How does 'Boredom You Can Afford' sound as an election slogan?
They should just bring back the slogans Brown would have used in 2007.
E.g.
This one is the one that would do the best IMHO:
Thanks for dredging these up. Not flash, just Gordon is easily my favourite political slogan of all time. So apt. Still makes me smile.
Not going for that election was a huge mistake. We'd have avoided all this chaos.
Even if he had won, he had nothing left, no big ideas. He wanted to be PM for so long, but had no idea what to do with it. His legacy is all around - lovely hospitals and schools bought using PFI and we are still paying the cost. He genuinely believed he had abolished boom and bust, which rather says it all.
He was and is a decent human being, but un suited to being pm.
Agreed, though that recent Blair-Brown documentary does make me wonder - why did Brown do the PFI crap? He was more left wing than Blair - was Brown pushed into PFI or was he the instigator? It’s before my time politically. Just seems so obviously crap in hindsight.
He found PFI as a way to keep to the spending plans. Under Blair, it was all about more money for schools and hospitals - but holding to spending targets. Killing road construction and some other infrastructure projects helped, but there was always more to do.
PFI was a bit of an addiction in the end - spending that pushed the actual spending into the future. I’ll be good next week…..
Thanks, that fits with the impression I have of him and makes a lot of sense. He wanted to spend more but had to get round Blair’s restraining spending targets.
But it still doesn’t add up for me (excuse the pun) - for all his faults he strikes me as both intelligent and a man of integrity and I struggle to believe that he couldn’t foresee the downsides of PFI. Which makes me think @lostpassword is right and he didn’t really care about the long term consequences. Politicians, eh?
It's gonna be Yousaf! I thought GRR would get Forbes, didn't think she'd fall at gay marriage. The twitter meltdown hadn't even got going yet.
But seriously, there is a huge gap here for an unknown to jump into. As Carnyx points out, one week to go. Perhaps even Robertson by desperate acclamation?
How does 'Boredom You Can Afford' sound as an election slogan?
They should just bring back the slogans Brown would have used in 2007.
E.g.
This one is the one that would do the best IMHO:
Thanks for dredging these up. Not flash, just Gordon is easily my favourite political slogan of all time. So apt. Still makes me smile.
Not going for that election was a huge mistake. We'd have avoided all this chaos.
Oooh now, Gordon was plenty capable of creating his own brand of chaos, but I think he would have won.
Even if he'd lost, the Tories would have overseen the financial crisis. Something they said needed less regulation than Labour proposed, so it would have been worse under them - Labour would have been back in a few years later.
You underestimate the consequences of the crisis getting out of control.
Brown haters (and I'm no fan) choke on the notion that he played a leading role in mitigating its worst effects, but it is hard to dispute, and if it was the only good thing he did it was definitely a biggy.
But Brown also significantly contributed to the issue. Even if he did not pull the trigger, he handed the gun to the person who did. You don't laud the person who stems the blood loss, if they're involved with the shooting.
The severity of the GFC in the UK is down to one thing: Brown's ambition. He wanted to be PM, and undermined Blair to get the job. But that also required electability, so he ran the treasury to get short-term gains, not long-term stability.
He could have made decisions that reduced the effect of the GFC, but he didn't. Because he wanted to be PM.
Nonsense on stilts. Brown did not cause the GFC, did not exacerbate the GFC, but did help stem the GFC.
How did his policies not 'exacerbate' the GFC) ? Are you saying the British economy was well-structured to withstand it?
How does 'Boredom You Can Afford' sound as an election slogan?
They should just bring back the slogans Brown would have used in 2007.
E.g.
This one is the one that would do the best IMHO:
Thanks for dredging these up. Not flash, just Gordon is easily my favourite political slogan of all time. So apt. Still makes me smile.
Not going for that election was a huge mistake. We'd have avoided all this chaos.
Even if he had won, he had nothing left, no big ideas. He wanted to be PM for so long, but had no idea what to do with it. His legacy is all around - lovely hospitals and schools bought using PFI and we are still paying the cost. He genuinely believed he had abolished boom and bust, which rather says it all.
He was and is a decent human being, but un suited to being pm.
Agreed, though that recent Blair-Brown documentary does make me wonder - why did Brown do the PFI crap? He was more left wing than Blair - was Brown pushed into PFI or was he the instigator? It’s before my time politically. Just seems so obviously crap in hindsight.
He found PFI as a way to keep to the spending plans. Under Blair, it was all about more money for schools and hospitals - but holding to spending targets. Killing road construction and some other infrastructure projects helped, but there was always more to do.
PFI was a bit of an addiction in the end - spending that pushed the actual spending into the future. I’ll be good next week…..
The great irony of course was that in reality government bond rates were (at the time) on a one-way track to 0% and the government could have borrowed far more & the markets would have happily given it to them & gone out & found more where that came from.
All that faffing about with PFI & the distortions it caused was for nothing.
Worse that nothing, as it cost a lot more to borrow privately, and poorly written contacts often led to the taxpayer being fleeced for decades.
It's gonna be Yousaf! I thought GRR would get Forbes, didn't think she'd fall at gay marriage. The twitter meltdown hadn't even got going yet.
But seriously, there is a huge gap here for an unknown to jump into. As Carnyx points out, one week to go. Perhaps even Robertson by desperate acclamation?
If Humza Yousaf is terrible, Sir Keir Starmer cannot be that lucky?
Bit of an outrage that the progressive SNP haven't had a Westminster/Holyrood leader from a visible ethnic minority.
(Visible ethnic minority is a new term I recently learned which is used to exclude Jews, as only Hasidic Jews are visibly ethnic minorities.)
It's gonna be Yousaf! I thought GRR would get Forbes, didn't think she'd fall at gay marriage. The twitter meltdown hadn't even got going yet.
But seriously, there is a huge gap here for an unknown to jump into. As Carnyx points out, one week to go. Perhaps even Robertson by desperate acclamation?
Or even Sturge?
"Well, if ye cannae find anyone else you want to do the job, I suppose I'll have to, even though I don't want to..."
How does 'Boredom You Can Afford' sound as an election slogan?
They should just bring back the slogans Brown would have used in 2007.
E.g.
This one is the one that would do the best IMHO:
Thanks for dredging these up. Not flash, just Gordon is easily my favourite political slogan of all time. So apt. Still makes me smile.
Not going for that election was a huge mistake. We'd have avoided all this chaos.
Oooh now, Gordon was plenty capable of creating his own brand of chaos, but I think he would have won.
Even if he'd lost, the Tories would have overseen the financial crisis. Something they said needed less regulation than Labour proposed, so it would have been worse under them - Labour would have been back in a few years later.
You underestimate the consequences of the crisis getting out of control.
Brown haters (and I'm no fan) choke on the notion that he played a leading role in mitigating its worst effects, but it is hard to dispute, and if it was the only good thing he did it was definitely a biggy.
But Brown also significantly contributed to the issue. Even if he did not pull the trigger, he handed the gun to the person who did. You don't laud the person who stems the blood loss, if they're involved with the shooting.
The severity of the GFC in the UK is down to one thing: Brown's ambition. He wanted to be PM, and undermined Blair to get the job. But that also required electability, so he ran the treasury to get short-term gains, not long-term stability.
He could have made decisions that reduced the effect of the GFC, but he didn't. Because he wanted to be PM.
Nonsense on stilts. Brown did not cause the GFC, did not exacerbate the GFC, but did help stem the GFC.
Indeed. Worth remembering that Barclays wanted to buy Lehmans and were blocked by doing so by the FCA and Alastair Darling. Think how bad it would have been had we then lost Barclays...
Not having any approved photo ID, last week I applied for the government's new voter authority certificate. The process was fairly painless and quick, though the end result is not a card but a flimsy A4 sheet with the uploaded photo on the back. https://www.gov.uk/apply-for-photo-id-voter-authority-certificate
Tbh I'd never heard of the voter authority certificate until stumbling across it whilst checking my pb claim not to have any approved photo ID, and as a regular PBer I'm probably a damn sight more tuned in than most voters. Only a cynic would say that a government using photo ID as a means of voter suppression would not want to publicise this workaround.
Senior member of Kate Forbes campaign says "she has fucked it" after the finance secretary said she would have voted against gay marriage.. In my informed opinion, as a political journalist, your own team saying you've fucked it on the day you launch your campaign isn't ideal is it
How does 'Boredom You Can Afford' sound as an election slogan?
They should just bring back the slogans Brown would have used in 2007.
E.g.
This one is the one that would do the best IMHO:
Thanks for dredging these up. Not flash, just Gordon is easily my favourite political slogan of all time. So apt. Still makes me smile.
Not going for that election was a huge mistake. We'd have avoided all this chaos.
Oooh now, Gordon was plenty capable of creating his own brand of chaos, but I think he would have won.
Even if he'd lost, the Tories would have overseen the financial crisis. Something they said needed less regulation than Labour proposed, so it would have been worse under them - Labour would have been back in a few years later.
You underestimate the consequences of the crisis getting out of control.
Brown haters (and I'm no fan) choke on the notion that he played a leading role in mitigating its worst effects, but it is hard to dispute, and if it was the only good thing he did it was definitely a biggy.
But Brown also significantly contributed to the issue. Even if he did not pull the trigger, he handed the gun to the person who did. You don't laud the person who stems the blood loss, if they're involved with the shooting.
The severity of the GFC in the UK is down to one thing: Brown's ambition. He wanted to be PM, and undermined Blair to get the job. But that also required electability, so he ran the treasury to get short-term gains, not long-term stability.
He could have made decisions that reduced the effect of the GFC, but he didn't. Because he wanted to be PM.
This is the line that my old mucker, Richard Nabavi, used to run. In his absence it's good that someone else puts it up instead.
Some of the things Brown did certainly contributed to the GFC, but you vastly overestimate his influence and the UK's importance if you think these were significant.
It began in the US, with huge amounts of dodgy debt dressed up as desireable assets. It snowballed from there, assisted to some extent by mismanagemnt here and elsewhere, but the origin is well-known and understood now.
How does 'Boredom You Can Afford' sound as an election slogan?
They should just bring back the slogans Brown would have used in 2007.
E.g.
This one is the one that would do the best IMHO:
Thanks for dredging these up. Not flash, just Gordon is easily my favourite political slogan of all time. So apt. Still makes me smile.
Not going for that election was a huge mistake. We'd have avoided all this chaos.
Even if he had won, he had nothing left, no big ideas. He wanted to be PM for so long, but had no idea what to do with it. His legacy is all around - lovely hospitals and schools bought using PFI and we are still paying the cost. He genuinely believed he had abolished boom and bust, which rather says it all.
He was and is a decent human being, but un suited to being pm.
Agreed, though that recent Blair-Brown documentary does make me wonder - why did Brown do the PFI crap? He was more left wing than Blair - was Brown pushed into PFI or was he the instigator? It’s before my time politically. Just seems so obviously crap in hindsight.
He found PFI as a way to keep to the spending plans. Under Blair, it was all about more money for schools and hospitals - but holding to spending targets. Killing road construction and some other infrastructure projects helped, but there was always more to do.
PFI was a bit of an addiction in the end - spending that pushed the actual spending into the future. I’ll be good next week…..
The great irony of course was that in reality government bond rates were (at the time) on a one-way track to 0% and the government could have borrowed far more & the markets would have happily given it to them & gone out & found more where that came from.
All that faffing about with PFI & the distortions it caused was for nothing.
As Ken Livingstone pointed out at the time, when he lost a big row with the government about letting TfL use the bond market.
