar exchange rate at that time? Serious question.
Hasn't Max factored that in by pricing oil in pounds?
On topic, indeed, and lest we forget Corbyn's toxic legacy where he bequeathed Starmer fewer MPs than Michael Foot won in 1983.
On topic.
Starmer lacks the gravitas to be Prime Minister, and hard working British voters have already worked this out for themselves. As the election draws ever closer and Rishi continues to falter, the clamour for the return of Boris and an inevitable comfortable Conservative majority will become louder.
When oil was previously ~£60 per barrel petrol prices were ~£1.43 per litre. Today they are ~£1.57 per litre. Neither the government nor opposition gives a shit about it and it is a huge source of our continued high inflation environment. Plus hitting forecourts is such an easy win for either party, everyone loathes them.
What was the pound/dollar exchange rate at that time? Serious question.
Hasn't Max factored that in by pricing oil in pounds?
You know, I hadn't actually spotted that. So used to seeing oil priced in dollars I filled in the blanks. So presumably yes!
On topic, indeed, and lest we forget Corbyn's toxic legacy where he bequeathed Starmer fewer MPs than Michael Foot won in 1983.
On topic.
Starmer lacks the gravitas to be Prime Minister, and hard working British voters have already worked this out for themselves. As the election draws ever closer and Rishi continues to falter, the clamour for the return of Boris and an inevitable comfortable Conservative majority will become louder.
That's more full of bollocks than my boxer shorts.
All South Koreans to become younger as traditional age system scrapped ... Koreans are deemed to be a year old when born and a year is added every 1 January. It’s this age most commonly cited by Koreans in everyday life.
A separate system also exists for conscription purposes or calculating the legal age to drink alcohol and smoke, in which a person’s age is calculated from zero at birth and a year is added on 1 January.
Can you imagine if this was us? The kind of culture wars madness that would ensue if a government tried to move us to the global standard?
The Koreans actually have three, not two age systems. In a modern society it causes significant problems, and there was widespread public support for the change.
https://m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.amp.asp?newsIdx=341383 ...Due to the mixed use of various methods, confusion and occasional disputes have arisen in society, such as when interpreting policies related to labor, social welfare and more recently in the case of vaccine administration.
Scrapping the Korean age system was one of the campaign pledges of President Yoon Suk-yeol, a promise that garnered wide public support from those preferring a simplified age system...
Fans of traditional complexity will be pleased to hear that they also have two different number systems (Korean and Sino-Korean) in regular use.
A bit like us still having dozen, score, gross etc - but a complete (if clunky) number system alongside the one used for regular mathematics.
On topic, indeed, and lest we forget Corbyn's toxic legacy where he bequeathed Starmer fewer MPs than Michael Foot won in 1983.
On topic.
Starmer lacks the gravitas to be Prime Minister, and hard working British voters have already worked this out for themselves. As the election draws ever closer and Rishi continues to falter, the clamour for the return of Boris and an inevitable comfortable Conservative majority will become louder.
That's more full of bollocks than my boxer shorts.
I would like to think this poster is a deliberate parody. Particularly in light of his/her remarks about Woodhead.
On topic, indeed, and lest we forget Corbyn's toxic legacy where he bequeathed Starmer fewer MPs than Michael Foot won in 1983.
On topic.
Starmer lacks the gravitas to be Prime Minister, and hard working British voters have already worked this out for themselves. As the election draws ever closer and Rishi continues to falter, the clamour for the return of Boris and an inevitable comfortable Conservative majority will become louder.
That's more full of bollocks than my boxer shorts.
On topic, indeed, and lest we forget Corbyn's toxic legacy where he bequeathed Starmer fewer MPs than Michael Foot won in 1983.
On topic.
Starmer lacks the gravitas to be Prime Minister, and hard working British voters have already worked this out for themselves. As the election draws ever closer and Rishi continues to falter, the clamour for the return of Boris and an inevitable comfortable Conservative majority will become louder.
That's more full of bollocks than my boxer shorts.
On topic, indeed, and lest we forget Corbyn's toxic legacy where he bequeathed Starmer fewer MPs than Michael Foot won in 1983.
On topic.
Starmer lacks the gravitas to be Prime Minister, and hard working British voters have already worked this out for themselves. As the election draws ever closer and Rishi continues to falter, the clamour for the return of Boris and an inevitable comfortable Conservative majority will become louder.
That's more full of bollocks than my boxer shorts.
On topic, indeed, and lest we forget Corbyn's toxic legacy where he bequeathed Starmer fewer MPs than Michael Foot won in 1983.
On topic.
Starmer lacks the gravitas to be Prime Minister, and hard working British voters have already worked this out for themselves. As the election draws ever closer and Rishi continues to falter, the clamour for the return of Boris and an inevitable comfortable Conservative majority will become louder.
That's more full of bollocks than my boxer shorts.
I would like to think this poster is a deliberate parody. Particularly in light of his/her remarks about Woodhead.
When oil was previously ~£60 per barrel petrol prices were ~£1.43 per litre. Today they are ~£1.57 per litre. Neither the government nor opposition gives a shit about it and it is a huge source of our continued high inflation environment. Plus hitting forecourts is such an easy win for either party, everyone loathes them.
What was the pound/dollar exchange rate at that time? Serious question.
Lol, why have England picked three quicks on this pitch?
Probably just a misreading of the pitch, or possibly just the balance of the attack. Egland have spin options outside of Leach and Jacks - on a turning pitch Root can be dangerous (47 wickets says yes).
I can understand Mike's argument, particularly without a recovery in Scotland Labour has a steep mountain to climb. And I'm sure a lot of the current ex-Tory don't knows in polling will turn out and vote on the day after all.
However, I agree with @Heathener that we are seeing a sea-change in public opinion, and we are heading for a 1997-style 'Get Rid Of Them' election. At the moment polling shows the Tories in the upper 20s, and that's now while Sunak is having his honeymoon and before all the bad news hits:
Fuel bills are yet to land - and if this is a cold winter it will be even worse
There will be a long winter of strikes affecting public services, which all need massive investment not cuts
Probably two rounds of stealth tax increases
Inflation eating away at people's incomes
A sense that the government is out of control of things it should be on top of, e.g. migration, justice system
None of those things are going to improve the Tories's standing in the polls. How low can they go?
The only question in my mind is how much of the core Tory vote is sufficiently well concentrated in the safe non-urban seats across the south for them to continue to withstand the oncoming deluge in numbers. I think they probably do, which is a shame because I think that any seat total above 0 will be entirely undeserved.
Lol, why have England picked three quicks on this pitch?
Probably just a misreading of the pitch, or possibly just the balance of the attack. Egland have spin options outside of Leach and Jacks - on a turning pitch Root can be dangerous (47 wickets says yes).
Sky glass is even worse. I was used to the radio being a bit ahead of the old Sky system (satellite) and that was quite useful, but Sky Glass is about 2 mins behind.
Lol, why have England picked three quicks on this pitch?
Probably just a misreading of the pitch, or possibly just the balance of the attack. Egland have spin options outside of Leach and Jacks - on a turning pitch Root can be dangerous (47 wickets says yes).
Worst misreading of a pitch since Calcutta 1993 when India picked three front line spinners and England picked four seamers/fast bowlers.
I can understand Mike's argument, particularly without a recovery in Scotland Labour has a steep mountain to climb. And I'm sure a lot of the current ex-Tory don't knows in polling will turn out and vote on the day after all.
