Presumably we're all for Royal Mail strikes since they're a private company? No impact on the public purse
No as they still impact on inflation
Why don't we cut Sunak's ridiculous salary, he's clearly vastly overpaid for what he does and that would reduce inflation for us all?
In fact why don't we sack the Tories altogether who caused this mess in the first place?
Sunak is not even in the top 1% of earners despite being UK PM.
Yes he has a lot of wealth with his wife anyway and he gets Chequers and No 10 with his job but he is hardly overpaid. Indeed MPs pay is only rising by 2% this year, even below the public sector average
Presumably we're all for Royal Mail strikes since they're a private company? No impact on the public purse
No as they still impact on inflation
Why don't we cut Sunak's ridiculous salary, he's clearly vastly overpaid for what he does and that would reduce inflation for us all?
In fact why don't we sack the Tories altogether who caused this mess in the first place?
Sunak is not even in the too 1% of earners despite being UK PM.
Yes he has a lot of wealth with his wife anyway and he gets Chequers and No 10 with his job but he is hardly overpaid
For what he has done so far he is vastly overpaid yes.
It seems to me that there is a massive overlap between people you don't want to have a pay rise and those that "cause inflation"
Why is city bosses getting a pay rise not inflationary but Royal Mail workers are? They both work in the private sector, I think you're talking nonsense.
I'm informed this morning that Twitter ad revenue is trending to pre-takeover levels by the end of this month and the cost base has been cut by 60%. The growth rate will take it beyond pre-takeover by the end of March and that user revenue is far, far larger than it has ever been already.
Twitter's next valuation round may see it get a reasonably close to the purchase price once debt is included. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if Elon and crew get an IPO done in ~2026 at a higher valuation that what they bought it for, the gross margin at Twitter is looking incredible and there's been no real drawbacks to getting rid of all those people. In fact the word from tech investors seems to be that twitter's dev pipeline and feature pipeline are stronger now than before all the cuts because they got rid of all the million layers that prevented feature releases.
For all the shit he got, Elon Musk seems to have made this work and I wouldn't be surprised if when everything is counted up he ends up making a huge profit from the deal.
If you believe Musk, that is.
That should not be a given.
(And this is important. Musk lies. He has been proven to lie. It therefore becomes a question of how much the markets should believe him. And whilst he continues to post profits, they probably will.)
Explained, as always, in Yes Prime Minister:
Sir Desmond Glazebrook : They've broken the rules.
Sir Humphrey : What, you mean the insider trading regulations?
Sir Desmond Glazebrook : No.
Sir Humphrey : Oh. Well, that's one relief.
Sir Desmond Glazebrook : I mean of course they've broken those, but they've broken the basic, the basic rule of the City.
Sir Humphrey : I didn't know there were any.
Sir Desmond Glazebrook : Just the one. If you're incompetent you have to be honest, and if you're crooked you have to be clever. See, if you're honest, then when you make a pig's breakfast of things the chaps rally round and help you out.
Sir Humphrey : If you're crooked?
Sir Desmond Glazebrook : Well, if you're making good profits for them, chaps don't start asking questions; they're not stupid. Well, not that stupid.
Sir Humphrey : So the ideal is a firm which is honest and clever.
Sir Desmond Glazebrook : Yes. Let me know if you ever come across one, won't you.
In the case of Twitter, past all the bullshit, it is fairly clear that it was run as a start up that has accreted functions and departments.
I’ve seen such places, and worked in a couple. They all needed a massive clear out.
A common feature is parts of the company work against each other until doing anything becomes impossible.
It's less easy to see what the hard right get it from. Yes, there will be a few neo-Nazis and fascists who quite like Putin's strongman act. There will be some who hate the government in power, and therefore oppose what that government supports. And there will be a few loud moths directly or indirectly in Russia's pay.
But if you wanted America to be Great Again, then spending a relatively tiny amount of money to defeat what was your #1 enemy is surely a good thing, especially as it does not cost American lives?
I wouldn't dismiss the first explanation so readily. For a lot of the people on the right, Putin's rule in Russia existed as a positive alternative to the namby-pamby wishy-washy liberal rule of law that they felt was suffocating the modern West. He was the tough guy alternative to the effete woke West, and so he has to prevail to continue to play that role.
The other point to make is that a large part of making America great again is seen as consciously withdrawing from the world back into a glorious isolationism. Unlike Britain, which has rarely - if ever - been self-sufficient, but has always strongly relied on trade, and therefore engagement with the outside world, part of the founding myth (and reality) of the US was as a withdrawal from the interminable wars in Europe, and America has often been to a much greater degree self-sufficient. Even now the US can supply all its own food and energy needs, and so it is much less reliant on trade.
It's easy for us to laugh at the way in which the US calls a domestic sporting competition the "World Series", but playing their own sports, against themselves, is part of this isolationist mindset that we Europeans simply don't get. Even the old joke about, "fog in Channel, continent cut off," betrays the importance of the cross-channel connection.
In addition to things others have said, nefarious governments will love digital currency because they'll be able (I believe) to just confiscate it. Or have a 5 day no spending period if pesky citizens have been going on protest marches.
Maybe it's just me but I really don't get what this is. How does this differ from the GBP in my bank accounts etc. now?
I don't imagine the NSI are sitting on a pile of £coins or £notes which represent my Premium Bond holdings, nor could my bank point to a vault that holds the money it's got recorded in my accounts.
No, they hold it digitally, surely?
If someone could explain what I'm missing I'd be grateful.
At the moment we use two different kinds of money - notes and coins, and bank deposits. The former are liabilities of the state, the latter are liabilities of the banking system. The latter are "digital" in the sense that they are simply book keeping entries on banks' balance sheets. When you pay with a debit card, your deposit at your bank goes down and the deposit of the vendor at their bank goes up, and it is cleared via the banking system. As I understand it a "digital pound" would be like a digital replacement for notes and coins. It could be anonymous. It would exist outside of the banking system. It would be a token rather than a book keeping entry. Right now it's not something that is really needed. I struggle a bit to see why it might be needed in the future. Perhaps a digital token technology is cheaper to administer than the bank payment and clearing system, or at least could become cheaper, and therefore more useful for small transactions? I remain intensely sceptical about crypto but this is something a bit different.
Say you had about £20m-£30m held in an offshore trust but it was nominally in your parents name and if you brought it back via normal banking the taxman would claim a significant chunk of it. Wouldn't a digital pound help such an individual to the tune of about £4m?
Presumably there would be reporting requirements for large transactions just as there are for cash?
Presumably we're all for Royal Mail strikes since they're a private company? No impact on the public purse
No as they still impact on inflation
Why don't we cut Sunak's ridiculous salary, he's clearly vastly overpaid for what he does and that would reduce inflation for us all?
In fact why don't we sack the Tories altogether who caused this mess in the first place?
Sunak is not even in the too 1% of earners despite being UK PM.
Yes he has a lot of wealth with his wife anyway and he gets Chequers and No 10 with his job but he is hardly overpaid
For what he has done so far he is vastly overpaid yes.
It seems to me that there is a massive overlap between people you don't want to have a pay rise and those that "cause inflation"
Why is city bosses getting a pay rise not inflationary but Royal Mail workers are? They both work in the private sector, I think you're talking nonsense.
HYUFD's opinion seems to be that 8 year old Starmer should have built a time machine and checked that his school would become fee-paying just before he left, so that forty years later when he became Labour leader he could have not gone to that school and gone to another
It's ironic when the Tories spent so long trying to label him as Captain Hindsight.
You’re like a cross between the Stop Breeeeexit Man and the Goon Show.
The Goon Show?
Many of your references don't ring true for a 20 something girl about town. The "Confessions" reference earlier busted you as a 62 year old Wellingborough plasterer called Keith.
Course. Time for a change pretty soon becomes Long Past Time for a Change. Folk who bemoan a lack of Labour radicalism should note. Starmer isn't Blair.
Starmer isn't Blair, but that may be not such a bad thing.
Well, for example, Starmer didn't go to a posh public school.
Eh? Starmer's old school is an independent HMC school.
He is the first Labour leader to have gone to public school since Blair
Well now, you are the one banging on about every clever kid should have access to a grammar school education, and here we are with the wrong sort of clever kid, and you think he should have transferred to a sink comp when the school became more exclusive.