The other ludicrous thing about PFI is that the UK government can always borrow at a cheaper rate than the private sector. With PFI, the government was forcing the private sector to borrow at market rates to fund investment, with the payments coming from the government. Even if the markets viewed these as effectively government backed bonds, there was still some risk attached, plus the expenses involved in raising the £ in the first place. The government was therefore inevitably going to have to pay more to cover the difference between the bond rates than if they had just issued government debt in the first place. Sure, you could argue that some risk was transferred to the private sector, who would lose everything if the project failed. As we now know, in reality all that meant was that the government would then have to bring the project back in-house, usually at great expense.
The Treasury is a curse upon this nation frankly. Their attempts to shift risk to the private sector with HS2 didn’t work either: they just ended up making the whole project ridiculously expensive & were completely abandonded for phase II.
It's gonna be Yousaf! I thought GRR would get Forbes, didn't think she'd fall at gay marriage. The twitter meltdown hadn't even got going yet.
But seriously, there is a huge gap here for an unknown to jump into. As Carnyx points out, one week to go. Perhaps even Robertson by desperate acclamation?
Serious question - what happens when a socially conservative Muslim politician comes on the scene looking for a major office? Is everyone suddenly start going to say "well, it doesn't really matter they oppose gay marriage / trans rights" because being seen as Islamophobic is higher up on the discrimination list than women's rights / gay rights ?
Genuine question and mention the Islamic side but could obviously relate to other conservative non-Christian religions.
There must be a negative slogan we can make up about Rishi Sunak.
Something about him being rich
This is still the best positive slogan ever;
He had a lovely smile.
Because of what the lovely Edwina was doing to his bum hole?
Another evening ruined by a visual mind worm.
Sorry but since this tweet from December 2020, I regularly think about Sir John Major getting pegged senseless.
I'm not a fan of Currie (and unusually for people not her fans, I've met her). But if it came to a pegging contest between the right-wing lowlife scum John Paul Watson and Currie, I'd hope most people on here would be thoroughly on her side.
How does 'Boredom You Can Afford' sound as an election slogan?
They should just bring back the slogans Brown would have used in 2007.
E.g.
This one is the one that would do the best IMHO:
Thanks for dredging these up. Not flash, just Gordon is easily my favourite political slogan of all time. So apt. Still makes me smile.
Not going for that election was a huge mistake. We'd have avoided all this chaos.
Oooh now, Gordon was plenty capable of creating his own brand of chaos, but I think he would have won.
Even if he'd lost, the Tories would have overseen the financial crisis. Something they said needed less regulation than Labour proposed, so it would have been worse under them - Labour would have been back in a few years later.
You underestimate the consequences of the crisis getting out of control.
Brown haters (and I'm no fan) choke on the notion that he played a leading role in mitigating its worst effects, but it is hard to dispute, and if it was the only good thing he did it was definitely a biggy.
Brown also kept us out of the €. The direct effects of the 2008 crash would have been much, much worse without the ability of the BoE to prop up the economy with QE.
Yes even I would give Brown that one. Blair would’ve had us in the Euro.
But this saved the world crap? What he did was what the BoE was obliged by statute to do: to be a lender of last resort to the banking network. He authorised the printing of the cash because we didn’t have it. And faced with the complete collapse of his economic fantasies of ending boom and bust he and Darling at least acted promptly. That’s it.
And then he lied and hid the consequences by refusing to have a spending review and made a joke of our economic framework by making the economic cycle over which he was supposed to balance the books run on indefinitely.
How does 'Boredom You Can Afford' sound as an election slogan?
They should just bring back the slogans Brown would have used in 2007.
E.g.
This one is the one that would do the best IMHO:
Thanks for dredging these up. Not flash, just Gordon is easily my favourite political slogan of all time. So apt. Still makes me smile.
Not going for that election was a huge mistake. We'd have avoided all this chaos.
Oooh now, Gordon was plenty capable of creating his own brand of chaos, but I think he would have won.
Even if he'd lost, the Tories would have overseen the financial crisis. Something they said needed less regulation than Labour proposed, so it would have been worse under them - Labour would have been back in a few years later.
You underestimate the consequences of the crisis getting out of control.
Brown haters (and I'm no fan) choke on the notion that he played a leading role in mitigating its worst effects, but it is hard to dispute, and if it was the only good thing he did it was definitely a biggy.
But Brown also significantly contributed to the issue. Even if he did not pull the trigger, he handed the gun to the person who did. You don't laud the person who stems the blood loss, if they're involved with the shooting.
The severity of the GFC in the UK is down to one thing: Brown's ambition. He wanted to be PM, and undermined Blair to get the job. But that also required electability, so he ran the treasury to get short-term gains, not long-term stability.
He could have made decisions that reduced the effect of the GFC, but he didn't. Because he wanted to be PM.
This is the line that my old mucker, Richard Nabavi, used to run. In his absence it's good that someone else puts it up instead.
Some of the things Brown did certainly contributed to the GFC, but you vastly overestimate his influence and the UK's importance if you think these were significant.
It began in the US, with huge amounts of dodgy debt dressed up as desireable assets. It snowballed from there, assisted to some extent by mismanagemnt here and elsewhere, but the origin is well-known and understood now.
Likewise Brown's role in putting the blaze out.
To follow that analogy: the fire started in the Bakers in Pudding Lane. Brown built the houses around St Pauls out of wood and paper, instead of stone.
Again, congratulating him for putting the fire out is odd.
How does 'Boredom You Can Afford' sound as an election slogan?
They should just bring back the slogans Brown would have used in 2007.
E.g.
This one is the one that would do the best IMHO:
Thanks for dredging these up. Not flash, just Gordon is easily my favourite political slogan of all time. So apt. Still makes me smile.
Not going for that election was a huge mistake. We'd have avoided all this chaos.
Oooh now, Gordon was plenty capable of creating his own brand of chaos, but I think he would have won.
Even if he'd lost, the Tories would have overseen the financial crisis. Something they said needed less regulation than Labour proposed, so it would have been worse under them - Labour would have been back in a few years later.
You underestimate the consequences of the crisis getting out of control.
Brown haters (and I'm no fan) choke on the notion that he played a leading role in mitigating its worst effects, but it is hard to dispute, and if it was the only good thing he did it was definitely a biggy.
But Brown also significantly contributed to the issue. Even if he did not pull the trigger, he handed the gun to the person who did. You don't laud the person who stems the blood loss, if they're involved with the shooting.
The severity of the GFC in the UK is down to one thing: Brown's ambition. He wanted to be PM, and undermined Blair to get the job. But that also required electability, so he ran the treasury to get short-term gains, not long-term stability.
He could have made decisions that reduced the effect of the GFC, but he didn't. Because he wanted to be PM.
Nonsense on stilts. Brown did not cause the GFC, did not exacerbate the GFC, but did help stem the GFC.
Indeed. Worth remembering that Barclays wanted to buy Lehmans and were blocked by doing so by the FCA and Alastair Darling. Think how bad it would have been had we then lost Barclays...
Ironically, I was about to add that stopping Barclays buying Lehmans was the only point at which GFC fingers might point at Brown but as Darling said at the time, that would create the absurdity of the Bank of England underwriting an American bank. iirc Barclays did end up buying pieces of Lehmans later on.
How does 'Boredom You Can Afford' sound as an election slogan?
They should just bring back the slogans Brown would have used in 2007.
E.g.
This one is the one that would do the best IMHO:
Thanks for dredging these up. Not flash, just Gordon is easily my favourite political slogan of all time. So apt. Still makes me smile.
Not going for that election was a huge mistake. We'd have avoided all this chaos.
Oooh now, Gordon was plenty capable of creating his own brand of chaos, but I think he would have won.
Even if he'd lost, the Tories would have overseen the financial crisis. Something they said needed less regulation than Labour proposed, so it would have been worse under them - Labour would have been back in a few years later.
You underestimate the consequences of the crisis getting out of control.
Brown haters (and I'm no fan) choke on the notion that he played a leading role in mitigating its worst effects, but it is hard to dispute, and if it was the only good thing he did it was definitely a biggy.
But Brown also significantly contributed to the issue. Even if he did not pull the trigger, he handed the gun to the person who did. You don't laud the person who stems the blood loss, if they're involved with the shooting.
The severity of the GFC in the UK is down to one thing: Brown's ambition. He wanted to be PM, and undermined Blair to get the job. But that also required electability, so he ran the treasury to get short-term gains, not long-term stability.
He could have made decisions that reduced the effect of the GFC, but he didn't. Because he wanted to be PM.
Nonsense on stilts. Brown did not cause the GFC, did not exacerbate the GFC, but did help stem the GFC.
Indeed. Worth remembering that Barclays wanted to buy Lehmans and were blocked by doing so by the FCA and Alastair Darling. Think how bad it would have been had we then lost Barclays...
The two big accelerators of our relative decline after the GFC were our outsized dependence on financial services (nobody’s fault as such, just a feature of our economy) and the unnecessarily contractionist policies in the following years.
It's gonna be Yousaf! I thought GRR would get Forbes, didn't think she'd fall at gay marriage. The twitter meltdown hadn't even got going yet.
But seriously, there is a huge gap here for an unknown to jump into. As Carnyx points out, one week to go. Perhaps even Robertson by desperate acclamation?
Serious question - what happens when a socially conservative Muslim politician comes on the scene looking for a major office? Is everyone suddenly start going to say "well, it doesn't really matter they oppose gay marriage / trans rights" because being seen as Islamophobic is higher up on the discrimination list than women's rights / gay rights ?
Genuine question and mention the Islamic side but could obviously relate to other conservative non-Christian religions.
If the party he is leading is majority christian/pastafarian I can't see it being a problem. Unless you subscribe to the 'we will all be forced to learn the koran' school of thought.
How does 'Boredom You Can Afford' sound as an election slogan?
They should just bring back the slogans Brown would have used in 2007.
E.g.
This one is the one that would do the best IMHO:
Thanks for dredging these up. Not flash, just Gordon is easily my favourite political slogan of all time. So apt. Still makes me smile.
Not going for that election was a huge mistake. We'd have avoided all this chaos.
Oooh now, Gordon was plenty capable of creating his own brand of chaos, but I think he would have won.
Even if he'd lost, the Tories would have overseen the financial crisis. Something they said needed less regulation than Labour proposed, so it would have been worse under them - Labour would have been back in a few years later.
You underestimate the consequences of the crisis getting out of control.
Brown haters (and I'm no fan) choke on the notion that he played a leading role in mitigating its worst effects, but it is hard to dispute, and if it was the only good thing he did it was definitely a biggy.
Brown also kept us out of the €. The direct effects of the 2008 crash would have been much, much worse without the ability of the BoE to prop up the economy with QE.
Yes even I would give Brown that one. Blair would’ve had us in the Euro.
But this saved the world crap? What he did was what the BoE was obliged by statute to do: to be a lender of last resort to the banking network. He authorised the printing of the cash because we didn’t have it. And faced with the complete collapse of his economic fantasies of ending boom and bust he and Darling at least acted promptly. That’s it.
And then he lied and hid the consequences by refusing to have a spending review and made a joke of our economic framework by making the economic cycle over which he was supposed to balance the books run on indefinitely.
You misunderstand. Gordon Brown saved the world by working the phones to coordinate the international bail-outs. Up till then, the United States had been prepared to let banks fail, including the just-discussed Lehmans which was arguably the tipping point into the GFC.
How does 'Boredom You Can Afford' sound as an election slogan?
They should just bring back the slogans Brown would have used in 2007.
E.g.
This one is the one that would do the best IMHO:
Thanks for dredging these up. Not flash, just Gordon is easily my favourite political slogan of all time. So apt. Still makes me smile.
Not going for that election was a huge mistake. We'd have avoided all this chaos.
Oooh now, Gordon was plenty capable of creating his own brand of chaos, but I think he would have won.