However, I agree with @Heathener that we are seeing a sea-change in public opinion, and we are heading for a 1997-style 'Get Rid Of Them' election. At the moment polling shows the Tories in the upper 20s, and that's now while Sunak is having his honeymoon and before all the bad news hits:
Fuel bills are yet to land - and if this is a cold winter it will be even worse
There will be a long winter of strikes affecting public services, which all need massive investment not cuts
Probably two rounds of stealth tax increases
Inflation eating away at people's incomes
A sense that the government is out of control of things it should be on top of, e.g. migration, justice system
None of those things are going to improve the Tories's standing in the polls. How low can they go?
The only question in my mind is how much of the core Tory vote is sufficiently well concentrated in the safe non-urban seats across the south for them to continue to withstand the oncoming deluge in numbers. I think they probably do, which is a shame because I think that any seat total above 0 will be entirely undeserved.
There is a difference between 1997 and now - then, Tony Blair was popular and had a plan of what to do after winning the election. Sir Keir isn't and doesn't.
On topic, indeed, and lest we forget Corbyn's toxic legacy where he bequeathed Starmer fewer MPs than Michael Foot won in 1983.
On topic.
Starmer lacks the gravitas to be Prime Minister, and hard working British voters have already worked this out for themselves. As the election draws ever closer and Rishi continues to falter, the clamour for the return of Boris and an inevitable comfortable Conservative majority will become louder.
That's more full of bollocks than my boxer shorts.
The irony of a Bozza cheerleader called Bozza criticising another politician for lack of gravitas is potentially life-threatening.
On topic, indeed, and lest we forget Corbyn's toxic legacy where he bequeathed Starmer fewer MPs than Michael Foot won in 1983.
On topic.
Starmer lacks the gravitas to be Prime Minister, and hard working British voters have already worked this out for themselves. As the election draws ever closer and Rishi continues to falter, the clamour for the return of Boris and an inevitable comfortable Conservative majority will become louder.
That's more full of bollocks than my boxer shorts.
I can't help it if you have small testicles.
To be fair it is very cold today.
Retraction rather than diminution, actually. But Mr Johnson is not noted for his knowledge of basic biology.
’Exclusive poll: Tories face WIPEOUT at General Election as Reform UK support surges’
A new poll by People’s Polling for GB News, found Labour is on 47% of the national vote, the Conservative Party down to 20%, the Liberal Democrats on 8%, the Greens on 6% and Reform on 9%.
This represents a one-point fall for Conservatives and a one-point jump for Labour from last week, increasing the gap between the two parties to 27 points.
It comes amid reports “Red Wall” MPs are being courted by Reform as it seeks a wave of Ukip-style defections among dissatisfied Tories.
More than 7,000 grassroots Conservatives have joined Reform since, i has been told, Liz Truss resigned as prime minister and the party is increasingly confident of MP defections.
It is understood Mr Tice the party’s founder and Nigel Farage its honorary president, have met several “Red Wall” MPs in recent weeks in an effort to tempt them over to the party.
On topic, indeed, and lest we forget Corbyn's toxic legacy where he bequeathed Starmer fewer MPs than Michael Foot won in 1983.
On topic.
Starmer lacks the gravitas to be Prime Minister, and hard working British voters have already worked this out for themselves. As the election draws ever closer and Rishi continues to falter, the clamour for the return of Boris and an inevitable comfortable Conservative majority will become louder.
That's more full of bollocks than my boxer shorts.
I can understand Mike's argument, particularly without a recovery in Scotland Labour has a steep mountain to climb. And I'm sure a lot of the current ex-Tory don't knows in polling will turn out and vote on the day after all.
However, I agree with @Heathener that we are seeing a sea-change in public opinion, and we are heading for a 1997-style 'Get Rid Of Them' election. At the moment polling shows the Tories in the upper 20s, and that's now while Sunak is having his honeymoon and before all the bad news hits:
Fuel bills are yet to land - and if this is a cold winter it will be even worse
There will be a long winter of strikes affecting public services, which all need massive investment not cuts
Probably two rounds of stealth tax increases
Inflation eating away at people's incomes
A sense that the government is out of control of things it should be on top of, e.g. migration, justice system
None of those things are going to improve the Tories's standing in the polls. How low can they go?
The only question in my mind is how much of the core Tory vote is sufficiently well concentrated in the safe non-urban seats across the south for them to continue to withstand the oncoming deluge in numbers. I think they probably do, which is a shame because I think that any seat total above 0 will be entirely undeserved.
Remember in mid 2008 Brown was also over 20% behind Cameron's Tories and with further economic downturn to come.
Yet by polling day in 2010 Brown had slashed the Tories lead to just 7% and got a hung parliament and deprived Cameron of his expected landslide. Even if Cameron still won most seats and became PM.
Mr. Dickson, I'm not persuaded Reform will be a big deal come the GE. But if they are it could have a massive impact. In 2015, Farage's strength took a lot of votes in Labour seats and helped Cameron to a surprise majority.
When oil was previously ~£60 per barrel petrol prices were ~£1.43 per litre. Today they are ~£1.57 per litre. Neither the government nor opposition gives a shit about it and it is a huge source of our continued high inflation environment. Plus hitting forecourts is such an easy win for either party, everyone loathes them.
What was the pound/dollar exchange rate at that time? Serious question.
Hasn't Max factored that in by pricing oil in pounds?
You know, I hadn't actually spotted that. So used to seeing oil priced in dollars I filled in the blanks. So presumably yes!
Also, didn't supermarkets previously sell petrol at an unviably low margin as a visible signal of their low prices? If that's stopped, there's a windfall that we're unlikely to see returning and no point complaining.
I can understand Mike's argument, particularly without a recovery in Scotland Labour has a steep mountain to climb. And I'm sure a lot of the current ex-Tory don't knows in polling will turn out and vote on the day after all.
However, I agree with @Heathener that we are seeing a sea-change in public opinion, and we are heading for a 1997-style 'Get Rid Of Them' election. At the moment polling shows the Tories in the upper 20s, and that's now while Sunak is having his honeymoon and before all the bad news hits:
Fuel bills are yet to land - and if this is a cold winter it will be even worse
There will be a long winter of strikes affecting public services, which all need massive investment not cuts
Probably two rounds of stealth tax increases
Inflation eating away at people's incomes
A sense that the government is out of control of things it should be on top of, e.g. migration, justice system
None of those things are going to improve the Tories's standing in the polls. How low can they go?
The only question in my mind is how much of the core Tory vote is sufficiently well concentrated in the safe non-urban seats across the south for them to continue to withstand the oncoming deluge in numbers. I think they probably do, which is a shame because I think that any seat total above 0 will be entirely undeserved.
Remember in mid 2008 Brown was also over 20% behind Cameron's Tories and with further economic downturn to come.
Yet by polling day in 2010 Brown had slashed the Tories lead to just 7% and got a hung parliament and deprived Cameron of his expected landslide. Even if Cameron still won most seats and became PM.
Sunak will hope to repeat Brown's comeback
And what about the comeback for Bomilcar in the Carthaginian suffete election in 435 BCE? Isn't that even more relevant an example?
When oil was previously ~£60 per barrel petrol prices were ~£1.43 per litre. Today they are ~£1.57 per litre. Neither the government nor opposition gives a shit about it and it is a huge source of our continued high inflation environment. Plus hitting forecourts is such an easy win for either party, everyone loathes them.
What was the pound/dollar exchange rate at that time? Serious question.
Hasn't Max factored that in by pricing oil in pounds?
