That’s really not a controversial view, is it? A huge number of people wait until they’re married to have children, and the statistics say that outcomes for the children (in general) are much better when living in a stable household with both parents.
It is a controversial view.
I certainly waited until marriage before having children, but many of my friends and peers did not. They did nothing wrong in my eyes.
What Forbes doesn't seem to understand is that there's nothing wrong having a faith, but keeping that faith private. Its when you, especially in the political sphere, start trying to foist your faith onto others that we have a problem.
It’s a view held by millions of Brits, in practice as well as in theory.
There’s been no indication of any intention to legislate for her views, in fact such moral issues have almost always been free votes in Parliament and she gives no indication of changing that.
What it does look like, from a long way away, is journalists and opponents looking for something they can frame as a ‘gotcha’.
Agreed, I admire her for sticking to her principles. The answer to her question is probably yes however: If the tenets of your faith put you out of step with the mainstream of UK opinion on social issues & you’re public about it, you’re going to have problems politically. There’s a reason Alasdair Campbell cut off questions about Blair’s faith with “We don’t do God”.
The UK is very socially liberal these days on many questions that in the past would have been much more controversial & that holds true across the political spectrum. It’s one of the reasons I’m still proud to be British.
We should just be honest then and say "if you hold strong religious views, you cannot be Prime Minister / FM as your views disqualify you from being a possible appointment."
Instead, we have this hypocritical standpoint where we pretend to be all tolerant and accepting but once someone comes along with such views, we then say why they are not acceptable.
Actually it isn't. If you want to be a leader of a party and a government you are required to defend the policies of your party and the decisions of your government. You can't do the job otherwise, but it is the same for everyone.
Kate Forbes seems to think her moral principles take precedence over her colleagues' That's a problem.
Jeez, she just can't stop talking about this stuff. Is it time for an intervention, from above or otherwise?
She has surely fucked her campaign, as her very own campaign aide says (never a good sign in a campaign). However in the interests of diversity and equality I REALLY hope some journalist is going to ask the same questions of Humza Yousaf. He may well have some interesting answers, and it would never do to encourage the perception that Muslims are given an easier ride than Wee Free white Hebrideans
Yousaf said at his own launch that "I don't legislate on the basis of my faith", arguing that as a member of a minority group he knows his rights "don't exist in some kind of vacuum... My rights are interdependent on other people's rights... I'll always fight for the equal rights of others regardless of who they are." This seems to me exactly the right answer to the question that Forbes was asked, and I'm not sure that Yousaf really needs to say anything else on the subject.
Bingo!
Given the age profile of politicians I expect there are more religious politicians than there are religious people in general in this country.
The difference is that most keep their faith to themselves.
Having faith isn't a bar to office. Wanting to enforce your faith on others isn't even a bar to office.
But the latter is a very good reason for people to vote against you.
That’s really not a controversial view, is it? A huge number of people wait until they’re married to have children, and the statistics say that outcomes for the children (in general) are much better when living in a stable household with both parents.
It is a controversial view.
I certainly waited until marriage before having children, but many of my friends and peers did not. They did nothing wrong in my eyes.
What Forbes doesn't seem to understand is that there's nothing wrong having a faith, but keeping that faith private. Its when you, especially in the political sphere, start trying to foist your faith onto others that we have a problem.
It’s a view held by millions of Brits, in practice as well as in theory.
There’s been no indication of any intention to legislate for her views, in fact such moral issues have almost always been free votes in Parliament and she gives no indication of changing that.
What it does look like, from a long way away, is journalists and opponents looking for something they can frame as a ‘gotcha’.
They spent years doing it for Labour, fair is fair.
Agreed, I admire her for sticking to her principles. The answer to her question is probably yes however: If the tenets of your faith put you out of step with the mainstream of UK opinion on social issues & you’re public about it, you’re going to have problems politically. There’s a reason Alasdair Campbell cut off questions about Blair’s faith with “We don’t do God”.
The UK is very socially liberal these days on many questions that in the past would have been much more controversial & that holds true across the political spectrum. It’s one of the reasons I’m still proud to be British.
We should just be honest then and say "if you hold strong religious views, you cannot be Prime Minister / FM as your views disqualify you from being a possible appointment."
Instead, we have this hypocritical standpoint where we pretend to be all tolerant and accepting but once someone comes along with such views, we then say why they are not acceptable.
Maybe we should stop looking at this through a particular moral lens. It is not true (as KF suggests) that having any religious conviction whatever bars you from office in a democracy.
To be in office involves winning contests, ones which have a hierarchy that anyone can join from the moment they are 18. Committees, party members, voters and fellow elected people do all the deciding. All can stand, all can join, all can vote. That's democracy.
I think it's sad and mistaken if in fact X won't be voted in because of a moral or religious principle which is in no way eccentric - as may happen with KF. But what I think doesn't matter. Democracy is what it is. If, on the whole, it likes Boris or Salmond, Orban or Putin, Trump or Berlusconi better than Kate Forbes let it be. Though I think there is a price to pay.
You can have religious conviction but keep it to yourself and that is not controversial. I'm sure many do.
Where there's a problem is when you expect the law of the land to be shaped by your convictions. That is a serious problem when it comes to politics, for anyone who doesn't share your convictions, which given that all religions are minorities is going to be a majority of people not sharing your faith.
As it happens here, her views are very, very eccentric.
A good rule for modern politicians is never ever talk about sex, and even when you have to, keep it brief and perfunctory. then obfuscate. Demur. Waffle. Then move on. At best anything you say will be mortifying and cringe, at worst it will end your career
Never go into details!
Thatcher knew this and practiced it, cleverly,, to the extent that even now there are well-informed people who believe she was at heart very libertine and tolerant, and others, equally well informed, who believe she was uptight and puritan
I do hope so - I had a random bet on her at long odds when Robertson was still favourite, just on the basis that she had declared she was running.
Just on the face of it, she seems the best candidate based on five key criteria:
• She is not a anti-sex, homophobic bigot • She is not a known incompetent • She has red hair • She has an unusual name • She is @StuartDickson 's anointed successor, so must be Scottish subsample friendly
Dylan's Gospel Tour of 1979-80, where he refused to play anything at all but his Christian numbers, interspersed with hellfire and damnation preaching, was universally held to be an unfortunate career move.
There is no reason London buses cannot be run by TfL directly, only stupid Government rules. They have at least made the best of a bad situation and TfL's technology is very good.