Even if he'd lost, the Tories would have overseen the financial crisis. Something they said needed less regulation than Labour proposed, so it would have been worse under them - Labour would have been back in a few years later.
You underestimate the consequences of the crisis getting out of control.
Brown haters (and I'm no fan) choke on the notion that he played a leading role in mitigating its worst effects, but it is hard to dispute, and if it was the only good thing he did it was definitely a biggy.
But Brown also significantly contributed to the issue. Even if he did not pull the trigger, he handed the gun to the person who did. You don't laud the person who stems the blood loss, if they're involved with the shooting.
The severity of the GFC in the UK is down to one thing: Brown's ambition. He wanted to be PM, and undermined Blair to get the job. But that also required electability, so he ran the treasury to get short-term gains, not long-term stability.
He could have made decisions that reduced the effect of the GFC, but he didn't. Because he wanted to be PM.
Nonsense on stilts. Brown did not cause the GFC, did not exacerbate the GFC, but did help stem the GFC.
Brown made one major policy failure that impacted 2008 directly I think: When he & Blair plotted their “big bang” reform of the control of monetary policy in the UK - the independence of the BoE & the setting up of the FSA - he completely failed to realise that he had taken away oversight of the banking system from the BoE and given it to ... nobody.
Which meant that there was no part of government that was looking at the banking system as a whole in the run up to 2008. The BoE was focused on macro economic issues & the FSA was focused on risk management in individual institutions. Nobody was looking at the system as a whole, so there was no one inside government to sound the alarm: Everyone saw it as someone else’s problem.
This is probably another Treasury failure too. Civil servants should have caught this.
Scotch experts should definitely not look at the geographical subsamples of this poll (because the margin on error on them is obviously so large as to make the figures meaningless).
Isn't the correct Scotch Expert process
- Open a bottle of cask strength, 20 year old - Add a dash of water to a good measure - Inhale - Pontificate about polls
?
Could get a bit expensive the way the polls are going.
As an Evul Tory, I just sell some more Collateralised Elderly Relative Obligations.
You’ve got this completely wrong. It is the kids we pile our obligations on so that we can live to a standard of living we have not earned.
How does 'Boredom You Can Afford' sound as an election slogan?
They should just bring back the slogans Brown would have used in 2007.
E.g.
This one is the one that would do the best IMHO:
Thanks for dredging these up. Not flash, just Gordon is easily my favourite political slogan of all time. So apt. Still makes me smile.
Not going for that election was a huge mistake. We'd have avoided all this chaos.
Oooh now, Gordon was plenty capable of creating his own brand of chaos, but I think he would have won.
Even if he'd lost, the Tories would have overseen the financial crisis. Something they said needed less regulation than Labour proposed, so it would have been worse under them - Labour would have been back in a few years later.
You underestimate the consequences of the crisis getting out of control.
Brown haters (and I'm no fan) choke on the notion that he played a leading role in mitigating its worst effects, but it is hard to dispute, and if it was the only good thing he did it was definitely a biggy.
But Brown also significantly contributed to the issue. Even if he did not pull the trigger, he handed the gun to the person who did. You don't laud the person who stems the blood loss, if they're involved with the shooting.
The severity of the GFC in the UK is down to one thing: Brown's ambition. He wanted to be PM, and undermined Blair to get the job. But that also required electability, so he ran the treasury to get short-term gains, not long-term stability.
He could have made decisions that reduced the effect of the GFC, but he didn't. Because he wanted to be PM.
This is the line that my old mucker, Richard Nabavi, used to run. In his absence it's good that someone else puts it up instead.
Some of the things Brown did certainly contributed to the GFC, but you vastly overestimate his influence and the UK's importance if you think these were significant.
It began in the US, with huge amounts of dodgy debt dressed up as desireable assets. It snowballed from there, assisted to some extent by mismanagemnt here and elsewhere, but the origin is well-known and understood now.
Likewise Brown's role in putting the blaze out.
To follow that analogy: the fire started in the Bakers in Pudding Lane. Brown built the houses around St Pauls out of wood and paper, instead of stone.
Again, congratulating him for putting the fire out is odd.
As the SNP considers electing an anti homosexual marriage leader, the Global South Fellowship of Anglicans removes Justin Welby as their leader after the Church of England Synod voted to bless homosexual couples
How does 'Boredom You Can Afford' sound as an election slogan?
They should just bring back the slogans Brown would have used in 2007.
E.g.
This one is the one that would do the best IMHO:
Thanks for dredging these up. Not flash, just Gordon is easily my favourite political slogan of all time. So apt. Still makes me smile.
Not going for that election was a huge mistake. We'd have avoided all this chaos.
Oooh now, Gordon was plenty capable of creating his own brand of chaos, but I think he would have won.
Even if he'd lost, the Tories would have overseen the financial crisis. Something they said needed less regulation than Labour proposed, so it would have been worse under them - Labour would have been back in a few years later.
You underestimate the consequences of the crisis getting out of control.
Brown haters (and I'm no fan) choke on the notion that he played a leading role in mitigating its worst effects, but it is hard to dispute, and if it was the only good thing he did it was definitely a biggy.
But Brown also significantly contributed to the issue. Even if he did not pull the trigger, he handed the gun to the person who did. You don't laud the person who stems the blood loss, if they're involved with the shooting.
The severity of the GFC in the UK is down to one thing: Brown's ambition. He wanted to be PM, and undermined Blair to get the job. But that also required electability, so he ran the treasury to get short-term gains, not long-term stability.
He could have made decisions that reduced the effect of the GFC, but he didn't. Because he wanted to be PM.
This is the line that my old mucker, Richard Nabavi, used to run. In his absence it's good that someone else puts it up instead.
Some of the things Brown did certainly contributed to the GFC, but you vastly overestimate his influence and the UK's importance if you think these were significant.
It began in the US, with huge amounts of dodgy debt dressed up as desireable assets. It snowballed from there, assisted to some extent by mismanagemnt here and elsewhere, but the origin is well-known and understood now.
Likewise Brown's role in putting the blaze out.
To follow that analogy: the fire started in the Bakers in Pudding Lane. Brown built the houses around St Pauls out of wood and paper, instead of stone.
Again, congratulating him for putting the fire out is odd.
Funny how the Americans never blamed London then, in their Congressional Report on the GFC. Of course, they might have looked into things a bit more deeply than trite 1666 analogies.
How does 'Boredom You Can Afford' sound as an election slogan?
They should just bring back the slogans Brown would have used in 2007.
E.g.
This one is the one that would do the best IMHO:
Thanks for dredging these up. Not flash, just Gordon is easily my favourite political slogan of all time. So apt. Still makes me smile.
Not going for that election was a huge mistake. We'd have avoided all this chaos.
Oooh now, Gordon was plenty capable of creating his own brand of chaos, but I think he would have won.
Even if he'd lost, the Tories would have overseen the financial crisis. Something they said needed less regulation than Labour proposed, so it would have been worse under them - Labour would have been back in a few years later.
You underestimate the consequences of the crisis getting out of control.
Brown haters (and I'm no fan) choke on the notion that he played a leading role in mitigating its worst effects, but it is hard to dispute, and if it was the only good thing he did it was definitely a biggy.
Brown also kept us out of the €. The direct effects of the 2008 crash would have been much, much worse without the ability of the BoE to prop up the economy with QE.
Yes even I would give Brown that one. Blair would’ve had us in the Euro.
But this saved the world crap? What he did was what the BoE was obliged by statute to do: to be a lender of last resort to the banking network. He authorised the printing of the cash because we didn’t have it. And faced with the complete collapse of his economic fantasies of ending boom and bust he and Darling at least acted promptly. That’s it.
And then he lied and hid the consequences by refusing to have a spending review and made a joke of our economic framework by making the economic cycle over which he was supposed to balance the books run on indefinitely.
You misunderstand. Gordon Brown saved the world by working the phones to coordinate the international bail-outs. Up till then, the United States had been prepared to let banks fail, including the just-discussed Lehmans which was arguably the tipping point into the GFC.
I think Gordon Brown realised, unlike most people then and even now, that the capitalist system had gone into a heart attack and needed emergency treatment.
I was trying to pick up a rental from Hertz shortly after the crash. They had run out of cars. Even as a bluechip company they couldn't get credit.
How does 'Boredom You Can Afford' sound as an election slogan?
They should just bring back the slogans Brown would have used in 2007.
E.g.
This one is the one that would do the best IMHO:
Thanks for dredging these up. Not flash, just Gordon is easily my favourite political slogan of all time. So apt. Still makes me smile.
Not going for that election was a huge mistake. We'd have avoided all this chaos.
Oooh now, Gordon was plenty capable of creating his own brand of chaos, but I think he would have won.
Even if he'd lost, the Tories would have overseen the financial crisis. Something they said needed less regulation than Labour proposed, so it would have been worse under them - Labour would have been back in a few years later.
You underestimate the consequences of the crisis getting out of control.
Brown haters (and I'm no fan) choke on the notion that he played a leading role in mitigating its worst effects, but it is hard to dispute, and if it was the only good thing he did it was definitely a biggy.
But Brown also significantly contributed to the issue. Even if he did not pull the trigger, he handed the gun to the person who did. You don't laud the person who stems the blood loss, if they're involved with the shooting.
The severity of the GFC in the UK is down to one thing: Brown's ambition. He wanted to be PM, and undermined Blair to get the job. But that also required electability, so he ran the treasury to get short-term gains, not long-term stability.
He could have made decisions that reduced the effect of the GFC, but he didn't. Because he wanted to be PM.
This is the line that my old mucker, Richard Nabavi, used to run. In his absence it's good that someone else puts it up instead.
Some of the things Brown did certainly contributed to the GFC, but you vastly overestimate his influence and the UK's importance if you think these were significant.
It began in the US, with huge amounts of dodgy debt dressed up as desireable assets. It snowballed from there, assisted to some extent by mismanagemnt here and elsewhere, but the origin is well-known and understood now.
Likewise Brown's role in putting the blaze out.
To follow that analogy: the fire started in the Bakers in Pudding Lane. Brown built the houses around St Pauls out of wood and paper, instead of stone.
Again, congratulating him for putting the fire out is odd.
Funny how the Americans never blamed London then, in their Congressional Report on the GFC. Of course, they might have looked into things a bit more deeply than trite 1666 analogies.
Perhaps because such reports would have concentrated on the US, rather than RoW? Whereas we're rather more concerned with the UK?
Are you claiming Brown left the UK economy in a good position to weather the GFC?
There must be a negative slogan we can make up about Rishi Sunak.
Something about him being rich
Get a life man.
This isn't LabourList.
Didn't we and Boris have some fun with Starmer though. Brittas, Keith Stormer, Captain Hindsight, Sir Beer Korma, Sir Crasharoonie Snoozefest and something about him being indecisive. All good fun.
How does 'Boredom You Can Afford' sound as an election slogan?
They should just bring back the slogans Brown would have used in 2007.
E.g.
This one is the one that would do the best IMHO:
Thanks for dredging these up. Not flash, just Gordon is easily my favourite political slogan of all time. So apt. Still makes me smile.
Not going for that election was a huge mistake. We'd have avoided all this chaos.
Oooh now, Gordon was plenty capable of creating his own brand of chaos, but I think he would have won.
Even if he'd lost, the Tories would have overseen the financial crisis. Something they said needed less regulation than Labour proposed, so it would have been worse under them - Labour would have been back in a few years later.
You underestimate the consequences of the crisis getting out of control.
Brown haters (and I'm no fan) choke on the notion that he played a leading role in mitigating its worst effects, but it is hard to dispute, and if it was the only good thing he did it was definitely a biggy.
Brown also kept us out of the €. The direct effects of the 2008 crash would have been much, much worse without the ability of the BoE to prop up the economy with QE.