You are no meritocrat, you are a shameless elitist.
Of course I know about clockwork orange and goon show etc - I went to art college! If it’s 60’s 70’s I’m all over it.
It’s not the only confessions film I’ve seen! The humour is bright and sunny, the tits are great, and it’s probably realistic, I bet window cleaners and tradesman can tell a few stories!
She suddenly appears there in just stockings, a basque and no knickers and says her husband won’t be home for three hours - what you going to do Mex, make your apologies and leave and mail the invoice for the blocked sink?
Talking of stories, the “I” says Labour fear Boris returning and getting a hung Parliament. Are they really in tune with Labour fearing that, or do journalists just make this up?
Forty years too late for me Moon Dance, and back in the day I'd have hi-tailed it out of there, I was no Timmy Lea.
As for Johnson. I don't see the Emperor's New Clothes but plenty do. The irony of many of Sunak's problems is Johnson was the architect. Are there still enough voters who see the tailored finery or just a fat naked blob? I am not sure.
I keep forgetting some of you are so old, you haven’t lived with internet, YouTube, Wikipedia and people sending you links all your life, so you can’t comprehend how much Gen Z have been able to learn about and see of your own era! I might have seen more 60s 70s culture now than even you who were around at the time, but in a pub the night it was shown on one of 3 telly channels 😆 I prefer Pete and Dud to goon show, and once you like something you stream all you can off YouTube. 80s I’m not so interested in though, the horrible hair cuts are a giveaway and off putting. The best Macbeth film I have seen is a 70s one made by Polanski.
I subscribe to the theory if Boris were to lead Tories into next election they would get a far better result than under Sunak or anybody else. I think he’s just a lot more popular and can reach voters in all the walls Sunak can’t.
Boris is what he always was- a bit of a letch, able to charm anyone into bed until he annoys them.enough that they chuck him out. It's a story that has played out again and again in his personal and professional lives.
Boris's problem is that he's now annoyed enough British voters to the extent that they won't forgive him.
What do you call “enough”? To lose his landslide majority and the election, I agree. But still get 40 or 80 seats more than Sunak or any other Tory leader and a hung Parliament?
I sort of suspect his personality downsides were already baked in when they gave him 80 seat majority, and of ones lost since 2019, he stands more chance of winning them back with his star turn boosterism than any other leader Tories can come up with right now.
So did the “I” make up this story, or does it ring true Labour fear Boris more than Sunak?
The Tory poll ratings have bombed and going nowhere under Truss and Sunak compared to what Boris left them, maybe they could bounce to a degree under Boris, simply because voters at least associate him with making things happen?
Presumably we're all for Royal Mail strikes since they're a private company? No impact on the public purse
No as they still impact on inflation
Why don't we cut Sunak's ridiculous salary, he's clearly vastly overpaid for what he does and that would reduce inflation for us all?
In fact why don't we sack the Tories altogether who caused this mess in the first place?
Sunak is not even in the too 1% of earners despite being UK PM.
Yes he has a lot of wealth with his wife anyway and he gets Chequers and No 10 with his job but he is hardly overpaid
For what he has done so far he is vastly overpaid yes.
It seems to me that there is a massive overlap between people you don't want to have a pay rise and those that "cause inflation"
Why is city bosses getting a pay rise not inflationary but Royal Mail workers are? They both work in the private sector, I think you're talking nonsense.
HYUFD's opinion seems to be that 8 year old Starmer should have built a time machine and checked that his school would become fee-paying just before he left, so that forty years later when he became Labour leader he could have not gone to that school and gone to another
It's ironic when the Tories spent so long trying to label him as Captain Hindsight.
Oddly that seems to have disappeared too.
Is it because Mr Hindsight has been proven correct? Or that the Tories have nothing left because any attack they make simply reflects badly on them?
We know they've had it, they're now referring to the last Labour Government again. 13 years later, it just rings so hollow, this is surely a losing platform.
"In my view this is like 1997 where the tide has turned and the public want to see something different. The huge challenge the Tories face is that unlike some previous fights they are facing a Labour leader who while possibly being a bit boring is not one who is going to be easily undermined. He is not Jeremy Corbyn."
I really don't see a way back for the tories from this and Liz Truss has now come along to remind everyone just how awful it has been.
The tide has indeed turned and, like dear old King Canute, there is nothing Sunak and Co can do to stop it.
The big question is how popular is Starmer in Red Wall areas like Stoke-on-Trent and Grimsby.
If Redfield and Wilton are to be believed, Starmer is probably popular enough;
When asked which would be a better Prime Minister between Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer, Starmer (43%, +1) leads Sunak (33%, +1) by ten points. 24% (-2) say they don’t know.
As things stand Labour can't lose and Tories can't win for simple reasons, including 'Time For A Change'.
If (which I am not) a case were to be made for recovery from the Tories it would be this.
"We can't possibly win in the conventional sense, but in GEs someone has to win even if in ordinary reality they have all lost. Two things need to happen; Labour needs to self destruct - and this is always possible as long as the left exists; and the Tories have to be the default option for both the headbangers of the right and ordinary centrist democrats who want neither Trump nor Stalin running the country".
Sunak's mixture of centrist decency and showing a bit of ankle over ECHR etc, while obviously incoherent nonsense, may be that attempt. Let us hope the cause is hopeless.
Add to that cuts in income tax rates, and you have the government's best (if narrow) chance of re-election. Hence the vice-like grip on public spending.
It does all require a degree of cynicism that I don't think Rishi quite possesses. The man they really need is Boris, only without the baggage Boris built up last time.
The time has come for Alex (definitely not Boris) de Pfeffel to have some plastic surgery and a hair transplant.
Good point; but I'm not sure whether borrowing £175bn a year is quite a vice like grip; and (I hope) a good number of people of the sort who often vote Tory but don't watch/listen to GB News would not vote for Boris on moral grounds alone.
Where are the young Heseltines and Clarkes when you need them?
Alienated from the party. As are the current incarnations.
Heseltine showing he still has it, yesterday.
https://www.parallelparliament.co.uk/debate/2023-02-06/lords/lords-chamber/retained-eu-law-revocation-and-reform-bill My Lords, I salute the two excellent maiden speeches that we have heard today. I am one of the few surviving members of Margaret Thatcher’s first Government and I am amazed to find myself sitting here listening to the arguments from the Front Bench as to why her greatest achievement should be sacrificed. I remember Arthur Cockfield: he is not, perhaps, a household name today, but if you look him up in Wikipedia, you will see him described as the “father of the Common Market”, and that is right. Margaret—not a natural supporter of foreigners—saw very clearly that the mistakes of the common agricultural policy must not be made again, so she sent Arthur Cockfield to Brussels as a commissioner in order to make sure that British self-interests were dominant in the negotiation of the single market.
The single market was historically, perhaps, one of the most extraordinarily successful concepts ever developed by humankind. The implementation was difficult, against difficult economic circumstances and endless forms—small employers at night, having done all the work themselves, finding yet another form—and the flame was fanned by those two great arbiters of British self-interest, Rupert Murdoch and Conrad Black. There was a growing resentment, and John Major inherited the problem. “Go to it, Tarzan”, he said to the Tory Party conference.
I was entrusted with the first serious attempt to look at the real effect of all these wealth-destroying, uncivilised, burdensome regulations. I went to it with all the enthusiasm that I hope noble Lords would expect of me. What did I do? I was entrusted with a Minister of State in every department to worm away, dig it all out. I set up public/private-sector committees for each field of activity, led by some of the most strident critics of the regulatory process. I actually published 3,000 of these regulations, so that nothing was hidden from anybody. “Let’s know what we’re all talking about in detail: here they are, great volumes of stuff”. I did something else: I wrote to every trade association and I said, “Look, I’m your man. All you’ve got to do is send me a regulation as drafted that is holding your members back and undermining the country, and send me an alternative draft”. I did not get any replies...
You’re like a cross between the Stop Breeeeexit Man and the Goon Show.
The Goon Show?
Many of your references don't ring true for a 20 something girl about town. The "Confessions" reference earlier busted you as a 62 year old Wellingborough plasterer called Keith.
Course. Time for a change pretty soon becomes Long Past Time for a Change. Folk who bemoan a lack of Labour radicalism should note. Starmer isn't Blair.