Too many people in politics obsess about ownership structures.
There is good management and bad management in the world, and you find both in the public and private sectors. There are also advantages from size (economies of scale, buying power) and disadvantages (bureaucracy, slowness).
The two main reasons to keep something in the public sector are control, and where public good is incompatible with the profit motive. You can replicate control to some extent through regulation of private providers though we all see the issues. You can fix the profit motive incompatibility issue by subsidising private companies - eg to run unprofitable bus routes - but that can create inefficiencies.
The main reasons to have something private are competition and innovation. Efforts to replicate these in the public sector have a chequered history. But privatisation doesn’t always lead to either real competition or innovation. That’s why I don’t think ownership per se is the most important factor.
I know you alluded to it but competition and innovation do seem to drift into rent seeking and financialisaton.
Which is why markets need regulating. Monopolies and all that.
The US space launch industry is a fascinating example of the varying models and why they cause problems.
You mean that spending $20bn on turning a dozen re-usable rocket motors, into disposable rocket motors, isn’t good value for the American taxpayer?
Rocket engines. Motors are solids, by convention.
SLS is the totally state controlled mode. Then you have ULA who are supposed to be the tame contractors. Then you have SpaceX - the pirates who are tearing the market place up Then you have Blue Origin - who are turning a lot of money into.... not a lot.
It is costing SpaceX $20 million and falling to get 16 tons (and growing) to LEO. None of the other come close to matching that. Why?
Why don't they want to do that? Yes, they don't want to do that.
Yes yes, engines and motors.
It does indeed appear that no-one wants to challenge SX in the commercial and government LEO space, preferring instead to do their own thing on a different basis, that sees them take no business risk.
The mad one is Blue Origin. The whole business of which, with hindsight, seemed to be about Bezos getting his personal joyride - and now it happened, no-one there cares about the bigger project any more.
You then end up with another danger, of an effective private monopoly in launch services which needs regulating at some point. Thankfully, so far SX have been behaving themselves in this regard, including stepping in to launch OneWeb hardware when the Russians got boycotted.
No-one really knows what Blue Origin is for. Bezos seems to have a love for space in a kind of Big Coffee Table Book kind of way. Not actually mad about the details of how you get the coatings to stick inside an oxygen rich pre burner or anything, but likes Space. Hence the F1 engine recovery project. According to people who've spoken to him, he's an O'Neil colony fan.
New Shepard was just a test project. It was the rockets beyond that are supposed to be the core of the company. Pun intended. But they've oscillated around, changing plans.
True, SpaceX have changed their plans quite radically - but always with a focus on doing stuff. More tons, cheaper, upstairs.
Consider the good that Bridenstine did at NASA - he gave focus and goals to several projects. Webb was finally launched because he suggested that, instead of giving out bonuses for eternal delays, he was going to ask the cost of termination. SLS was given a purpose (Artemis) which had political support and was doable (sort of) - it launched. He mandated the helicopter on Mars - which was a balance between the future capabilities groups and the science instrument guys. Another goal. And so on.
Jeez, she just can't stop talking about this stuff. Is it time for an intervention, from above or otherwise?
She has surely fucked her campaign, as he very own campaign aide says (never a good sign in a campaign). However in the interests of diversity and equality I REALLY hope some journalist is going to ask the same questions of Humza Yousaf. He may well have some interesting answers, and it would never do to encourage the perception that Muslims are given an easier ride than Wee Free white Hebrideans
Not that it makes any difference, but Kate is not a Hebridean.
Indeed. Born in Dingwall/Inbhir Pheofharain. Which is on the east coast (a mile or two of canal more or less), just NW of Inverness.
One could drop by on the way to Wick, not that I ever have.
I have. I like both (and Dingwall is on the way to Strathpeffer, the spa, the woods around the Falls of Conon, Knockfarril vitrified fort ...).
I do hope so - I had a random bet on her at long odds when Robertson was still favourite, just on the basis that she had declared she was running.
Just on the face of it, she seems the best candidate based on five key criteria:
• She is not a anti-sex, homophobic bigot • She is not a known incompetent • She has red hair • She has an unusual name • She is @StuartDickson 's anointed successor, so must be Scottish subsample friendly
Jeez, she just can't stop talking about this stuff. Is it time for an intervention, from above or otherwise?
She has surely fucked her campaign, as he very own campaign aide says (never a good sign in a campaign). However in the interests of diversity and equality I REALLY hope some journalist is going to ask the same questions of Humza Yousaf. He may well have some interesting answers, and it would never do to encourage the perception that Muslims are given an easier ride than Wee Free white Hebrideans
Not that it makes any difference, but Kate is not a Hebridean.
Indeed. Born in Dingwall/Inbhir Pheofharain. Which is on the east coast (a mile or two of canal more or less), just NW of Inverness.
One could drop by on the way to Wick, not that I ever have.
I have. I like both (and Dingwall is on the way to Strathpeffer, the spa, the woods around the Falls of Conon, Knockfarril vitrified fort ...).
I shall make an effort on your recommendation, will be visiting my Prussian aunt in Inverness sometime in the summer so may do a mini tour.
As for Kate Forbes I think it is a bit of shooting the messenger. Grand religious types such as ABoCs have opined in much the same terms and they are head of the CoE.
I doubt many forge their faith from first principles and are usually lead by a person or a book or a story of some kind.
It is up to the guardians of those sources of faith to adapt. Or not (also perfectly legitimate) but if not then to be judged by the electorate accordingly.
And ideally not be in any chamber of our political decision-making.
Jeez, she just can't stop talking about this stuff. Is it time for an intervention, from above or otherwise?
She has surely fucked her campaign, as her very own campaign aide says (never a good sign in a campaign). However in the interests of diversity and equality I REALLY hope some journalist is going to ask the same questions of Humza Yousaf. He may well have some interesting answers, and it would never do to encourage the perception that Muslims are given an easier ride than Wee Free white Hebrideans
Yousaf said at his own launch that "I don't legislate on the basis of my faith", arguing that as a member of a minority group he knows his rights "don't exist in some kind of vacuum... My rights are interdependent on other people's rights... I'll always fight for the equal rights of others regardless of who they are." This seems to me exactly the right answer to the question that Forbes was asked, and I'm not sure that Yousaf really needs to say anything else on the subject.
Bingo!
Given the age profile of politicians I expect there are more religious politicians than there are religious people in general in this country.
The difference is that most keep their faith to themselves.