Yes even I would give Brown that one. Blair would’ve had us in the Euro.
But this saved the world crap? What he did was what the BoE was obliged by statute to do: to be a lender of last resort to the banking network. He authorised the printing of the cash because we didn’t have it. And faced with the complete collapse of his economic fantasies of ending boom and bust he and Darling at least acted promptly. That’s it.
And then he lied and hid the consequences by refusing to have a spending review and made a joke of our economic framework by making the economic cycle over which he was supposed to balance the books run on indefinitely.
You misunderstand. Gordon Brown saved the world by working the phones to coordinate the international bail-outs. Up till then, the United States had been prepared to let banks fail, including the just-discussed Lehmans which was arguably the tipping point into the GFC.
It's covered well in Obama's autobiography. He had been recently elected and his acknowledgement of the role Brown played internationally is I think unprompted by prejudice or partisan politics.
Looking again at that latest R&W poll and perhaps the most remarkable stat is the LLG score: 66%. Highest we’ve seen. This isn’t a Labour score benefiting from eating up green votes. They’re unchanged on 5% and the LDs are up one on 10%.
Presumably he thinks it is small beer by comparison with the courage Trump showed by visiting Putin in Moscow, where the President sat fearlessly by the window.
There must be a negative slogan we can make up about Rishi Sunak.
Something about him being rich
Get a life man.
This isn't LabourList.
Didn't we and Boris have some fun with Starmer though. Brittas, Keith Stormer, Captain Hindsight, Sir Beer Korma, Sir Crasharoonie Snoozefest and something about him being indecisive. All good fun.
Some of these people called him Keith and Captain Hindsight continuously! Poor Rishi needs defending though wah wah wah
How does 'Boredom You Can Afford' sound as an election slogan?
They should just bring back the slogans Brown would have used in 2007.
E.g.
This one is the one that would do the best IMHO:
Thanks for dredging these up. Not flash, just Gordon is easily my favourite political slogan of all time. So apt. Still makes me smile.
Not going for that election was a huge mistake. We'd have avoided all this chaos.
Oooh now, Gordon was plenty capable of creating his own brand of chaos, but I think he would have won.
Even if he'd lost, the Tories would have overseen the financial crisis. Something they said needed less regulation than Labour proposed, so it would have been worse under them - Labour would have been back in a few years later.
You underestimate the consequences of the crisis getting out of control.
Brown haters (and I'm no fan) choke on the notion that he played a leading role in mitigating its worst effects, but it is hard to dispute, and if it was the only good thing he did it was definitely a biggy.
But Brown also significantly contributed to the issue. Even if he did not pull the trigger, he handed the gun to the person who did. You don't laud the person who stems the blood loss, if they're involved with the shooting.
The severity of the GFC in the UK is down to one thing: Brown's ambition. He wanted to be PM, and undermined Blair to get the job. But that also required electability, so he ran the treasury to get short-term gains, not long-term stability.
He could have made decisions that reduced the effect of the GFC, but he didn't. Because he wanted to be PM.
This is the line that my old mucker, Richard Nabavi, used to run. In his absence it's good that someone else puts it up instead.
Some of the things Brown did certainly contributed to the GFC, but you vastly overestimate his influence and the UK's importance if you think these were significant.
It began in the US, with huge amounts of dodgy debt dressed up as desireable assets. It snowballed from there, assisted to some extent by mismanagemnt here and elsewhere, but the origin is well-known and understood now.
Likewise Brown's role in putting the blaze out.
To follow that analogy: the fire started in the Bakers in Pudding Lane. Brown built the houses around St Pauls out of wood and paper, instead of stone.
Again, congratulating him for putting the fire out is odd.
That was kind of the analogy Richard used.
Well, if you say "putting the blaze out", you're kind-of heading for a fire analogy. And the Great Fire of London is a rather well-known blaze (as well as sharing two initials with the GFC).
Here's another analogy: the Ukraine invasion was not started by the west, whatever tankies claim. But we did embolden Putin by not reacting strongly enough when he did bad things. Our guilt lies not in causing Putin's evil little war, but in not saying: "Oi! No!" on the many opportunities we previously had, whether it was Georgia in 2008; Crimea/Donbass in 2014, MH17 the same year, Salisbury in 2018, etc, etc.
Looking again at that latest R&W poll and perhaps the most remarkable stat is the LLG score: 66%. Highest we’ve seen. This isn’t a Labour score benefiting from eating up green votes. They’re unchanged on 5% and the LDs are up one on 10%.
Or, to put it more succinctly, the Tory share is bloody low.
Trump rages against New York Post after DeSantis profile https://thehill.com/homenews/3866373-trump-rages-against-new-york-post-after-desantis-profile/ “In writer Salena Zito’s Fake News “puff piece” about DeSantis, which supposedly appeared in the dying New York Post, which is way down in readership just like FoxNews is way down in Ratings, why doesn’t she mention that he wants to cut Social Security & Medicare, loves losers like Jeb Bush, Paul Ryan, and Karl Rove, and it getting CLOBBERED in the polls by me,” Trump wrote on Sunday on Truth Social. “DeSantis is a RINO who is trying to hide his past. I don’t read the New York Post anymore. It has become Fake News, just like Fox & WSJ!”
How does 'Boredom You Can Afford' sound as an election slogan?
They should just bring back the slogans Brown would have used in 2007.
E.g.
This one is the one that would do the best IMHO:
Thanks for dredging these up. Not flash, just Gordon is easily my favourite political slogan of all time. So apt. Still makes me smile.
Not going for that election was a huge mistake. We'd have avoided all this chaos.
Oooh now, Gordon was plenty capable of creating his own brand of chaos, but I think he would have won.
Even if he'd lost, the Tories would have overseen the financial crisis. Something they said needed less regulation than Labour proposed, so it would have been worse under them - Labour would have been back in a few years later.
You underestimate the consequences of the crisis getting out of control.
Brown haters (and I'm no fan) choke on the notion that he played a leading role in mitigating its worst effects, but it is hard to dispute, and if it was the only good thing he did it was definitely a biggy.
But Brown also significantly contributed to the issue. Even if he did not pull the trigger, he handed the gun to the person who did. You don't laud the person who stems the blood loss, if they're involved with the shooting.
The severity of the GFC in the UK is down to one thing: Brown's ambition. He wanted to be PM, and undermined Blair to get the job. But that also required electability, so he ran the treasury to get short-term gains, not long-term stability.
He could have made decisions that reduced the effect of the GFC, but he didn't. Because he wanted to be PM.
Nonsense on stilts. Brown did not cause the GFC, did not exacerbate the GFC, but did help stem the GFC.
Brown made one major policy failure that impacted 2008 directly I think: When he & Blair plotted their “big bang” reform of the control of monetary policy in the UK - the independence of the BoE & the setting up of the FSA - he completely failed to realise that he had taken away oversight of the banking system from the BoE and given it to ... nobody.
Which meant that there was no part of government that was looking at the banking system as a whole in the run up to 2008. The BoE was focused on macro economic issues & the FSA was focused on risk management in individual institutions. Nobody was looking at the system as a whole, so there was no one inside government to sound the alarm: Everyone saw it as someone else’s problem.
This is probably another Treasury failure too. Civil servants should have caught this.
iirc there was a conflict of interest reason for changing the newly-independent Bank of England's role, but I really can't remember what it was. This made no difference to the GFC, as it happened.
Back in my old West London Manor. Ealing Broadway station has certainly been spruced up since I was last here.
What used to be Fat Boys Thai restaurant has become a branch of Rosa's. Hopefully the food is just as good. I shall find out soon. We used to eat here all the time. Here and the Clay Oven Indian restaurant which is now sadly shut down and boarded up.
Tomorrow I get to sample Crossrail for the first time.
Oh, and on topic: LOL.
Crossrail has a terrible rep; the Elizabeth Line is brilliant however.
How does 'Boredom You Can Afford' sound as an election slogan?
They should just bring back the slogans Brown would have used in 2007.
E.g.
This one is the one that would do the best IMHO:
Thanks for dredging these up. Not flash, just Gordon is easily my favourite political slogan of all time. So apt. Still makes me smile.
Not going for that election was a huge mistake. We'd have avoided all this chaos.
Even if he had won, he had nothing left, no big ideas. He wanted to be PM for so long, but had no idea what to do with it. His legacy is all around - lovely hospitals and schools bought using PFI and we are still paying the cost. He genuinely believed he had abolished boom and bust, which rather says it all.
He was and is a decent human being, but un suited to being pm.
Agreed, though that recent Blair-Brown documentary does make me wonder - why did Brown do the PFI crap? He was more left wing than Blair - was Brown pushed into PFI or was he the instigator? It’s before my time politically. Just seems so obviously crap in hindsight.
PFI started under the Tories. Once Brown and Blair pledged to stick to Tory spending plans for the first few years of their administration to avoid the obvious attacks, there wasn't much money around to spend and hospitals and schools were in a bad way that Labour couldn't politically afford not to fix. When I started secondary school in the late nineties we were changing in portakabins and were taught some lessons in huts - there were also often leaks in the roof of the main building and science block. By the time I left we had our own gym and astroturf that was a revenue raiser as used out of school hours. How do you build all that with no money - PFI was the easiest available tool and as was initially a Tory initiative couldn't really criticise. There is a certain logic to it politically too given people want stuff sorting now and aside from close observers aren't too bothered if something costs a bit more in 15 years time so long as get it done now.
I think this has a little way to run. Though I am surprised she stood as she has a tiny baby and better things to do, and bound to attract loads of sniping from all sides as they set the hounds on a tame gazelle. Hills have her moving rapidly from about 4/6 -to 13/8 in a short time. Humza now favourite at 4/6.
SFAICS KF is the only candidate with a charisma level above 1 out of 10. And if someone can emerge who is any good, how come we have not heard of them?
Her intro video today was awful. Scottish Tourist Board images and a commentary conspicuous for its absences.
If the polls show the Tories going UP, they are useful and must be posted.
If the polls show the Tories going DOWN, they are irrelevant until the GE, they will swing back, they are wrong, Keir Starmer is useless, any other leader would be 30 points ahead etc
How does 'Boredom You Can Afford' sound as an election slogan?
They should just bring back the slogans Brown would have used in 2007.
E.g.
This one is the one that would do the best IMHO:
Thanks for dredging these up. Not flash, just Gordon is easily my favourite political slogan of all time. So apt. Still makes me smile.
Not going for that election was a huge mistake. We'd have avoided all this chaos.
Oooh now, Gordon was plenty capable of creating his own brand of chaos, but I think he would have won.
Even if he'd lost, the Tories would have overseen the financial crisis. Something they said needed less regulation than Labour proposed, so it would have been worse under them - Labour would have been back in a few years later.
You underestimate the consequences of the crisis getting out of control.
Brown haters (and I'm no fan) choke on the notion that he played a leading role in mitigating its worst effects, but it is hard to dispute, and if it was the only good thing he did it was definitely a biggy.
But Brown also significantly contributed to the issue. Even if he did not pull the trigger, he handed the gun to the person who did. You don't laud the person who stems the blood loss, if they're involved with the shooting.
The severity of the GFC in the UK is down to one thing: Brown's ambition. He wanted to be PM, and undermined Blair to get the job. But that also required electability, so he ran the treasury to get short-term gains, not long-term stability.
He could have made decisions that reduced the effect of the GFC, but he didn't. Because he wanted to be PM.
Nonsense on stilts. Brown did not cause the GFC, did not exacerbate the GFC, but did help stem the GFC.
Indeed. Worth remembering that Barclays wanted to buy Lehmans and were blocked by doing so by the FCA and Alastair Darling. Think how bad it would have been had we then lost Barclays...
