I can't wait for the first reporter to ask a government minister what the government's position on the Great Balloon War is. I also look forward to hearing the opposition spokesman explaining why the government is wrong and how much more Labour would spend to thwart this floating menace.
Wasn't H.G. Wells' The War In The Air basically World War Balloon?
Yes - with a fair bit of stumbling into heavy than air flight as well. One plot point is the secret of true heavy than air flight
Anderson will pull a few extra votes in in the Red Wall from RefUk sympathisers, but nowhere near enough to save the seats from going Labour en-masse.
On the other hand he is going to make it more difficult for Sunak to pull back former remain one-nation Tories in better off areas in the south and south-west.
Don't understand the strategy to be honest. Having Anderson saying one thing only for Sunak to have to keep telling us it is not party policy is just a recipe for division and chaos.
🔴 MIDLOTHIAN: former Gordon Brown No 10 adviser Kirsty McNeill picked as Labour candidate. Brown openly backed both McNeill & Douglas Alexander is this dual selection process.
New Labour is making a comeback thank God. We need the talent back
Must be desperate to ask for Brown's backing.
How dare a former Prime Minister and lifelong party member back people to be selected as candidates for the party! Bringing politics into politics…. A disgrace I tell you…..
Brown was bonkers
Compared to some in modern politics, boring and normal.
Seeing a problem in a former PM backing candidates is ridiculous.
In my view this is a great turnout driver for the LDs. Anderson represents everything that LDs oppose and this is a good peg to get attention. The locals are all about turnout and Anderson represents everything that LDs abhor.
There's a long line of very very socially conservative MPs in the Conservative Party. In the past, they've tended to be unpromoted mavericks. People like Peter Griffis, Teresa Gorman and Andrew Rosindell have been allowed to strut their stuff on the backbenches, but no more than that.
And whilst Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party is a non job (see Jeffrey Archer) it does mean that Anderson's views will be more on the national media and come with a stamp of approval. And yes, there are places where they will be a positive, but this hurts the party more than it benefits.
Anderson is there to tickle the tummy of a slightly different demographic than museli munching LibDem switchers in South West London.
He's projecting an image of the Tories that predates Cameron, maybe would be more in tune with the Tory party of the 50s. I would suggest that will lose them votes overall with today's electorate. A net negative for them, is he the best that Rishi could come up with?
Cameron failed to win a majority in 2010 appealing to North London Guardian readers and the upper middle classes. He won a majority in 2015 appealing more to the likes of Anderson as well as the upper middle classes. Boris won a bigger majority in 2019 appealing to UKIP voters from 2015 and Labour Leave voters and won almost all the likes of Anderson as well as most of the upper middle classes
I don't believe 30p Lee is the pantomime villain character he has settled upon. There are some innately really nasty b******* in senior Conservative Party positions but I suspect with Lee it's all an act.
In my view this is a great turnout driver for the LDs. Anderson represents everything that LDs oppose and this is a good peg to get attention. The locals are all about turnout and Anderson represents everything that LDs abhor.
There's a long line of very very socially conservative MPs in the Conservative Party. In the past, they've tended to be unpromoted mavericks. People like Peter Griffis, Teresa Gorman and Andrew Rosindell have been allowed to strut their stuff on the backbenches, but no more than that.
And whilst Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party is a non job (see Jeffrey Archer) it does mean that Anderson's views will be more on the national media and come with a stamp of approval. And yes, there are places where they will be a positive, but this hurts the party more than it benefits.
Does it? There are more redwall and lower middle class and working class Leave voting Conservative v Labour marginals than bluewall and upper middle class Remain voting Tory v LD marginals
Anderson is there to tickle the tummy of a slightly different demographic than museli munching LibDem switchers in South West London.
He's projecting an image of the Tories that predates Cameron, maybe would be more in tune with the Tory party of the 50s. I would suggest that will lose them votes overall with today's electorate. A net negative for them, is he the best that Rishi could come up with?
Cameron failed to win a majority in 2010 appealing to North London Guardian readers and the upper middle classes. He won a majority in 2015 appealing more to the likes of Anderson as well as the upper middle classes. Boris won a bigger majority in 2019 appealing to UKIP voters from 2015 and Labour Leave voters and won almost all the likes of Anderson as well as most of the upper middle classes
We shall see. Looks like you're clutching at straws.
Anderson is there to tickle the tummy of a slightly different demographic than museli munching LibDem switchers in South West London.
He's projecting an image of the Tories that predates Cameron, maybe would be more in tune with the Tory party of the 50s. I would suggest that will lose them votes overall with today's electorate. A net negative for them, is he the best that Rishi could come up with?
Cameron failed to win a majority in 2010 appealing to North London Guardian readers and the upper middle classes. He won a majority in 2015 appealing more to the likes of Anderson as well as the upper middle classes. Boris won a bigger majority in 2019 appealing to UKIP voters from 2015 and Labour Leave voters and won almost all the likes of Anderson as well as most of the upper middle classes
I don't believe 30p Lee is the pantomime villain character he has settled upon. There are some innately really nasty b******* in senior Conservative Party positions but I suspect with Lee it's all an act.
Absolutely. He's putting it on to demonstrate his ultra-zealotry to his new party. Look how far I have left behind the Labour party! Problem is that people can't just laugh him off. Vice Chair of the Tory Party speaking, not the MP for Red Wall ByeBye.
Anderson is there to tickle the tummy of a slightly different demographic than museli munching LibDem switchers in South West London.
He's projecting an image of the Tories that predates Cameron, maybe would be more in tune with the Tory party of the 50s. I would suggest that will lose them votes overall with today's electorate. A net negative for them, is he the best that Rishi could come up with?
Cameron failed to win a majority in 2010 appealing to North London Guardian readers and the upper middle classes. He won a majority in 2015 appealing more to the likes of Anderson as well as the upper middle classes. Boris won a bigger majority in 2019 appealing to UKIP voters from 2015 and Labour Leave voters and won almost all the likes of Anderson as well as most of the upper middle classes
I don't believe 30p Lee is the pantomime villain character he has settled upon. There are some innately really nasty b******* in senior Conservative Party positions but I suspect with Lee it's all an act.
Absolutely. He's putting it on to demonstrate his ultra-zealotry to his new party. Look how far I have left behind the Labour party! Problem is that people can't just laugh him off. Vice Chair of the Tory Party speaking, not the MP for Red Wall ByeBye.
I suppose if the Tories win he is heralded as the hero who turned enough heads, and if he and the Conservatives lose he is a shoo into Gbeebies.
Anderson is there to tickle the tummy of a slightly different demographic than museli munching LibDem switchers in South West London.
He's projecting an image of the Tories that predates Cameron, maybe would be more in tune with the Tory party of the 50s. I would suggest that will lose them votes overall with today's electorate. A net negative for them, is he the best that Rishi could come up with?
Cameron failed to win a majority in 2010 appealing to North London Guardian readers and the upper middle classes. He won a majority in 2015 appealing more to the likes of Anderson as well as the upper middle classes. Boris won a bigger majority in 2019 appealing to UKIP voters from 2015 and Labour Leave voters and won almost all the likes of Anderson as well as most of the upper middle classes
I don't believe 30p Lee is the pantomime villain character he has settled upon. There are some innately really nasty b******* in senior Conservative Party positions but I suspect with Lee it's all an act.
Absolutely. He's putting it on to demonstrate his ultra-zealotry to his new party. Look how far I have left behind the Labour party! Problem is that people can't just laugh him off. Vice Chair of the Tory Party speaking, not the MP for Red Wall ByeBye.
I suppose if the Tories win he is heralded as the hero who turned enough heads, and if he and the Conservatives lose he is a shoo into Gbeebies.
The business model for GBeebies must make for interesting reading. They seem to be having trouble keeping actual journalists - having one of them told to pay their OFCOM fine is "interesting". And frankly, aren't their few viewers dying off? They need to be working on a new generation of radicalised morons, and various polling and research seems to be demonstrating that the traditional rightward shift as you get older isn't happening.
A friend of a friend went out canvassing in Maidenhead for the Conservatives over the weekend (there are local elections coming up, so they're talking to known Conservatives and probable Conservatives in seats they currently hold).
Actual figures of these previously canvassed Cs and Ps for the Saturday morning session:
17 Against 10 Undecided (considering Conservative) 3 Strong Liberal 2 Liberal/Conservative Waverer 2 Strong Conservative 1 Probable Conservative
What he has done quite effectively is to flush out those who are always itching to denigrate as thick, those with different views to their own. The fact it is so often well-heeled m/c lefty liberals is just a bonus.
Anderson is there to tickle the tummy of a slightly different demographic than museli munching LibDem switchers in South West London.
He's projecting an image of the Tories that predates Cameron, maybe would be more in tune with the Tory party of the 50s. I would suggest that will lose them votes overall with today's electorate. A net negative for them, is he the best that Rishi could come up with?
Cameron failed to win a majority in 2010 appealing to North London Guardian readers and the upper middle classes. He won a majority in 2015 appealing more to the likes of Anderson as well as the upper middle classes. Boris won a bigger majority in 2019 appealing to UKIP voters from 2015 and Labour Leave voters and won almost all the likes of Anderson as well as most of the upper middle classes
I don't believe 30p Lee is the pantomime villain character he has settled upon. There are some innately really nasty b******* in senior Conservative Party positions but I suspect with Lee it's all an act.
It's not pantomime villain though is it? The polls state about half the country supports the death penalty. Lots of people regard the poor as dysfunctional and think the state is too soft on miscreants. Maybe that's why Anderson is more of a lightning rod for the left than other Tories who've obviously done bad things - Baroness Mone, Nadhim Zahawi, Boris Johnson - whilst their actions may be reprehensible there isn't anyone who would actually defend them for it.*
Alternatively there may be another answer. Whilst supporting the death penalty might not on the surface seem as bad as questionable business dealings (Mone) threatening journalists for telling the truth (Zahawi) or cavorting with oligarchs (Johnson), for the class obsessed English it is actually something worse. Uncouth. Perhaps it's just plain old snobbery?
*Boris' admirers tend to think he should be forgiven any indiscretions or he was stitched up which is slightly different.
A friend of a friend went out canvassing in Maidenhead for the Conservatives over the weekend (there are local elections coming up, so they're talking to known Conservatives and probable Conservatives in seats they currently hold).
Actual figures of these previously canvassed Cs and Ps for the Saturday morning session:
17 Against 10 Undecided (considering Conservative) 3 Strong Liberal 2 Liberal/Conservative Waverer 2 Strong Conservative 1 Probable Conservative
The Tories don’t need these elitist museli-munching, income earning, BBC-watching, latte-sipping arseholes.
In my view this is a great turnout driver for the LDs. Anderson represents everything that LDs oppose and this is a good peg to get attention. The locals are all about turnout and Anderson represents everything that LDs abhor.
There's a long line of very very socially conservative MPs in the Conservative Party. In the past, they've tended to be unpromoted mavericks. People like Peter Griffis, Teresa Gorman and Andrew Rosindell have been allowed to strut their stuff on the backbenches, but no more than that.
And whilst Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party is a non job (see Jeffrey Archer) it does mean that Anderson's views will be more on the national media and come with a stamp of approval. And yes, there are places where they will be a positive, but this hurts the party more than it benefits.
Does it? There are more redwall and lower middle class and working class Leave voting Conservative v Labour marginals than bluewall and upper middle class Remain voting Tory v LD marginals
I suspect some of his rants go down poorly in the Red Wall, particularly foodbank users. I don't think Red Wall voters (assuming the Eed Wall exists as a distinct place) are as "socially conservative" as many Tories at head office believe. The world is more complicated than that.
That said, I would prefer my party to pick more positive, pro LD campaigns than such negative ones.
What he has done quite effectively is to flush out those who are always itching to denigrate as thick, those with different views to their own. The fact it is so often well-heeled m/c lefty liberals is just a bonus.
Hi, lefty liberal here. My point isn't that the people who hold his views are thick. Its that far far fewer people actually hold those views than he thinks. He's cunning enough to think that pile on the Jeremy Clarkson politics will hold his seat. It won't. He should know how red wall Labour voters think, he was in the same party as most of them for a long time. That those voters went Tory once for a specific reason doesn't mean that they are desperate to have nurses put in the stocks for being broke.
Anderson is there to tickle the tummy of a slightly different demographic than museli munching LibDem switchers in South West London.
Yep but will cost the Tories more votes (and way more seats) than his views will retain.
Depdends on whether you think the 2019 strategy was the start of something clever, or something a bit foolish.
Red Wall theory was that there were a lot of older voters who had bought their council houses in northern towns who historically hadn't voted Conservative but should have. The trick to getting them on the blue side was to chuck them some red meat on social issues.
In 2019, this looked brilliant, because the younger, more liberal Conservatives didn't really have anywhere else to go. Thanks Jeremy. So it was a big, potenitally decisive vote grab.