Having faith isn't a bar to office. Wanting to enforce your faith on others isn't even a bar to office.
But the latter is a very good reason for people to vote against you.
He also has the issue that he can't publicly decry various teachings (and interpretations) of his faith - otherwise the nutters would be on him like rabid somethingortheothers.
Jeez, she just can't stop talking about this stuff. Is it time for an intervention, from above or otherwise?
She has put her finger on the issue though. There isn't really any conversion therapy that isn't "religious based". And. What about those who sincerely want to be converted, and believe they can be, based on their Faith? Don't they have freedom of choice? The issue is the coercive, forced "therapy", often instigated by parents. Which is where the rights of the under 16's to medical autonomy comes in. And we are back where we started.
Though there is an issue with "What is conversion therapy?"
Some psychiatrists have been attacked for questioning whether someone is trans or not - to some even saying "I don't think you are trans" is unacceptable.
See. There's also the issue with "What is therapy?" I would categorise psychiatrists as doctors not therapists. Trained therapists (and there's a difference here, cos unlike a doctor you don't need any qualifications whatsoever to set up as one), have to have Unconditional Positive Regard. And deal with only the issues the client brings to the room. Not what they think the issue ought to be. So what do they do if a client pitches up and says "I am having feelings for someone of the same sex and believe it is sinful. Please help me not to have these thoughts."?
Simpler - what if the head shrinker thinks on the evidence presented by the patient that the the patient isn't trans but has a different issue? I've heard it said that there is a great deal of self diagnosis as trans out there, which is actually other things.
It's not the job of a trained therapist to diagnose. In fact. It's against the Code
The tone and mood around the Forbes debacle amounts to this: She is expected to take a properly liberal view about those she disagrees with, but no-one is expected to take a properly liberal view about her.
I don't agree with the SNP on independence, and I don't agree with most of the evangelical take on the world. But KF seems to me to be acting in a more genuinely liberal way than her army of detractors. it looks to me like bullying.
I do hope so - I had a random bet on her at long odds when Robertson was still favourite, just on the basis that she had declared she was running.
Just on the face of it, she seems the best candidate based on five key criteria:
• She is not a anti-sex, homophobic bigot • She is not a known incompetent • She has red hair • She has an unusual name • She is @StuartDickson 's anointed successor, so must be Scottish subsample friendly
To be fair to the PB Nats, such as @Theuniondivvie and @StuartDickson and others, they have all been notably less enthusiastic about Kate Forbes than the combined intellects of the Spectator, Telegraph, and others, all pontificating - in the main - from London (even if Scottish)
I do hope so - I had a random bet on her at long odds when Robertson was still favourite, just on the basis that she had declared she was running.
Just on the face of it, she seems the best candidate based on five key criteria:
• She is not a anti-sex, homophobic bigot • She is not a known incompetent • She has red hair • She has an unusual name • She is @StuartDickson 's anointed successor, so must be Scottish subsample friendly
Sadly, neither of her names is that of a fish.
A flaw, certainly, which no doubt has contributed to her being VALUE
"The vast majority of the locals in Scalpay are Protestants. The island is home to two Presbyterian churches, the Free Church of Scotland and the Free Church of Scotland (Continuing)." As one might imagine, it seems the latter are a more doctrinally pure version of the FCS.
That’s really not a controversial view, is it? A huge number of people wait until they’re married to have children, and the statistics say that outcomes for the children (in general) are much better when living in a stable household with both parents.
It is a controversial view.
I certainly waited until marriage before having children, but many of my friends and peers did not. They did nothing wrong in my eyes.
What Forbes doesn't seem to understand is that there's nothing wrong having a faith, but keeping that faith private. Its when you, especially in the political sphere, start trying to foist your faith onto others that we have a problem.
It’s a view held by millions of Brits, in practice as well as in theory.
There’s been no indication of any intention to legislate for her views, in fact such moral issues have almost always been free votes in Parliament and she gives no indication of changing that.
What it does look like, from a long way away, is journalists and opponents looking for something they can frame as a ‘gotcha’.
No it is not.
Opposing sex before marriage is not a view held by millions of Brits in either practice or theory. Certainly not amongst the young where it matters. That is a very eccentric and extreme view nowadays.
There is no reason to believe that those who wait until marriage to have kids, like myself, have a philosophical or moral objection to those that made a different choice. Or were virgins when they got married. If you offer me a choice of chicken or beef and I choose chicken, it doesn't mean I have a moral objection to beef. Waiting until marriage can simply be a choice, no morals necessary.
She has proposed to have faith exemptions to the law, which is legislating for her faith. That is a problem.
Can someone please open a book on whether Ireland will rejoin the Commonwealth. Lump on No at almost any price. A united Ireland won't ever be pink on the map.
As for the notion that unionist parties shouldn't be allowed to join a united Ireland government, it seems time flows differently west of the Irish Sea. If the DUP took seats in the Dail, they'd need to have "recognised" it first. They wouldn't be unionist any more, except perhaps in name. They wouldn't bother running on a manifesto promise of getting into government in Dublin and then splitting the 6C off again to rejoin GB. That could never be achieved, and GB probably wouldn't want them anyway. But if they weren't allowed in the government there'd be little point in them standing for election. The older and crazier would reach for the Book of Revelations and then their balaclavas.
Politically the drumbashers are nuts, ranting about "No border in the Irish Sea", whereas anybody who has crossed into or out of NI across both the Irish Sea and the land border knows which one has the most checks.
I'm sure there's a small constituency in the Republic for closer ties with Britain, otherwise there wouldn't be the West Brit stereotype/insult.
No reason why Northern Unionists couldn't stand candidates across the island of Ireland to argue in the Dail for a special relationship with Britain.
"The vast majority of the locals in Scalpay are Protestants. The island is home to two Presbyterian churches, the Free Church of Scotland and the Free Church of Scotland (Continuing)." As one might imagine, it seems the latter are a more doctrinally pure version of the FCS.
I believe the Free Church of Scotland (Continuing) are known as the Wee Wee Frees which I hope doesn't over-stimulate Leon.
There is no reason London buses cannot be run by TfL directly, only stupid Government rules. They have at least made the best of a bad situation and TfL's technology is very good.
Too many people in politics obsess about ownership structures.
There is good management and bad management in the world, and you find both in the public and private sectors. There are also advantages from size (economies of scale, buying power) and disadvantages (bureaucracy, slowness).