They did allow Lloyds to buy HBOS though. Brown was slow to act but when he did he was decisive.
How does 'Boredom You Can Afford' sound as an election slogan?
They should just bring back the slogans Brown would have used in 2007.
E.g.
This one is the one that would do the best IMHO:
Thanks for dredging these up. Not flash, just Gordon is easily my favourite political slogan of all time. So apt. Still makes me smile.
Not going for that election was a huge mistake. We'd have avoided all this chaos.
Oooh now, Gordon was plenty capable of creating his own brand of chaos, but I think he would have won.
Even if he'd lost, the Tories would have overseen the financial crisis. Something they said needed less regulation than Labour proposed, so it would have been worse under them - Labour would have been back in a few years later.
You underestimate the consequences of the crisis getting out of control.
Brown haters (and I'm no fan) choke on the notion that he played a leading role in mitigating its worst effects, but it is hard to dispute, and if it was the only good thing he did it was definitely a biggy.
But Brown also significantly contributed to the issue. Even if he did not pull the trigger, he handed the gun to the person who did. You don't laud the person who stems the blood loss, if they're involved with the shooting.
The severity of the GFC in the UK is down to one thing: Brown's ambition. He wanted to be PM, and undermined Blair to get the job. But that also required electability, so he ran the treasury to get short-term gains, not long-term stability.
He could have made decisions that reduced the effect of the GFC, but he didn't. Because he wanted to be PM.
This is the line that my old mucker, Richard Nabavi, used to run. In his absence it's good that someone else puts it up instead.
Some of the things Brown did certainly contributed to the GFC, but you vastly overestimate his influence and the UK's importance if you think these were significant.
It began in the US, with huge amounts of dodgy debt dressed up as desireable assets. It snowballed from there, assisted to some extent by mismanagemnt here and elsewhere, but the origin is well-known and understood now.
Likewise Brown's role in putting the blaze out.
To follow that analogy: the fire started in the Bakers in Pudding Lane. Brown built the houses around St Pauls out of wood and paper, instead of stone.
Again, congratulating him for putting the fire out is odd.
Funny how the Americans never blamed London then, in their Congressional Report on the GFC. Of course, they might have looked into things a bit more deeply than trite 1666 analogies.
Perhaps because such reports would have concentrated on the US, rather than RoW? Whereas we're rather more concerned with the UK?
Are you claiming Brown left the UK economy in a good position to weather the GFC?
I'm claiming what I claimed a few minutes ago, that Brown neither caused nor exacerbated the GFC but did play a major role in responding to it.
How does 'Boredom You Can Afford' sound as an election slogan?
They should just bring back the slogans Brown would have used in 2007.
E.g.
This one is the one that would do the best IMHO:
Thanks for dredging these up. Not flash, just Gordon is easily my favourite political slogan of all time. So apt. Still makes me smile.
Not going for that election was a huge mistake. We'd have avoided all this chaos.
Oooh now, Gordon was plenty capable of creating his own brand of chaos, but I think he would have won.
Even if he'd lost, the Tories would have overseen the financial crisis. Something they said needed less regulation than Labour proposed, so it would have been worse under them - Labour would have been back in a few years later.
You underestimate the consequences of the crisis getting out of control.
Brown haters (and I'm no fan) choke on the notion that he played a leading role in mitigating its worst effects, but it is hard to dispute, and if it was the only good thing he did it was definitely a biggy.
But Brown also significantly contributed to the issue. Even if he did not pull the trigger, he handed the gun to the person who did. You don't laud the person who stems the blood loss, if they're involved with the shooting.
The severity of the GFC in the UK is down to one thing: Brown's ambition. He wanted to be PM, and undermined Blair to get the job. But that also required electability, so he ran the treasury to get short-term gains, not long-term stability.
He could have made decisions that reduced the effect of the GFC, but he didn't. Because he wanted to be PM.
This is the line that my old mucker, Richard Nabavi, used to run. In his absence it's good that someone else puts it up instead.
Some of the things Brown did certainly contributed to the GFC, but you vastly overestimate his influence and the UK's importance if you think these were significant.
It began in the US, with huge amounts of dodgy debt dressed up as desireable assets. It snowballed from there, assisted to some extent by mismanagemnt here and elsewhere, but the origin is well-known and understood now.
Likewise Brown's role in putting the blaze out.
To follow that analogy: the fire started in the Bakers in Pudding Lane. Brown built the houses around St Pauls out of wood and paper, instead of stone.
Again, congratulating him for putting the fire out is odd.
That was kind of the analogy Richard used.
Well, if you say "putting the blaze out", you're kind-of heading for a fire analogy. And the Great Fire of London is a rather well-known blaze (as well as sharing two initials with the GFC).
Here's another analogy: the Ukraine invasion was not started by the west, whatever tankies claim. But we did embolden Putin by not reacting strongly enough when he did bad things. Our guilt lies not in causing Putin's evil little war, but in not saying: "Oi! No!" on the many opportunities we previously had, whether it was Georgia in 2008; Crimea/Donbass in 2014, MH17 the same year, Salisbury in 2018, etc, etc.
That's true!
The problem with your use of the analogy though is the facts not fitting it. I doubt any economy would have survived complete collapse of the global financial system. We would probably have been reverting to barter.
It's gonna be Yousaf! I thought GRR would get Forbes, didn't think she'd fall at gay marriage. The twitter meltdown hadn't even got going yet.
But seriously, there is a huge gap here for an unknown to jump into. As Carnyx points out, one week to go. Perhaps even Robertson by desperate acclamation?
Serious question - what happens when a socially conservative Muslim politician comes on the scene looking for a major office? Is everyone suddenly start going to say "well, it doesn't really matter they oppose gay marriage / trans rights" because being seen as Islamophobic is higher up on the discrimination list than women's rights / gay rights ?
Genuine question and mention the Islamic side but could obviously relate to other conservative non-Christian religions.
If the party he is leading is majority christian/pastafarian I can't see it being a problem. Unless you subscribe to the 'we will all be forced to learn the koran' school of thought.
Is the SNP a majority Christian body? I would have thought more agnostic / atheist. In any event, then it's not the leader's views who is important but who they are leading.
How does 'Boredom You Can Afford' sound as an election slogan?
They should just bring back the slogans Brown would have used in 2007.
E.g.
This one is the one that would do the best IMHO:
Thanks for dredging these up. Not flash, just Gordon is easily my favourite political slogan of all time. So apt. Still makes me smile.
Not going for that election was a huge mistake. We'd have avoided all this chaos.
Even if he had won, he had nothing left, no big ideas. He wanted to be PM for so long, but had no idea what to do with it. His legacy is all around - lovely hospitals and schools bought using PFI and we are still paying the cost. He genuinely believed he had abolished boom and bust, which rather says it all.
He was and is a decent human being, but un suited to being pm.
Agreed, though that recent Blair-Brown documentary does make me wonder - why did Brown do the PFI crap? He was more left wing than Blair - was Brown pushed into PFI or was he the instigator? It’s before my time politically. Just seems so obviously crap in hindsight.
PFI started under the Tories. Once Brown and Blair pledged to stick to Tory spending plans for the first few years of their administration to avoid the obvious attacks, there wasn't much money around to spend and hospitals and schools were in a bad way that Labour couldn't politically afford not to fix. When I started secondary school in the late nineties we were changing in portakabins and were taught some lessons in huts - there were also often leaks in the roof of the main building and science block. By the time I left we had our own gym and astroturf that was a revenue raiser as used out of school hours. How do you build all that with no money - PFI was the easiest available tool and as was initially a Tory initiative couldn't really criticise. There is a certain logic to it politically too given people want stuff sorting now and aside from close observers aren't too bothered if something costs a bit more in 15 years time so long as get it done now.
Yes, lessons in huts were commonplace through the entirety of my school days. I didn't think anything of it at the time, but looking back it was a pretty dour thing. Kids today don't know how lucky they are!
How does 'Boredom You Can Afford' sound as an election slogan?
They should just bring back the slogans Brown would have used in 2007.
E.g.
This one is the one that would do the best IMHO:
Thanks for dredging these up. Not flash, just Gordon is easily my favourite political slogan of all time. So apt. Still makes me smile.
Not going for that election was a huge mistake. We'd have avoided all this chaos.
Even if he had won, he had nothing left, no big ideas. He wanted to be PM for so long, but had no idea what to do with it. His legacy is all around - lovely hospitals and schools bought using PFI and we are still paying the cost. He genuinely believed he had abolished boom and bust, which rather says it all.
He was and is a decent human being, but un suited to being pm.
Agreed, though that recent Blair-Brown documentary does make me wonder - why did Brown do the PFI crap? He was more left wing than Blair - was Brown pushed into PFI or was he the instigator? It’s before my time politically. Just seems so obviously crap in hindsight.
PFI started under the Tories. Once Brown and Blair pledged to stick to Tory spending plans for the first few years of their administration to avoid the obvious attacks, there wasn't much money around to spend and hospitals and schools were in a bad way that Labour couldn't politically afford not to fix. When I started secondary school in the late nineties we were changing in portakabins and were taught some lessons in huts - there were also often leaks in the roof of the main building and science block. By the time I left we had our own gym and astroturf that was a revenue raiser as used out of school hours. How do you build all that with no money - PFI was the easiest available tool and as was initially a Tory initiative couldn't really criticise. There is a certain logic to it politically too given people want stuff sorting now and aside from close observers aren't too bothered if something costs a bit more in 15 years time so long as get it done now.
Yes, lessons in huts were commonplace through the entirety of my school days. I didn't think anything of it at the time, but looking back it was a pretty dour thing. Kids today don't know how lucky they are!
Those who are still in huts perhaps have no reason to be aware of it?
As the SNP considers electing an anti homosexual marriage leader, the Global South Fellowship of Anglicans removes Justin Welby as their leader after the Church of England Synod voted to bless homosexual couples
How does 'Boredom You Can Afford' sound as an election slogan?
They should just bring back the slogans Brown would have used in 2007.
E.g.
This one is the one that would do the best IMHO:
Thanks for dredging these up. Not flash, just Gordon is easily my favourite political slogan of all time. So apt. Still makes me smile.
Not going for that election was a huge mistake. We'd have avoided all this chaos.
Oooh now, Gordon was plenty capable of creating his own brand of chaos, but I think he would have won.
Even if he'd lost, the Tories would have overseen the financial crisis. Something they said needed less regulation than Labour proposed, so it would have been worse under them - Labour would have been back in a few years later.
You underestimate the consequences of the crisis getting out of control.
Brown haters (and I'm no fan) choke on the notion that he played a leading role in mitigating its worst effects, but it is hard to dispute, and if it was the only good thing he did it was definitely a biggy.
But Brown also significantly contributed to the issue. Even if he did not pull the trigger, he handed the gun to the person who did. You don't laud the person who stems the blood loss, if they're involved with the shooting.
The severity of the GFC in the UK is down to one thing: Brown's ambition. He wanted to be PM, and undermined Blair to get the job. But that also required electability, so he ran the treasury to get short-term gains, not long-term stability.
He could have made decisions that reduced the effect of the GFC, but he didn't. Because he wanted to be PM.
Nonsense on stilts. Brown did not cause the GFC, did not exacerbate the GFC, but did help stem the GFC.
Indeed. Worth remembering that Barclays wanted to buy Lehmans and were blocked by doing so by the FCA and Alastair Darling. Think how bad it would have been had we then lost Barclays...
They did allow Lloyds to buy HBOS though. Brown was slow to act but when he did he was decisive.
I don't know about anyone else, but that really does feel like an oxymoron, but I'm not 100% sure.