Starmer isn't Blair, but that may be not such a bad thing.
Well, for example, Starmer didn't go to a posh public school.
Eh? Starmer's old school is an independent HMC school.
He is the first Labour leader to have gone to public school since Blair
Well now, you are the one banging on about every clever kid should have access to a grammar school education, and here we are with the wrong sort of clever kid, and you think he should have transferred to a sink comp when the school became more exclusive.
You are no meritocrat, you are a shameless elitist.
Of course I know about clockwork orange and goon show etc - I went to art college! If it’s 60’s 70’s I’m all over it.
It’s not the only confessions film I’ve seen! The humour is bright and sunny, the tits are great, and it’s probably realistic, I bet window cleaners and tradesman can tell a few stories!
She suddenly appears there in just stockings, a basque and no knickers and says her husband won’t be home for three hours - what you going to do Mex, make your apologies and leave and mail the invoice for the blocked sink?
Talking of stories, the “I” says Labour fear Boris returning and getting a hung Parliament. Are they really in tune with Labour fearing that, or do journalists just make this up?
Forty years too late for me Moon Dance, and back in the day I'd have hi-tailed it out of there, I was no Timmy Lea.
As for Johnson. I don't see the Emperor's New Clothes but plenty do. The irony of many of Sunak's problems is Johnson was the architect. Are there still enough voters who see the tailored finery or just a fat naked blob? I am not sure.
I keep forgetting some of you are so old, you haven’t lived with internet, YouTube, Wikipedia and people sending you links all your life, so you can’t comprehend how much Gen Z have been able to learn about and see of your own era! I might have seen more 60s 70s culture now than even you who were around at the time, but in a pub the night it was shown on one of 3 telly channels 😆 I prefer Pete and Dud to goon show, and once you like something you stream all you can off YouTube. 80s I’m not so interested in though, the horrible hair cuts are a giveaway and off putting. The best Macbeth film I have seen is a 70s one made by Polanski.
I subscribe to the theory if Boris were to lead Tories into next election they would get a far better result than under Sunak or anybody else. I think he’s just a lot more popular and can reach voters in all the walls Sunak can’t.
Bozo was able to reach some voters - but you are making the mistake that Bozo was the reason why the Red Wall voted Tory - a lot of those voters were voting for the not Corbyn option.
Still not had a chance to look more closely at the deaths stats, but it does look like things have improved in the latest week of data. Just the 1,000 non-COVID deaths in excess of the five-year average.
It is worth saying that since the week-ending 22 May 2020 (basically the point at which non-COVID deaths were legitimately excluding COVID deaths), we are still 18,000 below the five-year average. Back in April 2022, we were 51,000 below the five-year average, and that has gradually been eroded over the last 10 months. Of course, in that time, we're also had 21,000 COVID deaths.
Week-ending | 5-year average | COVID deaths | non-COVID deaths | non-COVID deaths in excess of the 5-year average
Presumably we're all for Royal Mail strikes since they're a private company? No impact on the public purse
No as they still impact on inflation
Why don't we cut Sunak's ridiculous salary, he's clearly vastly overpaid for what he does and that would reduce inflation for us all?
In fact why don't we sack the Tories altogether who caused this mess in the first place?
Sunak is not even in the too 1% of earners despite being UK PM.
Yes he has a lot of wealth with his wife anyway and he gets Chequers and No 10 with his job but he is hardly overpaid
For what he has done so far he is vastly overpaid yes.
It seems to me that there is a massive overlap between people you don't want to have a pay rise and those that "cause inflation"
Why is city bosses getting a pay rise not inflationary but Royal Mail workers are? They both work in the private sector, I think you're talking nonsense.
Do you understand that a bonus is still ON TOP of the salary?
So I am right in saying it's got nothing to do with inflation. It's that you don't like Royal Mail workers. Ok.
This is not how some people's pay is structured. I worked one job where my pay was structured in such a way that the bonus was effectively a way for the company to cut my pay by 25% if it was going through a sticky patch, which was really helpful for them as a way of managing their cash flow, not so helpful for me, but it certainly would affect inflation, and the "bonus" wasn't seen as a nice to have on top of the basic salary by most of the workforce.
Talking about war, the Gilmour Waters war is an interesting way to promote the Dark Side of the Moon 50th anniversary box set...
Why buy a box set? It’s all on Spotify.
A Spotify subscription will set you back 1200 Euros over ten years at current rates, and if you find that you've no more money to spend at that point you are left with nothing.
Pretty sure that if I spend 1200 Euros on actual copies of music that I own I would find myself in a better place in ten years time.
But in which format are you buying? Vinyl? Went away, has come back with compression monster 180g reissues. CD? I know many many CDs are still out there. But its long since past its prime. The new thing is Dolby Atmos mixes, but DVD or DVD-A or BluRay?
Personally I still love Minidisc. Playing one as I type this...
Really?! If I'm not missing sarcasm here, that's the strangest thing I've heard on here for months. I did like minidisc. Tape, only better. For a brief window, they did their job better than anything else. But they very quickly became redundant with a) writable CDs, b) being able to store music on computer and c) MP3 players, all of which did the job of a minidisc better than a minidisc. I own music rather than rent it. As a 47 year old who has spent over 30 years building up a music collection it makes sense. I have spent thousands on music over the years and 90% of what I listen to (apart from the radio) is stuff I already own. It doesn't make sense for me to pay to rent what I could listen to for free now. But it probably makes more sense for my children to rent it.
That said, my 12 year old daughter has recently got into vinyl. And vinyl is so very desirable. Sadly I lost most of my vinyl in a house move some time in the noughties. I still own the music on CD, but I miss the actual objects of vinyl records that I owned - particularly one or two cherishable ones. (The double album of London Calling - not rare, but an absolute work of art - and the original cover of Appetite for Destruction - horrible to look at, but rare and therefore cherishable.) I went with her to a record shop recently and had to hold myself back from buying vinyl copies of all sorts of records I already own on CD even though the only record player in the house now is her new cheap one and even though new records are £30 a pop. (Which is roughly where you'd expect them to be had the price of music since the 80s kept pace with inflation, but a bit of a shock when you are used to CDs for £7.) I keep going into her room just to look fondly at a shelf full of records. It is such a lovely thing to see. When we redo her room in her few months I am going to get her a decent record player with a good set of speakers. Other family members are cheerfully buying her their favourite records in a way they wouldn't think to with electronic music. There's something about a record which engenders a visceral reaction in the same way that a baby cuckoo's open mouth does in birds - a need to touch, to interact, to make it work, in a way that defies rationality. It is so very satisfyingly physical a thing.
I was visiting my parents for a couple of weeks over Christmas, and one of my tasks was to get rid of a storage unit that had been full of stuff since I emigrated. I managed to condense a dozen boxes of general ‘stuff’ into two, with plenty for the charity shop, the shredder and the bin.
The one thing I couldn’t touch, was the record collection. About a thousand records, mostly from the ‘90s but with plenty from other decades, alongside a pair of Technics decks from my time as a student DJ a quarter-century ago. Can’t see me ever selling them, no matter what. My most prized possession.
It's less easy to see what the hard right get it from. Yes, there will be a few neo-Nazis and fascists who quite like Putin's strongman act. There will be some who hate the government in power, and therefore oppose what that government supports. And there will be a few loud moths directly or indirectly in Russia's pay.
But if you wanted America to be Great Again, then spending a relatively tiny amount of money to defeat what was your #1 enemy is surely a good thing, especially as it does not cost American lives?
I wouldn't dismiss the first explanation so readily. For a lot of the people on the right, Putin's rule in Russia existed as a positive alternative to the namby-pamby wishy-washy liberal rule of law that they felt was suffocating the modern West. He was the tough guy alternative to the effete woke West, and so he has to prevail to continue to play that role.
Russia, as distinct from the Russian Federation and the Rysskiy Mir, is exactly the type of country the MAGAnauts wish the USA was: assertively patriotic, state mandated social conservatism, massive wealth inequality and old white men are in charge. It appeals to ur-leavers like Farage for the same reasons.
The appeal on the left is largely a romantic and historical connection to the USSR while recognising that NATO is undeniably an imperialist construct so any thing that challenges its dominance is of moral worth.