The two main reasons to keep something in the public sector are control, and where public good is incompatible with the profit motive. You can replicate control to some extent through regulation of private providers though we all see the issues. You can fix the profit motive incompatibility issue by subsidising private companies - eg to run unprofitable bus routes - but that can create inefficiencies.
The main reasons to have something private are competition and innovation. Efforts to replicate these in the public sector have a chequered history. But privatisation doesn’t always lead to either real competition or innovation. That’s why I don’t think ownership per se is the most important factor.
Actually I am not advocating changing the way London buses are run, just that them being publicly owned wouldn't make them fall apart. The reason they are run well and efficiently is because TfL have invested in technology like live tracking, apps etc.
No reason this could not be replicated elsewhere.
Eh? We have live tracking and apps up here. So we know accurately quite how many of our ultra expensive buses are cancelled and ridiculously late.
I got the bus daily in Hampshire for many years and we didn't have anything of the sort. If the bus turned up at all, it was lucky.
In London by contrast I have live tracking on every bus, many bus stops have live countdowns to the next bus and the buses come every few minutes. It is fantastic.
I remember when the buses were in the process of privatisation - watching the Tory minister being interviewed and frothing at the mouth about how wasteful the current system was. Specifically pointing at like 3 buses backed up outside parliament.
And yet London was about the only place that wasn't horrifically screwed over by the policy.
If I was of a cynical persuasion I might think there was some sort of bias in the decision making...
I remember the exciting days of competition! Former council operator being raced by new company. Bee Line Buzz Company operated geriatric bus racing the GM Buses North operated geriatric bus up St Marys Way in Oldham with both trying to cut the other up to get into the right turn lane first and thus have first dibs on customers in Oldham Interchange.
Look at how wasteful it is with 3 buses! Was much better when all 3 came at one fighting for customers. Then nothing for 30 minutes. On a service supposedly every 10 minutes alternating between operators.
I do hope so - I had a random bet on her at long odds when Robertson was still favourite, just on the basis that she had declared she was running.
Just on the face of it, she seems the best candidate based on five key criteria:
• She is not a anti-sex, homophobic bigot • She is not a known incompetent • She has red hair • She has an unusual name • She is @StuartDickson 's anointed successor, so must be Scottish subsample friendly
To be fair to the PB Nats, such as @Theuniondivvie and @StuartDickson and others, they have all been notably less enthusiastic about Kate Forbes than the combined intellects of the Spectator, Telegraph, and others, all pontificating - in the main - from London (even if Scottish)
I do hope so - I had a random bet on her at long odds when Robertson was still favourite, just on the basis that she had declared she was running.
Just on the face of it, she seems the best candidate based on five key criteria:
• She is not a anti-sex, homophobic bigot • She is not a known incompetent • She has red hair • She has an unusual name • She is @StuartDickson 's anointed successor, so must be Scottish subsample friendly
As for Kate Forbes I think it is a bit of shooting the messenger. Grand religious types such as ABoCs have opined in much the same terms and they are head of the CoE.
I doubt many forge their faith from first principles and are usually lead by a person or a book or a story of some kind.
It is up to the guardians of those sources of faith to adapt. Or not (also perfectly legitimate) but if not then to be judged by the electorate accordingly.
And ideally not be in any chamber of our political decision-making.
The trouble is that in a democracy the chamber ought to be representative of the people. And I don't think you understand the issue of faith. I prefer the sincerity of people who believe things rather than those who just adapt to the times. What sort of guardians are they? Just careerists?
There is no reason London buses cannot be run by TfL directly, only stupid Government rules. They have at least made the best of a bad situation and TfL's technology is very good.
Too many people in politics obsess about ownership structures.
There is good management and bad management in the world, and you find both in the public and private sectors. There are also advantages from size (economies of scale, buying power) and disadvantages (bureaucracy, slowness).
The two main reasons to keep something in the public sector are control, and where public good is incompatible with the profit motive. You can replicate control to some extent through regulation of private providers though we all see the issues. You can fix the profit motive incompatibility issue by subsidising private companies - eg to run unprofitable bus routes - but that can create inefficiencies.
The main reasons to have something private are competition and innovation. Efforts to replicate these in the public sector have a chequered history. But privatisation doesn’t always lead to either real competition or innovation. That’s why I don’t think ownership per se is the most important factor.
I know you alluded to it but competition and innovation do seem to drift into rent seeking and financialisaton.
Which is why markets need regulating. Monopolies and all that.
The US space launch industry is a fascinating example of the varying models and why they cause problems.
You mean that spending $20bn on turning a dozen re-usable rocket motors, into disposable rocket motors, isn’t good value for the American taxpayer?
Rocket engines. Motors are solids, by convention.
SLS is the totally state controlled mode. Then you have ULA who are supposed to be the tame contractors. Then you have SpaceX - the pirates who are tearing the market place up Then you have Blue Origin - who are turning a lot of money into.... not a lot.
It is costing SpaceX $20 million and falling to get 16 tons (and growing) to LEO. None of the other come close to matching that. Why?
Why don't they want to do that? Yes, they don't want to do that.
Yes yes, engines and motors.
It does indeed appear that no-one wants to challenge SX in the commercial and government LEO space, preferring instead to do their own thing on a different basis, that sees them take no business risk.
The mad one is Blue Origin. The whole business of which, with hindsight, seemed to be about Bezos getting his personal joyride - and now it happened, no-one there cares about the bigger project any more.
You then end up with another danger, of an effective private monopoly in launch services which needs regulating at some point. Thankfully, so far SX have been behaving themselves in this regard, including stepping in to launch OneWeb hardware when the Russians got boycotted.
No-one really knows what Blue Origin is for. Bezos seems to have a love for space in a kind of Big Coffee Table Book kind of way. Not actually mad about the details of how you get the coatings to stick inside an oxygen rich pre burner or anything, but likes Space. Hence the F1 engine recovery project. According to people who've spoken to him, he's an O'Neil colony fan.
(Snip)
I utterly disagree with that, and sadly it comes across as a bit of a Musk-loving diatribe. It also follows the rather dubious idea that Musk himself knows how 'you get the coatings to stick inside an oxygen rich pre burner'. Given his proclaimed software 'knowledge', that's dubious. It also rather assumes the most useful a boss of a massive, multi-faceted organisation can be doing is mirco-managing.
Bezos has had a love of space from when he was a kid; IIRC his speech at uni was on man's future in space. Musk, in comparison, is a newcomer.