You know, I hadn't actually spotted that. So used to seeing oil priced in dollars I filled in the blanks. So presumably yes!
Also, didn't supermarkets previously sell petrol at an unviably low margin as a visible signal of their low prices? If that's stopped, there's a windfall that we're unlikely to see returning and no point complaining.
Supermarkets used to compete on petrol prices with standalone forecourts. Then one of the biggest of the former was bought by one of the biggest owners of the latter...
On topic, indeed, and lest we forget Corbyn's toxic legacy where he bequeathed Starmer fewer MPs than Michael Foot won in 1983.
On topic.
Starmer lacks the gravitas to be Prime Minister, and hard working British voters have already worked this out for themselves. As the election draws ever closer and Rishi continues to falter, the clamour for the return of Boris and an inevitable comfortable Conservative majority will become louder.
That's more full of bollocks than my boxer shorts.
The irony of a Bozza cheerleader called Bozza criticising another politician for lack of gravitas is potentially life-threatening.
Things have moved on so much that it has all the impact of someone seriously demanding that Balfour return to the party leadership.
I agree with Mike. If you take Scotland out of the equation, as you should, Labour needs huge gains in England to get to a majority and pretty substantial ones to get to a plurality. While I can see the latter happening, the former still seems a stretch to me. As much as I’d love to see people like Rees Mogg lose their seats, it’s hard to imagine it happening when push comes to shove. As things stand, I expect Starmer to be the next PM, but for Labour to be a minority government.
Starmer has entirely given up on Scotland. His every move is focused on Middle England.
Wise in the short term, but idiotic in the long term. Scotland is off, and with her disappears much of England’s energy and water. And sole nuclear base.
Falmouth: don’t say you weren’t warned!
After the Supreme Court judgement Scotland is irrelevant. Unless the SNP hold the balance of power whoever wins the next general election can ignore the SNP and refuse indyref2 indefinitely.
Though I suspect Starmer might eventually allow indyref2 with Brown's devomax plans
When oil was previously ~£60 per barrel petrol prices were ~£1.43 per litre. Today they are ~£1.57 per litre. Neither the government nor opposition gives a shit about it and it is a huge source of our continued high inflation environment. Plus hitting forecourts is such an easy win for either party, everyone loathes them.
What was the pound/dollar exchange rate at that time? Serious question.
Mr. Dickson, I'm not persuaded Reform will be a big deal come the GE. But if they are it could have a massive impact. In 2015, Farage's strength took a lot of votes in Labour seats and helped Cameron to a surprise majority.
I share your scepticism.
I think it profoundly unlikely that Reform will get more than 4% at the GE. Probably slightly less.
Punters can pretty safely add 50% of the Ref vote to Con and 50% of the Green vote to Lab (to SNP in Scotland).
Mr. Dickson, I'm not persuaded Reform will be a big deal come the GE. But if they are it could have a massive impact. In 2015, Farage's strength took a lot of votes in Labour seats and helped Cameron to a surprise majority.
Currently though they are mainly taking Tory votes, some Cameron 2015 voters now voting Starmer Labour or LD post Brexit and most 2015 UKIP voters having voted for Boris in 2019
When oil was previously ~£60 per barrel petrol prices were ~£1.43 per litre. Today they are ~£1.57 per litre. Neither the government nor opposition gives a shit about it and it is a huge source of our continued high inflation environment. Plus hitting forecourts is such an easy win for either party, everyone loathes them.
What was the pound/dollar exchange rate at that time? Serious question.
Hasn't Max factored that...
You're not suggesting he'd makeup the figures ?
You need some blusher for that pun.
No doubt it will provide a foundation for @ydoethur .
Lol, why have England picked three quicks on this pitch?
So they can get behind the French back four, whip crosses into the box, create chances for the big lad up front?
Ha. Similarly, for the next few days, I will be deliberately misinterpreting any reference to 'England' which does not specifically reference football to be to the England cricket team. Bloody football, coming in trampling all over the traditional cricket window of November/December.
When oil was previously ~£60 per barrel petrol prices were ~£1.43 per litre. Today they are ~£1.57 per litre. Neither the government nor opposition gives a shit about it and it is a huge source of our continued high inflation environment. Plus hitting forecourts is such an easy win for either party, everyone loathes them.
Free market economics innit?
It's not a free market though, the barrier of entry in that market is prohibitively high and it's allowed for effective cartel like price controls by the major players who no longer fear competition, having bought them all.
The other factor is that the petrol/diesel difference used to be about 2p per litre, and now it's about 20p - making the inflation situation for logistics even worse than the headline "petrol prices" number suggests.
‘The emotions of Britishness and being English, a response to David Mitchell’
Some say that England requires no representative, accountable, democractic institutions because the institutions of the British state are, in fact, de facto English. Mitchell alludes to this Anglo-centric mindset when he informs us that “when Palmerston said "English" he meant British”. My challenge to Mitchell and other Brits who wish to save the Union is to imagine a new multi-national Britain that draws strength from its hybridity instead of riding rough-shod over the national identities of Britain by buying into these Anglo-centric, Anglo-British notions of Britishness.
… if devolution has failed to ‘kill nationalism stone dead’, as George Robertson prophesised, it is partly because it has heightened the perception that Britain is the English State by proxy, and devolution merely an exercise in post-imperial imperialism.
Today when the public hears British politicians refer to ‘our country’ or ‘our NHS’ it is reasonable to assume that they are talking about England or the NHS in England
An old one but actually very timely at present given recent proposals from Labour and the Tory reactions, and the ensuing discussions on PB re an English Pmt.
'For the sake of Britain the English need to be allowed to be English and British instead of Anglo-British; a dual identity rather than a conjoined, conflated identity. “The nationalism that urgently needs definition is Englishness”, says Madeleine Bunting. If the Anglo-British nationalism of Blair, Brown and Cameron can be regarded as an English nationalism by proxy, then I agree with her completely. If the way to a new understanding of British identity is to forge a Little England nationalism that replaces the Anglo-British nationalism of a faded imperial power, then yes, let’s reimagine Britain as a multinational, consensual, union of partner nations with an English nationalism that complements the nationalisms of Scotland and Wales. Only a looser – possibly federal – idea of Britain, in which Scotland and Wales are equal partners instead of semi-autonomous parts of Greater England, will allow the nations to sit comfortably in Union.
The alternative is to force Scottish and Welsh nationalists, and increasingly English nationalists (see below), to choose between their national identities and their British identity.'
‘The emotions of Britishness and being English, a response to David Mitchell’
Some say that England requires no representative, accountable, democractic institutions because the institutions of the British state are, in fact, de facto English. Mitchell alludes to this Anglo-centric mindset when he informs us that “when Palmerston said "English" he meant British”. My challenge to Mitchell and other Brits who wish to save the Union is to imagine a new multi-national Britain that draws strength from its hybridity instead of riding rough-shod over the national identities of Britain by buying into these Anglo-centric, Anglo-British notions of Britishness.
… if devolution has failed to ‘kill nationalism stone dead’, as George Robertson prophesised, it is partly because it has heightened the perception that Britain is the English State by proxy, and devolution merely an exercise in post-imperial imperialism.
Today when the public hears British politicians refer to ‘our country’ or ‘our NHS’ it is reasonable to assume that they are talking about England or the NHS in England
An old one but actuallyu very timely at present given recent proposals from Labour and the Tory reactions.