HYUFD's opinion seems to be that 8 year old Starmer should have built a time machine and checked that his school would become fee-paying just before he left, so that forty years later when he became Labour leader he could have not gone to that school and gone to another
It's ironic when the Tories spent so long trying to label him as Captain Hindsight.
Oddly that seems to have disappeared too.
Is it because Mr Hindsight has been proven correct? Or that the Tories have nothing left because any attack they make simply reflects badly on them?
We know they've had it, they're now referring to the last Labour Government again. 13 years later, it just rings so hollow, this is surely a losing platform.
Captain Hindsight was always an odd one to me because it kind of implied that the Tories were repeatedly making mistakes over and over again.
If you keep saying the other side is right, but only with hindsight... maybe at some point people start wondering why you are always wrong?
Anyway - it was probably a Boris Johnson witticism (c) - so that's why it has faded away a bit...
In addition to things others have said, nefarious governments will love digital currency because they'll be able (I believe) to just confiscate it. Or have a 5 day no spending period if pesky citizens have been going on protest marches.
No need to apologise for having a life outside PB ;-)
What is there to stop a nefarious government confiscating all our savings now (that wouldn't also apply to a 'digital currency)?
In case you missed it, you’re losing hundreds of mobliks and a dozen tanks every day in Ukraine at the moment. Not too sure there’s much left of the once-mighty Russian military to go around.
What gets me are the idiots - and idiots are a nice term for them - who excuse Russia's actions. It's not their fault. It's ours (wrong). We promised no eastwards NATO expansion (wrong). The Ukrainians are Nazis (wrong). Russia deserves a hinterland for protection (wrong). wibble wibble Stepan Bandera (wrong). Russia wants peace (wrong). We 'poked' Russia into this war (wrong). The war needs to end now (wrong, sadly).
All you need to do is listen to what Lavrov and Putin say to see the real cause of this war: Russian fascist imperialism. Whatever we said or did, they would have made a play for Ukraine or another state. Because that's their world view.
You can read exactly those arguments from the MAGA’s.
It's yet another example where hard left and hard right meet in the middle.
It's easy to see why the hard left come up with this stuff: a combination of still liking Russia because of the USSR and Communism (even though modern Russia only takes the 'enriches those in power' from Communism); a hatred of the West and our institutions, and an utter loathing of the 'wrong' people.
It's less easy to see what the hard right get it from. Yes, there will be a few neo-Nazis and fascists who quite like Putin's strongman act. There will be some who hate the government in power, and therefore oppose what that government supports. And there will be a few loud moths directly or indirectly in Russia's pay.
But if you wanted America to be Great Again, then spending a relatively tiny amount of money to defeat what was your #1 enemy is surely a good thing, especially as it does not cost American lives?
Woke?
What Putins Russia sells is that all of Russian history is glorious, wonderful and morally perfect. Think Henty and his works, as their vision of history.
Their fear of “Western self doubt and self loathing” is based on the idea that their power (such as it is) comes from belief. The willingness of the human waves to bayonet charge….. I their world, once you allow the Head Count to doubt The System, your culture collapses and the cold wind blows.
It was a meme on the extreme right, before the invasion, that the proper, manly Russian army would demonstrate that their Big Weapons would annihilate Western FeminizedTransWoke armies.
In case you missed it, you’re losing hundreds of mobliks and a dozen tanks every day in Ukraine at the moment. Not too sure there’s much left of the once-mighty Russian military to go around.
What gets me are the idiots - and idiots are a nice term for them - who excuse Russia's actions. It's not their fault. It's ours (wrong). We promised no eastwards NATO expansion (wrong). The Ukrainians are Nazis (wrong). Russia deserves a hinterland for protection (wrong). wibble wibble Stepan Bandera (wrong). Russia wants peace (wrong). We 'poked' Russia into this war (wrong). The war needs to end now (wrong, sadly).
All you need to do is listen to what Lavrov and Putin say to see the real cause of this war: Russian fascist imperialism. Whatever we said or did, they would have made a play for Ukraine or another state. Because that's their world view.
You can read exactly those arguments from the MAGA’s.
It's yet another example where hard left and hard right meet in the middle.
It's easy to see why the hard left come up with this stuff: a combination of still liking Russia because of the USSR and Communism (even though modern Russia only takes the 'enriches those in power' from Communism); a hatred of the West and our institutions, and an utter loathing of the 'wrong' people.
It's less easy to see what the hard right get it from. Yes, there will be a few neo-Nazis and fascists who quite like Putin's strongman act. There will be some who hate the government in power, and therefore oppose what that government supports. And there will be a few loud moths directly or indirectly in Russia's pay.
But if you wanted America to be Great Again, then spending a relatively tiny amount of money to defeat what was your #1 enemy is surely a good thing, especially as it does not cost American lives?
Woke?
What Putins Russia sells is that all of Russian history is glorious, wonderful and morally perfect. Think Henty and his works, as their vision of history.
Their fear of “Western self doubt and self loathing” is based on the idea that their power (such as it is) comes from belief. The willingness of the human waves to bayonet charge….. I their world, once you allow the Head Count to doubt The System, your culture collapses and the cold wind blows.
It was a meme on the extreme right, before the invasion, that the proper, manly Russian army would demonstrate that their Big Weapons would annihilate Western FeminizedTransWoke armies.
Not just on the extreme right. I rather thought that a military whose main aim was to win wars, from a culture who weren't really that bothered about how it did so, would have an edge over a military with an HR department, from a culture whose distaste for violence obliged it to tread lightly and not kill people if it could possibly avoid it. (That said, it should be noted that Ukraine is not typical of the west: its soldiers and its people are impressively motivated to fight, and I still wonder whether this would be true of societies further west). But it turns out that the Russian military wasn't actually there for killing people, but as a tool for enriching middlemen, and that however enthusiastic it might be to kill people, it simply wasn't equipped to do so because the resources which had been spent on it over the years had been diverted elsewhere.
I'm informed this morning that Twitter ad revenue is trending to pre-takeover levels by the end of this month and the cost base has been cut by 60%. The growth rate will take it beyond pre-takeover by the end of March and that user revenue is far, far larger than it has ever been already.
Twitter's next valuation round may see it get a reasonably close to the purchase price once debt is included. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if Elon and crew get an IPO done in ~2026 at a higher valuation that what they bought it for, the gross margin at Twitter is looking incredible and there's been no real drawbacks to getting rid of all those people. In fact the word from tech investors seems to be that twitter's dev pipeline and feature pipeline are stronger now than before all the cuts because they got rid of all the million layers that prevented feature releases.
For all the shit he got, Elon Musk seems to have made this work and I wouldn't be surprised if when everything is counted up he ends up making a huge profit from the deal.
I do feel a bit silly for taking at face value the statements from some tech sources that Musk had done so much damage to the company they wouldn't be able to keep the website running. I will be a bit more sceptical of these sources in the future.
The other thing it shows is the value of the grand old military principle of maintenance of aim. Musk had a plan, stuck to it despite all the warnings of imminent disaster, and, trusting Max as a reputable source, sounds like it is beginning to pay off.
It's interesting to compare this with Liz Truss' experience as PM. Die-hard Trussites will draw the lesson that, if only Conservative MPs had allowed Truss to see her plan through, then Britain would also soon be seeing the benefits of a bold plan seen through against stiff opposition.
I think the difference here is that Musk had the financial and organisational means to see his plan through, whereas Truss had not laid the groundwork for retaining the support of her MPs, or the trust of the financial markets, and so lacked the financial and organisational means to see her plan through. The fruitful comparison is with Thatcher, who prepared carefully for the Miner's Strike of 1984-5, and so she was able to see that through to a victorious conclusion.
This then brings us to Sunak, and the public sector strikes that he is now enduring, for longer than many would have thought possible, and yet with no preparation. Can he wait this out for longer than the Unions? I don't see any obvious means for the Unions to force his hand. By the time the May local elections damages his electoral credibility, it is possible that inflation will be considerably lower, and public support for higher pay settlements may erode.
I think Sunak is going to see this one through, and thereby avoid having to court more unpopularity later by imposing further tax rises to balance the books.
That point on inflation is a good one.
If inflation drops to 4%, will there still be public support for unions asking for 10% or so? Of course, to avoid a real terms pay cut, they'd still need 10% (plus the extra inflation since then) but the public at large may see a 10% demand, with inflation at 4% at the time as a pay rise way above inflation, even though it would cover a period in which cost of living had increased by well over 10%.