If you look, SpaceX has done *nothing* for space science, let alone Mars. Yes, they've launched probes (and been paid handsomely for it), but the amount of space science done is negligible. They have leant heavily on NASA and DOD contracts; 'inventions' like their PICA-X are just rehashed NASA research.
As for Blue Origin; they just seem to be getting on with what they're doing. e.g. the following:
It will be interesting to see if the withdrawal of support by various MPs MSPs etc actually has any impact on the polling. Less than many on here assume I think although I may well be wrong. But if these attacks become any more vicious it will be hard to see KF in any one else’s cabinet. As this race shows all too clearly the paucity of talent in Scottish politics is painful. Losing even modest talents like Forbes is something we cannot afford.
The tone and mood around the Forbes debacle amounts to this: She is expected to take a properly liberal view about those she disagrees with, but no-one is expected to take a properly liberal view about her.
I don't agree with the SNP on independence, and I don't agree with most of the evangelical take on the world. But KF seems to me to be acting in a more genuinely liberal way than her army of detractors. it looks to me like bullying.
No, it’s more than that
She morally disapproves - in a really quite serious, “you are going to hell“ fashion - of gay marriage, of children born out of wedlock, even just sex outside marriage. She thinks people that do this - ie 90% of Scots? - are evil sinners. Sure, they can be redeemed, IF THEY JOIN HER CHURCH AND SHAPE UP, but until then they are evil sinners
Do you want that person running the country, and looking down on you, demanding you pay tax despite her regarding you as evil? Do you want her shaping social policies? For me, that’s a big No (but of course I am not Scottish etc). No more than I would want a strictly Orthodox Jew or fundamentalist Muslim running the UK, for pretty much the same reason
As for Kate Forbes I think it is a bit of shooting the messenger. Grand religious types such as ABoCs have opined in much the same terms and they are head of the CoE.
I doubt many forge their faith from first principles and are usually lead by a person or a book or a story of some kind.
It is up to the guardians of those sources of faith to adapt. Or not (also perfectly legitimate) but if not then to be judged by the electorate accordingly.
And ideally not be in any chamber of our political decision-making.
The trouble is that in a democracy the chamber ought to be representative of the people. And I don't think you understand the issue of faith. I prefer the sincerity of people who believe things rather than those who just adapt to the times. What sort of guardians are they? Just careerists?
What bollocks.
I believe in not killing people, not stealing, the sanctity of Arsene Wenger, and a bunch of other stuff much of which would form a union set with Christians, Muslims, Jews, 7th Day Adventists and Zoroastrians.
It has nothing to do with "faith". I totally understand that people believe in Zeus, homeopathy, and the Holy Trinity and that Christ was risen on Day 3. I believe that they believe in them sincerely.
But crafting a set of political laws has fuck all to do with what supernatural entity you believe in.
Agreed, I admire her for sticking to her principles. The answer to her question is probably yes however: If the tenets of your faith put you out of step with the mainstream of UK opinion on social issues & you’re public about it, you’re going to have problems politically. There’s a reason Alasdair Campbell cut off questions about Blair’s faith with “We don’t do God”.
The UK is very socially liberal these days on many questions that in the past would have been much more controversial & that holds true across the political spectrum. It’s one of the reasons I’m still proud to be British.
We should just be honest then and say "if you hold strong religious views, you cannot be Prime Minister / FM as your views disqualify you from being a possible appointment."
Instead, we have this hypocritical standpoint where we pretend to be all tolerant and accepting but once someone comes along with such views, we then say why they are not acceptable.
Maybe we should stop looking at this through a particular moral lens. It is not true (as KF suggests) that having any religious conviction whatever bars you from office in a democracy.
To be in office involves winning contests, ones which have a hierarchy that anyone can join from the moment they are 18. Committees, party members, voters and fellow elected people do all the deciding. All can stand, all can join, all can vote. That's democracy.
I think it's sad and mistaken if in fact X won't be voted in because of a moral or religious principle which is in no way eccentric - as may happen with KF. But what I think doesn't matter. Democracy is what it is. If, on the whole, it likes Boris or Salmond, Orban or Putin, Trump or Berlusconi better than Kate Forbes let it be. Though I think there is a price to pay.
You can have religious conviction but keep it to yourself and that is not controversial. I'm sure many do.
Where there's a problem is when you expect the law of the land to be shaped by your convictions. That is a serious problem when it comes to politics, for anyone who doesn't share your convictions, which given that all religions are minorities is going to be a majority of people not sharing your faith.
As it happens here, her views are very, very eccentric.
A good rule for modern politicians is never ever talk about sex, and even when you have to, keep it brief and perfunctory. then obfuscate. Demur. Waffle. Then move on. At best anything you say will be mortifying and cringe, at worst it will end your career
Never go into details!
Thatcher knew this and practiced it, cleverly,, to the extent that even now there are well-informed people who believe she was at heart very libertine and tolerant, and others, equally well informed, who believe she was uptight and puritan
Tony Blair too, I expect he was privately more devoutly religious than some of his successors but when seeking office simply said he wouldn't talk about it.
Make it a non issue and move on. If you can't make it a non issue, then we have a problem.
Can someone please open a book on whether Ireland will rejoin the Commonwealth. Lump on No at almost any price. A united Ireland won't ever be pink on the map.
As for the notion that unionist parties shouldn't be allowed to join a united Ireland government, it seems time flows differently west of the Irish Sea. If the DUP took seats in the Dail, they'd need to have "recognised" it first. They wouldn't be unionist any more, except perhaps in name. They wouldn't bother running on a manifesto promise of getting into government in Dublin and then splitting the 6C off again to rejoin GB. That could never be achieved, and GB probably wouldn't want them anyway. But if they weren't allowed in the government there'd be little point in them standing for election. The older and crazier would reach for the Book of Revelations and then their balaclavas.
Politically the drumbashers are nuts, ranting about "No border in the Irish Sea", whereas anybody who has crossed into or out of NI across both the Irish Sea and the land border knows which one has the most checks.
I'm sure there's a small constituency in the Republic for closer ties with Britain, otherwise there wouldn't be the West Brit stereotype/insult.
No reason why Northern Unionists couldn't stand candidates across the island of Ireland to argue in the Dail for a special relationship with Britain.
There is already a "special relationship with Britain" (see CTA for example). If rejoining the Commonwealth gets reunification over the line then RoI will go for it.