From the perspective of 2023, it looks less smart, because posh snobby liberal elite voters (the sort who have been Conservative in most previous generations) are driven away by Anderson-style politics. And it's not obvious that's a good trade for the Conservatives. That's before considering that the gap between the socially conservative rhetoric on scroungers, criminals and boat people and the incompetent reality. It's quite possible that by 2024, the Conservatives will be pleasing approximately nobody.
The calculation was that graduate voters won't vote Cons
Anderson is there to tickle the tummy of a slightly different demographic than museli munching LibDem switchers in South West London.
He's projecting an image of the Tories that predates Cameron, maybe would be more in tune with the Tory party of the 50s. I would suggest that will lose them votes overall with today's electorate. A net negative for them, is he the best that Rishi could come up with?
Cameron failed to win a majority in 2010 appealing to North London Guardian readers and the upper middle classes. He won a majority in 2015 appealing more to the likes of Anderson as well as the upper middle classes. Boris won a bigger majority in 2019 appealing to UKIP voters from 2015 and Labour Leave voters and won almost all the likes of Anderson as well as most of the upper middle classes
I don't believe 30p Lee is the pantomime villain character he has settled upon. There are some innately really nasty b******* in senior Conservative Party positions but I suspect with Lee it's all an act.
It's not pantomime villain though is it? The polls state about half the country supports the death penalty. Lots of people regard the poor as dysfunctional and think the state is too soft on miscreants. Maybe that's why Anderson is more of a lightning rod for the left than other Tories who've obviously done bad things - Baroness Mone, Nadhim Zahawi, Boris Johnson - whilst their actions may be reprehensible there isn't anyone who would actually defend them for it.*
Alternatively there may be another answer. Whilst supporting the death penalty might not on the surface seem as bad as questionable business dealings (Mone) threatening journalists for telling the truth (Zahawi) or cavorting with oligarchs (Johnson), for the class obsessed English it is actually something worse. Uncouth. Perhaps it's just plain old snobbery?
*Boris' admirers tend to think he should be forgiven any indiscretions or he was stitched up which is slightly different.
Much as Dan Hodges talks out of his arse sometimes, he made a very good point that the reaction to Anderson's comments has drawn out the latent snobbery on the left about the socially conservative plebs and the petit bourgeois. I don't think that helps Labour.
With regards to the LDs though, their target vote is well-off graduates who are think of themselves as socially liberal but who are also concerned enough about their own wealth to not vote Labour in case it means higher taxes. So probably makes sense for them to highlight this *
* with the caveat that in many of their target seats, there are often pockets of poorer more socially conservative areas
As a constant lurker I rarely contribute, but as a constituent of the egregious Mr. Anderson I feel I must. He is of course not intelligent but cunning; he was not only a Labour councillor previously but the election agent for the previous Labour MP, Gloria di Piero. He has gone from that to being the deputy leader of the Tory party in 5 years, and I don't suppose his views have changed in that time, but he now feels it is more convenient to express them. It is fair to say that what he says chimes with the general feelings of many people in Ashfield, particularly over immigration. However, he was elected last time because of two special factors: Jeremy Corbin and Brexit. The hatred for the former and enthusiasm for the latter was palpable, but they don't apply this time around. His love for publicity is a benefit for a politician, but some of his utterances antagonise people, for example attacks on striking nurses. I think he will lose his seat next time. Flag · Off Topic Like
A friend of a friend went out canvassing in Maidenhead for the Conservatives over the weekend (there are local elections coming up, so they're talking to known Conservatives and probable Conservatives in seats they currently hold).
Actual figures of these previously canvassed Cs and Ps for the Saturday morning session:
17 Against 10 Undecided (considering Conservative) 3 Strong Liberal 2 Liberal/Conservative Waverer 2 Strong Conservative 1 Probable Conservative
Oof. That's pretty brutal. I actually feel sorry for the canvassers.
In my view this is a great turnout driver for the LDs. Anderson represents everything that LDs oppose and this is a good peg to get attention. The locals are all about turnout and Anderson represents everything that LDs abhor.
There's a long line of very very socially conservative MPs in the Conservative Party. In the past, they've tended to be unpromoted mavericks. People like Peter Griffis, Teresa Gorman and Andrew Rosindell have been allowed to strut their stuff on the backbenches, but no more than that.
And whilst Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party is a non job (see Jeffrey Archer) it does mean that Anderson's views will be more on the national media and come with a stamp of approval. And yes, there are places where they will be a positive, but this hurts the party more than it benefits.
Does it? There are more redwall and lower middle class and working class Leave voting Conservative v Labour marginals than bluewall and upper middle class Remain voting Tory v LD marginals
I suspect some of his rants go down poorly in the Red Wall, particularly foodbank users. I don't think Red Wall voters (assuming the Eed Wall exists as a distinct place) are as "socially conservative" as many Tories at head office believe. The world is more complicated than that.
That said, I would prefer my party to pick more positive, pro LD campaigns than such negative ones.
I think too many believe that masses of very poor foodbank users voted Tory in Red Wall seats in the north. I'd be confident that the Tory voters were mainly l/m/c and w/c voters of the same ilk whove long voted Tory in places like north Kent. In the main not likely to be sympathetic to food bank users.
A friend of a friend went out canvassing in Maidenhead for the Conservatives over the weekend (there are local elections coming up, so they're talking to known Conservatives and probable Conservatives in seats they currently hold).
Actual figures of these previously canvassed Cs and Ps for the Saturday morning session:
17 Against 10 Undecided (considering Conservative) 3 Strong Liberal 2 Liberal/Conservative Waverer 2 Strong Conservative 1 Probable Conservative
In my view this is a great turnout driver for the LDs. Anderson represents everything that LDs oppose and this is a good peg to get attention. The locals are all about turnout and Anderson represents everything that LDs abhor.
There's a long line of very very socially conservative MPs in the Conservative Party. In the past, they've tended to be unpromoted mavericks. People like Peter Griffis, Teresa Gorman and Andrew Rosindell have been allowed to strut their stuff on the backbenches, but no more than that.
And whilst Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party is a non job (see Jeffrey Archer) it does mean that Anderson's views will be more on the national media and come with a stamp of approval. And yes, there are places where they will be a positive, but this hurts the party more than it benefits.
Does it? There are more redwall and lower middle class and working class Leave voting Conservative v Labour marginals than bluewall and upper middle class Remain voting Tory v LD marginals
I suspect some of his rants go down poorly in the Red Wall, particularly foodbank users. I don't think Red Wall voters (assuming the Eed Wall exists as a distinct place) are as "socially conservative" as many Tories at head office believe. The world is more complicated than that.
That said, I would prefer my party to pick more positive, pro LD campaigns than such negative ones.
As @FrankBooth said, more than half the country support bringing back the death penalty yet it is a view that, if you listened to the current orthodoxy, is very much a minority held opinion. I think you'll find there a lot of people out there who may not publicly express their views but are of a similar mindset.
In my view this is a great turnout driver for the LDs. Anderson represents everything that LDs oppose and this is a good peg to get attention. The locals are all about turnout and Anderson represents everything that LDs abhor.
They can abhor all they want. It didn't stop them being part of a government under whom food bank use went up massively.
As a constant lurker I rarely contribute, but as a constituent of the egregious Mr. Anderson I feel I must. He is of course not intelligent but cunning; he was not only a Labour councillor previously but the election agent for the previous Labour MP, Gloria di Piero. He has gone from that to being the deputy leader of the Tory party in 5 years, and I don't suppose his views have changed in that time, but he now feels it is more convenient to express them. It is fair to say that what he says chimes with the general feelings of many people in Ashfield, particularly over immigration. However, he was elected last time because of two special factors: Jeremy Corbin and Brexit. The hatred for the former and enthusiasm for the latter was palpable, but they don't apply this time around. His love for publicity is a benefit for a politician, but some of his utterances antagonise people, for example attacks on striking nurses. I think he will lose his seat next time. Flag · Off Topic Like
Welcome! Please post more - always far more valuable to hear opinions on the ground than ones like mine about what I think those opinions might be.
As you say, a lot of working class Labour voters are socially conservative and always have been. Jezbollah as Labour leader was Kryptonite to these voters, soft on crime and unpatriotic. No wonder they fell for Boris, especially when Boris was offering his oven-ready Brexit deal that would instantly solve all their problems.
In my view this is a great turnout driver for the LDs. Anderson represents everything that LDs oppose and this is a good peg to get attention. The locals are all about turnout and Anderson represents everything that LDs abhor.
There's a long line of very very socially conservative MPs in the Conservative Party. In the past, they've tended to be unpromoted mavericks. People like Peter Griffis, Teresa Gorman and Andrew Rosindell have been allowed to strut their stuff on the backbenches, but no more than that.
And whilst Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party is a non job (see Jeffrey Archer) it does mean that Anderson's views will be more on the national media and come with a stamp of approval. And yes, there are places where they will be a positive, but this hurts the party more than it benefits.
Does it? There are more redwall and lower middle class and working class Leave voting Conservative v Labour marginals than bluewall and upper middle class Remain voting Tory v LD marginals
I suspect some of his rants go down poorly in the Red Wall, particularly foodbank users. I don't think Red Wall voters (assuming the Eed Wall exists as a distinct place) are as "socially conservative" as many Tories at head office believe. The world is more complicated than that.
That said, I would prefer my party to pick more positive, pro LD campaigns than such negative ones.
I think too many believe that masses of very poor foodbank users voted Tory in Red Wall seats in the north. I'd be confident that the Tory voters were mainly l/m/c and w/c voters of the same ilk whove long voted Tory in places like north Kent. In the main not likely to be sympathetic to food bank users.
I note it's almost all middle-class chatterati who are condemning him. He isn't and so doesn't share their penchants and sense of guilt.
I don't agree with his views on the death penalty but almost half the public do, and he was also a single parent himself who raised two boys alone for years - in a poor area.
I also think much of the ire that's directed his way that comes from the Left is down to the fact he's a defector.
The appeal of Lee Anderson (to the Tories) is that he is in tune with the collective thoughts of "white van men", who are apparently now the key voting bloc, having turned from Farage to Boris.
Three problems, however: 1. People who drive white vans have a myriad of views. 2. There aren't actually that many people who drive white vans. 3. White van men don't include half the electorate, namely women.
In my view this is a great turnout driver for the LDs. Anderson represents everything that LDs oppose and this is a good peg to get attention. The locals are all about turnout and Anderson represents everything that LDs abhor.
They can abhor all they want. It didn't stop them being part of a government under whom food bank use went up massively.
The collective horror of the first half of the 2010s was that all politicians seemed to fall into the same hole where spending had to be heavily cut or the economy dies. As you say, some egregiously bad decisions were made under the coalition which my Labour rosette-wearing self was unhappy about. That Labour had proposed even tougher cuts was something we tried to pretend hadn't been real.
We should have copied European countries, said stuff the deficit and not tret people like dirt. But there wasn't any political will for it.
A friend of a friend went out canvassing in Maidenhead for the Conservatives over the weekend (there are local elections coming up, so they're talking to known Conservatives and probable Conservatives in seats they currently hold).
Actual figures of these previously canvassed Cs and Ps for the Saturday morning session:
17 Against 10 Undecided (considering Conservative) 3 Strong Liberal 2 Liberal/Conservative Waverer 2 Strong Conservative 1 Probable Conservative
Oof. That's pretty brutal. I actually feel sorry for the canvassers.
If Maidenhead is anything like Guildford, it's actually not too bad, mostly people feeling sorry for you and saying a variation of "it must be tough with what's happening nationally so you're brave for coming out, but I can't vote for you lot at the moment". If you're lucky, it'll be followed up with "and I'll be supporting the Lib Dems/local insane independent group"; if you aren't, it'll be followed with a polite version of "please fuck off and leave me alone because I have better things to do".
USAF E-3 Sentry & KC-135 that were in orbit above Lake Michigan are now maneuvering to that AO.
I find it really quite hard to believe that they are all foolishly chasing balloons
🤷♂️
I think they're chasing around after things that they don't know what they are until they get to them. Surveillance of airspace is clearly not as complete as we might imagine.
If it's Chinese spy balloons then they want to know that and get a handle on the scale of it. But maybe there are also long endurance Chinese spy drones of various other sorts too. I know various types of drones that can stay airborne for a long time are being developed in Western countries.
USAF E-3 Sentry & KC-135 that were in orbit above Lake Michigan are now maneuvering to that AO.
I find it really quite hard to believe that they are all foolishly chasing balloons
🤷♂️
In the 1950s, when the US tried sending recon balloons over the Soviet Union, IIRC a non trivial number of Soviet fighter pilots died tried to shoot them down. High altitude jet flight was very chancy back then - they were zoom climbing like a rocket, way above their aerodynamic flight capability. Completely out of control. Quite often they couldn’t regain control on the way back down….
If we had a referendum on the ECHR what would the result be?
A way to kick the government, because that is what referendums are.