Waiting this out may have benefits for Sunak, short term. Longer term issues of nurses/teachers etc giving up and quitting to get better paid jobs elsewhere will of course remain.
Is it true that Twitter has been unavailable a lot more since he took over. And that the quality of the app has gone down drastically. And that he has banned all thirty party clients.
This probably doesn't impact on revenue at all - but it does make the service worse than it was.
The 3rd party clients were making a lot of revenue that Twitter are going to try and collect. It’s going to cost thousands a month to run coprorate Twitter accounts, complete with the analytics software similar to that which the 3rd parties used to sell to corporates.
There’s hundreds of millions in extra revenue, and more importantly a diversification away from the fickle and cyclical advertising market.
I'm informed this morning that Twitter ad revenue is trending to pre-takeover levels by the end of this month and the cost base has been cut by 60%. The growth rate will take it beyond pre-takeover by the end of March and that user revenue is far, far larger than it has ever been already.
Twitter's next valuation round may see it get a reasonably close to the purchase price once debt is included. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if Elon and crew get an IPO done in ~2026 at a higher valuation that what they bought it for, the gross margin at Twitter is looking incredible and there's been no real drawbacks to getting rid of all those people. In fact the word from tech investors seems to be that twitter's dev pipeline and feature pipeline are stronger now than before all the cuts because they got rid of all the million layers that prevented feature releases.
For all the shit he got, Elon Musk seems to have made this work and I wouldn't be surprised if when everything is counted up he ends up making a huge profit from the deal.
If you believe Musk, that is.
That should not be a given.
(And this is important. Musk lies. He has been proven to lie. It therefore becomes a question of how much the markets should believe him. And whilst he continues to post profits, they probably will.)
Explained, as always, in Yes Prime Minister:
Sir Desmond Glazebrook : They've broken the rules.
Sir Humphrey : What, you mean the insider trading regulations?
Sir Desmond Glazebrook : No.
Sir Humphrey : Oh. Well, that's one relief.
Sir Desmond Glazebrook : I mean of course they've broken those, but they've broken the basic, the basic rule of the City.
Sir Humphrey : I didn't know there were any.
Sir Desmond Glazebrook : Just the one. If you're incompetent you have to be honest, and if you're crooked you have to be clever. See, if you're honest, then when you make a pig's breakfast of things the chaps rally round and help you out.
Sir Humphrey : If you're crooked?
Sir Desmond Glazebrook : Well, if you're making good profits for them, chaps don't start asking questions; they're not stupid. Well, not that stupid.
Sir Humphrey : So the ideal is a firm which is honest and clever.
Sir Desmond Glazebrook : Yes. Let me know if you ever come across one, won't you.
In the case of Twitter, past all the bullshit, it is fairly clear that it was run as a start up that has accreted functions and departments.
I’ve seen such places, and worked in a couple. They all needed a massive clear out.
A common feature is parts of the company work against each other until doing anything becomes impossible.
Sounds very much like Whitehall. (Or Washington, Brussels etc).
Which is why it needs turning upside-down there as well.
Maybe it's just me but I really don't get what this is. How does this differ from the GBP in my bank accounts etc. now?
I don't imagine the NSI are sitting on a pile of £coins or £notes which represent my Premium Bond holdings, nor could my bank point to a vault that holds the money it's got recorded in my accounts.
No, they hold it digitally, surely?
If someone could explain what I'm missing I'd be grateful.
It’s a centralised version of Bitcoin, which would become an alternative over time to using cash and cards.
The concerns against such systems, are that anonymity becomes impossible, and that a scammer or state actor could ‘un-person’ an individual trivially and with no recourse.
Thanks for this, and the other various responses. You say anonymity becomes possible, others say it would be lost, so I am none the wiser really.
All in all it feels like a solution looking for a problem.
Maybe it's just me but I really don't get what this is. How does this differ from the GBP in my bank accounts etc. now?
I don't imagine the NSI are sitting on a pile of £coins or £notes which represent my Premium Bond holdings, nor could my bank point to a vault that holds the money it's got recorded in my accounts.
No, they hold it digitally, surely?
If someone could explain what I'm missing I'd be grateful.
Doesn't make much sense to me either. Reading the article, the thing that stands out to me is this: "...ensure the public has access to safe money that is easy to use in the digital age."
As I understand the status quo, it provides a duopoly to VISA and Mastercard who make vast piles of cash processing current digital transactions of your pounds Sterling. What a new digital coin could do, if designed right, is provide a means for transactions of the digital pound to be processed by a much wider variety of people, and therefore open up payment processing to a wider market and drive down costs.
The other thing that stands out, and surprises me, is this bit: "Neither the Bank of England nor Government would have access to the data on transactions with a digital pound. But consumers could pick providers, not just banks, to hold their cash in digital wallets, with varying degrees of privacy. Some users might be comfortable with their wallet provider knowing all their transactions, if they received a discount for example. Others might want to stay as private as possible."
A lot of concern has been expressed about the death of cash making it possible for bad actors to track your every financial transaction, and that this represents a severe erosion of our privacy rights. At first glance, the above excerpt from the article suggests that the intent is to make it possible to enable untraceable cash-style transactions with a digital Pound.
You'd imagine that the police would be aghast at such a suggestion, but, if it comes to pass, it would be a major win for privacy rights that would last generations.
So, well, my first reaction was one of befuddlement, but I'm now reasonably hopeful that the people involved know what they are doing, and may achieve something worthwhile.
LMAO, you really believe there will be someone providing this service and not tracking you and the government and police will allow any provider that won't be able to give them access to all your transactions. By the way I have a bridge made out of unicorns to sell you
Maybe it's just me but I really don't get what this is. How does this differ from the GBP in my bank accounts etc. now?
I don't imagine the NSI are sitting on a pile of £coins or £notes which represent my Premium Bond holdings, nor could my bank point to a vault that holds the money it's got recorded in my accounts.
No, they hold it digitally, surely?
If someone could explain what I'm missing I'd be grateful.
It’s a centralised version of Bitcoin, which would become an alternative over time to using cash and cards.
The concerns against such systems, are that anonymity becomes impossible, and that a scammer or state actor could ‘un-person’ an individual trivially and with no recourse.
Thanks for this, and the other various responses. You say anonymity becomes possible, others say it would be lost, so I am none the wiser really.
All in all it feels like a solution looking for a problem.
There is no single digital coin system. You can design in whatever features you want at the very beginning, so this is potentially a very important time as those decisions are made.
I think the problem to be solved is that our current digital banking infrastructure has been built up gradually over time on top of existing cash and paper based systems, and this is a chance to create something new that works a lot better. Or worse. Depending on who is making the decisions and for what motivations.
You’re like a cross between the Stop Breeeeexit Man and the Goon Show.
The Goon Show?
Many of your references don't ring true for a 20 something girl about town. The "Confessions" reference earlier busted you as a 62 year old Wellingborough plasterer called Keith.
Course. Time for a change pretty soon becomes Long Past Time for a Change. Folk who bemoan a lack of Labour radicalism should note. Starmer isn't Blair.
Starmer isn't Blair, but that may be not such a bad thing.
Well, for example, Starmer didn't go to a posh public school.
Eh? Starmer's old school is an independent HMC school.
He is the first Labour leader to have gone to public school since Blair
Well now, you are the one banging on about every clever kid should have access to a grammar school education, and here we are with the wrong sort of clever kid, and you think he should have transferred to a sink comp when the school became more exclusive.
You are no meritocrat, you are a shameless elitist.
Of course I know about clockwork orange and goon show etc - I went to art college! If it’s 60’s 70’s I’m all over it.
It’s not the only confessions film I’ve seen! The humour is bright and sunny, the tits are great, and it’s probably realistic, I bet window cleaners and tradesman can tell a few stories!
She suddenly appears there in just stockings, a basque and no knickers and says her husband won’t be home for three hours - what you going to do Mex, make your apologies and leave and mail the invoice for the blocked sink?
Talking of stories, the “I” says Labour fear Boris returning and getting a hung Parliament. Are they really in tune with Labour fearing that, or do journalists just make this up?