There is no reason London buses cannot be run by TfL directly, only stupid Government rules. They have at least made the best of a bad situation and TfL's technology is very good.
Too many people in politics obsess about ownership structures.
There is good management and bad management in the world, and you find both in the public and private sectors. There are also advantages from size (economies of scale, buying power) and disadvantages (bureaucracy, slowness).
The two main reasons to keep something in the public sector are control, and where public good is incompatible with the profit motive. You can replicate control to some extent through regulation of private providers though we all see the issues. You can fix the profit motive incompatibility issue by subsidising private companies - eg to run unprofitable bus routes - but that can create inefficiencies.
The main reasons to have something private are competition and innovation. Efforts to replicate these in the public sector have a chequered history. But privatisation doesn’t always lead to either real competition or innovation. That’s why I don’t think ownership per se is the most important factor.
I know you alluded to it but competition and innovation do seem to drift into rent seeking and financialisaton.
Which is why markets need regulating. Monopolies and all that.
The US space launch industry is a fascinating example of the varying models and why they cause problems.
You mean that spending $20bn on turning a dozen re-usable rocket motors, into disposable rocket motors, isn’t good value for the American taxpayer?
Rocket engines. Motors are solids, by convention.
SLS is the totally state controlled mode. Then you have ULA who are supposed to be the tame contractors. Then you have SpaceX - the pirates who are tearing the market place up Then you have Blue Origin - who are turning a lot of money into.... not a lot.
It is costing SpaceX $20 million and falling to get 16 tons (and growing) to LEO. None of the other come close to matching that. Why?
Why don't they want to do that? Yes, they don't want to do that.
Yes yes, engines and motors.
It does indeed appear that no-one wants to challenge SX in the commercial and government LEO space, preferring instead to do their own thing on a different basis, that sees them take no business risk.
The mad one is Blue Origin. The whole business of which, with hindsight, seemed to be about Bezos getting his personal joyride - and now it happened, no-one there cares about the bigger project any more.
You then end up with another danger, of an effective private monopoly in launch services which needs regulating at some point. Thankfully, so far SX have been behaving themselves in this regard, including stepping in to launch OneWeb hardware when the Russians got boycotted.
No-one really knows what Blue Origin is for. Bezos seems to have a love for space in a kind of Big Coffee Table Book kind of way. Not actually mad about the details of how you get the coatings to stick inside an oxygen rich pre burner or anything, but likes Space. Hence the F1 engine recovery project. According to people who've spoken to him, he's an O'Neil colony fan.
New Shepard was just a test project. It was the rockets beyond that are supposed to be the core of the company. Pun intended. But they've oscillated around, changing plans.
True, SpaceX have changed their plans quite radically - but always with a focus on doing stuff. More tons, cheaper, upstairs.
Consider the good that Bridenstine did at NASA - he gave focus and goals to several projects. Webb was finally launched because he suggested that, instead of giving out bonuses for eternal delays, he was going to ask the cost of termination. SLS was given a purpose (Artemis) which had political support and was doable (sort of) - it launched. He mandated the helicopter on Mars - which was a balance between the future capabilities groups and the science instrument guys. Another goal. And so on.
Great point on Bridenstine, one of Trump’s positive achievements in office.
Presidents need to find more people like him, to run departments and agencies - although the political process of appointments and resignations must be debilitating to an organisation, especially during a transition period which can often take several months. A new President should be be able to canvas, and be given a list of people who are willing to stay on in post for another term, rather than have thousands of leaders all resign on Jan 20th.
Do you want that person running the country, and looking down on you, demanding you pay tax despite her regarding you as evil? Do you want her shaping social policies? For me, that’s a big No (but of course I am not Scottish etc). No more than I would want a strictly Orthodox Jew or fundamentalist Muslim running the UK, for pretty much the same reason
Agreed, I admire her for sticking to her principles. The answer to her question is probably yes however: If the tenets of your faith put you out of step with the mainstream of UK opinion on social issues & you’re public about it, you’re going to have problems politically. There’s a reason Alasdair Campbell cut off questions about Blair’s faith with “We don’t do God”.
The UK is very socially liberal these days on many questions that in the past would have been much more controversial & that holds true across the political spectrum. It’s one of the reasons I’m still proud to be British.
We should just be honest then and say "if you hold strong religious views, you cannot be Prime Minister / FM as your views disqualify you from being a possible appointment."
Instead, we have this hypocritical standpoint where we pretend to be all tolerant and accepting but once someone comes along with such views, we then say why they are not acceptable.
Maybe we should stop looking at this through a particular moral lens. It is not true (as KF suggests) that having any religious conviction whatever bars you from office in a democracy.
To be in office involves winning contests, ones which have a hierarchy that anyone can join from the moment they are 18. Committees, party members, voters and fellow elected people do all the deciding. All can stand, all can join, all can vote. That's democracy.
I think it's sad and mistaken if in fact X won't be voted in because of a moral or religious principle which is in no way eccentric - as may happen with KF. But what I think doesn't matter. Democracy is what it is. If, on the whole, it likes Boris or Salmond, Orban or Putin, Trump or Berlusconi better than Kate Forbes let it be. Though I think there is a price to pay.
You can have religious conviction but keep it to yourself and that is not controversial. I'm sure many do.
Where there's a problem is when you expect the law of the land to be shaped by your convictions. That is a serious problem when it comes to politics, for anyone who doesn't share your convictions, which given that all religions are minorities is going to be a majority of people not sharing your faith.
As it happens here, her views are very, very eccentric.
A good rule for modern politicians is never ever talk about sex, and even when you have to, keep it brief and perfunctory. then obfuscate. Demur. Waffle. Then move on. At best anything you say will be mortifying and cringe, at worst it will end your career
Never go into details!
Thatcher knew this and practiced it, cleverly,, to the extent that even now there are well-informed people who believe she was at heart very libertine and tolerant, and others, equally well informed, who believe she was uptight and puritan
Tony Blair too, I expect he was privately more devoutly religious than some of his successors but when seeking office simply said he wouldn't talk about it.
Make it a non issue and move on. If you can't make it a non issue, then we have a problem.
Queen Elizabeth I got it right, 500 years ago. “Do not seek to make windows into men’s souls”
What is private, is private. Thus she squared the Protestant-Catholic circle in a bitterly divided nation, and became one of our greatest monarchs
Kate Forbes wants to peer through her window into your soul, and she will find you lacking
I feel a bit sorry for Forbes. She evidently feels passionately enough about this area to “double down” on her view.