The other result will be that the electorate don't understand properly what the consequences of their votes are.
The trouble is that the migrant boats issue needs dealing with. I don't think it is properly understood the legal revolution we have engaged in over recent decades. If people feel disenchanted by legal rulings that they have no means of being able to address, the likely reaction is eternal populism.
The boats issue can be dealt with by having processing centres and other methods of application in France, then provide them with ferry tickets. It would be a helluva lot cheaper, safer and more humane. It doesn't tickle the fancies of the core Tory/ukip vote though, never mind the Daily Mail and it's mouth breathing patrons.
What happens if someone from, say, Albania or Egypt decides that his odds of being accepted at a processing centre in France are fairly slim, so might as well cross the Channel anyway? Or he does try the processing centre and gets rejected - are we then going to be detaining and deporting these people from France to their home countries?
...maybe...that's up to the French.
Some simple solutions
1) take Calais back from the French. The. The migrants will be in the U.K. 2) anyone crossing the channel illegally and declaring they have no papers is automatically deemed to have enlisted in the Royal Navy. 3) anyone employing an illegal is subject to a £100k fine, immigrant gets half and indefinite leave to remain.
Which do you like best?
You forgot 4) id them as a monkey and send them to hartlepool claiming they are a french spy
What he has done quite effectively is to flush out those who are always itching to denigrate as thick, those with different views to their own. The fact it is so often well-heeled m/c lefty liberals is just a bonus.
I don't really have a problem with Lee Anderson, even though I don't agree with him.
I do with David Warburton, Imran Ahmed, Chris Pincher, Jared O'Mara and Lloyd Russell-Moyle.
I don't think these tactics being used against Lee Anderson will work in Red Wall areas. They may work elsewhere.
You think anyone who has ever experienced a noisy or disruptive neighbour is going to be clutching their pearls over his statement about problem tenants?
Please drop me 48,000 off and I will deliver them myself in Ashfield.
#winninghere
Its a fascinating bit of politics. Anderson thinks there are votes in his own constituency attacking his own constituents. One thing that all of these Tory MPs do is have their SPADs block everyone - and I do mean everyone - who calls them out on social media.
So he probably sees people saying "good for you Lee" and thinks there's 48,000 who agree with him. Whereas in reality there's 48 agreeing with him and he's blocked from hearing from everyone else.
There are lots of people who voted for Lee, who agree with him.
There are also probably quite a few who have voted for him in the past, and who (for example) feel that his views on nurses and food banks would be a little less hypocritical if MPs hadn't just voted themselves a large pay rise.
But this isn't really about Lee. It's about libdems holding onto council seats in the south east of England.
Yep this is the real point. Now that he has moved from being a gobby back bencher to Deputy Chairman of the Tory party, the Lib Dems and others can quite rightly use his words to hold up a mirror to the whole Tory party. They don't have top go near his constituency nor pay any attention to how this influences results in Ashfield. They can simply point to him as the new face of the Tory party and ask if that is how voters in southern seats want their country to be governed.
Anderson will pull a few extra votes in in the Red Wall from RefUk sympathisers, but nowhere near enough to save the seats from going Labour en-masse.
On the other hand he is going to make it more difficult for Sunak to pull back former remain one-nation Tories in better off areas in the south and south-west.
Don't understand the strategy to be honest. Having Anderson saying one thing only for Sunak to have to keep telling us it is not party policy is just a recipe for division and chaos.
I think you're kidding yourself that the Sunak/Hunt/Osborne net zero pro-EU corporatist nexus has a natural constituency of any size. It is in actuality a parasite that has attached itself to the Tory party and convinced enough of its MPs (though not its membership, or votership) that they need it to govern. Nobody on the right *wants* what these gargoyles are offering, because it's nothing good. These sorts of policies have more of a natural home within the Labour Party, because that's the party of those employed directly or indirectly by the state. I don't know who you vote for, but I have my doubts that it's the Tories, even in their Sunakite form.
*Edit - sorry for the messed up quotes - blame Vanilla.
A friend of a friend went out canvassing in Maidenhead for the Conservatives over the weekend (there are local elections coming up, so they're talking to known Conservatives and probable Conservatives in seats they currently hold).
Actual figures of these previously canvassed Cs and Ps for the Saturday morning session:
17 Against 10 Undecided (considering Conservative) 3 Strong Liberal 2 Liberal/Conservative Waverer 2 Strong Conservative 1 Probable Conservative
Oof. That's pretty brutal. I actually feel sorry for the canvassers.
If Maidenhead is anything like Guildford, it's actually not too bad, mostly people feeling sorry for you and saying a variation of "it must be tough with what's happening nationally so you're brave for coming out, but I can't vote for you lot at the moment". If you're lucky, it'll be followed up with "and I'll be supporting the Lib Dems/local insane independent group"; if you aren't, it'll be followed with a polite version of "please fuck off and leave me alone because I have better things to do".
The "please fuck off and leave me alone because I have better things to do" Party would win a landslide.
USAF E-3 Sentry & KC-135 that were in orbit above Lake Michigan are now maneuvering to that AO.
I find it really quite hard to believe that they are all foolishly chasing balloons
🤷♂️
In the 1950s, when the US tried sending recon balloons over the Soviet Union, IIRC a non trivial number of Soviet fighter pilots died tried to shoot them down. High altitude jet flight was very chancy back then - they were zoom climbing like a rocket, way above their aerodynamic flight capability. Completely out of control. Quite often they couldn’t regain control on the way back down….
A friend of a friend went out canvassing in Maidenhead for the Conservatives over the weekend (there are local elections coming up, so they're talking to known Conservatives and probable Conservatives in seats they currently hold).
Actual figures of these previously canvassed Cs and Ps for the Saturday morning session:
17 Against 10 Undecided (considering Conservative) 3 Strong Liberal 2 Liberal/Conservative Waverer 2 Strong Conservative 1 Probable Conservative
Oof. That's pretty brutal. I actually feel sorry for the canvassers.
If Maidenhead is anything like Guildford, it's actually not too bad, mostly people feeling sorry for you and saying a variation of "it must be tough with what's happening nationally so you're brave for coming out, but I can't vote for you lot at the moment". If you're lucky, it'll be followed up with "and I'll be supporting the Lib Dems/local insane independent group"; if you aren't, it'll be followed with a polite version of "please fuck off and leave me alone because I have better things to do".
If they are ex-Conservatives they are unlikely to be abusive to a Conservative canvasser - it's more common they want to share their change of mind and reasons.
Very rarely there is one who is, but most people aren't like that.
A friend of a friend went out canvassing in Maidenhead for the Conservatives over the weekend (there are local elections coming up, so they're talking to known Conservatives and probable Conservatives in seats they currently hold).
Actual figures of these previously canvassed Cs and Ps for the Saturday morning session:
17 Against 10 Undecided (considering Conservative) 3 Strong Liberal 2 Liberal/Conservative Waverer 2 Strong Conservative 1 Probable Conservative
Oof. That's pretty brutal. I actually feel sorry for the canvassers.
If Maidenhead is anything like Guildford, it's actually not too bad, mostly people feeling sorry for you and saying a variation of "it must be tough with what's happening nationally so you're brave for coming out, but I can't vote for you lot at the moment". If you're lucky, it'll be followed up with "and I'll be supporting the Lib Dems/local insane independent group"; if you aren't, it'll be followed with a polite version of "please fuck off and leave me alone because I have better things to do".
"local insane independent group" - love that. I am enjoying the bunfight back in my old gaff where the local insane independents have deselected one councillor (as 1 member disappears in May with a boundary change). He's not a relative / best mate of the mayor like the others and is vowing to fight them as an independent independent. Should be good fun, and let my friends in Labour take at least one seat in the melee.
What he has done quite effectively is to flush out those who are always itching to denigrate as thick, those with different views to their own. The fact it is so often well-heeled m/c lefty liberals is just a bonus.
Hi, lefty liberal here. My point isn't that the people who hold his views are thick. Its that far far fewer people actually hold those views than he thinks. He's cunning enough to think that pile on the Jeremy Clarkson politics will hold his seat. It won't. He should know how red wall Labour voters think, he was in the same party as most of them for a long time. That those voters went Tory once for a specific reason doesn't mean that they are desperate to have nurses put in the stocks for being broke.
Couple of things I didn't realise before I just checked;
The Conservative share of the vote went down between 2017 and 2019. Anderson won because the Labour share fell even more. The big gains had been made by Anderson's predecessor.
Anderson isn't the first Conservative MP for Ashfield. Tim Smith got there first in a by-election in 1977.
But the key thing is that, for all the red wall hype, not all Conservative voters in red wall seats do so for Andersonism. I wonder what the balance of attraction and repulsion is?
Balloons. - Chinese New Year fell on January 22nd (Sunday), and the festival went on until February 5th. They send lanterns up in the sky. Perhaps the space intruders are giant Chinese lanterns,
I don't think these tactics being used against Lee Anderson will work in Red Wall areas. They may work elsewhere.
You think anyone who has ever experienced a noisy or disruptive neighbour is going to be clutching their pearls over his statement about problem tenants?
Please drop me 48,000 off and I will deliver them myself in Ashfield.
#winninghere
Its a fascinating bit of politics. Anderson thinks there are votes in his own constituency attacking his own constituents. One thing that all of these Tory MPs do is have their SPADs block everyone - and I do mean everyone - who calls them out on social media.
So he probably sees people saying "good for you Lee" and thinks there's 48,000 who agree with him. Whereas in reality there's 48 agreeing with him and he's blocked from hearing from everyone else.
There are lots of people who voted for Lee, who agree with him.
There are also probably quite a few who have voted for him in the past, and who (for example) feel that his views on nurses and food banks would be a little less hypocritical if MPs hadn't just voted themselves a large pay rise.
But this isn't really about Lee. It's about libdems holding onto council seats in the south east of England.
Yep this is the real point. Now that he has moved from being a gobby back bencher to Deputy Chairman of the Tory party, the Lib Dems and others can quite rightly use his words to hold up a mirror to the whole Tory party. They don't have top go near his constituency nor pay any attention to how this influences results in Ashfield. They can simply point to him as the new face of the Tory party and ask if that is how voters in southern seats want their country to be governed.
Anderson will pull a few extra votes in in the Red Wall from RefUk sympathisers, but nowhere near enough to save the seats from going Labour en-masse.
On the other hand he is going to make it more difficult for Sunak to pull back former remain one-nation Tories in better off areas in the south and south-west.
Don't understand the strategy to be honest. Having Anderson saying one thing only for Sunak to have to keep telling us it is not party policy is just a recipe for division and chaos.
I think you're kidding yourself that the Sunak/Hunt/Osborne net zero pro-EU corporatist nexus has a natural constituency of any size. It is in actuality a parasite that has attached itself to the Tory party and convinced enough of its MPs (though not its membership, or votership) that they need it to govern. Nobody on the right *wants* what these gargoyles are offering, because it's nothing good. These sorts of policies have more of a natural home within the Labour Party, because that's the party of those employed directly or indirectly by the state. I don't know who you vote for, but I have my doubts that it's the Tories, even in their Sunakite form.
*Edit - sorry for the messed up quotes - blame Vanilla.
I actually knew that was you just from skimming two sentences, even before scrolling up to confirm your name.
I don't think these tactics being used against Lee Anderson will work in Red Wall areas. They may work elsewhere.
You think anyone who has ever experienced a noisy or disruptive neighbour is going to be clutching their pearls over his statement about problem tenants?
Please drop me 48,000 off and I will deliver them myself in Ashfield.
#winninghere
Its a fascinating bit of politics. Anderson thinks there are votes in his own constituency attacking his own constituents. One thing that all of these Tory MPs do is have their SPADs block everyone - and I do mean everyone - who calls them out on social media.
So he probably sees people saying "good for you Lee" and thinks there's 48,000 who agree with him. Whereas in reality there's 48 agreeing with him and he's blocked from hearing from everyone else.
There are lots of people who voted for Lee, who agree with him.
There are also probably quite a few who have voted for him in the past, and who (for example) feel that his views on nurses and food banks would be a little less hypocritical if MPs hadn't just voted themselves a large pay rise.
But this isn't really about Lee. It's about libdems holding onto council seats in the south east of England.
Yep this is the real point. Now that he has moved from being a gobby back bencher to Deputy Chairman of the Tory party, the Lib Dems and others can quite rightly use his words to hold up a mirror to the whole Tory party. They don't have top go near his constituency nor pay any attention to how this influences results in Ashfield. They can simply point to him as the new face of the Tory party and ask if that is how voters in southern seats want their country to be governed.
Anderson will pull a few extra votes in in the Red Wall from RefUk sympathisers, but nowhere near enough to save the seats from going Labour en-masse.
On the other hand he is going to make it more difficult for Sunak to pull back former remain one-nation Tories in better off areas in the south and south-west.
Don't understand the strategy to be honest. Having Anderson saying one thing only for Sunak to have to keep telling us it is not party policy is just a recipe for division and chaos.