Forty years too late for me Moon Dance, and back in the day I'd have hi-tailed it out of there, I was no Timmy Lea.
As for Johnson. I don't see the Emperor's New Clothes but plenty do. The irony of many of Sunak's problems is Johnson was the architect. Are there still enough voters who see the tailored finery or just a fat naked blob? I am not sure.
I keep forgetting some of you are so old, you haven’t lived with internet, YouTube, Wikipedia and people sending you links all your life, so you can’t comprehend how much Gen Z have been able to learn about and see of your own era! I might have seen more 60s 70s culture now than even you who were around at the time, but in a pub the night it was shown on one of 3 telly channels 😆 I prefer Pete and Dud to goon show, and once you like something you stream all you can off YouTube. 80s I’m not so interested in though, the horrible hair cuts are a giveaway and off putting. The best Macbeth film I have seen is a 70s one made by Polanski.
I subscribe to the theory if Boris were to lead Tories into next election they would get a far better result than under Sunak or anybody else. I think he’s just a lot more popular and can reach voters in all the walls Sunak can’t.
Boris is what he always was- a bit of a letch, able to charm anyone into bed until he annoys them.enough that they chuck him out. It's a story that has played out again and again in his personal and professional lives.
Boris's problem is that he's now annoyed enough British voters to the extent that they won't forgive him.
What do you call “enough”? To lose his landslide majority and the election, I agree. But still get 40 or 80 seats more than Sunak or any other Tory leader and a hung Parliament?
I sort of suspect his personality downsides were already baked in when they gave him 80 seat majority, and of ones lost since 2019, he stands more chance of winning them back with his star turn boosterism than any other leader Tories can come up with right now.
So did the “I” make up this story, or does it ring true Labour fear Boris more than Sunak?
The Tory poll ratings have bombed and going nowhere under Truss and Sunak compared to what Boris left them, maybe they could bounce to a degree under Boris, simply because voters at least associate him with making things happen?
I'm thinking more at an individual level. Each of us will put up with a certain amount of nonsense from people we know and love, but there's a line which, once crossed, can't be crossed back. The trust and the relationship is gone.
Different people have reached that point with Boris at different times, and not everyone has reached it yet- the charm works until you have personally been sufficiently let down by Big Dog enough. (See Nadine D for example).
So yes- Bringing Back Boris would win back some voters for a bit. But I'm confident that we're now at the point where it would lose more.
In case you missed it, you’re losing hundreds of mobliks and a dozen tanks every day in Ukraine at the moment. Not too sure there’s much left of the once-mighty Russian military to go around.
What gets me are the idiots - and idiots are a nice term for them - who excuse Russia's actions. It's not their fault. It's ours (wrong). We promised no eastwards NATO expansion (wrong). The Ukrainians are Nazis (wrong). Russia deserves a hinterland for protection (wrong). wibble wibble Stepan Bandera (wrong). Russia wants peace (wrong). We 'poked' Russia into this war (wrong). The war needs to end now (wrong, sadly).
All you need to do is listen to what Lavrov and Putin say to see the real cause of this war: Russian fascist imperialism. Whatever we said or did, they would have made a play for Ukraine or another state. Because that's their world view.
You can read exactly those arguments from the MAGA’s.
It's yet another example where hard left and hard right meet in the middle.
It's easy to see why the hard left come up with this stuff: a combination of still liking Russia because of the USSR and Communism (even though modern Russia only takes the 'enriches those in power' from Communism); a hatred of the West and our institutions, and an utter loathing of the 'wrong' people.
It's less easy to see what the hard right get it from. Yes, there will be a few neo-Nazis and fascists who quite like Putin's strongman act. There will be some who hate the government in power, and therefore oppose what that government supports. And there will be a few loud moths directly or indirectly in Russia's pay.
But if you wanted America to be Great Again, then spending a relatively tiny amount of money to defeat what was your #1 enemy is surely a good thing, especially as it does not cost American lives?
Woke?
What Putins Russia sells is that all of Russian history is glorious, wonderful and morally perfect. Think Henty and his works, as their vision of history.
Their fear of “Western self doubt and self loathing” is based on the idea that their power (such as it is) comes from belief. The willingness of the human waves to bayonet charge….. I their world, once you allow the Head Count to doubt The System, your culture collapses and the cold wind blows.
It was a meme on the extreme right, before the invasion, that the proper, manly Russian army would demonstrate that their Big Weapons would annihilate Western FeminizedTransWoke armies.
In case you missed it, you’re losing hundreds of mobliks and a dozen tanks every day in Ukraine at the moment. Not too sure there’s much left of the once-mighty Russian military to go around.
What gets me are the idiots - and idiots are a nice term for them - who excuse Russia's actions. It's not their fault. It's ours (wrong). We promised no eastwards NATO expansion (wrong). The Ukrainians are Nazis (wrong). Russia deserves a hinterland for protection (wrong). wibble wibble Stepan Bandera (wrong). Russia wants peace (wrong). We 'poked' Russia into this war (wrong). The war needs to end now (wrong, sadly).
All you need to do is listen to what Lavrov and Putin say to see the real cause of this war: Russian fascist imperialism. Whatever we said or did, they would have made a play for Ukraine or another state. Because that's their world view.
You can read exactly those arguments from the MAGA’s.
It's yet another example where hard left and hard right meet in the middle.
It's easy to see why the hard left come up with this stuff: a combination of still liking Russia because of the USSR and Communism (even though modern Russia only takes the 'enriches those in power' from Communism); a hatred of the West and our institutions, and an utter loathing of the 'wrong' people.
It's less easy to see what the hard right get it from. Yes, there will be a few neo-Nazis and fascists who quite like Putin's strongman act. There will be some who hate the government in power, and therefore oppose what that government supports. And there will be a few loud moths directly or indirectly in Russia's pay.
But if you wanted America to be Great Again, then spending a relatively tiny amount of money to defeat what was your #1 enemy is surely a good thing, especially as it does not cost American lives?
Woke?
What Putins Russia sells is that all of Russian history is glorious, wonderful and morally perfect. Think Henty and his works, as their vision of history.
Their fear of “Western self doubt and self loathing” is based on the idea that their power (such as it is) comes from belief. The willingness of the human waves to bayonet charge….. I their world, once you allow the Head Count to doubt The System, your culture collapses and the cold wind blows.
It was a meme on the extreme right, before the invasion, that the proper, manly Russian army would demonstrate that their Big Weapons would annihilate Western FeminizedTransWoke armies.
Not just on the extreme right. I rather thought that a military whose main aim was to win wars, from a culture who weren't really that bothered about how it did so, would have an edge over a military with an HR department, from a culture whose distaste for violence obliged it to tread lightly and not kill people if it could possibly avoid it. (That said, it should be noted that Ukraine is not typical of the west: its soldiers and its people are impressively motivated to fight, and I still wonder whether this would be true of societies further west). But it turns out that the Russian military wasn't actually there for killing people, but as a tool for enriching middlemen, and that however enthusiastic it might be to kill people, it simply wasn't equipped to do so because the resources which had been spent on it over the years had been diverted elsewhere.
It's an interesting question: if (say) France launched an invasion of the south coast today, how hard would we Brits fight (leaving aside the strength of our respective militaries and nukes) ?
I'd like to think we'd fight hard, especially if we were in the Ukrainian situation, where (say) Devon and Cornwall had been captured eight years earlier. But I can imagine some of us talking about how the French were in the right...
Maybe it's just me but I really don't get what this is. How does this differ from the GBP in my bank accounts etc. now?
I don't imagine the NSI are sitting on a pile of £coins or £notes which represent my Premium Bond holdings, nor could my bank point to a vault that holds the money it's got recorded in my accounts.
No, they hold it digitally, surely?
If someone could explain what I'm missing I'd be grateful.
It’s a centralised version of Bitcoin, which would become an alternative over time to using cash and cards.
The concerns against such systems, are that anonymity becomes impossible, and that a scammer or state actor could ‘un-person’ an individual trivially and with no recourse.
Thanks for this, and the other various responses. You say anonymity becomes possible, others say it would be lost, so I am none the wiser really.
All in all it feels like a solution looking for a problem.
The anonymity of cash transactions, is not present with card or “digital currency” transactions.