While I was having a few days break last week, I read:
1. Azincourt (Bernard Cornwell) I may be a lefty, liberal, card-carrying member of the wokerati, but I bloody love the story of Agincourt. I've loved it since I first read Shakespeare's Henry V, and saw Olivier's film; I've seen and loved Branagh's film too, been in the play (Burgundy), been to the battlefield, seen Robert Hardy talk passionately about it, played the wargame. Cornwell writes about, and from the point of view of, the archers. They were craftsmen, who knew their discipline inside out, had practiced to perfection, and used that to devastating effect. So does Cornwell: solid history, great characterisation, clear-eyed view of Henry, braids fact and fiction together with ease, gives an amazing sense of what it would have been like to stand at the bottom of that hill, tired, ill and resigned to death. Wonderful read. Recommended.
2. The City & the City (China Mieville) I drifted away from SF a bit for a while in the 90s and 00s, but before and since have read very widely in the genre, under its many guises (including those mainstream authors who avoid using the term SF because they look down on it, even though it's what they're writing), and the premise of this book stands out in my recollection as being utterly unique and original. Imagine a city in mittel-Europa: down at heel, decaying and a little backward, searching for an identity and place in the modern world. Imagine another city, this one somewhat Turkic or near Eastern, thrusting forward economically as it modernises and embraces western capitalism. Now imagine that these two cities share the same streets and parks, not just culturally, but with the inhabitants of each, by a collective and individual effort of will, *never seeing the residents of their counterpart*. Set a murder mystery in those weird twin cities, bring in some secret history and fringe politics, and that's a recipe you won't find anywhere else. Mieville may not be the greatest stylist as a writer, either in SF (his many awards would indicate lots of people don't agree with me on that) or crime fiction, but frankly this is irresistible. I do have some questions, however: is Orciny a nod to Ursula Le Guin? Did he want to call it 'Between the City & the City' for added metatextualism, but it wouldn't fit? And why is it 'The City & the City', and not 'The City and the City'?
3. The Dreamstone (C.J. Cherryh) A very early Cherryh book, and one I initially thought was going to be completely unlike the ones I knew - Celtic fantasy as opposed to the hard SF of the Alliance-Union, Chanur and other books. But there is a resonance and a resemblance to the Morgaine books: a sense of fading, loss, resignation, and ending. For a book so early in a career, it is incredibly accomplished; for a book so short (180pp), it is incredibly charged. If you're not into folklore and mythology, don't bother; if you are, it'll be rewarding.
Ultimately Brown's plan was cooked up in the Treasury though he deserves credit for persuading people internationally of its merits. Whatever its flaws the British state remains good in a crisis.
It's gonna be Yousaf! I thought GRR would get Forbes, didn't think she'd fall at gay marriage. The twitter meltdown hadn't even got going yet.
But seriously, there is a huge gap here for an unknown to jump into. As Carnyx points out, one week to go. Perhaps even Robertson by desperate acclamation?
Serious question - what happens when a socially conservative Muslim politician comes on the scene looking for a major office? Is everyone suddenly start going to say "well, it doesn't really matter they oppose gay marriage / trans rights" because being seen as Islamophobic is higher up on the discrimination list than women's rights / gay rights ?
Genuine question and mention the Islamic side but could obviously relate to other conservative non-Christian religions.
If the party he is leading is majority christian/pastafarian I can't see it being a problem. Unless you subscribe to the 'we will all be forced to learn the koran' school of thought.
Is the SNP a majority Christian body? I would have thought more agnostic / atheist. In any event, then it's not the leader's views who is important but who they are leading.
If only Hitler had run a majority Jewish party
Are you in favour of Marj's latest wheeze? A national divorce between red and blue states?
How does 'Boredom You Can Afford' sound as an election slogan?
They should just bring back the slogans Brown would have used in 2007.
E.g.
This one is the one that would do the best IMHO:
Thanks for dredging these up. Not flash, just Gordon is easily my favourite political slogan of all time. So apt. Still makes me smile.
Not going for that election was a huge mistake. We'd have avoided all this chaos.
Oooh now, Gordon was plenty capable of creating his own brand of chaos, but I think he would have won.
Even if he'd lost, the Tories would have overseen the financial crisis. Something they said needed less regulation than Labour proposed, so it would have been worse under them - Labour would have been back in a few years later.
You underestimate the consequences of the crisis getting out of control.
Brown haters (and I'm no fan) choke on the notion that he played a leading role in mitigating its worst effects, but it is hard to dispute, and if it was the only good thing he did it was definitely a biggy.
But Brown also significantly contributed to the issue. Even if he did not pull the trigger, he handed the gun to the person who did. You don't laud the person who stems the blood loss, if they're involved with the shooting.
The severity of the GFC in the UK is down to one thing: Brown's ambition. He wanted to be PM, and undermined Blair to get the job. But that also required electability, so he ran the treasury to get short-term gains, not long-term stability.
He could have made decisions that reduced the effect of the GFC, but he didn't. Because he wanted to be PM.
This is the line that my old mucker, Richard Nabavi, used to run. In his absence it's good that someone else puts it up instead.
Some of the things Brown did certainly contributed to the GFC, but you vastly overestimate his influence and the UK's importance if you think these were significant.
It began in the US, with huge amounts of dodgy debt dressed up as desireable assets. It snowballed from there, assisted to some extent by mismanagemnt here and elsewhere, but the origin is well-known and understood now.
Likewise Brown's role in putting the blaze out.
To follow that analogy: the fire started in the Bakers in Pudding Lane. Brown built the houses around St Pauls out of wood and paper, instead of stone.
Again, congratulating him for putting the fire out is odd.
Funny how the Americans never blamed London then, in their Congressional Report on the GFC. Of course, they might have looked into things a bit more deeply than trite 1666 analogies.
Perhaps because such reports would have concentrated on the US, rather than RoW? Whereas we're rather more concerned with the UK?
Are you claiming Brown left the UK economy in a good position to weather the GFC?
I'm claiming what I claimed a few minutes ago, that Brown neither caused nor exacerbated the GFC but did play a major role in responding to it.
Well, I say you are utterly and totally wrong in the 'exacerbating' bit. In essence, you are claiming that Brown could not have done anything to set the UK up to be in a better position for when the crash occurred. Is that your position?
The Redfield & Wilton poll is certainly a surprise. I thought the Government had, by its standards, a decent week last week. All I can think is the impact of winter bills is finally coming through - it's also possible this poll is a massive outlier.
Sunak's own approval figures continue to sink and he trails Starmer by nine points on the best PM polling (or should that be better PM polling?)
Into the data (rather than just using the headline figures) and excluding those saying they Won't Vote, Labour leads 43-21 with 15% Don't Knows. The 2019 Conservative vote now splits 47% Conservative, 24% Labour (and there's your explanation for the change), 17% Don't Know and 8% Reform.
The Conservative Don't Knows represent 44% of the total.
Stripping out the DKs, Labour leads by 18 points among men and 35 points among women. Among the 65+ age group, the Conservatives lead 39-36 which represents a 22% swing from Conservative to Labour among this core Tory voting group.
The England sub sample comes out at Labour 53%, Conservative 25%, LD 9.5%, Reform 7% and Green 5%. That's a swing of 20.5% from Conservative to Labour and a 9.5% swing from Conservative to Liberal Democrat since the 2019 election.
A UNS of 20.5% means Hertsmere, the 293rd most marginal Conservative seat, would be a Labour gain suggesting a Conservative Parliamentary Party reduced to just under 100 seats
How does 'Boredom You Can Afford' sound as an election slogan?
They should just bring back the slogans Brown would have used in 2007.
E.g.
This one is the one that would do the best IMHO:
Thanks for dredging these up. Not flash, just Gordon is easily my favourite political slogan of all time. So apt. Still makes me smile.
Not going for that election was a huge mistake. We'd have avoided all this chaos.
Oooh now, Gordon was plenty capable of creating his own brand of chaos, but I think he would have won.
Even if he'd lost, the Tories would have overseen the financial crisis. Something they said needed less regulation than Labour proposed, so it would have been worse under them - Labour would have been back in a few years later.
You underestimate the consequences of the crisis getting out of control.
Brown haters (and I'm no fan) choke on the notion that he played a leading role in mitigating its worst effects, but it is hard to dispute, and if it was the only good thing he did it was definitely a biggy.
But Brown also significantly contributed to the issue. Even if he did not pull the trigger, he handed the gun to the person who did. You don't laud the person who stems the blood loss, if they're involved with the shooting.
The severity of the GFC in the UK is down to one thing: Brown's ambition. He wanted to be PM, and undermined Blair to get the job. But that also required electability, so he ran the treasury to get short-term gains, not long-term stability.
He could have made decisions that reduced the effect of the GFC, but he didn't. Because he wanted to be PM.
This is the line that my old mucker, Richard Nabavi, used to run. In his absence it's good that someone else puts it up instead.
Some of the things Brown did certainly contributed to the GFC, but you vastly overestimate his influence and the UK's importance if you think these were significant.
It began in the US, with huge amounts of dodgy debt dressed up as desireable assets. It snowballed from there, assisted to some extent by mismanagemnt here and elsewhere, but the origin is well-known and understood now.
Likewise Brown's role in putting the blaze out.
To follow that analogy: the fire started in the Bakers in Pudding Lane. Brown built the houses around St Pauls out of wood and paper, instead of stone.
Again, congratulating him for putting the fire out is odd.
That was kind of the analogy Richard used.
Well, if you say "putting the blaze out", you're kind-of heading for a fire analogy. And the Great Fire of London is a rather well-known blaze (as well as sharing two initials with the GFC).
Here's another analogy: the Ukraine invasion was not started by the west, whatever tankies claim. But we did embolden Putin by not reacting strongly enough when he did bad things. Our guilt lies not in causing Putin's evil little war, but in not saying: "Oi! No!" on the many opportunities we previously had, whether it was Georgia in 2008; Crimea/Donbass in 2014, MH17 the same year, Salisbury in 2018, etc, etc.
That's true!
The problem with your use of the analogy though is the facts not fitting it. I doubt any economy would have survived complete collapse of the global financial system. We would probably have been reverting to barter.
Well, I say you are utterly and totally wrong in the 'exacerbating' bit. In essence, you are claiming that Brown could not have done anything to set the UK up to be in a better position for when the crash occurred. Is that your position?
If we'd had the Tories, they said Brown regulated too much and they would have matched his spending.
I can’t say I really understand the concept of voting against gay marriage for religious reasons. I get that you might believe that in your church or faith or religion it would not be accepted. And I am not a proponent of requiring religious officials to marry people against their beliefs. But to me it seems really weird to be against it so fundamentally as a concept in a civil or (where different religions or officials want to) religious context outside of your own beliefs. Just let it take place if people want it to. It doesn’t affect your practices.
The Redfield & Wilton poll is certainly a surprise. I thought the Government had, by its standards, a decent week last week. All I can think is the impact of winter bills is finally coming through - it's also possible this poll is a massive outlier.
Sunak's own approval figures continue to sink and he trails Starmer by nine points on the best PM polling (or should that be better PM polling?)
Into the data (rather than just using the headline figures) and excluding those saying they Won't Vote, Labour leads 43-21 with 15% Don't Knows. The 2019 Conservative vote now splits 47% Conservative, 24% Labour (and there's your explanation for the change), 17% Don't Know and 8% Reform.
The Conservative Don't Knows represent 44% of the total.
Stripping out the DKs, Labour leads by 18 points among men and 35 points among women. Among the 65+ age group, the Conservatives lead 39-36 which represents a 22% swing from Conservative to Labour among this core Tory voting group.
The England sub sample comes out at Labour 53%, Conservative 25%, LD 9.5%, Reform 7% and Green 5%. That's a swing of 20.5% from Conservative to Labour and a 9.5% swing from Conservative to Liberal Democrat since the 2019 election.