I think you're kidding yourself that the Sunak/Hunt/Osborne net zero pro-EU corporatist nexus ...
I suppose you think Sunak voting for Brexit was part of some fiendish conspiracy orchestrated by vegan meteorologists. Or something.
What he has done quite effectively is to flush out those who are always itching to denigrate as thick, those with different views to their own. The fact it is so often well-heeled m/c lefty liberals is just a bonus.
Hi, lefty liberal here. My point isn't that the people who hold his views are thick. Its that far far fewer people actually hold those views than he thinks.
In my view this is a great turnout driver for the LDs. Anderson represents everything that LDs oppose and this is a good peg to get attention. The locals are all about turnout and Anderson represents everything that LDs abhor.
There's a long line of very very socially conservative MPs in the Conservative Party. In the past, they've tended to be unpromoted mavericks. People like Peter Griffis, Teresa Gorman and Andrew Rosindell have been allowed to strut their stuff on the backbenches, but no more than that.
And whilst Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party is a non job (see Jeffrey Archer) it does mean that Anderson's views will be more on the national media and come with a stamp of approval. And yes, there are places where they will be a positive, but this hurts the party more than it benefits.
Does it? There are more redwall and lower middle class and working class Leave voting Conservative v Labour marginals than bluewall and upper middle class Remain voting Tory v LD marginals
I suspect some of his rants go down poorly in the Red Wall, particularly foodbank users. I don't think Red Wall voters (assuming the Eed Wall exists as a distinct place) are as "socially conservative" as many Tories at head office believe. The world is more complicated than that.
That said, I would prefer my party to pick more positive, pro LD campaigns than such negative ones.
As @FrankBooth said, more than half the country support bringing back the death penalty yet it is a view that, if you listened to the current orthodoxy, is very much a minority held opinion. I think you'll find there a lot of people out there who may not publicly express their views but are of a similar mindset.
No one is denying a capital punishment referendum would assist RedWall Conservatives and the tough on crime Conservatives in general. My point is Anderson is flying a kite for the party hierarchy. Such a policy platform is the last resort of scoundrels, but if winning is the only requirement why not?
Demanding that Ian Huntley deserves the ultimate sanction is an easy win, and anyone denying the ultimate sanction is appropriate for Ian Huntley can be cast as soft on crime.
Once again 48% of voters are going to be disappointed and once again suck it up. Probably much the same peer group who had to suck it up.in 2016.
What he has done quite effectively is to flush out those who are always itching to denigrate as thick, those with different views to their own. The fact it is so often well-heeled m/c lefty liberals is just a bonus.
Hi, lefty liberal here. My point isn't that the people who hold his views are thick. Its that far far fewer people actually hold those views than he thinks. He's cunning enough to think that pile on the Jeremy Clarkson politics will hold his seat. It won't. He should know how red wall Labour voters think, he was in the same party as most of them for a long time. That those voters went Tory once for a specific reason doesn't mean that they are desperate to have nurses put in the stocks for being broke.
Couple of things I didn't realise before I just checked;
The Conservative share of the vote went down between 2017 and 2019. Anderson won because the Labour share fell even more. The big gains had been made by Anderson's predecessor.
Anderson isn't the first Conservative MP for Ashfield. Tim Smith got there first in a by-election in 1977.
But the key thing is that, for all the red wall hype, not all Conservative voters in red wall seats do so for Andersonism. I wonder what the balance of attraction and repulsion is?
The key there is what happens to the Ashfield Independent vote, by and large pro-Brexit but anti Tory voters. Starmer doesn't need many to retake the seat. Con have never had more than about 40% of the vote there.
As a constant lurker I rarely contribute, but as a constituent of the egregious Mr. Anderson I feel I must. He is of course not intelligent but cunning; he was not only a Labour councillor previously but the election agent for the previous Labour MP, Gloria di Piero. He has gone from that to being the deputy leader of the Tory party in 5 years, and I don't suppose his views have changed in that time, but he now feels it is more convenient to express them. It is fair to say that what he says chimes with the general feelings of many people in Ashfield, particularly over immigration. However, he was elected last time because of two special factors: Jeremy Corbin and Brexit. The hatred for the former and enthusiasm for the latter was palpable, but they don't apply this time around. His love for publicity is a benefit for a politician, but some of his utterances antagonise people, for example attacks on striking nurses. I think he will lose his seat next time. Flag · Off Topic Like
Welcome! Please post more - always far more valuable to hear opinions on the ground than ones like mine about what I think those opinions might be.
As you say, a lot of working class Labour voters are socially conservative and always have been. Jezbollah as Labour leader was Kryptonite to these voters, soft on crime and unpatriotic. No wonder they fell for Boris, especially when Boris was offering his oven-ready Brexit deal that would instantly solve all their problems.
RP I think you, and probably the majority of us on here who are political nerds and pun obsessives, think that everyone sees, reads, analyses the way we do. We cannot understand why someone would vote for trump, vote for Anderson etc etc.
The thing is that 99% of voters see headlines, they have dyed in the wool opinions on politics (and woolydyed I hope you are bearing up and strong), they don’t look at nuance and small political issues.
Someone like Anderson is just another front in the political wall. A few thousand “red wall voters” see the press about his views, see he is vice chair of the Tories and like what he says, finally someone saying it like it should be (in their opinion).
So whilst a coalition inside the Tories is a nightmare for party unity in one way a coalition can also be very effective against a party such as the current Labour offering where they are trying to be tightly on-message but not actually saying what they will do, just what they wouldn’t do.
If you are a red wall voter what have you heard from Labour that resonates? What have they said that cuts through and makes you decide you will get off your arse and vote for them.
But then they see someone pilloried for being socially conservative and actually having a view and they might just relate - not on every issue but say “at least he’s not a party robot” etc.
So to cut through the balls I wrote, the Lee Anderson issue might cause us to hold our noses but he’s probably more attractive to a lot of voters than someone like Lisa Nandy because he has a profile and identity they can relate to. Be careful thinking he is toxic as he’s probably really not.
As a constant lurker I rarely contribute, but as a constituent of the egregious Mr. Anderson I feel I must. He is of course not intelligent but cunning; he was not only a Labour councillor previously but the election agent for the previous Labour MP, Gloria di Piero. He has gone from that to being the deputy leader of the Tory party in 5 years, and I don't suppose his views have changed in that time, but he now feels it is more convenient to express them. It is fair to say that what he says chimes with the general feelings of many people in Ashfield, particularly over immigration. However, he was elected last time because of two special factors: Jeremy Corbin and Brexit. The hatred for the former and enthusiasm for the latter was palpable, but they don't apply this time around. His love for publicity is a benefit for a politician, but some of his utterances antagonise people, for example attacks on striking nurses. I think he will lose his seat next time. Flag · Off Topic Like
Having read his wikipedia page, admittedly not a 24 carrot source, if Lee Anderson is the worst person in Britain I feel I can sleep easily in my liberal bed tonight.
In other news, Farage, after his one night stand with redwallers, appears to be going back to old UKIP and standing up for people on six figure incomes. Against the rise in corporation tax, dividends tax. Good for the small fraction of wealthy people who pay themselves through their own company rather than be self employed/PAYE but irrelevant to the vast majority of the country. Might help with donations though. More odiously he's claiming the appointment of Hunt represented a globalist coup and I think he meant it quite literally. I've defended him at times but he seems to have gone full bats**t on this one.
I don't think these tactics being used against Lee Anderson will work in Red Wall areas. They may work elsewhere.
You think anyone who has ever experienced a noisy or disruptive neighbour is going to be clutching their pearls over his statement about problem tenants?
Please drop me 48,000 off and I will deliver them myself in Ashfield.
#winninghere
Its a fascinating bit of politics. Anderson thinks there are votes in his own constituency attacking his own constituents. One thing that all of these Tory MPs do is have their SPADs block everyone - and I do mean everyone - who calls them out on social media.
So he probably sees people saying "good for you Lee" and thinks there's 48,000 who agree with him. Whereas in reality there's 48 agreeing with him and he's blocked from hearing from everyone else.
There are lots of people who voted for Lee, who agree with him.
There are also probably quite a few who have voted for him in the past, and who (for example) feel that his views on nurses and food banks would be a little less hypocritical if MPs hadn't just voted themselves a large pay rise.
But this isn't really about Lee. It's about libdems holding onto council seats in the south east of England.
Yep this is the real point. Now that he has moved from being a gobby back bencher to Deputy Chairman of the Tory party, the Lib Dems and others can quite rightly use his words to hold up a mirror to the whole Tory party. They don't have top go near his constituency nor pay any attention to how this influences results in Ashfield. They can simply point to him as the new face of the Tory party and ask if that is how voters in southern seats want their country to be governed.
Anderson will pull a few extra votes in in the Red Wall from RefUk sympathisers, but nowhere near enough to save the seats from going Labour en-masse.
On the other hand he is going to make it more difficult for Sunak to pull back former remain one-nation Tories in better off areas in the south and south-west.
Don't understand the strategy to be honest. Having Anderson saying one thing only for Sunak to have to keep telling us it is not party policy is just a recipe for division and chaos.
I think you're kidding yourself that the Sunak/Hunt/Osborne net zero pro-EU corporatist nexus ...
I suppose you think Sunak voting for Brexit was part of some fiendish conspiracy orchestrated by vegan meteorologists. Or something.
Since you rather pathetically snipped half the post you're arguing against, perhaps it's you who believes that.
I don't think these tactics being used against Lee Anderson will work in Red Wall areas. They may work elsewhere.
You think anyone who has ever experienced a noisy or disruptive neighbour is going to be clutching their pearls over his statement about problem tenants?
Please drop me 48,000 off and I will deliver them myself in Ashfield.
#winninghere
Its a fascinating bit of politics. Anderson thinks there are votes in his own constituency attacking his own constituents. One thing that all of these Tory MPs do is have their SPADs block everyone - and I do mean everyone - who calls them out on social media.
So he probably sees people saying "good for you Lee" and thinks there's 48,000 who agree with him. Whereas in reality there's 48 agreeing with him and he's blocked from hearing from everyone else.
There are lots of people who voted for Lee, who agree with him.
There are also probably quite a few who have voted for him in the past, and who (for example) feel that his views on nurses and food banks would be a little less hypocritical if MPs hadn't just voted themselves a large pay rise.
But this isn't really about Lee. It's about libdems holding onto council seats in the south east of England.
Yep this is the real point. Now that he has moved from being a gobby back bencher to Deputy Chairman of the Tory party, the Lib Dems and others can quite rightly use his words to hold up a mirror to the whole Tory party. They don't have top go near his constituency nor pay any attention to how this influences results in Ashfield. They can simply point to him as the new face of the Tory party and ask if that is how voters in southern seats want their country to be governed.
Anderson will pull a few extra votes in in the Red Wall from RefUk sympathisers, but nowhere near enough to save the seats from going Labour en-masse.
On the other hand he is going to make it more difficult for Sunak to pull back former remain one-nation Tories in better off areas in the south and south-west.
Don't understand the strategy to be honest. Having Anderson saying one thing only for Sunak to have to keep telling us it is not party policy is just a recipe for division and chaos.
I think you're kidding yourself that the Sunak/Hunt/Osborne net zero pro-EU corporatist nexus has a natural constituency of any size. It is in actuality a parasite that has attached itself to the Tory party and convinced enough of its MPs (though not its membership, or votership) that they need it to govern. Nobody on the right *wants* what these gargoyles are offering, because it's nothing good. These sorts of policies have more of a natural home within the Labour Party, because that's the party of those employed directly or indirectly by the state. I don't know who you vote for, but I have my doubts that it's the Tories, even in their Sunakite form.
*Edit - sorry for the messed up quotes - blame Vanilla.
I actually knew that was you just from skimming two sentences, even before scrolling up to confirm your name.
In my view this is a great turnout driver for the LDs. Anderson represents everything that LDs oppose and this is a good peg to get attention. The locals are all about turnout and Anderson represents everything that LDs abhor.
There's a long line of very very socially conservative MPs in the Conservative Party. In the past, they've tended to be unpromoted mavericks. People like Peter Griffis, Teresa Gorman and Andrew Rosindell have been allowed to strut their stuff on the backbenches, but no more than that.
And whilst Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party is a non job (see Jeffrey Archer) it does mean that Anderson's views will be more on the national media and come with a stamp of approval. And yes, there are places where they will be a positive, but this hurts the party more than it benefits.
Does it? There are more redwall and lower middle class and working class Leave voting Conservative v Labour marginals than bluewall and upper middle class Remain voting Tory v LD marginals
I suspect some of his rants go down poorly in the Red Wall, particularly foodbank users. I don't think Red Wall voters (assuming the Eed Wall exists as a distinct place) are as "socially conservative" as many Tories at head office believe. The world is more complicated than that.
That said, I would prefer my party to pick more positive, pro LD campaigns than such negative ones.