'For the sake of Britain the English need to be allowed to be English and British instead of Anglo-British; a dual identity rather than a conjoined, conflated identity. “The nationalism that urgently needs definition is Englishness”, says Madeleine Bunting. If the Anglo-British nationalism of Blair, Brown and Cameron can be regarded as an English nationalism by proxy, then I agree with her completely. If the way to a new understanding of British identity is to forge a Little England nationalism that replaces the Anglo-British nationalism of a faded imperial power, then yes, let’s reimagine Britain as a multinational, consensual, union of partner nations with an English nationalism that complements the nationalisms of Scotland and Wales. Only a looser – possibly federal – idea of Britain, in which Scotland and Wales are equal partners instead of semi-autonomous parts of Greater England, will allow the nations to sit comfortably in Union.
The alternative is to force Scottish and Welsh nationalists, and increasingly English nationalists (see below), to choose between their national identities and their British identity.'
An English parliament would be a start with the same powers as the other 3 home nations parliaments
When oil was previously ~£60 per barrel petrol prices were ~£1.43 per litre. Today they are ~£1.57 per litre. Neither the government nor opposition gives a shit about it and it is a huge source of our continued high inflation environment. Plus hitting forecourts is such an easy win for either party, everyone loathes them.
What was the pound/dollar exchange rate at that time? Serious question.
Hasn't Max factored that...
You're not suggesting he'd makeup the figures ?
You need some blusher for that pun.
No doubt it will provide a foundation for @ydoethur .
I'd rather keep my powder dry.
Especially since I've got a massive gas leak somewhere at the moment.
When oil was previously ~£60 per barrel petrol prices were ~£1.43 per litre. Today they are ~£1.57 per litre. Neither the government nor opposition gives a shit about it and it is a huge source of our continued high inflation environment. Plus hitting forecourts is such an easy win for either party, everyone loathes them.
Free market economics innit?
It's not a free market though, the barrier of entry in that market is prohibitively high and it's allowed for effective cartel like price controls by the major players who no longer fear competition, having bought them all.
The other factor is that the petrol/diesel difference used to be about 2p per litre, and now it's about 20p - making the inflation situation for logistics even worse than the headline "perrol prices" number suggests.
That's actually because of differences in the wholesale price and tax, I'm pretty sure that forecourts have a lower margin on diesel than they do on petrol despite the big price difference.
‘The emotions of Britishness and being English, a response to David Mitchell’
Some say that England requires no representative, accountable, democractic institutions because the institutions of the British state are, in fact, de facto English. Mitchell alludes to this Anglo-centric mindset when he informs us that “when Palmerston said "English" he meant British”. My challenge to Mitchell and other Brits who wish to save the Union is to imagine a new multi-national Britain that draws strength from its hybridity instead of riding rough-shod over the national identities of Britain by buying into these Anglo-centric, Anglo-British notions of Britishness.
… if devolution has failed to ‘kill nationalism stone dead’, as George Robertson prophesised, it is partly because it has heightened the perception that Britain is the English State by proxy, and devolution merely an exercise in post-imperial imperialism.
Today when the public hears British politicians refer to ‘our country’ or ‘our NHS’ it is reasonable to assume that they are talking about England or the NHS in England
An old one but actuallyu very timely at present given recent proposals from Labour and the Tory reactions.
'For the sake of Britain the English need to be allowed to be English and British instead of Anglo-British; a dual identity rather than a conjoined, conflated identity. “The nationalism that urgently needs definition is Englishness”, says Madeleine Bunting. If the Anglo-British nationalism of Blair, Brown and Cameron can be regarded as an English nationalism by proxy, then I agree with her completely. If the way to a new understanding of British identity is to forge a Little England nationalism that replaces the Anglo-British nationalism of a faded imperial power, then yes, let’s reimagine Britain as a multinational, consensual, union of partner nations with an English nationalism that complements the nationalisms of Scotland and Wales. Only a looser – possibly federal – idea of Britain, in which Scotland and Wales are equal partners instead of semi-autonomous parts of Greater England, will allow the nations to sit comfortably in Union.
The alternative is to force Scottish and Welsh nationalists, and increasingly English nationalists (see below), to choose between their national identities and their British identity.'
An English parliament would be a start with the same powers as the other 3 home nations parliaments
When oil was previously ~£60 per barrel petrol prices were ~£1.43 per litre. Today they are ~£1.57 per litre. Neither the government nor opposition gives a shit about it and it is a huge source of our continued high inflation environment. Plus hitting forecourts is such an easy win for either party, everyone loathes them.
What was the pound/dollar exchange rate at that time? Serious question.
Hasn't Max factored that...
You're not suggesting he'd makeup the figures ?
You need some blusher for that pun.
No doubt it will provide a foundation for @ydoethur .
’Exclusive poll: Tories face WIPEOUT at General Election as Reform UK support surges’
A new poll by People’s Polling for GB News, found Labour is on 47% of the national vote, the Conservative Party down to 20%, the Liberal Democrats on 8%, the Greens on 6% and Reform on 9%.
This represents a one-point fall for Conservatives and a one-point jump for Labour from last week, increasing the gap between the two parties to 27 points.
It comes amid reports “Red Wall” MPs are being courted by Reform as it seeks a wave of Ukip-style defections among dissatisfied Tories.
More than 7,000 grassroots Conservatives have joined Reform since, i has been told, Liz Truss resigned as prime minister and the party is increasingly confident of MP defections.
It is understood Mr Tice the party’s founder and Nigel Farage its honorary president, have met several “Red Wall” MPs in recent weeks in an effort to tempt them over to the party.
I can understand Mike's argument, particularly without a recovery in Scotland Labour has a steep mountain to climb. And I'm sure a lot of the current ex-Tory don't knows in polling will turn out and vote on the day after all.
However, I agree with @Heathener that we are seeing a sea-change in public opinion, and we are heading for a 1997-style 'Get Rid Of Them' election. At the moment polling shows the Tories in the upper 20s, and that's now while Sunak is having his honeymoon and before all the bad news hits:
Fuel bills are yet to land - and if this is a cold winter it will be even worse
There will be a long winter of strikes affecting public services, which all need massive investment not cuts
Probably two rounds of stealth tax increases
Inflation eating away at people's incomes
A sense that the government is out of control of things it should be on top of, e.g. migration, justice system
None of those things are going to improve the Tories's standing in the polls. How low can they go?
The only question in my mind is how much of the core Tory vote is sufficiently well concentrated in the safe non-urban seats across the south for them to continue to withstand the oncoming deluge in numbers. I think they probably do, which is a shame because I think that any seat total above 0 will be entirely undeserved.
Exactly this. Whilst people are assuming some swingback in the Tory vote share because that has happened before, what are the fundamental conditions (e.g. economic) that cause that to happen? If some market predictions are right, we will be paying continued high energy costs over the winter of 23/24 just before a likely election.
A lot of bitterness towards Italy in certain circles right now.
French and German ?
Indeed, Italian involvement makes this look like the European effort plus Japan rather than Brexit Britain taking it's toys to an irrelevant defence partner in the Pacific to make a plane no one will buy.
A lot of bitterness towards Italy in certain circles right now.
French and German ?
Indeed, Italian involvement makes this look like the European effort plus Japan rather than Brexit Britain taking it's toys to an irrelevant defence partner in the Pacific to make a plane no one will buy.
Though there's still no certainty anyone will. It's a high cost, high stakes business.
Welp, I'm with Leon on this ChatGPT aka OpenAI matter.
I run a business and we are already looking at ways we can train the first line of staff who answer emails to use this to improve how they respond.