But I can’t see a leadership position - by anyone in Westminster / devolved govs - being held by someone who opposes gay marriage / children outside of marriage etc
Agreed, I admire her for sticking to her principles. The answer to her question is probably yes however: If the tenets of your faith put you out of step with the mainstream of UK opinion on social issues & you’re public about it, you’re going to have problems politically. There’s a reason Alasdair Campbell cut off questions about Blair’s faith with “We don’t do God”.
The UK is very socially liberal these days on many questions that in the past would have been much more controversial & that holds true across the political spectrum. It’s one of the reasons I’m still proud to be British.
We should just be honest then and say "if you hold strong religious views, you cannot be Prime Minister / FM as your views disqualify you from being a possible appointment."
Instead, we have this hypocritical standpoint where we pretend to be all tolerant and accepting but once someone comes along with such views, we then say why they are not acceptable.
Maybe we should stop looking at this through a particular moral lens. It is not true (as KF suggests) that having any religious conviction whatever bars you from office in a democracy.
To be in office involves winning contests, ones which have a hierarchy that anyone can join from the moment they are 18. Committees, party members, voters and fellow elected people do all the deciding. All can stand, all can join, all can vote. That's democracy.
I think it's sad and mistaken if in fact X won't be voted in because of a moral or religious principle which is in no way eccentric - as may happen with KF. But what I think doesn't matter. Democracy is what it is. If, on the whole, it likes Boris or Salmond, Orban or Putin, Trump or Berlusconi better than Kate Forbes let it be. Though I think there is a price to pay.
You can have religious conviction but keep it to yourself and that is not controversial. I'm sure many do.
Where there's a problem is when you expect the law of the land to be shaped by your convictions. That is a serious problem when it comes to politics, for anyone who doesn't share your convictions, which given that all religions are minorities is going to be a majority of people not sharing your faith.
As it happens here, her views are very, very eccentric.
A good rule for modern politicians is never ever talk about sex, and even when you have to, keep it brief and perfunctory. then obfuscate. Demur. Waffle. Then move on. At best anything you say will be mortifying and cringe, at worst it will end your career
Never go into details!
Thatcher knew this and practiced it, cleverly,, to the extent that even now there are well-informed people who believe she was at heart very libertine and tolerant, and others, equally well informed, who believe she was uptight and puritan
Tony Blair too, I expect he was privately more devoutly religious than some of his successors but when seeking office simply said he wouldn't talk about it.
Make it a non issue and move on. If you can't make it a non issue, then we have a problem.
Queen Elizabeth I got it right, 500 years ago. “Do not seek to make windows into men’s souls”
What is private, is private. Thus she squared the Protestant-Catholic circle in a bitterly divided nation, and became one of our greatest monarchs
Kate Forbes wants to peer through her window into your soul, and she will find you lacking
Maybe, if the journalists had any interest in her economic and taxation policy, her policing, health, or education policies, then this is what we might be hearing about today.
Instead, she’s only being asked about her moral views on marriage and children, so that’s all that’s been reported. She needs to learn to ignore such questions, even if it gets to the point of walking out rather than answering. Because the walk-out will lead the news.
It will be interesting to see if the withdrawal of support by various MPs MSPs etc actually has any impact on the polling. Less than many on here assume I think although I may well be wrong. But if these attacks become any more vicious it will be hard to see KF in any one else’s cabinet. As this race shows all too clearly the paucity of talent in Scottish politics is painful. Losing even modest talents like Forbes is something we cannot afford.
Is there not a different standard for being FM as opposed to being in the cabinet? I dont think her, or Farron for example, would make good choices for the top job, which involves representing the whole nation, but wouldn't have any issues with them being in the cabinet.
Agreed, I admire her for sticking to her principles. The answer to her question is probably yes however: If the tenets of your faith put you out of step with the mainstream of UK opinion on social issues & you’re public about it, you’re going to have problems politically. There’s a reason Alasdair Campbell cut off questions about Blair’s faith with “We don’t do God”.
The UK is very socially liberal these days on many questions that in the past would have been much more controversial & that holds true across the political spectrum. It’s one of the reasons I’m still proud to be British.
We should just be honest then and say "if you hold strong religious views, you cannot be Prime Minister / FM as your views disqualify you from being a possible appointment."
Instead, we have this hypocritical standpoint where we pretend to be all tolerant and accepting but once someone comes along with such views, we then say why they are not acceptable.
Actually it isn't. If you want to be a leader of a party and a government you are required to defend the policies of your party and the decisions of your government. You can't do the job otherwise, but it is the same for everyone.
Kate Forbes seems to think her moral principles take precedence over her colleagues' That's a problem.
Does she though? She's just saying she has certain beliefs, not that they've affected governance.
At any rate, this is exactly how radical movements fail, they fracture and split over things that have nothing to do with the central goal. Oh well! We are where we are.
Do you want that person running the country, and looking down on you, demanding you pay tax despite her regarding you as evil? Do you want her shaping social policies? For me, that’s a big No (but of course I am not Scottish etc). No more than I would want a strictly Orthodox Jew or fundamentalist Muslim running the UK, for pretty much the same reason
I say No too, but possibly she regards most of us as wicked sinners rather than evil.
Lord Mackay who was Lord Chancellor 1987-97 was a member of a Scottish Presbyterian church that was even further out in the loonysphere than Kate Forbes's.
Has anyone ever asked Jacob Rees-Mogg's view on premarital sex?
It must be a hoot in the Commons when the devouties and staunchies all have to go through the same voting lobby for religious reasons.
In the interests of balance BBC R4 WATO has a Putin apologist defending "Russia's liberation of Ukraine" by the "illegal Neo-Nazi regime" in Kyiv.
In the interests of balance the BBC really needs to lose its charter.
Amusingly, this morning an acquaintance wrote a long screed about how "Slava Ukrainia" originates in deep, dark fascist-style history, and therefore its use is deeply upsetting to Russians.
1) Scots are not socially liberal - certainly no more so than the English. 2) The SNP are a mass membership party and the members, therefore, are more likely to be socially conservative than the inhabitants of the Holyrood bubble who are having a fit of the vapours at the moment. 3) Kate, and her Wee Free views, are authentically Scottish, not to say Highland Scots. SNP members, and others beside, will kinda like that. 4) And, most importantly, she IS NOT Humza "Useless" Yousaf. Who in their right mind would vote for him? A walking disaster area, when he isn't falling over in front of BBC cameramen.