I think too many believe that masses of very poor foodbank users voted Tory in Red Wall seats in the north. I'd be confident that the Tory voters were mainly l/m/c and w/c voters of the same ilk whove long voted Tory in places like north Kent. In the main not likely to be sympathetic to food bank users.
I note it's almost all middle-class chatterati who are condemning him. He isn't and so doesn't share their penchants and sense of guilt.
I don't agree with his views on the death penalty but almost half the public do, and he was also a single parent himself who raised two boys alone for years - in a poor area.
I also think much of the ire that's directed his way that comes from the Left is down to the fact he's a defector.
People don't vote for people who despise them and their views. It's the single biggest underlying factor that has led to Labour losing a swathe of historically safe seats. By making his comments, Anderson is bringing a reaction from the left which reminds those voters why they left Labour.
I'd say Sunak will be mildly happy at the reaction here. As for the more socially liberal but wealthier households vulnerable to a LD a win, expect to hear a lot of highlighting of Labour's decision to end VAT on private school education and then attempting to pin down Ed Davey's position and / or whether he would support such a Labour plan. That will be a disproportionately sized issue in Blue Wall seats.
A friend of a friend went out canvassing in Maidenhead for the Conservatives over the weekend (there are local elections coming up, so they're talking to known Conservatives and probable Conservatives in seats they currently hold).
Actual figures of these previously canvassed Cs and Ps for the Saturday morning session:
17 Against 10 Undecided (considering Conservative) 3 Strong Liberal 2 Liberal/Conservative Waverer 2 Strong Conservative 1 Probable Conservative
Oof. That's pretty brutal. I actually feel sorry for the canvassers.
If Maidenhead is anything like Guildford, it's actually not too bad, mostly people feeling sorry for you and saying a variation of "it must be tough with what's happening nationally so you're brave for coming out, but I can't vote for you lot at the moment". If you're lucky, it'll be followed up with "and I'll be supporting the Lib Dems/local insane independent group"; if you aren't, it'll be followed with a polite version of "please fuck off and leave me alone because I have better things to do".
If they are ex-Conservatives they are unlikely to be abusive to a Conservative canvasser - it's more common they want to share their change of mind and reasons.
Very rarely there is one who is, but most people aren't like that.
Yes, as I said it's not too bad and most people feel sorry for you/are generally polite. But for canvassing purposes you generally want to find out their voting intention as rapidly as possible, rather than having a chat about exactly why they aren't voting for us. You can absolutely have persuasion discussions with voters, especially in smaller wards with a strong team; however it's not a good use of time in big wards with a small team.
Meanwhile, what the Tories hope Lee Anderson will let people not notice. From the office of Anderson's boss Mr Greg Hands
Another PPE VIP fast track scandal. Another spiv middle man operation buying stuff it had no experience of. Another 8 figure write-off for the taxpayer. Is there any reason at all that we used any of these companies? All they did was go on Ali Baba and buy stuff they had zero trading knowledge of. The government could have done that themselves. Or paid actual PPE companies. To buy PPE that doesn't just go in the bin as most of this did.
Was the main reason that didn't happen because the PPE companies weren't run by Tory donors / mates?
In my view this is a great turnout driver for the LDs. Anderson represents everything that LDs oppose and this is a good peg to get attention. The locals are all about turnout and Anderson represents everything that LDs abhor.
There's a long line of very very socially conservative MPs in the Conservative Party. In the past, they've tended to be unpromoted mavericks. People like Peter Griffis, Teresa Gorman and Andrew Rosindell have been allowed to strut their stuff on the backbenches, but no more than that.
And whilst Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party is a non job (see Jeffrey Archer) it does mean that Anderson's views will be more on the national media and come with a stamp of approval. And yes, there are places where they will be a positive, but this hurts the party more than it benefits.
Does it? There are more redwall and lower middle class and working class Leave voting Conservative v Labour marginals than bluewall and upper middle class Remain voting Tory v LD marginals
I suspect some of his rants go down poorly in the Red Wall, particularly foodbank users. I don't think Red Wall voters (assuming the Eed Wall exists as a distinct place) are as "socially conservative" as many Tories at head office believe. The world is more complicated than that.
That said, I would prefer my party to pick more positive, pro LD campaigns than such negative ones.
As @FrankBooth said, more than half the country support bringing back the death penalty yet it is a view that, if you listened to the current orthodoxy, is very much a minority held opinion. I think you'll find there a lot of people out there who may not publicly express their views but are of a similar mindset.
No one is denying a capital punishment referendum would assist RedWall Conservatives and the tough on crime Conservatives in general. My point is Anderson is flying a kite for the party hierarchy. Such a policy platform is the last resort of scoundrels, but if winning is the only requirement why not?
Demanding that Ian Huntley deserves the ultimate sanction is an easy win, and anyone denying the ultimate sanction is appropriate for Ian Huntley can be cast as soft on crime.
I don't have a particular view on capital punishment, apart from noting that the US States with it have higher murder rates than those without, suggesting its deterrent effect is not true.
I do wonder how many would actually switch party because of it. More likely it helps shore up a rapidly eroding core vote, on both sides.
As a constant lurker I rarely contribute, but as a constituent of the egregious Mr. Anderson I feel I must. He is of course not intelligent but cunning; he was not only a Labour councillor previously but the election agent for the previous Labour MP, Gloria di Piero. He has gone from that to being the deputy leader of the Tory party in 5 years, and I don't suppose his views have changed in that time, but he now feels it is more convenient to express them. It is fair to say that what he says chimes with the general feelings of many people in Ashfield, particularly over immigration. However, he was elected last time because of two special factors: Jeremy Corbin and Brexit. The hatred for the former and enthusiasm for the latter was palpable, but they don't apply this time around. His love for publicity is a benefit for a politician, but some of his utterances antagonise people, for example attacks on striking nurses. I think he will lose his seat next time. Flag · Off Topic Like
Welcome! Please post more - always far more valuable to hear opinions on the ground than ones like mine about what I think those opinions might be.
As you say, a lot of working class Labour voters are socially conservative and always have been. Jezbollah as Labour leader was Kryptonite to these voters, soft on crime and unpatriotic. No wonder they fell for Boris, especially when Boris was offering his oven-ready Brexit deal that would instantly solve all their problems.
RP I think you, and probably the majority of us on here who are political nerds and pun obsessives, think that everyone sees, reads, analyses the way we do. We cannot understand why someone would vote for trump, vote for Anderson etc etc.
The thing is that 99% of voters see headlines, they have dyed in the wool opinions on politics (and woolydyed I hope you are bearing up and strong), they don’t look at nuance and small political issues.
Someone like Anderson is just another front in the political wall. A few thousand “red wall voters” see the press about his views, see he is vice chair of the Tories and like what he says, finally someone saying it like it should be (in their opinion).
So whilst a coalition inside the Tories is a nightmare for party unity in one way a coalition can also be very effective against a party such as the current Labour offering where they are trying to be tightly on-message but not actually saying what they will do, just what they wouldn’t do.
If you are a red wall voter what have you heard from Labour that resonates? What have they said that cuts through and makes you decide you will get off your arse and vote for them.
But then they see someone pilloried for being socially conservative and actually having a view and they might just relate - not on every issue but say “at least he’s not a party robot” etc.
So to cut through the balls I wrote, the Lee Anderson issue might cause us to hold our noses but he’s probably more attractive to a lot of voters than someone like Lisa Nandy because he has a profile and identity they can relate to. Be careful thinking he is toxic as he’s probably really not.
Oh I don’t think he is toxic and we’re the Torys neck and neck with Labour he would be a good plan.
The problem is that he’s toxic in the seats that are more socially liberal but economically conservative and with Labour 15% ahead the fight isn’t retain the red wall seats they won in 2019 - it’s retain seats that are shifting generally left. Think abou places such as High Wycombe - just one example has been Tory since year dot but will be safe Labour at the next election as priced out Londoners move ever further out of London.
As a constant lurker I rarely contribute, but as a constituent of the egregious Mr. Anderson I feel I must. He is of course not intelligent but cunning; he was not only a Labour councillor previously but the election agent for the previous Labour MP, Gloria di Piero. He has gone from that to being the deputy leader of the Tory party in 5 years, and I don't suppose his views have changed in that time, but he now feels it is more convenient to express them. It is fair to say that what he says chimes with the general feelings of many people in Ashfield, particularly over immigration. However, he was elected last time because of two special factors: Jeremy Corbin and Brexit. The hatred for the former and enthusiasm for the latter was palpable, but they don't apply this time around. His love for publicity is a benefit for a politician, but some of his utterances antagonise people, for example attacks on striking nurses. I think he will lose his seat next time. Flag · Off Topic Like
Welcome! Please post more - always far more valuable to hear opinions on the ground than ones like mine about what I think those opinions might be.
As you say, a lot of working class Labour voters are socially conservative and always have been. Jezbollah as Labour leader was Kryptonite to these voters, soft on crime and unpatriotic. No wonder they fell for Boris, especially when Boris was offering his oven-ready Brexit deal that would instantly solve all their problems.
RP I think you, and probably the majority of us on here who are political nerds and pun obsessives, think that everyone sees, reads, analyses the way we do. We cannot understand why someone would vote for trump, vote for Anderson etc etc.
The thing is that 99% of voters see headlines, they have dyed in the wool opinions on politics (and woolydyed I hope you are bearing up and strong), they don’t look at nuance and small political issues.
Someone like Anderson is just another front in the political wall. A few thousand “red wall voters” see the press about his views, see he is vice chair of the Tories and like what he says, finally someone saying it like it should be (in their opinion).
So whilst a coalition inside the Tories is a nightmare for party unity in one way a coalition can also be very effective against a party such as the current Labour offering where they are trying to be tightly on-message but not actually saying what they will do, just what they wouldn’t do.
If you are a red wall voter what have you heard from Labour that resonates? What have they said that cuts through and makes you decide you will get off your arse and vote for them.
But then they see someone pilloried for being socially conservative and actually having a view and they might just relate - not on every issue but say “at least he’s not a party robot” etc.
So to cut through the balls I wrote, the Lee Anderson issue might cause us to hold our noses but he’s probably more attractive to a lot of voters than someone like Lisa Nandy because he has a profile and identity they can relate to. Be careful thinking he is toxic as he’s probably really not.
Are you kidding? I know exactly why people voted for Boris from the red wall and have posted about it at length.
Meanwhile, what the Tories hope Lee Anderson will let people not notice. From the office of Anderson's boss Mr Greg Hands
Another PPE VIP fast track scandal. Another spiv middle man operation buying stuff it had no experience of. Another 8 figure write-off for the taxpayer. Is there any reason at all that we used any of these companies? All they did was go on Ali Baba and buy stuff they had zero trading knowledge of. The government could have done that themselves. Or paid actual PPE companies. To buy PPE that doesn't just go in the bin as most of this did.
Was the main reason that didn't happen because the PPE companies weren't run by Tory donors / mates?
Interesting that it was defrauding foreigners that led to the arrests. No one yet seems to have been arrested for defrauding the British taxpayer over PPE.
Re Lee Anderson quotes. It isn't quite true that Anderson is a neanderthal and other people can correct him.
1) Foodbanks and cooking. Probably true in part 2) Executed people don't commit crimes. Easy to mock; but of course true 3) Nuisance tenants. The mockers mostly don't live at great risk of this. Just like I don't. I can more or less choose not to. Many can't. Who cares about them? 4) Nurses using foodbanks comment. Probably mostly true.
I'm a liberal and don't agree with Anderson. But In don't agree with many of his critics either.
barring the unfortunate 1 or 2% where something has happened such as death of a partner etc
Where do people draw the line salary wise between needs a food bank and its a budgeting issue?
It depends very much on their other financial commitments, including mortgages, rents, bills etc, and a number of other issues such as personal resources in terms of savings and other support networks.
Meanwhile, what the Tories hope Lee Anderson will let people not notice. From the office of Anderson's boss Mr Greg Hands
Another PPE VIP fast track scandal. Another spiv middle man operation buying stuff it had no experience of. Another 8 figure write-off for the taxpayer. Is there any reason at all that we used any of these companies? All they did was go on Ali Baba and buy stuff they had zero trading knowledge of. The government could have done that themselves. Or paid actual PPE companies. To buy PPE that doesn't just go in the bin as most of this did.
Was the main reason that didn't happen because the PPE companies weren't run by Tory donors / mates?
The only reason Lee Anderson is a distraction from this is because the left wants to get itself in a tizz over Lee Anderson. And the Lib Dems clearly think it works better with their voters.
barring the unfortunate 1 or 2% where something has happened such as death of a partner etc
Where do people draw the line salary wise between needs a food bank and its a budgeting issue?
It depends very much on their other financial commitments, including mortgages, rents, bills etc, and a number of other issues such as personal resources in terms of savings and other support networks.