I've been trying to persuade my kids to run their homework through it: this is the question, this is my answer, what am I missing?
More basic. It goes along the lines of quoting the email of the customer and saying how we would deal with it, but this has been prefaced to begin with by saying they need to give it in a professional way.
I have told my main email handler for all of December he MUST use this and only if at the end of the month if his emails have improved then he can not do so. Progress!
I would be slightly cautious about using it for professional work, especially if there is client-confidential data in anything you input. Not only is all the work being sent to an 'unknown' server; but the data might end up in a training data set.
It's clear this is the future
Dystopia
Having dissed those who find change hard to adapt to, there are some (many) things about modern life from which I recoil.
I was hopeful that the pandemic might cause a recalibration and a return to more nature-based life. To an extent it did but the techno giants are creeping back into every crevice of life and I, for one, wish to raise my hand in dissent.
I wouldn't go as far as gluing myself to a motorway or throwing paint over a famous canvass but the techno west's merry-go-round is so very wrong on so many levels.
I'm intensely relaxed about it. The last few centuries have seen massive amounts of compressed change, and we coped. As I've said passim, my great-granddad lived from something like the 1870s to the 1960s, and the changes he saw in life far outstrip what we are seeing today. My dad was probably the last generation taught to plough with horses for 'real' use, immediately after the war.
And yet I'd rather live as an 'ordinary' person today than in 1870. Or 1970, for that matter.
Yes, the country does face problems, as does the world. But we will muddle through, as we always have done.
On Tuesday I was wandering round the St Paul’s area in London, where I started work in the early ‘80s; of course the area has changed remarkably since then - but it occurred to me that counting the same number of years back from when I started work and London would have been at wartime; something that already seemed like ancient history when I started my working life. Whether life, culture and society have changed more between 1980 and 2020 than they did between 1940 and 1980 is an interesting question. The answer, probably, is that change doesn’t feel so dramatic if you’ve live through it and seen it gradually.
I was thinking something similar about music. When I bought The Chemical Brothers' Dig Your Own Hole in 1997, that was 25 years after Exile On Main Street and Ziggy Stardust - music from what felt like a different era altogether, whereas DYOH (and lots of albums from round this time) I feel could still be released today and feel new.
All South Koreans to become younger as traditional age system scrapped ... Koreans are deemed to be a year old when born and a year is added every 1 January. It’s this age most commonly cited by Koreans in everyday life.
A separate system also exists for conscription purposes or calculating the legal age to drink alcohol and smoke, in which a person’s age is calculated from zero at birth and a year is added on 1 January.
Setting aside any views on his policies and philosophy, can you name a minister who has had more influence on society in recent years - without holding a Cabinet position - than Nick Gibb?
I agree with Mike. If you take Scotland out of the equation, as you should, Labour needs huge gains in England to get to a majority and pretty substantial ones to get to a plurality. While I can see the latter happening, the former still seems a stretch to me. As much as I’d love to see people like Rees Mogg lose their seats, it’s hard to imagine it happening when push comes to shove. As things stand, I expect Starmer to be the next PM, but for Labour to be a minority government.
Starmer has entirely given up on Scotland. His every move is focused on Middle England.
Wise in the short term, but idiotic in the long term. Scotland is off, and with her disappears much of England’s energy and water. And sole nuclear base.
Falmouth: don’t say you weren’t warned!
I guess you have to say that to keep your spirits up
Welp, I'm with Leon on this ChatGPT aka OpenAI matter.
I run a business and we are already looking at ways we can train the first line of staff who answer emails to use this to improve how they respond.
I've been trying to persuade my kids to run their homework through it: this is the question, this is my answer, what am I missing?
More basic. It goes along the lines of quoting the email of the customer and saying how we would deal with it, but this has been prefaced to begin with by saying they need to give it in a professional way.
I have told my main email handler for all of December he MUST use this and only if at the end of the month if his emails have improved then he can not do so. Progress!
I would be slightly cautious about using it for professional work, especially if there is client-confidential data in anything you input. Not only is all the work being sent to an 'unknown' server; but the data might end up in a training data set.
It's clear this is the future
Dystopia
Having dissed those who find change hard to adapt to, there are some (many) things about modern life from which I recoil.
I was hopeful that the pandemic might cause a recalibration and a return to more nature-based life. To an extent it did but the techno giants are creeping back into every crevice of life and I, for one, wish to raise my hand in dissent.
I wouldn't go as far as gluing myself to a motorway or throwing paint over a famous canvass but the techno west's merry-go-round is so very wrong on so many levels.
I'm intensely relaxed about it. The last few centuries have seen massive amounts of compressed change, and we coped. As I've said passim, my great-granddad lived from something like the 1870s to the 1960s, and the changes he saw in life far outstrip what we are seeing today. My dad was probably the last generation taught to plough with horses for 'real' use, immediately after the war.
And yet I'd rather live as an 'ordinary' person today than in 1870. Or 1970, for that matter.
Yes, the country does face problems, as does the world. But we will muddle through, as we always have done.
On Tuesday I was wandering round the St Paul’s area in London, where I started work in the early ‘80s; of course the area has changed remarkably since then - but it occurred to me that counting the same number of years back from when I started work and London would have been at wartime; something that already seemed like ancient history when I started my working life. Whether life, culture and society have changed more between 1980 and 2020 than they did between 1940 and 1980 is an interesting question. The answer, probably, is that change doesn’t feel so dramatic if you’ve live through it and seen it gradually.
Interesting point. I started a job in London near Blackfriars Bridge in 1981 and as you say equidistant in time between now and the war. My impression is that things changed more more in the first period, with the exception of technology possibly.
In photographs of 1940 everything looked very different to how they looked in 1981, certainly in London. Photos of 1981 don't appear that different to today. I think the fact that 1940 was in wartime is the major factor.
A lot of bitterness towards Italy in certain circles right now.
French and German ?
Indeed, Italian involvement makes this look like the European effort plus Japan rather than Brexit Britain taking it's toys to an irrelevant defence partner in the Pacific to make a plane no one will buy.
Though there's still no certainty anyone will. It's a high cost, high stakes business.
Well there's certainly 3 buyers of it, but yes. I think my point is that in terms of European internal squabbling, this now looks legitimate in a way that it wouldn't without Italian involvement. I'm sure the French and Germans would love to peel away Italian support so they can turn it into a Brexit thing and try and force the sale of their hardware as the "good European" thing to do. I'm sure they still will.
The coal mine is another example, along with the shenanigans around the NIP, of the conservative government indulging in projects that impair the UK’s soft power and brand value way more than any conceivable financial benefit.
The mine will be tiny, produce mediocre coal and probably have a foreshortened useful economic life as met coal gets phased out of steel production in the next couple of decades. Makes no economic sense. Meanwhile - completely out of proportion to any environmental impact of the mine itself - it gives every country under pressure to reduce coal use the opportunity to point and shout hypocrite, and carry on as before.
The national brand wrecking equivalent of a brand like John Lewis cutting costs by using sweatshop child labour for its clothing.
It has zero impact. It will make no difference to what China or the US actually do
Mr. Dickson, I'm not persuaded Reform will be a big deal come the GE. But if they are it could have a massive impact. In 2015, Farage's strength took a lot of votes in Labour seats and helped Cameron to a surprise majority.
Reform's opinion poll ratings MAY be spurious.
Pre the Chester by-election, a local website carried out a poll, which gave Reform 18% of the vote. The real election gave them 2.7%. For which there may be a common-sense explanation.