A UNS of 20.5% means Hertsmere, the 293rd most marginal Conservative seat, would be a Labour gain suggesting a Conservative Parliamentary Party reduced to just under 100 seats
It's gonna be Yousaf! I thought GRR would get Forbes, didn't think she'd fall at gay marriage. The twitter meltdown hadn't even got going yet.
But seriously, there is a huge gap here for an unknown to jump into. As Carnyx points out, one week to go. Perhaps even Robertson by desperate acclamation?
If Humza Yousaf is terrible, Sir Keir Starmer cannot be that lucky?
Bit of an outrage that the progressive SNP haven't had a Westminster/Holyrood leader from a visible ethnic minority.
(Visible ethnic minority is a new term I recently learned which is used to exclude Jews, as only Hasidic Jews are visibly ethnic minorities.)
Stats, given the composition of the Scottish population, so outrage is too strong a term. Ther have been only 5 FMs so far, and with 4% non-white [edit] in the wider population, it's not obviously biased. Not yet, though, I have to agree.
I was going to suggest that you consider whether Gaels are also arguably an ethnic minority too, but you have pre-empted that.
Well, I say you are utterly and totally wrong in the 'exacerbating' bit. In essence, you are claiming that Brown could not have done anything to set the UK up to be in a better position for when the crash occurred. Is that your position?
If we'd had the Tories, they said Brown regulated too much and they would have matched his spending.
So yes I think we did the best we could.
That's a real "look, squirrel!" response.
Look at what Brown did. Are you claiming the UK economy was in a good position prior to the GFC?
While I was having a few days break last week, I read:
1. Azincourt (Bernard Cornwell) I may be a lefty, liberal, card-carrying member of the wokerati, but I bloody love the story of Agincourt. I've loved it since I first read Shakespeare's Henry V, and saw Olivier's film; I've seen and loved Branagh's film too, been in the play (Burgundy), been to the battlefield, seen Robert Hardy talk passionately about it, played the wargame. Cornwell writes about, and from the point of view of, the archers. They were craftsmen, who knew their discipline inside out, had practiced to perfection, and used that to devastating effect. So does Cornwell: solid history, great characterisation, clear-eyed view of Henry, braids fact and fiction together with ease, gives an amazing sense of what it would have been like to stand at the bottom of that hill, tired, ill and resigned to death. Wonderful read. Recommended.
2. The City & the City (China Mieville) I drifted away from SF a bit for a while in the 90s and 00s, but before and since have read very widely in the genre, under its many guises (including those mainstream authors who avoid using the term SF because they look down on it, even though it's what they're writing), and the premise of this book stands out in my recollection as being utterly unique and original. Imagine a city in mittel-Europa: down at heel, decaying and a little backward, searching for an identity and place in the modern world. Imagine another city, this one somewhat Turkic or near Eastern, thrusting forward economically as it modernises and embraces western capitalism. Now imagine that these two cities share the same streets and parks, not just culturally, but with the inhabitants of each, by a collective and individual effort of will, *never seeing the residents of their counterpart*. Set a murder mystery in those weird twin cities, bring in some secret history and fringe politics, and that's a recipe you won't find anywhere else. Mieville may not be the greatest stylist as a writer, either in SF (his many awards would indicate lots of people don't agree with me on that) or crime fiction, but frankly this is irresistible. I do have some questions, however: is Orciny a nod to Ursula Le Guin? Did he want to call it 'Between the City & the City' for added metatextualism, but it wouldn't fit? And why is it 'The City & the City', and not 'The City and the City'?
3. The Dreamstone (C.J. Cherryh) A very early Cherryh book, and one I initially thought was going to be completely unlike the ones I knew - Celtic fantasy as opposed to the hard SF of the Alliance-Union, Chanur and other books. But there is a resonance and a resemblance to the Morgaine books: a sense of fading, loss, resignation, and ending. For a book so early in a career, it is incredibly accomplished; for a book so short (180pp), it is incredibly charged. If you're not into folklore and mythology, don't bother; if you are, it'll be rewarding.
Now starting The Furys by James Hanley.
I’m not a huge Mieville fan but The City & the City is excellent. The Beeb did a good adaptation that really nailed the feel of the book too.
I can’t say I really understand the concept of voting against gay marriage for religious reasons. I get that you might believe that in your church or faith or religion it would not be accepted. And I am not a proponent of requiring religious officials to marry people against their beliefs. But to me it seems really weird to be against it so fundamentally as a concept in a civil or (where different religions or officials want to) religious context outside of your own beliefs. Just let it take place if people want it to. It doesn’t affect your practices.
Forbes is going to really struggle with this now.
She is.
It's like that couple that said they wouldn't sell their house to a gay couple because it was against their beliefs. Why does it matter what the people who live in the house do, after you've sold it?
Well, I say you are utterly and totally wrong in the 'exacerbating' bit. In essence, you are claiming that Brown could not have done anything to set the UK up to be in a better position for when the crash occurred. Is that your position?
If we'd had the Tories, they said Brown regulated too much and they would have matched his spending.
So yes I think we did the best we could.
That's a real "look, squirrel!" response.
Look at what Brown did. Are you claiming the UK economy was in a good position prior to the GFC?
I think in hindsight you're saying all of this. Virtually nobody was saying he was spending too much prior and some said he was spending too little.
Looking again at that latest R&W poll and perhaps the most remarkable stat is the LLG score: 66%. Highest we’ve seen. This isn’t a Labour score benefiting from eating up green votes. They’re unchanged on 5% and the LDs are up one on 10%.
Or, to put it more succinctly, the Tory share is bloody low.
The actual reason for the move seems to be more ex-Conservative supporters now going Labour rather than Don't Know. Could just be the sample used for this poll - we'll see.
How does 'Boredom You Can Afford' sound as an election slogan?
They should just bring back the slogans Brown would have used in 2007.
E.g.
This one is the one that would do the best IMHO:
Thanks for dredging these up. Not flash, just Gordon is easily my favourite political slogan of all time. So apt. Still makes me smile.
Not going for that election was a huge mistake. We'd have avoided all this chaos.
Even if he had won, he had nothing left, no big ideas. He wanted to be PM for so long, but had no idea what to do with it. His legacy is all around - lovely hospitals and schools bought using PFI and we are still paying the cost. He genuinely believed he had abolished boom and bust, which rather says it all.
He was and is a decent human being, but un suited to being pm.
Agreed, though that recent Blair-Brown documentary does make me wonder - why did Brown do the PFI crap? He was more left wing than Blair - was Brown pushed into PFI or was he the instigator? It’s before my time politically. Just seems so obviously crap in hindsight.
He found PFI as a way to keep to the spending plans. Under Blair, it was all about more money for schools and hospitals - but holding to spending targets. Killing road construction and some other infrastructure projects helped, but there was always more to do.
PFI was a bit of an addiction in the end - spending that pushed the actual spending into the future. I’ll be good next week…..
Thanks, that fits with the impression I have of him and makes a lot of sense. He wanted to spend more but had to get round Blair’s restraining spending targets.
But it still doesn’t add up for me (excuse the pun) - for all his faults he strikes me as both intelligent and a man of integrity and I struggle to believe that he couldn’t foresee the downsides of PFI. Which makes me think @lostpassword is right and he didn’t really care about the long term consequences. Politicians, eh?
He really wanted to get those things done. He wanted it, the MPs in the Labour Party wanted it. The Unions wanted it. Everyone wanted it. Everyone didn't want big tax rises as well. It was the easy solution. And once you start with the easy solution...
A number of politicians have described the difficulty of pulling out of the tactical level to even get a look at the medium term - everyone wants something from you now.
The Redfield & Wilton poll is certainly a surprise. I thought the Government had, by its standards, a decent week last week. All I can think is the impact of winter bills is finally coming through - it's also possible this poll is a massive outlier.
Sunak's own approval figures continue to sink and he trails Starmer by nine points on the best PM polling (or should that be better PM polling?)
Into the data (rather than just using the headline figures) and excluding those saying they Won't Vote, Labour leads 43-21 with 15% Don't Knows. The 2019 Conservative vote now splits 47% Conservative, 24% Labour (and there's your explanation for the change), 17% Don't Know and 8% Reform.
The Conservative Don't Knows represent 44% of the total.
Stripping out the DKs, Labour leads by 18 points among men and 35 points among women. Among the 65+ age group, the Conservatives lead 39-36 which represents a 22% swing from Conservative to Labour among this core Tory voting group.
The England sub sample comes out at Labour 53%, Conservative 25%, LD 9.5%, Reform 7% and Green 5%. That's a swing of 20.5% from Conservative to Labour and a 9.5% swing from Conservative to Liberal Democrat since the 2019 election.
A UNS of 20.5% means Hertsmere, the 293rd most marginal Conservative seat, would be a Labour gain suggesting a Conservative Parliamentary Party reduced to just under 100 seats
Doesn't look like an outlier, Stodge.
It's fairly consistent with their previous two efforts. They are not a notably Labour-leaning pollster. It's broadly consistent with the trend of other recent polls.
Even if it's a few points overstated, it's still effing terrible for the Tories.
How does 'Boredom You Can Afford' sound as an election slogan?
They should just bring back the slogans Brown would have used in 2007.
E.g.
This one is the one that would do the best IMHO:
Thanks for dredging these up. Not flash, just Gordon is easily my favourite political slogan of all time. So apt. Still makes me smile.
Not going for that election was a huge mistake. We'd have avoided all this chaos.
Oooh now, Gordon was plenty capable of creating his own brand of chaos, but I think he would have won.
Even if he'd lost, the Tories would have overseen the financial crisis. Something they said needed less regulation than Labour proposed, so it would have been worse under them - Labour would have been back in a few years later.
You underestimate the consequences of the crisis getting out of control.
Brown haters (and I'm no fan) choke on the notion that he played a leading role in mitigating its worst effects, but it is hard to dispute, and if it was the only good thing he did it was definitely a biggy.
But Brown also significantly contributed to the issue. Even if he did not pull the trigger, he handed the gun to the person who did. You don't laud the person who stems the blood loss, if they're involved with the shooting.
The severity of the GFC in the UK is down to one thing: Brown's ambition. He wanted to be PM, and undermined Blair to get the job. But that also required electability, so he ran the treasury to get short-term gains, not long-term stability.
He could have made decisions that reduced the effect of the GFC, but he didn't. Because he wanted to be PM.
This is the line that my old mucker, Richard Nabavi, used to run. In his absence it's good that someone else puts it up instead.
Some of the things Brown did certainly contributed to the GFC, but you vastly overestimate his influence and the UK's importance if you think these were significant.
It began in the US, with huge amounts of dodgy debt dressed up as desireable assets. It snowballed from there, assisted to some extent by mismanagemnt here and elsewhere, but the origin is well-known and understood now.
Likewise Brown's role in putting the blaze out.
To follow that analogy: the fire started in the Bakers in Pudding Lane. Brown built the houses around St Pauls out of wood and paper, instead of stone.
Again, congratulating him for putting the fire out is odd.
Funny how the Americans never blamed London then, in their Congressional Report on the GFC. Of course, they might have looked into things a bit more deeply than trite 1666 analogies.
Perhaps because such reports would have concentrated on the US, rather than RoW? Whereas we're rather more concerned with the UK?
Are you claiming Brown left the UK economy in a good position to weather the GFC?
I'm claiming what I claimed a few minutes ago, that Brown neither caused nor exacerbated the GFC but did play a major role in responding to it.
I think you can assess political leaders two ways: whether they ran an effective administration and whether they made they made the right call on issues that confront them, as they happen.