So if I make personal commitments which such as credit card bills, expensive phone contracts which means I mean I need to use a food bank despite being on 35k a year then its the governments fault not my budgeting issues?
barring the unfortunate 1 or 2% where something has happened such as death of a partner etc
Where do people draw the line salary wise between needs a food bank and its a budgeting issue?
Probably depends how much you are paying for your accommodation.
Which, depending on age, location and personal circumstances, will vary between peanuts and more than you or I would want to contemplate.
There have been times when I have run into the issue of my accomodation as a renter has become too expensive....guess what I moved to somewhere cheaper I didn't go its the governments fault and I need to rely on fucking foodbanks
Meanwhile, what the Tories hope Lee Anderson will let people not notice. From the office of Anderson's boss Mr Greg Hands
Another PPE VIP fast track scandal. Another spiv middle man operation buying stuff it had no experience of. Another 8 figure write-off for the taxpayer. Is there any reason at all that we used any of these companies? All they did was go on Ali Baba and buy stuff they had zero trading knowledge of. The government could have done that themselves. Or paid actual PPE companies. To buy PPE that doesn't just go in the bin as most of this did.
Was the main reason that didn't happen because the PPE companies weren't run by Tory donors / mates?
Interesting that it was defrauding foreigners that led to the arrests. No one yet seems to have been arrested for defrauding the British taxpayer over PPE.
What is public knowledge: 1. Tory activist approaches Tory Minister to get this company in the VIP lane 2. Company has no demonstrable experience of PPE 3. Company awarded £25.8m contract to supply PPE 4. £20m worth of the PPE it supplies is marked "do not issue" by the government 5. Company doesn't publish statutory accounts for the period in question 6. Director of the company has filed to strike off the company
Questions, based on the information that is public knowledge: 1. Why was this contract awarded to this company with zero experience of supplying PPE? 2. Why has the £20m paid for unusable PPE supplied not been recovered? 3. Where has our money gone - we won't be able to see if they now disappear from public record? 4. Would this company - or any of the "I'll buy some stuff on Ali Baba and charge you a 14bn% markup" companies have been awarded a contract had they not been run by Tories?
As a constant lurker I rarely contribute, but as a constituent of the egregious Mr. Anderson I feel I must. He is of course not intelligent but cunning; he was not only a Labour councillor previously but the election agent for the previous Labour MP, Gloria di Piero. He has gone from that to being the deputy leader of the Tory party in 5 years, and I don't suppose his views have changed in that time, but he now feels it is more convenient to express them. It is fair to say that what he says chimes with the general feelings of many people in Ashfield, particularly over immigration. However, he was elected last time because of two special factors: Jeremy Corbin and Brexit. The hatred for the former and enthusiasm for the latter was palpable, but they don't apply this time around. His love for publicity is a benefit for a politician, but some of his utterances antagonise people, for example attacks on striking nurses. I think he will lose his seat next time. Flag · Off Topic Like
Welcome! Please post more - always far more valuable to hear opinions on the ground than ones like mine about what I think those opinions might be.
As you say, a lot of working class Labour voters are socially conservative and always have been. Jezbollah as Labour leader was Kryptonite to these voters, soft on crime and unpatriotic. No wonder they fell for Boris, especially when Boris was offering his oven-ready Brexit deal that would instantly solve all their problems.
RP I think you, and probably the majority of us on here who are political nerds and pun obsessives, think that everyone sees, reads, analyses the way we do. We cannot understand why someone would vote for trump, vote for Anderson etc etc.
The thing is that 99% of voters see headlines, they have dyed in the wool opinions on politics (and woolydyed I hope you are bearing up and strong), they don’t look at nuance and small political issues.
Someone like Anderson is just another front in the political wall. A few thousand “red wall voters” see the press about his views, see he is vice chair of the Tories and like what he says, finally someone saying it like it should be (in their opinion).
So whilst a coalition inside the Tories is a nightmare for party unity in one way a coalition can also be very effective against a party such as the current Labour offering where they are trying to be tightly on-message but not actually saying what they will do, just what they wouldn’t do.
If you are a red wall voter what have you heard from Labour that resonates? What have they said that cuts through and makes you decide you will get off your arse and vote for them.
But then they see someone pilloried for being socially conservative and actually having a view and they might just relate - not on every issue but say “at least he’s not a party robot” etc.
So to cut through the balls I wrote, the Lee Anderson issue might cause us to hold our noses but he’s probably more attractive to a lot of voters than someone like Lisa Nandy because he has a profile and identity they can relate to. Be careful thinking he is toxic as he’s probably really not.
Are you kidding? I know exactly why people voted for Boris from the red wall and have posted about it at length.
The fact you say "I know exactly why people voted for Boris from the red wall" is an immediate red flag - you have a view and it may be well informed but you don't know why people voted the way they did.
In my view this is a great turnout driver for the LDs. Anderson represents everything that LDs oppose and this is a good peg to get attention. The locals are all about turnout and Anderson represents everything that LDs abhor.
There's a long line of very very socially conservative MPs in the Conservative Party. In the past, they've tended to be unpromoted mavericks. People like Peter Griffis, Teresa Gorman and Andrew Rosindell have been allowed to strut their stuff on the backbenches, but no more than that.
And whilst Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party is a non job (see Jeffrey Archer) it does mean that Anderson's views will be more on the national media and come with a stamp of approval. And yes, there are places where they will be a positive, but this hurts the party more than it benefits.
Does it? There are more redwall and lower middle class and working class Leave voting Conservative v Labour marginals than bluewall and upper middle class Remain voting Tory v LD marginals
I suspect some of his rants go down poorly in the Red Wall, particularly foodbank users. I don't think Red Wall voters (assuming the Eed Wall exists as a distinct place) are as "socially conservative" as many Tories at head office believe. The world is more complicated than that.
That said, I would prefer my party to pick more positive, pro LD campaigns than such negative ones.
As @FrankBooth said, more than half the country support bringing back the death penalty yet it is a view that, if you listened to the current orthodoxy, is very much a minority held opinion. I think you'll find there a lot of people out there who may not publicly express their views but are of a similar mindset.
No one is denying a capital punishment referendum would assist RedWall Conservatives and the tough on crime Conservatives in general. My point is Anderson is flying a kite for the party hierarchy. Such a policy platform is the last resort of scoundrels, but if winning is the only requirement why not?
Demanding that Ian Huntley deserves the ultimate sanction is an easy win, and anyone denying the ultimate sanction is appropriate for Ian Huntley can be cast as soft on crime.
I don't have a particular view on capital punishment, apart from noting that the US States with it have higher murder rates than those without, suggesting its deterrent effect is not true.
I do wonder how many would actually switch party because of it. More likely it helps shore up a rapidly eroding core vote, on both sides.
Tbf there may have been a deterrent effect on those innocent of the crime for which they were executed.
barring the unfortunate 1 or 2% where something has happened such as death of a partner etc
Where do people draw the line salary wise between needs a food bank and its a budgeting issue?
It depends very much on their other financial commitments, including mortgages, rents, bills etc, and a number of other issues such as personal resources in terms of savings and other support networks.
So if I make personal commitments which such as credit card bills, expensive phone contracts which means I mean I need to use a food bank despite being on 35k a year then its the governments fault not my budgeting issues?
Those would be budgeting issues, but rent and utilities bills much less so.
That's before we get into budgeting issues such as parents spending money on alcohol or drugs rather than food for their children. Some parents make very poor decisions.
Anyway, foodbanks are not taxpayers money, so why should you care?
As a constant lurker I rarely contribute, but as a constituent of the egregious Mr. Anderson I feel I must. He is of course not intelligent but cunning; he was not only a Labour councillor previously but the election agent for the previous Labour MP, Gloria di Piero. He has gone from that to being the deputy leader of the Tory party in 5 years, and I don't suppose his views have changed in that time, but he now feels it is more convenient to express them. It is fair to say that what he says chimes with the general feelings of many people in Ashfield, particularly over immigration. However, he was elected last time because of two special factors: Jeremy Corbin and Brexit. The hatred for the former and enthusiasm for the latter was palpable, but they don't apply this time around. His love for publicity is a benefit for a politician, but some of his utterances antagonise people, for example attacks on striking nurses. I think he will lose his seat next time. Flag · Off Topic Like
Welcome! Please post more - always far more valuable to hear opinions on the ground than ones like mine about what I think those opinions might be.
As you say, a lot of working class Labour voters are socially conservative and always have been. Jezbollah as Labour leader was Kryptonite to these voters, soft on crime and unpatriotic. No wonder they fell for Boris, especially when Boris was offering his oven-ready Brexit deal that would instantly solve all their problems.
RP I think you, and probably the majority of us on here who are political nerds and pun obsessives, think that everyone sees, reads, analyses the way we do. We cannot understand why someone would vote for trump, vote for Anderson etc etc.
The thing is that 99% of voters see headlines, they have dyed in the wool opinions on politics (and woolydyed I hope you are bearing up and strong), they don’t look at nuance and small political issues.
Someone like Anderson is just another front in the political wall. A few thousand “red wall voters” see the press about his views, see he is vice chair of the Tories and like what he says, finally someone saying it like it should be (in their opinion).
So whilst a coalition inside the Tories is a nightmare for party unity in one way a coalition can also be very effective against a party such as the current Labour offering where they are trying to be tightly on-message but not actually saying what they will do, just what they wouldn’t do.
If you are a red wall voter what have you heard from Labour that resonates? What have they said that cuts through and makes you decide you will get off your arse and vote for them.
But then they see someone pilloried for being socially conservative and actually having a view and they might just relate - not on every issue but say “at least he’s not a party robot” etc.
So to cut through the balls I wrote, the Lee Anderson issue might cause us to hold our noses but he’s probably more attractive to a lot of voters than someone like Lisa Nandy because he has a profile and identity they can relate to. Be careful thinking he is toxic as he’s probably really not.
Are you kidding? I know exactly why people voted for Boris from the red wall and have posted about it at length.
The fact you say "I know exactly why people voted for Boris from the red wall" is an immediate red flag - you have a view and it may be well informed but you don't know why people voted the way they did.
My neighbours? The people I had represented for 4 years on the Town Council? I make no criticism of them running out to vote Tory in vast numbers - they had been left to decline for decades under Labour and suddenly the moon on a stick had been proffered. Then Jezbollah told them that its wrong to want criminals locked up and to like Britain, and off they flooded into the polling stations.
barring the unfortunate 1 or 2% where something has happened such as death of a partner etc
Where do people draw the line salary wise between needs a food bank and its a budgeting issue?
No idea. But SFAICS if you go back, say to the 1970s (which I remember well) we were poorer than now, and foodbanks didn't exist; nor did it occur to anyone to start them.
Once you create ready availability of free stuff which is useful and which otherwise costs money you only have to have 1% of households using it 3 times a year to have a million UK visits which will 'prove' to anyone who wants to believe it that there is a massive need. 1% of households is 30 out of 3000. Is it impossible to think there are that number of households who are slightly on the make for one reason or another? I don't think so.
In my view this is a great turnout driver for the LDs. Anderson represents everything that LDs oppose and this is a good peg to get attention. The locals are all about turnout and Anderson represents everything that LDs abhor.
They can abhor all they want. It didn't stop them being part of a government under whom food bank use went up massively.
Ancient history in political terms. All parties try to bring up historical stuff, reasonably and unreasonably, but the public are pretty selective in what they choose to be outraged by (they weren't outraged by Corbyn on 2017, but for the same things in 2019 they were, for example).
barring the unfortunate 1 or 2% where something has happened such as death of a partner etc
Where do people draw the line salary wise between needs a food bank and its a budgeting issue?
It depends very much on their other financial commitments, including mortgages, rents, bills etc, and a number of other issues such as personal resources in terms of savings and other support networks.
So if I make personal commitments which such as credit card bills, expensive phone contracts which means I mean I need to use a food bank despite being on 35k a year then its the governments fault not my budgeting issues?
Those would be budgeting issues, but rent and utilities bills much less so.
That's before we get into budgeting issues such as parents spending money on alcohol or drugs rather than food for their children. Some parents make very poor decisions.
Anyway, foodbanks are not taxpayers money, so why should you care?
I care because fuckwits like that get stories published about it and then it gets used as reasons why they should get a payrise which I am definitely paying for. Should take it as if you cant budget you cant care for people and sack them in my view
barring the unfortunate 1 or 2% where something has happened such as death of a partner etc
Where do people draw the line salary wise between needs a food bank and its a budgeting issue?
It depends very much on their other financial commitments, including mortgages, rents, bills etc, and a number of other issues such as personal resources in terms of savings and other support networks.
'A number of other issues' would suggest to me that it isn't seen as completely absurd to suggest budgeting is a part of the issue, it's just that Anderson is a perfomative tosser who says it is the whole of the issue.
barring the unfortunate 1 or 2% where something has happened such as death of a partner etc
Where do people draw the line salary wise between needs a food bank and its a budgeting issue?