It’s indeed a solution looking for a problem. Those pushing it either have a vested interest in the system itself, or are authoritarians in love with the control it would give the operators. Central digital currency was one of the major talking points at the recent WEF summit.
Talking about war, the Gilmour Waters war is an interesting way to promote the Dark Side of the Moon 50th anniversary box set...
Why buy a box set? It’s all on Spotify.
A Spotify subscription will set you back 1200 Euros over ten years at current rates, and if you find that you've no more money to spend at that point you are left with nothing.
Pretty sure that if I spend 1200 Euros on actual copies of music that I own I would find myself in a better place in ten years time.
But in which format are you buying? Vinyl? Went away, has come back with compression monster 180g reissues. CD? I know many many CDs are still out there. But its long since past its prime. The new thing is Dolby Atmos mixes, but DVD or DVD-A or BluRay?
Personally I still love Minidisc. Playing one as I type this...
The format doesn't matter provided I retain the means to play it back.
You say that vinyl "went away", but for the entire period it did so, my mother had her old vinyl records and a vinyl player, and no-one stopped her form playing her old records because she'd stopped paying them ten Euros a month.
Went away as in they stopped releasing mainstream music on it.
"In my view this is like 1997 where the tide has turned and the public want to see something different. The huge challenge the Tories face is that unlike some previous fights they are facing a Labour leader who while possibly being a bit boring is not one who is going to be easily undermined. He is not Jeremy Corbyn."
I really don't see a way back for the tories from this and Liz Truss has now come along to remind everyone just how awful it has been.
The tide has indeed turned and, like dear old King Canute, there is nothing Sunak and Co can do to stop it.
The big question is how popular is Starmer in Red Wall areas like Stoke-on-Trent and Grimsby.
If Redfield and Wilton are to be believed, Starmer is probably popular enough;
When asked which would be a better Prime Minister between Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer, Starmer (43%, +1) leads Sunak (33%, +1) by ten points. 24% (-2) say they don’t know.
As things stand Labour can't lose and Tories can't win for simple reasons, including 'Time For A Change'.
If (which I am not) a case were to be made for recovery from the Tories it would be this.
"We can't possibly win in the conventional sense, but in GEs someone has to win even if in ordinary reality they have all lost. Two things need to happen; Labour needs to self destruct - and this is always possible as long as the left exists; and the Tories have to be the default option for both the headbangers of the right and ordinary centrist democrats who want neither Trump nor Stalin running the country".
Sunak's mixture of centrist decency and showing a bit of ankle over ECHR etc, while obviously incoherent nonsense, may be that attempt. Let us hope the cause is hopeless.
Add to that cuts in income tax rates, and you have the government's best (if narrow) chance of re-election. Hence the vice-like grip on public spending.
It does all require a degree of cynicism that I don't think Rishi quite possesses. The man they really need is Boris, only without the baggage Boris built up last time.
The time has come for Alex (definitely not Boris) de Pfeffel to have some plastic surgery and a hair transplant.
Good point; but I'm not sure whether borrowing £175bn a year is quite a vice like grip; and (I hope) a good number of people of the sort who often vote Tory but don't watch/listen to GB News would not vote for Boris on moral grounds alone.
Where are the young Heseltines and Clarkes when you need them?
Alienated from the party. As are the current incarnations.
Heseltine showing he still has it, yesterday.
https://www.parallelparliament.co.uk/debate/2023-02-06/lords/lords-chamber/retained-eu-law-revocation-and-reform-bill My Lords, I salute the two excellent maiden speeches that we have heard today. I am one of the few surviving members of Margaret Thatcher’s first Government and I am amazed to find myself sitting here listening to the arguments from the Front Bench as to why her greatest achievement should be sacrificed. I remember Arthur Cockfield: he is not, perhaps, a household name today, but if you look him up in Wikipedia, you will see him described as the “father of the Common Market”, and that is right. Margaret—not a natural supporter of foreigners—saw very clearly that the mistakes of the common agricultural policy must not be made again, so she sent Arthur Cockfield to Brussels as a commissioner in order to make sure that British self-interests were dominant in the negotiation of the single market.
The single market was historically, perhaps, one of the most extraordinarily successful concepts ever developed by humankind. The implementation was difficult, against difficult economic circumstances and endless forms—small employers at night, having done all the work themselves, finding yet another form—and the flame was fanned by those two great arbiters of British self-interest, Rupert Murdoch and Conrad Black. There was a growing resentment, and John Major inherited the problem. “Go to it, Tarzan”, he said to the Tory Party conference.
I was entrusted with the first serious attempt to look at the real effect of all these wealth-destroying, uncivilised, burdensome regulations. I went to it with all the enthusiasm that I hope noble Lords would expect of me. What did I do? I was entrusted with a Minister of State in every department to worm away, dig it all out. I set up public/private-sector committees for each field of activity, led by some of the most strident critics of the regulatory process. I actually published 3,000 of these regulations, so that nothing was hidden from anybody. “Let’s know what we’re all talking about in detail: here they are, great volumes of stuff”. I did something else: I wrote to every trade association and I said, “Look, I’m your man. All you’ve got to do is send me a regulation as drafted that is holding your members back and undermining the country, and send me an alternative draft”. I did not get any replies...
And his critique of the bill (along with the description of Rees Mogg as the Robespierre of Brexit) is spot on.
..The essence, of course, is that, for all the empty generalisations, all the promises and all that new world, there was nothing there. This Bill demonstrates beyond peradventure that they did not know what they were doing. Six years on, they did not know what they were doing. They have now actually created a giant question mark over a whole realm of regulations that are the custodian that separates us from the law of the jungle. They are what defines a civilised society. At a time of economic stress, when we need desperately to increase the levels of investment in our economy, what have they provided? A giant question mark for anyone seeking to know whether to spend a penny piece in the United Kingdom economy. I beg noble Lords not to let this legislation leave this place unscathed...
Still not had a chance to look more closely at the deaths stats, but it does look like things have improved in the latest week of data. Just the 1,000 non-COVID deaths in excess of the five-year average.
It is worth saying that since the week-ending 22 May 2020 (basically the point at which non-COVID deaths were legitimately excluding COVID deaths), we are still 18,000 below the five-year average. Back in April 2022, we were 51,000 below the five-year average, and that has gradually been eroded over the last 10 months. Of course, in that time, we're also had 21,000 COVID deaths.
Week-ending | 5-year average | COVID deaths | non-COVID deaths | non-COVID deaths in excess of the 5-year average
A lot of the ambulance times/accident and emergency delays crisis has lifted, which helps. That was one of the biggest chunks of the extra deaths. We'll still have covid sequelae deaths for a while, but they should (hopefully) lift a bit too, as time goes by. The risk period for elevated heart issues/stroke issues seems to be highest over 1 to 2 years, and linked to the severity of the illness, so with reduced severity from widespread immunity (and protection from severe disease doesn't tend to erode like protection from infection), so hopefully those numbers will fall as well.
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Yes he has a lot of wealth with his wife anyway and he gets Chequers and No 10 with his job but he is hardly overpaid. Indeed MPs pay is only rising by 2% this year, even below the public sector average
It seems to me that there is a massive overlap between people you don't want to have a pay rise and those that "cause inflation"
Why is city bosses getting a pay rise not inflationary but Royal Mail workers are? They both work in the private sector, I think you're talking nonsense.
I’ve seen such places, and worked in a couple. They all needed a massive clear out.
A common feature is parts of the company work against each other until doing anything becomes impossible.
The other point to make is that a large part of making America great again is seen as consciously withdrawing from the world back into a glorious isolationism. Unlike Britain, which has rarely - if ever - been self-sufficient, but has always strongly relied on trade, and therefore engagement with the outside world, part of the founding myth (and reality) of the US was as a withdrawal from the interminable wars in Europe, and America has often been to a much greater degree self-sufficient. Even now the US can supply all its own food and energy needs, and so it is much less reliant on trade.
It's easy for us to laugh at the way in which the US calls a domestic sporting competition the "World Series", but playing their own sports, against themselves, is part of this isolationist mindset that we Europeans simply don't get. Even the old joke about, "fog in Channel, continent cut off," betrays the importance of the cross-channel connection.