In a UK full of sleaze fears about politicians, a pollster asks which of the following parties you'll vote for, and many respondents may choose a label that sounds like it wants reform - something few disagree with. Come a real election, though, and they've got a choice between Jeanie Someone no-one's ever heard of, inarticulately spouting policies dreamt up by an unaccountable Putin-supporting TV pundit and Green, Tory, Labour and LibDem candidates, each lucidly arguing for at least some policies you rather like.
Among voters as a whole, little choice: the real politicians win. Question only disgruntled Tory members, though - and it wouldn't be surprising if the pro-Reform Party respondents knew what the Farageists meant and wanted it.
So Tories, erroneously, are probably putting far more trust in opinion polls than they would if they went out and talked to voters - which Tories rarely do these days because, with a collapsing activist base, they have to limit their human contacts to keeping disgruntled Tories from defecting.
A lot of bitterness towards Italy in certain circles right now.
French and German ?
Indeed, Italian involvement makes this look like the European effort plus Japan rather than Brexit Britain taking it's toys to an irrelevant defence partner in the Pacific to make a plane no one will buy.
There might also be some fallout from the Ukraine war as well. Countries that have been seen to be less keen to send advanced weapons to Ukraine might be seen as less reliable partners for weapons systems. There's no good having a joint weapons system if you need a left handed flugle-nut from a country that refuses to sell it to you.
Rightly or wrongly, Italy has been seen to do better in this regard than Germany. Perhaps unfairly, but there's a big difference between pledges and actual deliveries.
It'll be interesting to see how Swiss arms sales do over the next few years, for this reason.
1980 would feel like an alien planet. No mobile phones, no Internet, crap food, all cash or cheque payments, and few cash machines to get cash. It would feel virtually impossible to function.
So, glancing over the Wikipedia page, it seems electric arc furnaces are useful for effectively recycling scrap steel, and for smaller scale/stop-start production. But they cannot, it seems, be used for primary steelmaking.
There's also a big elephant in the room, that steel with a high scrap content isn't very good, and in particular has corrosion issues. For things like cars and washing machines this isn't a massive issue because their life cycles are short and paint coatings have got better (although it was a big deal when electric arc scrap remelts first became a big thing in the 70s, and still is on Mercs, because they don't seem capable of using effective paint). However for anything with a long working life, particularly in tough conditions it's a nightmare. I repair stuff which is often 90-100 years old, and has only just got down to minimum thickness - often the modern steel repair patches I use only last 10—15 years before we're cutting them off for another go. You can't buy decent virgin steel in Europe even if you pay for it because the green morons got the EU to mandate minium scrap percentages in everything. In my industry its costing us a fortune and it's not very green either as frequently replacing slightly greener steel is way more carbon intensive than occasionally replacing decent steel.
I can understand Mike's argument, particularly without a recovery in Scotland Labour has a steep mountain to climb. And I'm sure a lot of the current ex-Tory don't knows in polling will turn out and vote on the day after all.
However, I agree with @Heathener that we are seeing a sea-change in public opinion, and we are heading for a 1997-style 'Get Rid Of Them' election. At the moment polling shows the Tories in the upper 20s, and that's now while Sunak is having his honeymoon and before all the bad news hits:
Fuel bills are yet to land - and if this is a cold winter it will be even worse
There will be a long winter of strikes affecting public services, which all need massive investment not cuts
Probably two rounds of stealth tax increases
Inflation eating away at people's incomes
A sense that the government is out of control of things it should be on top of, e.g. migration, justice system
None of those things are going to improve the Tories's standing in the polls. How low can they go?
The only question in my mind is how much of the core Tory vote is sufficiently well concentrated in the safe non-urban seats across the south for them to continue to withstand the oncoming deluge in numbers. I think they probably do, which is a shame because I think that any seat total above 0 will be entirely undeserved.
Exactly this. Whilst people are assuming some swingback in the Tory vote share because that has happened before, what are the fundamental conditions (e.g. economic) that cause that to happen? If some market predictions are right, we will be paying continued high energy costs over the winter of 23/24 just before a likely election.
I don't think they have a hope in hell.
The mood is very much time for a change. Labour don't really need to be anything more than relatively competent in order to guarantee a very poor showing by the Tories at the next election.
I was at the much-covered Labour business conference yesterday. It was notable both for the strength of message discipline from the shadow ministers speaking, and the general atmosphere of warmth and ease during the day. Everyone in business has decided a Labour government in 2 years is inevitable. They are not scared or nervous - anything would be better than the current rabble.
And to compound it all the government are not going to do anything to shore up their support between now and then. Their only hope would have been to knuckle down, do sensible things, distance themselves from the Johnson and Truss years and show a bit of humility. Then hope people give them a second chance. But no, gazing over social media the last few days it's clear the arrogance is back. They are playing silly and expensive playground games looking for a big gotcha to get Labour: the coal mine, the Rwanda nonsense, public sector strikes. It's fundamentally unserious. Fiddling while Rome burns. They will be punished roundly by the voters. They haven't learned at all.
‘The emotions of Britishness and being English, a response to David Mitchell’
Some say that England requires no representative, accountable, democractic institutions because the institutions of the British state are, in fact, de facto English. Mitchell alludes to this Anglo-centric mindset when he informs us that “when Palmerston said "English" he meant British”. My challenge to Mitchell and other Brits who wish to save the Union is to imagine a new multi-national Britain that draws strength from its hybridity instead of riding rough-shod over the national identities of Britain by buying into these Anglo-centric, Anglo-British notions of Britishness.
… if devolution has failed to ‘kill nationalism stone dead’, as George Robertson prophesised, it is partly because it has heightened the perception that Britain is the English State by proxy, and devolution merely an exercise in post-imperial imperialism.
Today when the public hears British politicians refer to ‘our country’ or ‘our NHS’ it is reasonable to assume that they are talking about England or the NHS in England
An old one but actuallyu very timely at present given recent proposals from Labour and the Tory reactions.
'For the sake of Britain the English need to be allowed to be English and British instead of Anglo-British; a dual identity rather than a conjoined, conflated identity. “The nationalism that urgently needs definition is Englishness”, says Madeleine Bunting. If the Anglo-British nationalism of Blair, Brown and Cameron can be regarded as an English nationalism by proxy, then I agree with her completely. If the way to a new understanding of British identity is to forge a Little England nationalism that replaces the Anglo-British nationalism of a faded imperial power, then yes, let’s reimagine Britain as a multinational, consensual, union of partner nations with an English nationalism that complements the nationalisms of Scotland and Wales. Only a looser – possibly federal – idea of Britain, in which Scotland and Wales are equal partners instead of semi-autonomous parts of Greater England, will allow the nations to sit comfortably in Union.
The alternative is to force Scottish and Welsh nationalists, and increasingly English nationalists (see below), to choose between their national identities and their British identity.'
An English parliament would be a start with the same powers as the other 3 home nations parliaments
It's against Tory Party policy, you do know.
For now. If Labour win the next general election and Brown follows through with his devomax plans for Holyrood then I expect the Tories to adopt an English parliament in opposition
When oil was previously ~£60 per barrel petrol prices were ~£1.43 per litre. Today they are ~£1.57 per litre. Neither the government nor opposition gives a shit about it and it is a huge source of our continued high inflation environment. Plus hitting forecourts is such an easy win for either party, everyone loathes them.
Free market economics innit?
It's not a free market though, the barrier of entry in that market is prohibitively high and it's allowed for effective cartel like price controls by the major players who no longer fear competition, having bought them all.