It depends very much on their other financial commitments, including mortgages, rents, bills etc, and a number of other issues such as personal resources in terms of savings and other support networks.
So if I make personal commitments which such as credit card bills, expensive phone contracts which means I mean I need to use a food bank despite being on 35k a year then its the governments fault not my budgeting issues?
Those would be budgeting issues, but rent and utilities bills much less so.
That's before we get into budgeting issues such as parents spending money on alcohol or drugs rather than food for their children. Some parents make very poor decisions.
Anyway, foodbanks are not taxpayers money, so why should you care?
I care because fuckwits like that get stories published about it and then it gets used as reasons why they should get a payrise which I am definitely paying for. Should take it as if you cant budget you cant care for people and sack them in my view
Fab. So you sack the nurses. With whom do you replace them? We need nurses, and you can't just hire someone else like you could if you were Tesco.
barring the unfortunate 1 or 2% where something has happened such as death of a partner etc
Where do people draw the line salary wise between needs a food bank and its a budgeting issue?
No idea. But SFAICS if you go back, say to the 1970s (which I remember well) we were poorer than now, and foodbanks didn't exist; nor did it occur to anyone to start them.
Once you create ready availability of free stuff which is useful and which otherwise costs money you only have to have 1% of households using it 3 times a year to have a million UK visits which will 'prove' to anyone who wants to believe it that there is a massive need. 1% of households is 30 out of 3000. Is it impossible to think there are that number of households who are slightly on the make for one reason or another? I don't think so.
A friend with the local Lions club provides evening meals once a week for the homeless of the town. He reckons only 3 or 4 are genuinely homeless, the rest see it as free food, saving money to spend on other things.
Without in any way judging people, it is very often the case that examples of food bank use on the TV are single parents, with no obvious support from the father(s) of the children. My ‘favourite’ recent example had two children, and was miraculously pregnant with a third (bloody Gabriel, coming down, making babies). No sign of the father taking an interest, and no curiosity from the reporters.
barring the unfortunate 1 or 2% where something has happened such as death of a partner etc
Where do people draw the line salary wise between needs a food bank and its a budgeting issue?
It depends very much on their other financial commitments, including mortgages, rents, bills etc, and a number of other issues such as personal resources in terms of savings and other support networks.
'A number of other issues' would suggest to me that it isn't seen as completely absurd to suggest budgeting is a part of the issue, it's just that Anderson is a perfomative tosser who says it is the whole of the issue.
What annoys me is....office worker on 35k a year has to use a food bank....stories will be why doesnt he/she live somewhere cheaper...substitue nurse in there for office worker and its entirely our fault for not paying more.
I have had to continually downsize through out the last 20 years to afford to live and no one would write a story about that.....some nurse however earning the same and doesn't downsize and uses a food bank....oh how horrible we are
barring the unfortunate 1 or 2% where something has happened such as death of a partner etc
Where do people draw the line salary wise between needs a food bank and its a budgeting issue?
It depends very much on their other financial commitments, including mortgages, rents, bills etc, and a number of other issues such as personal resources in terms of savings and other support networks.
'A number of other issues' would suggest to me that it isn't seen as completely absurd to suggest budgeting is a part of the issue, it's just that Anderson is a perfomative tosser who says it is the whole of the issue.
Yes it isn't just lack of financial resources that drives people to foodbanks, or other charitable feeding places like the Salvation Army or Sikh temples. There is often a lack of other social resources such as reliable family, understanding of nutrition, mental health issues, addiction etc.
Not all of the poor are the "undeserving poor" but many make poor decisions that contribute to their difficulties.
"While more is known about the Chinese spy balloon that transited the country, it remains unclear just what the other two unidentified objects are. A spokesperson with the National Security Council said Sunday that the objects downed over Canada and Alaska "did not closely resemble and were much smaller" than the Chinese airship, and the Biden administration "will not definitively characterize them until we can recover the debris," which the military is working on."
Remarkable in similarities to the early 1950's flap, as Leon says. Material from an identified adversary seems to be bringing in a whole load of more genuinely unidentifiable stuff in its slipstream, as it moves into the centre of the public consciousness.
As a constant lurker I rarely contribute, but as a constituent of the egregious Mr. Anderson I feel I must. He is of course not intelligent but cunning; he was not only a Labour councillor previously but the election agent for the previous Labour MP, Gloria di Piero. He has gone from that to being the deputy leader of the Tory party in 5 years, and I don't suppose his views have changed in that time, but he now feels it is more convenient to express them. It is fair to say that what he says chimes with the general feelings of many people in Ashfield, particularly over immigration. However, he was elected last time because of two special factors: Jeremy Corbin and Brexit. The hatred for the former and enthusiasm for the latter was palpable, but they don't apply this time around. His love for publicity is a benefit for a politician, but some of his utterances antagonise people, for example attacks on striking nurses. I think he will lose his seat next time. Flag · Off Topic Like
Welcome! Please post more - always far more valuable to hear opinions on the ground than ones like mine about what I think those opinions might be.
As you say, a lot of working class Labour voters are socially conservative and always have been. Jezbollah as Labour leader was Kryptonite to these voters, soft on crime and unpatriotic. No wonder they fell for Boris, especially when Boris was offering his oven-ready Brexit deal that would instantly solve all their problems.
RP I think you, and probably the majority of us on here who are political nerds and pun obsessives, think that everyone sees, reads, analyses the way we do. We cannot understand why someone would vote for trump, vote for Anderson etc etc.
The thing is that 99% of voters see headlines, they have dyed in the wool opinions on politics (and woolydyed I hope you are bearing up and strong), they don’t look at nuance and small political issues.
Someone like Anderson is just another front in the political wall. A few thousand “red wall voters” see the press about his views, see he is vice chair of the Tories and like what he says, finally someone saying it like it should be (in their opinion).
So whilst a coalition inside the Tories is a nightmare for party unity in one way a coalition can also be very effective against a party such as the current Labour offering where they are trying to be tightly on-message but not actually saying what they will do, just what they wouldn’t do.
If you are a red wall voter what have you heard from Labour that resonates? What have they said that cuts through and makes you decide you will get off your arse and vote for them.
But then they see someone pilloried for being socially conservative and actually having a view and they might just relate - not on every issue but say “at least he’s not a party robot” etc.
So to cut through the balls I wrote, the Lee Anderson issue might cause us to hold our noses but he’s probably more attractive to a lot of voters than someone like Lisa Nandy because he has a profile and identity they can relate to. Be careful thinking he is toxic as he’s probably really not.
Are you kidding? I know exactly why people voted for Boris from the red wall and have posted about it at length.
The fact you say "I know exactly why people voted for Boris from the red wall" is an immediate red flag - you have a view and it may be well informed but you don't know why people voted the way they did.
My neighbours? The people I had represented for 4 years on the Town Council? I make no criticism of them running out to vote Tory in vast numbers - they had been left to decline for decades under Labour and suddenly the moon on a stick had been proffered. Then Jezbollah told them that its wrong to want criminals locked up and to like Britain, and off they flooded into the polling stations.
In truth, you probably knew the views of your neighbours and had a pretty good idea of a chunk - if not all - of your constituents. Extrapolating that across to all Red Wall voters is dangerous.
As for Jezbollah, his views were known in 2017 yet people still voted for him. I suspect - and what Labour doesn't want to hear especially Starmer - is that he was trounced in 2019 not because of his alleged anti-semitism but because he had been seen to backtrack on respecting the Brexit vote.
barring the unfortunate 1 or 2% where something has happened such as death of a partner etc
Where do people draw the line salary wise between needs a food bank and its a budgeting issue?
It depends very much on their other financial commitments, including mortgages, rents, bills etc, and a number of other issues such as personal resources in terms of savings and other support networks.
So if I make personal commitments which such as credit card bills, expensive phone contracts which means I mean I need to use a food bank despite being on 35k a year then its the governments fault not my budgeting issues?
Those would be budgeting issues, but rent and utilities bills much less so.
That's before we get into budgeting issues such as parents spending money on alcohol or drugs rather than food for their children. Some parents make very poor decisions.
Anyway, foodbanks are not taxpayers money, so why should you care?
I care because fuckwits like that get stories published about it and then it gets used as reasons why they should get a payrise which I am definitely paying for. Should take it as if you cant budget you cant care for people and sack them in my view
Fab. So you sack the nurses. With whom do you replace them? We need nurses, and you can't just hire someone else like you could if you were Tesco.
So what are you suggesting we keep upping the pay of nurses till we stop having their sob stories....no
barring the unfortunate 1 or 2% where something has happened such as death of a partner etc
Where do people draw the line salary wise between needs a food bank and its a budgeting issue?
It depends very much on their other financial commitments, including mortgages, rents, bills etc, and a number of other issues such as personal resources in terms of savings and other support networks.
So if I make personal commitments which such as credit card bills, expensive phone contracts which means I mean I need to use a food bank despite being on 35k a year then its the governments fault not my budgeting issues?
Those would be budgeting issues, but rent and utilities bills much less so.
That's before we get into budgeting issues such as parents spending money on alcohol or drugs rather than food for their children. Some parents make very poor decisions.
Anyway, foodbanks are not taxpayers money, so why should you care?
I care because fuckwits like that get stories published about it and then it gets used as reasons why they should get a payrise which I am definitely paying for. Should take it as if you cant budget you cant care for people and sack them in my view
ridiculous statement
Good medical skills don't necessarily correlate with good budgeting skills, or vice versa. I wouldn't trust you with brain surgery but I bet you are wizard at online banking!
barring the unfortunate 1 or 2% where something has happened such as death of a partner etc
Where do people draw the line salary wise between needs a food bank and its a budgeting issue?
It depends very much on their other financial commitments, including mortgages, rents, bills etc, and a number of other issues such as personal resources in terms of savings and other support networks.
'A number of other issues' would suggest to me that it isn't seen as completely absurd to suggest budgeting is a part of the issue, it's just that Anderson is a perfomative tosser who says it is the whole of the issue.
Yes it isn't just lack of financial resources that drives people to foodbanks, or other charitable feeding places like the Salvation Army or Sikh temples. There is often a lack of other social resources such as reliable family, understanding of nutrition, mental health issues, addiction etc.
Not all of the poor are the "undeserving poor" but many make poor decisions that contribute to their difficulties.
Why are their poor decisions the tax payers responsibilites?
As a constant lurker I rarely contribute, but as a constituent of the egregious Mr. Anderson I feel I must. He is of course not intelligent but cunning; he was not only a Labour councillor previously but the election agent for the previous Labour MP, Gloria di Piero. He has gone from that to being the deputy leader of the Tory party in 5 years, and I don't suppose his views have changed in that time, but he now feels it is more convenient to express them. It is fair to say that what he says chimes with the general feelings of many people in Ashfield, particularly over immigration. However, he was elected last time because of two special factors: Jeremy Corbin and Brexit. The hatred for the former and enthusiasm for the latter was palpable, but they don't apply this time around. His love for publicity is a benefit for a politician, but some of his utterances antagonise people, for example attacks on striking nurses. I think he will lose his seat next time. Flag · Off Topic Like
Welcome! Please post more - always far more valuable to hear opinions on the ground than ones like mine about what I think those opinions might be.
As you say, a lot of working class Labour voters are socially conservative and always have been. Jezbollah as Labour leader was Kryptonite to these voters, soft on crime and unpatriotic. No wonder they fell for Boris, especially when Boris was offering his oven-ready Brexit deal that would instantly solve all their problems.
RP I think you, and probably the majority of us on here who are political nerds and pun obsessives, think that everyone sees, reads, analyses the way we do. We cannot understand why someone would vote for trump, vote for Anderson etc etc.
The thing is that 99% of voters see headlines, they have dyed in the wool opinions on politics (and woolydyed I hope you are bearing up and strong), they don’t look at nuance and small political issues.
Someone like Anderson is just another front in the political wall. A few thousand “red wall voters” see the press about his views, see he is vice chair of the Tories and like what he says, finally someone saying it like it should be (in their opinion).
So whilst a coalition inside the Tories is a nightmare for party unity in one way a coalition can also be very effective against a party such as the current Labour offering where they are trying to be tightly on-message but not actually saying what they will do, just what they wouldn’t do.
If you are a red wall voter what have you heard from Labour that resonates? What have they said that cuts through and makes you decide you will get off your arse and vote for them.
But then they see someone pilloried for being socially conservative and actually having a view and they might just relate - not on every issue but say “at least he’s not a party robot” etc.
So to cut through the balls I wrote, the Lee Anderson issue might cause us to hold our noses but he’s probably more attractive to a lot of voters than someone like Lisa Nandy because he has a profile and identity they can relate to. Be careful thinking he is toxic as he’s probably really not.
Are you kidding? I know exactly why people voted for Boris from the red wall and have posted about it at length.
The fact you say "I know exactly why people voted for Boris from the red wall" is an immediate red flag - you have a view and it may be well informed but you don't know why people voted the way they did.