In addition to things others have said, nefarious governments will love digital currency because they'll be able (I believe) to just confiscate it. Or have a 5 day no spending period if pesky citizens have been going on protest marches.
https://www.standard.co.uk/business/london-banker-bonuses-set-to-plunge-amid-stock-market-downturn-bank-b1048965.html
I sort of suspect his personality downsides were already baked in when they gave him 80 seat majority, and of ones lost since 2019, he stands more chance of winning them back with his star turn boosterism than any other leader Tories can come up with right now.
So did the “I” make up this story, or does it ring true Labour fear Boris more than Sunak?
The Tory poll ratings have bombed and going nowhere under Truss and Sunak compared to what Boris left them, maybe they could bounce to a degree under Boris, simply because voters at least associate him with making things happen?
So I am right in saying it's got nothing to do with inflation. It's that you don't like Royal Mail workers. Ok.
Is it because Mr Hindsight has been proven correct? Or that the Tories have nothing left because any attack they make simply reflects badly on them?
We know they've had it, they're now referring to the last Labour Government again. 13 years later, it just rings so hollow, this is surely a losing platform.
As are the current incarnations.
Heseltine showing he still has it, yesterday.
https://www.parallelparliament.co.uk/debate/2023-02-06/lords/lords-chamber/retained-eu-law-revocation-and-reform-bill
My Lords, I salute the two excellent maiden speeches that we have heard today. I am one of the few surviving members of Margaret Thatcher’s first Government and I am amazed to find myself sitting here listening to the arguments from the Front Bench as to why her greatest achievement should be sacrificed. I remember Arthur Cockfield: he is not, perhaps, a household name today, but if you look him up in Wikipedia, you will see him described as the “father of the Common Market”, and that is right. Margaret—not a natural supporter of foreigners—saw very clearly that the mistakes of the common agricultural policy must not be made again, so she sent Arthur Cockfield to Brussels as a commissioner in order to make sure that British self-interests were dominant in the negotiation of the single market.
The single market was historically, perhaps, one of the most extraordinarily successful concepts ever developed by humankind. The implementation was difficult, against difficult economic circumstances and endless forms—small employers at night, having done all the work themselves, finding yet another form—and the flame was fanned by those two great arbiters of British self-interest, Rupert Murdoch and Conrad Black. There was a growing resentment, and John Major inherited the problem. “Go to it, Tarzan”, he said to the Tory Party conference.
I was entrusted with the first serious attempt to look at the real effect of all these wealth-destroying, uncivilised, burdensome regulations. I went to it with all the enthusiasm that I hope noble Lords would expect of me. What did I do? I was entrusted with a Minister of State in every department to worm away, dig it all out. I set up public/private-sector committees for each field of activity, led by some of the most strident critics of the regulatory process. I actually published 3,000 of these regulations, so that nothing was hidden from anybody. “Let’s know what we’re all talking about in detail: here they are, great volumes of stuff”. I did something else: I wrote to every trade association and I said, “Look, I’m your man. All you’ve got to do is send me a regulation as drafted that is holding your members back and undermining the country, and send me an alternative draft”. I did not get any replies...
https://tinyurl.com/25f9fs4n
Still not had a chance to look more closely at the deaths stats, but it does look like things have improved in the latest week of data. Just the 1,000 non-COVID deaths in excess of the five-year average.
It is worth saying that since the week-ending 22 May 2020 (basically the point at which non-COVID deaths were legitimately excluding COVID deaths), we are still 18,000 below the five-year average. Back in April 2022, we were 51,000 below the five-year average, and that has gradually been eroded over the last 10 months. Of course, in that time, we're also had 21,000 COVID deaths.
Week-ending | 5-year average | COVID deaths | non-COVID deaths | non-COVID deaths in excess of the 5-year average
07-Oct-22 | 9,835 | 400 | 10,807 | 972
14-Oct-22 | 10,091 | 565 | 11,134 | 1,043
21-Oct-22 | 10,224 | 687 | 11,251 | 1,027
28-Oct-22 | 10,013 | 651 | 10,594 | 581
04-Nov-22 | 10,278 | 650 | 11,145 | 867
11-Nov-22 | 10,743 | 518 | 11,020 | 277
18-Nov-22 | 10,786 | 423 | 11,156 | 370
25-Nov-22 | 10,705 | 348 | 11,135 | 430
02-Dec-22 | 10,725 | 317 | 10,990 | 265
09-Dec-22 | 11,007 | 326 | 11,368 | 361
16-Dec-22 | 11,203 | 390 | 11,999 | 796
23-Dec-22 | 12,037 | 429 | 14,101 | 2,064
30-Dec-22 | 7,925 | 393 | 9,124 | 1,199
06-Jan-23 | 12,037 | 739 | 14,244 | 2,207
13-Jan-23 | 13,749 | 922 | 16,459 | 2,710
20-Jan-23 | 13,098 | 781 | 15,023 | 1,925
27-Jan-23 | 12,562 | 579 | 13,588 | 1,026
The one thing I couldn’t touch, was the record collection. About a thousand records, mostly from the ‘90s but with plenty from other decades, alongside a pair of Technics decks from my time as a student DJ a quarter-century ago. Can’t see me ever selling them, no matter what. My most prized possession.
The appeal on the left is largely a romantic and historical connection to the USSR while recognising that NATO is undeniably an imperialist construct so any thing that challenges its dominance is of moral worth.
If you keep saying the other side is right, but only with hindsight... maybe at some point people start wondering why you are always wrong?
Anyway - it was probably a Boris Johnson witticism (c) - so that's why it has faded away a bit...
What is there to stop a nefarious government confiscating all our savings now (that wouldn't also apply to a 'digital currency)?
But it turns out that the Russian military wasn't actually there for killing people, but as a tool for enriching middlemen, and that however enthusiastic it might be to kill people, it simply wasn't equipped to do so because the resources which had been spent on it over the years had been diverted elsewhere.
There’s hundreds of millions in extra revenue, and more importantly a diversification away from the fickle and cyclical advertising market.
Which is why it needs turning upside-down there as well.
All in all it feels like a solution looking for a problem.
I think the problem to be solved is that our current digital banking infrastructure has been built up gradually over time on top of existing cash and paper based systems, and this is a chance to create something new that works a lot better. Or worse. Depending on who is making the decisions and for what motivations.
Different people have reached that point with Boris at different times, and not everyone has reached it yet- the charm works until you have personally been sufficiently let down by Big Dog enough. (See Nadine D for example).
So yes- Bringing Back Boris would win back some voters for a bit. But I'm confident that we're now at the point where it would lose more.
I'd like to think we'd fight hard, especially if we were in the Ukrainian situation, where (say) Devon and Cornwall had been captured eight years earlier. But I can imagine some of us talking about how the French were in the right...
It’s indeed a solution looking for a problem. Those pushing it either have a vested interest in the system itself, or are authoritarians in love with the control it would give the operators. Central digital currency was one of the major talking points at the recent WEF summit.
The WEF white paper from a couple of years ago. https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Digital_Currency_Governance_Consortium_White_Paper_Series_2021.pdf
I tried to find a news article that was anything other than heavily biased against the concept, but struggled!
This is as close as I got, with actual quotes from the Mastercard CEO, who said that the idea is to eliminate SWIFT and ‘regular’ banking within five years.
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/mastercard-ceo-tells-world-economic-forum-digital-currencies-may-replace-global-banking-system/
It’s the £800,000,000,000 of spending he controls, that causes inflation.
Want to reduce inflation, reduce that £800bn.
..The essence, of course, is that, for all the empty generalisations, all the promises and all that new world, there was nothing there. This Bill demonstrates beyond peradventure that they did not know what they were doing. Six years on, they did not know what they were doing. They have now actually created a giant question mark over a whole realm of regulations that are the custodian that separates us from the law of the jungle. They are what defines a civilised society. At a time of economic stress, when we need desperately to increase the levels of investment in our economy, what have they provided? A giant question mark for anyone seeking to know whether to spend a penny piece in the United Kingdom economy. I beg noble Lords not to let this legislation leave this place unscathed...
We'll still have covid sequelae deaths for a while, but they should (hopefully) lift a bit too, as time goes by. The risk period for elevated heart issues/stroke issues seems to be highest over 1 to 2 years, and linked to the severity of the illness, so with reduced severity from widespread immunity (and protection from severe disease doesn't tend to erode like protection from infection), so hopefully those numbers will fall as well.