The current cartel approach from the supermarkets must be a bonanza for the remaining independents - my local independent is now usually 10-15p /l cheaper than my local Morrisons, instead of 5p more expensive - I suspect their markup hasn't changed, but suddenly their station has cars queuing for the pumps rather than one at a time on the forecourt.
So, glancing over the Wikipedia page, it seems electric arc furnaces are useful for effectively recycling scrap steel, and for smaller scale/stop-start production. But they cannot, it seems, be used for primary steelmaking.
There's also a big elephant in the room, that steel with a high scrap content isn't very good, and in particular has corrosion issues. For things like cars and washing machines this isn't a massive issue because their life cycles are short and paint coatings have got better (although it was a big deal when electric arc scrap remelts first became a big thing in the 70s, and still is on Mercs, because they don't seem capable of using effective paint). However for anything with a long working life, particularly in tough conditions it's a nightmare. I repair stuff which is often 90-100 years old, and has only just got down to minimum thickness - often the modern steel repair patches I use only last 10—15 years before we're cutting them off for another go. You can't buy decent virgin steel in Europe even if you pay for it because the green morons got the EU to mandate minium scrap percentages in everything. In my industry its costing us a fortune and it's not very green either as frequently replacing slightly greener steel is way more carbon intensive than occasionally replacing decent steel.
I did some materials courses at school, and steel is a fascinating substance. Seemingly simple, but in reality massively complex.
A bit like concrete. That's even more fascinating. and even more complex ...
When oil was previously ~£60 per barrel petrol prices were ~£1.43 per litre. Today they are ~£1.57 per litre. Neither the government nor opposition gives a shit about it and it is a huge source of our continued high inflation environment. Plus hitting forecourts is such an easy win for either party, everyone loathes them.
What was the pound/dollar exchange rate at that time? Serious question.
Hasn't Max factored that in by pricing oil in pounds?
You know, I hadn't actually spotted that. So used to seeing oil priced in dollars I filled in the blanks. So presumably yes!
No - max is deliberately misleading by implying it’s the petrol stations.
It’s entirely down to the FX change - their costs are in dollars which have gone up in pound terms (ie the pound is weaker). The balance is operating costs & margin plus excise and VAT all priced in pounds
When oil was previously ~£60 per barrel petrol prices were ~£1.43 per litre. Today they are ~£1.57 per litre. Neither the government nor opposition gives a shit about it and it is a huge source of our continued high inflation environment. Plus hitting forecourts is such an easy win for either party, everyone loathes them.
What was the pound/dollar exchange rate at that time? Serious question.
Hasn't Max factored that in by pricing oil in pounds?
You know, I hadn't actually spotted that. So used to seeing oil priced in dollars I filled in the blanks. So presumably yes!
No - max is deliberately misleading by implying it’s the petrol stations.
It’s entirely down to the FX change - their costs are in dollars which have gone up in pound terms (ie the pound is weaker). The balance is operating costs & margin plus excise and VAT all priced in pounds
But he quoted the price of oil in pounds, so its surely already taken account of?
Also on petrol prices, the cheapest price in the country is currently £1.34 per litre and they are definitely still making a fairly decent margin on it. If a similar price were replicated or even slightly higher to take into account differential distribution cost we'd see an overnight fall in inflation of about 1% and 2-3% a month from now as those lower transport prices feed into the economy.
While the government says it wants to combat inflation, it's literally got a solution and is doing nothing about it. Break up the Issa forecourts empire - demerge the Asda forecourts from Issa and force them to float Asda as an independent again. It's not even very difficult to achieve.
A rare day off and it looks like there may not be much racing to keep me entertained.
On topic, back in the 90s, there were discussions like this. The spectre of 1992 hung over everything and there was a widespread belief disillusioned voters would stand in the ballot box and then put their cross against the Conservative candidate. Even after all the votes were cast in 1997, there were still Conservatives saying "it won't be that bad" - of course it was.
Assuming very Reform UK voter will run back to the Conservatives is part of this mountain of false hope and belief some Conservatives are constructing. The 6-week campaign in 1997 was supposedly going to tease out the weakness of Blair and "New" Labour whereas all it did was highlight the divisions in the Conservatives. It might well be the same in 2024.
The complicating factor is Scotland and the SNP strength there - to win a majority without Scotland for Labour will be an incredible achievement - the very fact we can entertain it shows how far Starmer has fallen or how far the Conservatives have fallen in barely three years.
Comments
Interesting - we now have a food and drink inflation indicator independent of HMG. Edit: divided by sypermarket.
Some very high figures, Ocado having least and Aldi/Lidl most (but still overall cheapest). But the least was 10.3, greatest 19.7% annually. This is going to have real impact independent of e.g. what Mr Sunak says.
I'm sorry but if one coal mine ruins the brand and works actions then the brand was already weak as hell and those using it as an excuse would have found something else to use.
Personally I'm in favour of the new year reverting to sometime in March, end of winter. Yes, its unfair on the southern hemisphere, but we outnumber them.
Reform could be a problem for the Tories. It's worth remembering that they stood down in Tory held marginals last time due to Brexit. They won't do so this time. And I also think that they'll this time be gathering votes exclusively from disillusioned 2019 Tory voters who were not recent converts from Labour. They won't poll 8% but I think they are quite capable of getting 5% pretty well exclusively at the Tories' expense.
Pakistan will be very happy with their day so far.
Even happier now!
7-91 - could he be the first person to take all ten on debut?
Starmer lacks the gravitas to be Prime Minister, and hard working British voters have already worked this out for themselves. As the election draws ever closer and Rishi continues to falter, the clamour for the return of Boris and an inevitable comfortable Conservative majority will become louder.
In fact, arguably we've only got one.
https://m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.amp.asp?newsIdx=341383
...Due to the mixed use of various methods, confusion and occasional disputes have arisen in society, such as when interpreting policies related to labor, social welfare and more recently in the case of vaccine administration.
Scrapping the Korean age system was one of the campaign pledges of President Yoon Suk-yeol, a promise that garnered wide public support from those preferring a simplified age system...
Fans of traditional complexity will be pleased to hear that they also have two different number systems (Korean and Sino-Korean) in regular use.
A bit like us still having dozen, score, gross etc - but a complete (if clunky) number system alongside the one used for regular mathematics.
Bit like the Bozza himself, indeed.
Rotten shot really, but he's not in the side for his batting.
However, I agree with @Heathener that we are seeing a sea-change in public opinion, and we are heading for a 1997-style 'Get Rid Of Them' election. At the moment polling shows the Tories in the upper 20s, and that's now while Sunak is having his honeymoon and before all the bad news hits:
- Fuel bills are yet to land - and if this is a cold winter it will be even worse
- There will be a long winter of strikes affecting public services, which all need massive investment not cuts
- Probably two rounds of stealth tax increases
- Inflation eating away at people's incomes
- A sense that the government is out of control of things it should be on top of, e.g. migration, justice system
None of those things are going to improve the Tories's standing in the polls. How low can they go?The only question in my mind is how much of the core Tory vote is sufficiently well concentrated in the safe non-urban seats across the south for them to continue to withstand the oncoming deluge in numbers. I think they probably do, which is a shame because I think that any seat total above 0 will be entirely undeserved.
Indian spinners took 17 wickets.
https://www.espncricinfo.com/series/england-tour-of-india-1992-93-61796/india-vs-england-1st-test-63598/full-scorecard
A new poll by People’s Polling for GB News, found Labour is on 47% of the national vote, the Conservative Party down to 20%, the Liberal Democrats on 8%, the Greens on 6% and Reform on 9%.