My neighbours? The people I had represented for 4 years on the Town Council? I make no criticism of them running out to vote Tory in vast numbers - they had been left to decline for decades under Labour and suddenly the moon on a stick had been proffered. Then Jezbollah told them that its wrong to want criminals locked up and to like Britain, and off they flooded into the polling stations.
In truth, you probably knew the views of your neighbours and had a pretty good idea of a chunk - if not all - of your constituents. Extrapolating that across to all Red Wall voters is dangerous.
As for Jezbollah, his views were known in 2017 yet people still voted for him. I suspect - and what Labour doesn't want to hear especially Starmer - is that he was trounced in 2019 not because of his alleged anti-semitism but because he had been seen to backtrack on respecting the Brexit vote.
Yes but things have moved on. Being against Brexit is now increasingly the nations view. It may have worked in 2019, but anyone trying the same tune in 2024 will get a different hearing. Hence Starmer speaking about making Brexit work. One of several reasons that I won't vote for his party.
Comments
On the other hand he is going to make it more difficult for Sunak to pull back former remain one-nation Tories in better off areas in the south and south-west.
Don't understand the strategy to be honest. Having Anderson saying one thing only for Sunak to have to keep telling us it is not party policy is just a recipe for division and chaos.
Seeing a problem in a former PM backing candidates is ridiculous.
https://todayinhistorydotblog.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/ppcqp.jpg
And whilst Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party is a non job (see Jeffrey Archer) it does mean that Anderson's views will be more on the national media and come with a stamp of approval. And yes, there are places where they will be a positive, but this hurts the party more than it benefits.
I don't believe 30p Lee is the pantomime villain character he has settled upon. There are some innately really nasty b******* in senior Conservative Party positions but I suspect with Lee it's all an act.
Looks like you're clutching at straws.
Most LD seats Cameron gained in 2015 were in the South West and voted Leave too in 2016 anyway
Actual figures of these previously canvassed Cs and Ps for the Saturday morning session:
17 Against
10 Undecided (considering Conservative)
3 Strong Liberal
2 Liberal/Conservative Waverer
2 Strong Conservative
1 Probable Conservative
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-64617245
Some of the stories coming out of that country are horrific. (The same will be true for Syria, but the stories are sadly harder to get to there.)
Alternatively there may be another answer. Whilst supporting the death penalty might not on the surface seem as bad as questionable business dealings (Mone) threatening journalists for telling the truth (Zahawi) or cavorting with oligarchs (Johnson), for the class obsessed English it is actually something worse. Uncouth. Perhaps it's just plain old snobbery?
*Boris' admirers tend to think he should be forgiven any indiscretions or he was stitched up which is slightly different.
That said, I would prefer my party to pick more positive, pro LD campaigns than such negative ones.
BREAKING: A new NOTAM has been issued S of Sudbury, Canada due to an "active air defense operation."
https://twitter.com/global_mil_info/status/1624854040675753985?s=46&t=dJMbwJFX9D478ou9x-4n-g
USAF E-3 Sentry & KC-135 that were in orbit above Lake Michigan are now maneuvering to that AO.
I find it really quite hard to believe that they are all foolishly chasing balloons
🤷♂️
With regards to the LDs though, their target vote is well-off graduates who are think of themselves as socially liberal but who are also concerned enough about their own wealth to not vote Labour in case it means higher taxes. So probably makes sense for them to highlight this *
* with the caveat that in many of their target seats, there are often pockets of poorer more socially conservative areas
As a constant lurker I rarely contribute, but as a constituent of the egregious Mr. Anderson I feel I must.
He is of course not intelligent but cunning; he was not only a Labour councillor previously but the election agent for the previous Labour MP, Gloria di Piero. He has gone from that to being the deputy leader of the Tory party in 5 years, and I don't suppose his views have changed in that time, but he now feels it is more convenient to express them. It is fair to say that what he says chimes with the general feelings of many people in Ashfield, particularly over immigration.
However, he was elected last time because of two special factors: Jeremy Corbin and Brexit. The hatred for the former and enthusiasm for the latter was palpable, but they don't apply this time around. His love for publicity is a benefit for a politician, but some of his utterances antagonise people, for example attacks on striking nurses. I think he will lose his seat next time.
Flag · Off Topic Like
“Canada closes airspace near Tobermory in Ontario, close to the U.S. border, due to "active air defense operation"”
https://twitter.com/bnodesk/status/1624852886759825408?s=46&t=dJMbwJFX9D478ou9x-4n-g
As you say, a lot of working class Labour voters are socially conservative and always have been. Jezbollah as Labour leader was Kryptonite to these voters, soft on crime and unpatriotic. No wonder they fell for Boris, especially when Boris was offering his oven-ready Brexit deal that would instantly solve all their problems.
Even if it is just a bunch of balloons.
I don't agree with his views on the death penalty but almost half the public do, and he was also a single parent himself who raised two boys alone for years - in a poor area.
I also think much of the ire that's directed his way that comes from the Left is down to the fact he's a defector.
PC Plum nicked someone at last?
Three problems, however:
1. People who drive white vans have a myriad of views.
2. There aren't actually that many people who drive white vans.
3. White van men don't include half the electorate, namely women.
We should have copied European countries, said stuff the deficit and not tret people like dirt. But there wasn't any political will for it.
By RYAN LIZZA, RACHAEL BADE and EUGENE DANIELS 02/12/2023 11:32 AM EST
https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook/2023/02/12/ufo-fever-grips-washington-00082457
If it's Chinese spy balloons then they want to know that and get a handle on the scale of it. But maybe there are also long endurance Chinese spy drones of various other sorts too. I know various types of drones that can stay airborne for a long time are being developed in Western countries.
What larks!
I do with David Warburton, Imran Ahmed, Chris Pincher, Jared O'Mara and Lloyd Russell-Moyle.
*Edit - sorry for the messed up quotes - blame Vanilla.
https://youtu.be/hiwgOWo7mDc
As featured on my Spotify apocalypse playlist:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4LybGX1d2YvaFIHB3VAxXx?si=40YFcfRVTHSwDayhKSir6w
Very rarely there is one who is, but most people aren't like that.
The Conservative share of the vote went down between 2017 and 2019. Anderson won because the Labour share fell even more. The big gains had been made by Anderson's predecessor.
Anderson isn't the first Conservative MP for Ashfield. Tim Smith got there first in a by-election in 1977.
But the key thing is that, for all the red wall hype, not all Conservative voters in red wall seats do so for Andersonism. I wonder what the balance of attraction and repulsion is?
Demanding that Ian Huntley deserves the ultimate sanction is an easy win, and anyone denying the ultimate sanction is appropriate for Ian Huntley can be cast as soft on crime.
Once again 48% of voters are going to be disappointed and once again suck it up. Probably much the same peer group who had to suck it up.in 2016.
The thing is that 99% of voters see headlines, they have dyed in the wool opinions on politics (and woolydyed I hope you are bearing up and strong), they don’t look at nuance and small political issues.
Someone like Anderson is just another front in the political wall. A few thousand “red wall voters” see the press about his views, see he is vice chair of the Tories and like what he says, finally someone saying it like it should be (in their opinion).
So whilst a coalition inside the Tories is a nightmare for party unity in one way a coalition can also be very effective against a party such as the current Labour offering where they are trying to be tightly on-message but not actually saying what they will do, just what they wouldn’t do.
If you are a red wall voter what have you heard from Labour that resonates? What have they said that cuts through and makes you decide you will get off your arse and vote for them.
But then they see someone pilloried for being socially conservative and actually having a view and they might just relate - not on every issue but say “at least he’s not a party robot” etc.
So to cut through the balls I wrote, the Lee Anderson issue might cause us to hold our noses but he’s probably more attractive to a lot of voters than someone like Lisa Nandy because he has a profile and identity they can relate to. Be careful thinking he is toxic as he’s probably really not.
In other news, Farage, after his one night stand with redwallers, appears to be going back to old UKIP and standing up for people on six figure incomes. Against the rise in corporation tax, dividends tax. Good for the small fraction of wealthy people who pay themselves through their own company rather than be self employed/PAYE but irrelevant to the vast majority of the country. Might help with donations though. More odiously he's claiming the appointment of Hunt represented a globalist coup and I think he meant it quite literally. I've defended him at times but he seems to have gone full bats**t on this one.
I'd say Sunak will be mildly happy at the
reaction here. As for the more socially liberal but wealthier households vulnerable to a LD a win, expect to hear a lot of highlighting of Labour's decision to end VAT on private school education and then attempting to pin down Ed Davey's position and / or whether he would support such a Labour plan. That will be a disproportionately sized issue in Blue Wall seats.
Another PPE VIP fast track scandal. Another spiv middle man operation buying stuff it had no experience of. Another 8 figure write-off for the taxpayer. Is there any reason at all that we used any of these companies? All they did was go on Ali Baba and buy stuff they had zero trading knowledge of. The government could have done that themselves. Or paid actual PPE companies. To buy PPE that doesn't just go in the bin as most of this did.
Was the main reason that didn't happen because the PPE companies weren't run by Tory donors / mates?
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/feb/12/firm-won-ppe-contract-greg-hands-approached-by-tory-activist-luxe-lifestyle
I do wonder how many would actually switch party because of it. More likely it helps shore up a rapidly eroding core vote, on both sides.
The problem is that he’s toxic in the seats that are more socially liberal but economically conservative and with Labour 15% ahead the fight isn’t retain the red wall seats they won in 2019 - it’s retain seats that are shifting generally left. Think abou places such as High Wycombe - just one example has been Tory since year dot but will be safe Labour at the next election as priced out Londoners move ever further out of London.
barring the unfortunate 1 or 2% where something has happened such as death of a partner etc
Where do people draw the line salary wise between needs a food bank and its a budgeting issue?
https://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/news/local-news/loughborough-couple-arrested-ppe-fraud-8127468
Interesting that it was defrauding foreigners that led to the arrests. No one yet seems to have been arrested for defrauding the British taxpayer over PPE.
1) Foodbanks and cooking. Probably true in part
2) Executed people don't commit crimes. Easy to mock; but of course true
3) Nuisance tenants. The mockers mostly don't live at great risk of this. Just like I don't. I can more or less choose not to. Many can't. Who cares about them?
4) Nurses using foodbanks comment. Probably mostly true.
I'm a liberal and don't agree with Anderson. But In don't agree with many of his critics either.
Which, depending on age, location and personal circumstances, will vary between peanuts and more than you or I would want to contemplate.
1. Tory activist approaches Tory Minister to get this company in the VIP lane
2. Company has no demonstrable experience of PPE
3. Company awarded £25.8m contract to supply PPE
4. £20m worth of the PPE it supplies is marked "do not issue" by the government
5. Company doesn't publish statutory accounts for the period in question
6. Director of the company has filed to strike off the company
Questions, based on the information that is public knowledge:
1. Why was this contract awarded to this company with zero experience of supplying PPE?
2. Why has the £20m paid for unusable PPE supplied not been recovered?
3. Where has our money gone - we won't be able to see if they now disappear from public record?
4. Would this company - or any of the "I'll buy some stuff on Ali Baba and charge you a 14bn% markup" companies have been awarded a contract had they not been run by Tories?
Have we done the Seymour Hersch "the Yanks blew up Nordstream 2" story?
Not sure what I think on that one.
That's before we get into budgeting issues such as parents spending money on alcohol or drugs rather than food for their children. Some parents make very poor decisions.
Anyway, foodbanks are not taxpayers money, so why should you care?
Once you create ready availability of free stuff which is useful and which otherwise costs money you only have to have 1% of households using it 3 times a year to have a million UK visits which will 'prove' to anyone who wants to believe it that there is a massive need. 1% of households is 30 out of 3000. Is it impossible to think there are that number of households who are slightly on the make for one reason or another? I don't think so.
Without in any way judging people, it is very often the case that examples of food bank use on the TV are single parents, with no obvious support from the father(s) of the children. My ‘favourite’ recent example had two children, and was miraculously pregnant with a third (bloody Gabriel, coming down, making babies). No sign of the father taking an interest, and no curiosity from the reporters.
I have had to continually downsize through out the last 20 years to afford to live and no one would write a story about that.....some nurse however earning the same and doesn't downsize and uses a food bank....oh how horrible we are
Not all of the poor are the "undeserving poor" but many make poor decisions that contribute to their difficulties.
Remarkable in similarities to the early 1950's flap, as Leon says. Material from an identified adversary seems to be bringing in a whole load of more genuinely unidentifiable stuff in its slipstream, as it moves into the centre of the public consciousness.
As for Jezbollah, his views were known in 2017 yet people still voted for him. I suspect - and what Labour doesn't want to hear especially Starmer - is that he was trounced in 2019 not because of his alleged anti-semitism but because he had been seen to backtrack on respecting the Brexit vote.
Good medical skills don't necessarily correlate with good budgeting skills, or vice versa. I wouldn't trust you with brain surgery but I bet you are wizard at online banking!