In general I think Brown a mediocre PM - not awful but not great either - but he did make the right call on the GFC. By contrast Blair was an effective PM who made the wrong call on Iraq. Wilson a mediocre PM who made the right call on Vietnam. Johnson an otherwise abysmal PM, did make a couple of decent calls on Covid vaccines and early support for Ukraine.
2. The City & the City (China Mieville) I drifted away from SF a bit for a while in the 90s and 00s, but before and since have read very widely in the genre, under its many guises (including those mainstream authors who avoid using the term SF because they look down on it, even though it's what they're writing), and the premise of this book stands out in my recollection as being utterly unique and original. Imagine a city in mittel-Europa: down at heel, decaying and a little backward, searching for an identity and place in the modern world. Imagine another city, this one somewhat Turkic or near Eastern, thrusting forward economically as it modernises and embraces western capitalism. Now imagine that these two cities share the same streets and parks, not just culturally, but with the inhabitants of each, by a collective and individual effort of will, *never seeing the residents of their counterpart*. Set a murder mystery in those weird twin cities, bring in some secret history and fringe politics, and that's a recipe you won't find anywhere else. Mieville may not be the greatest stylist as a writer, either in SF (his many awards would indicate lots of people don't agree with me on that) or crime fiction, but frankly this is irresistible. I do have some questions, however: is Orciny a nod to Ursula Le Guin? Did he want to call it 'Between the City & the City' for added metatextualism, but it wouldn't fit? And why is it 'The City & the City', and not 'The City and the City'?
I’m not a huge Mieville fan but The City & the City is excellent. The Beeb did a good adaptation that really nailed the feel of the book too.
Yes, I saw the BBC adaptation when it was on and really enjoyed it - I was very intrigued to see how it was actually expressed in print, and I think it came across very well. I have another Mieville - Perdido Street Station - on the 'waiting to be read' bookcase, so it might just have moved up a few notches.
Comments
But it still doesn’t add up for me (excuse the pun) - for all his faults he strikes me as both intelligent and a man of integrity and I struggle to believe that he couldn’t foresee the downsides of PFI. Which makes me think @lostpassword is right and he didn’t really care about the long term consequences. Politicians, eh?
But seriously, there is a huge gap here for an unknown to jump into. As Carnyx points out, one week to go. Perhaps even Robertson by desperate acclamation?
(Bottle of mind bleach? Don't mind if I do.)
Bit of an outrage that the progressive SNP haven't had a Westminster/Holyrood leader from a visible ethnic minority.
(Visible ethnic minority is a new term I recently learned which is used to exclude Jews, as only Hasidic Jews are visibly ethnic minorities.)
"Well, if ye cannae find anyone else you want to do the job, I suppose I'll have to, even though I don't want to..."
"Senior member of Kate Forbes campaign says "she has fucked it" after the finance secretary said she would have voted against gay marriage"
In my informed opinion, as a political journalist, your own team saying you've fucked it on the day you launch your campaign isn't ideal is it
https://twitter.com/AlexofBrown/status/1627748904363036674
I guess pile on Humza. Things not looking too rosy for quality leadership of the SNP * in that case.
* or of the Scottish government, of course.
Some of the things Brown did certainly contributed to the GFC, but you vastly overestimate his influence and the UK's importance if you think these were significant.
It began in the US, with huge amounts of dodgy debt dressed up as desireable assets. It snowballed from there, assisted to some extent by mismanagemnt here and elsewhere, but the origin is well-known and understood now.
Likewise Brown's role in putting the blaze out.
The Treasury is a curse upon this nation frankly. Their attempts to shift risk to the private sector with HS2 didn’t work either: they just ended up making the whole project ridiculously expensive & were completely abandonded for phase II.
Genuine question and mention the Islamic side but could obviously relate to other conservative non-Christian religions.
Or out of the room, applying mind bleach...
But this saved the world crap?
What he did was what the BoE was obliged by statute to do: to be a lender of last resort to the banking network. He authorised the printing of the cash because we didn’t have it. And faced with the complete collapse of his economic fantasies of ending boom and bust he and Darling at least acted promptly. That’s it.
And then he lied and hid the consequences by refusing to have a spending review and made a joke of our economic framework by making the economic cycle over which he was supposed to balance the books run on indefinitely.
Again, congratulating him for putting the fire out is odd.
So was the ambience.
At least I'm not paying out of my own pocket.
I don't mean to say she may not suffer the same fate.
Which meant that there was no part of government that was looking at the banking system as a whole in the run up to 2008. The BoE was focused on macro economic issues & the FSA was focused on risk management in individual institutions. Nobody was looking at the system as a whole, so there was no one inside government to sound the alarm: Everyone saw it as someone else’s problem.
This is probably another Treasury failure too. Civil servants should have caught this.
Total disrespect for their members, activists and supporters, and opens up the way for an absolute defeat to our opponents.
Venal self-serving bastards.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11772769/Anglican-church-leaders-oust-Archbishop-Canterbury-head-following-blessing-sex-couples.html#article-11772769
Who says the liberals aren't "all things to all men"? Well, maybe not all men.
I was trying to pick up a rental from Hertz shortly after the crash. They had run out of cars. Even as a bluechip company they couldn't get credit.
Are you claiming Brown left the UK economy in a good position to weather the GFC?
DeSantis downplays Russia threat after Biden visit
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/02/20/desantis-russia-threat-biden-00083625
Here's another analogy: the Ukraine invasion was not started by the west, whatever tankies claim. But we did embolden Putin by not reacting strongly enough when he did bad things. Our guilt lies not in causing Putin's evil little war, but in not saying: "Oi! No!" on the many opportunities we previously had, whether it was Georgia in 2008; Crimea/Donbass in 2014, MH17 the same year, Salisbury in 2018, etc, etc.
https://thehill.com/homenews/3866373-trump-rages-against-new-york-post-after-desantis-profile/
“In writer Salena Zito’s Fake News “puff piece” about DeSantis, which supposedly appeared in the dying New York Post, which is way down in readership just like FoxNews is way down in Ratings, why doesn’t she mention that he wants to cut Social Security & Medicare, loves losers like Jeb Bush, Paul Ryan, and Karl Rove, and it getting CLOBBERED in the polls by me,” Trump wrote on Sunday on Truth Social. “DeSantis is a RINO who is trying to hide his past. I don’t read the New York Post anymore. It has become Fake News, just like Fox & WSJ!”
SFAICS KF is the only candidate with a charisma level above 1 out of 10. And if someone can emerge who is any good, how come we have not heard of them?
Her intro video today was awful. Scottish Tourist Board images and a commentary conspicuous for its absences.
If the polls show the Tories going UP, they are useful and must be posted.
If the polls show the Tories going DOWN, they are irrelevant until the GE, they will swing back, they are wrong, Keir Starmer is useless, any other leader would be 30 points ahead etc
The problem with your use of the analogy though is the facts not fitting it. I doubt any economy would have survived complete collapse of the global financial system. We would probably have been reverting to barter.
If only Hitler had run a majority Jewish party
I rarely use the word but bigots does seem appropriate
1. Azincourt (Bernard Cornwell)
I may be a lefty, liberal, card-carrying member of the wokerati, but I bloody love the story of Agincourt. I've loved it since I first read Shakespeare's Henry V, and saw Olivier's film; I've seen and loved Branagh's film too, been in the play (Burgundy), been to the battlefield, seen Robert Hardy talk passionately about it, played the wargame. Cornwell writes about, and from the point of view of, the archers. They were craftsmen, who knew their discipline inside out, had practiced to perfection, and used that to devastating effect. So does Cornwell: solid history, great characterisation, clear-eyed view of Henry, braids fact and fiction together with ease, gives an amazing sense of what it would have been like to stand at the bottom of that hill, tired, ill and resigned to death. Wonderful read. Recommended.
2. The City & the City (China Mieville)
I drifted away from SF a bit for a while in the 90s and 00s, but before and since have read very widely in the genre, under its many guises (including those mainstream authors who avoid using the term SF because they look down on it, even though it's what they're writing), and the premise of this book stands out in my recollection as being utterly unique and original. Imagine a city in mittel-Europa: down at heel, decaying and a little backward, searching for an identity and place in the modern world. Imagine another city, this one somewhat Turkic or near Eastern, thrusting forward economically as it modernises and embraces western capitalism. Now imagine that these two cities share the same streets and parks, not just culturally, but with the inhabitants of each, by a collective and individual effort of will, *never seeing the residents of their counterpart*. Set a murder mystery in those weird twin cities, bring in some secret history and fringe politics, and that's a recipe you won't find anywhere else. Mieville may not be the greatest stylist as a writer, either in SF (his many awards would indicate lots of people don't agree with me on that) or crime fiction, but frankly this is irresistible. I do have some questions, however: is Orciny a nod to Ursula Le Guin? Did he want to call it 'Between the City & the City' for added metatextualism, but it wouldn't fit? And why is it 'The City & the City', and not 'The City and the City'?
3. The Dreamstone (C.J. Cherryh)
A very early Cherryh book, and one I initially thought was going to be completely unlike the ones I knew - Celtic fantasy as opposed to the hard SF of the Alliance-Union, Chanur and other books. But there is a resonance and a resemblance to the Morgaine books: a sense of fading, loss, resignation, and ending. For a book so early in a career, it is incredibly accomplished; for a book so short (180pp), it is incredibly charged. If you're not into folklore and mythology, don't bother; if you are, it'll be rewarding.
Now starting The Furys by James Hanley.
https://twitter.com/RepMTG/status/1627723317657337860
The Redfield & Wilton poll is certainly a surprise. I thought the Government had, by its standards, a decent week last week. All I can think is the impact of winter bills is finally coming through - it's also possible this poll is a massive outlier.
Sunak's own approval figures continue to sink and he trails Starmer by nine points on the best PM polling (or should that be better PM polling?)
Into the data (rather than just using the headline figures) and excluding those saying they Won't Vote, Labour leads 43-21 with 15% Don't Knows. The 2019 Conservative vote now splits 47% Conservative, 24% Labour (and there's your explanation for the change), 17% Don't Know and 8% Reform.
The Conservative Don't Knows represent 44% of the total.
Stripping out the DKs, Labour leads by 18 points among men and 35 points among women. Among the 65+ age group, the Conservatives lead 39-36 which represents a 22% swing from Conservative to Labour among this core Tory voting group.
The England sub sample comes out at Labour 53%, Conservative 25%, LD 9.5%, Reform 7% and Green 5%. That's a swing of 20.5% from Conservative to Labour and a 9.5% swing from Conservative to Liberal Democrat since the 2019 election.
A UNS of 20.5% means Hertsmere, the 293rd most marginal Conservative seat, would be a Labour gain suggesting a Conservative Parliamentary Party reduced to just under 100 seats
So yes I think we did the best we could.
Forbes is going to really struggle with this now.
How does the 24% compare to 1997
I was going to suggest that you consider whether Gaels are also arguably an ethnic minority too, but you have pre-empted that.
Look at what Brown did. Are you claiming the UK economy was in a good position prior to the GFC?
It's like that couple that said they wouldn't sell their house to a gay couple because it was against their beliefs. Why does it matter what the people who live in the house do, after you've sold it?
A number of politicians have described the difficulty of pulling out of the tactical level to even get a look at the medium term - everyone wants something from you now.
It's fairly consistent with their previous two efforts. They are not a notably Labour-leaning pollster. It's broadly consistent with the trend of other recent polls.
Even if it's a few points overstated, it's still effing terrible for the Tories.
In general I think Brown a mediocre PM - not awful but not great either - but he did make the right call on the GFC. By contrast Blair was an effective PM who made the wrong call on Iraq. Wilson a mediocre PM who made the right call on Vietnam. Johnson an otherwise abysmal PM, did make a couple of decent calls on Covid vaccines and early support for Ukraine.