This represents a one-point fall for Conservatives and a one-point jump for Labour from last week, increasing the gap between the two parties to 27 points.
It comes amid reports “Red Wall” MPs are being courted by Reform as it seeks a wave of Ukip-style defections among dissatisfied Tories.
More than 7,000 grassroots Conservatives have joined Reform since, i has been told, Liz Truss resigned as prime minister and the party is increasingly confident of MP defections.
It is understood Mr Tice the party’s founder and Nigel Farage its honorary president, have met several “Red Wall” MPs in recent weeks in an effort to tempt them over to the party.
https://www.gbnews.uk/politics/exclusive-poll-tories-face-wipeout-at-general-election-as-reform-uk-support-surges/403497
The last time a poll showed a higher lead than 27 points was late October
Yet by polling day in 2010 Brown had slashed the Tories lead to just 7% and got a hung parliament and deprived Cameron of his expected landslide. Even if Cameron still won most seats and became PM.
Sunak will hope to repeat Brown's comeback
https://mobile.twitter.com/GarethJennings3/status/1601064213606457344
Keeps us in the military aircraft game for now.
Though I suspect Starmer might eventually allow indyref2 with Brown's devomax plans
I think it profoundly unlikely that Reform will get more than 4% at the GE. Probably slightly less.
Punters can pretty safely add 50% of the Ref vote to Con and 50% of the Green vote to Lab (to SNP in Scotland).
Similarly, for the next few days, I will be deliberately misinterpreting any reference to 'England' which does not specifically reference football to be to the England cricket team.
Bloody football, coming in trampling all over the traditional cricket window of November/December.
'For the sake of Britain the English need to be allowed to be English and British instead of Anglo-British; a dual identity rather than a conjoined, conflated identity. “The nationalism that urgently needs definition is Englishness”, says Madeleine Bunting. If the Anglo-British nationalism of Blair, Brown and Cameron can be regarded as an English nationalism by proxy, then I agree with her completely. If the way to a new understanding of British identity is to forge a Little England nationalism that replaces the Anglo-British nationalism of a faded imperial power, then yes, let’s reimagine Britain as a multinational, consensual, union of partner nations with an English nationalism that complements the nationalisms of Scotland and Wales. Only a looser – possibly federal – idea of Britain, in which Scotland and Wales are equal partners instead of semi-autonomous parts of Greater England, will allow the nations to sit comfortably in Union.
The alternative is to force Scottish and Welsh nationalists, and increasingly English nationalists (see below), to choose between their national identities and their British identity.'
Especially since I've got a massive gas leak somewhere at the moment.
It's a high cost, high stakes business.
Howard Dean makes the case for the party’s 2024 shakeup.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/12/08/howard-dean-democratic-primary-calendar-00073152
Admittedly Dean might have something of a bias against Iowa.
He really would have been a better candidate than Kerry. Might even have won.
https://www.tes.com/magazine/analysis/general/nick-gibb-interview-we-had-to-blow-up-concrete
In photographs of 1940 everything looked very different to how they looked in 1981, certainly in London. Photos of 1981 don't appear that different to today. I think the fact that 1940 was in wartime is the major factor.
I presume they’d prefer to call it a new triple entente rather than axis.
Pre the Chester by-election, a local website carried out a poll, which gave Reform 18% of the vote. The real election gave them 2.7%. For which there may be a common-sense explanation.
In a UK full of sleaze fears about politicians, a pollster asks which of the following parties you'll vote for, and many respondents may choose a label that sounds like it wants reform - something few disagree with. Come a real election, though, and they've got a choice between Jeanie Someone no-one's ever heard of, inarticulately spouting policies dreamt up by an unaccountable Putin-supporting TV pundit and Green, Tory, Labour and LibDem candidates, each lucidly arguing for at least some policies you rather like.
Among voters as a whole, little choice: the real politicians win. Question only disgruntled Tory members, though - and it wouldn't be surprising if the pro-Reform Party respondents knew what the Farageists meant and wanted it.
So Tories, erroneously, are probably putting far more trust in opinion polls than they would if they went out and talked to voters - which Tories rarely do these days because, with a collapsing activist base, they have to limit their human contacts to keeping disgruntled Tories from defecting.
https://www.cheshire-live.co.uk/news/chester-cheshire-news/chester-election-cestrians-head-polls-25631290
Rightly or wrongly, Italy has been seen to do better in this regard than Germany. Perhaps unfairly, but there's a big difference between pledges and actual deliveries.
It'll be interesting to see how Swiss arms sales do over the next few years, for this reason.
However for anything with a long working life, particularly in tough conditions it's a nightmare. I repair stuff which is often 90-100 years old, and has only just got down to minimum thickness - often the modern steel repair patches I use only last 10—15 years before we're cutting them off for another go. You can't buy decent virgin steel in Europe even if you pay for it because the green morons got the EU to mandate minium scrap percentages in everything. In my industry its costing us a fortune and it's not very green either as frequently replacing slightly greener steel is way more carbon intensive than occasionally replacing decent steel.
The mood is very much time for a change. Labour don't really need to be anything more than relatively competent in order to guarantee a very poor showing by the Tories at the next election.
I was at the much-covered Labour business conference yesterday. It was notable both for the strength of message discipline from the shadow ministers speaking, and the general atmosphere of warmth and ease during the day. Everyone in business has decided a Labour government in 2 years is inevitable. They are not scared or nervous - anything would be better than the current rabble.
And to compound it all the government are not going to do anything to shore up their support between now and then. Their only hope would have been to knuckle down, do sensible things, distance themselves from the Johnson and Truss years and show a bit of humility. Then hope people give them a second chance. But no, gazing over social media the last few days it's clear the arrogance is back. They are playing silly and expensive playground games looking for a big gotcha to get Labour: the coal mine, the Rwanda nonsense, public sector strikes. It's fundamentally unserious. Fiddling while Rome burns. They will be punished roundly by the voters. They haven't learned at all.
"Twitter laid off 63% of women in engineering roles compared to 48% of men."
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/12/twitter-lawsuit-alleges-musk-layoffs-disproportionately-targeted-women/
A bit like concrete. That's even more fascinating. and even more complex ...
It’s entirely down to the FX change - their costs are in dollars which have gone up in pound terms (ie the pound is weaker). The balance is operating costs & margin plus excise and VAT all priced in pounds
While the government says it wants to combat inflation, it's literally got a solution and is doing nothing about it. Break up the Issa forecourts empire - demerge the Asda forecourts from Issa and force them to float Asda as an independent again. It's not even very difficult to achieve.
A rare day off and it looks like there may not be much racing to keep me entertained.
On topic, back in the 90s, there were discussions like this. The spectre of 1992 hung over everything and there was a widespread belief disillusioned voters would stand in the ballot box and then put their cross against the Conservative candidate. Even after all the votes were cast in 1997, there were still Conservatives saying "it won't be that bad" - of course it was.
Assuming very Reform UK voter will run back to the Conservatives is part of this mountain of false hope and belief some Conservatives are constructing. The 6-week campaign in 1997 was supposedly going to tease out the weakness of Blair and "New" Labour whereas all it did was highlight the divisions in the Conservatives. It might well be the same in 2024.
The complicating factor is Scotland and the SNP strength there - to win a majority without Scotland for Labour will be an incredible achievement - the very fact we can entertain it shows how far Starmer has fallen or how far the Conservatives have fallen in barely three years.