Maybe the prayers of @Carnyx will be answered and someone from on high will intervene? (Though perhaps "He" already has).
In the interests of balance BBC R4 WATO has a Putin apologist defending "Russia's liberation of Ukraine" by the "illegal Neo-Nazi regime" in Kyiv.
In the interests of balance the BBC really needs to lose its charter.
Amusingly, this morning an acquaintance wrote a long screed about how "Slava Ukrainia" originates in deep, dark fascist-style history, and therefore its use is deeply upsetting to Russians.
To which I replied: "Slava Ukrainia!"
Slava Ukrania!
Translation: Puck Futin. Been there, got the T-shirt!
The tone and mood around the Forbes debacle amounts to this: She is expected to take a properly liberal view about those she disagrees with, but no-one is expected to take a properly liberal view about her.
I don't agree with the SNP on independence, and I don't agree with most of the evangelical take on the world. But KF seems to me to be acting in a more genuinely liberal way than her army of detractors. it looks to me like bullying.
No, it’s more than that
She morally disapproves - in a really quite serious, “you are going to hell“ fashion - of gay marriage, of children born out of wedlock, even just sex outside marriage. She thinks people that do this - ie 90% of Scots? - are evil sinners. Sure, they can be redeemed, IF THEY JOIN HER CHURCH AND SHAPE UP, but until then they are evil sinners
Do you want that person running the country, and looking down on you, demanding you pay tax despite her regarding you as evil? Do you want her shaping social policies? For me, that’s a big No (but of course I am not Scottish etc). No more than I would want a strictly Orthodox Jew or fundamentalist Muslim running the UK, for pretty much the same reason
Bit of a distinction between winning power on a national election on those terms (you may not like it, it's probably a bad thing, but them's the rules) and doing so after an internal party vote.
There is no reason London buses cannot be run by TfL directly, only stupid Government rules. They have at least made the best of a bad situation and TfL's technology is very good.
Too many people in politics obsess about ownership structures.
There is good management and bad management in the world, and you find both in the public and private sectors. There are also advantages from size (economies of scale, buying power) and disadvantages (bureaucracy, slowness).
The two main reasons to keep something in the public sector are control, and where public good is incompatible with the profit motive. You can replicate control to some extent through regulation of private providers though we all see the issues. You can fix the profit motive incompatibility issue by subsidising private companies - eg to run unprofitable bus routes - but that can create inefficiencies.
The main reasons to have something private are competition and innovation. Efforts to replicate these in the public sector have a chequered history. But privatisation doesn’t always lead to either real competition or innovation. That’s why I don’t think ownership per se is the most important factor.
I know you alluded to it but competition and innovation do seem to drift into rent seeking and financialisaton.
Which is why markets need regulating. Monopolies and all that.
The US space launch industry is a fascinating example of the varying models and why they cause problems.
You mean that spending $20bn on turning a dozen re-usable rocket motors, into disposable rocket motors, isn’t good value for the American taxpayer?
Rocket engines. Motors are solids, by convention.
SLS is the totally state controlled mode. Then you have ULA who are supposed to be the tame contractors. Then you have SpaceX - the pirates who are tearing the market place up Then you have Blue Origin - who are turning a lot of money into.... not a lot.
It is costing SpaceX $20 million and falling to get 16 tons (and growing) to LEO. None of the other come close to matching that. Why?
Why don't they want to do that? Yes, they don't want to do that.
Yes yes, engines and motors.
It does indeed appear that no-one wants to challenge SX in the commercial and government LEO space, preferring instead to do their own thing on a different basis, that sees them take no business risk.
The mad one is Blue Origin. The whole business of which, with hindsight, seemed to be about Bezos getting his personal joyride - and now it happened, no-one there cares about the bigger project any more.
You then end up with another danger, of an effective private monopoly in launch services which needs regulating at some point. Thankfully, so far SX have been behaving themselves in this regard, including stepping in to launch OneWeb hardware when the Russians got boycotted.
No-one really knows what Blue Origin is for. Bezos seems to have a love for space in a kind of Big Coffee Table Book kind of way. Not actually mad about the details of how you get the coatings to stick inside an oxygen rich pre burner or anything, but likes Space. Hence the F1 engine recovery project. According to people who've spoken to him, he's an O'Neil colony fan.
(Snip)
I utterly disagree with that, and sadly it comes across as a bit of a Musk-loving diatribe. It also follows the rather dubious idea that Musk himself knows how 'you get the coatings to stick inside an oxygen rich pre burner'. Given his proclaimed software 'knowledge', that's dubious. It also rather assumes the most useful a boss of a massive, multi-faceted organisation can be doing is mirco-managing.
Bezos has had a love of space from when he was a kid; IIRC his speech at uni was on man's future in space. Musk, in comparison, is a newcomer.
If you look, SpaceX has done *nothing* for space science, let alone Mars. Yes, they've launched probes (and been paid handsomely for it), but the amount of space science done is negligible. They have leant heavily on NASA and DOD contracts; 'inventions' like their PICA-X are just rehashed NASA research.
As for Blue Origin; they just seem to be getting on with what they're doing. e.g. the following:
Actually, SpaceX have been doing quite bit of original research. Retro propulsion for one. Hence NASA sending the WB-57 out to watch the relights during entry. That was something that NASA wanted for a long long time, but couldn't get funded for test.
The NASA plan to retrieve the samples from Mars they are laying down depends on retro-propulsion for the lander. The current techniques don't scale to something large enough to get back to Mars orbit.
PICA-X is an interesting one - the original NASA version had severe problems with cost and getting a uniform structure. As often happens, the research was canned because of a lack of immediate use. SpaceX hired the guys who'd worked on it and got them to productionise it.
Their work on FFSC is pretty unique as well. First ever FFSC for non-storables (RD-270 was hydrazine)
Agreed, I admire her for sticking to her principles. The answer to her question is probably yes however: If the tenets of your faith put you out of step with the mainstream of UK opinion on social issues & you’re public about it, you’re going to have problems politically. There’s a reason Alasdair Campbell cut off questions about Blair’s faith with “We don’t do God”.
The UK is very socially liberal these days on many questions that in the past would have been much more controversial & that holds true across the political spectrum. It’s one of the reasons I’m still proud to be British.
We should just be honest then and say "if you hold strong religious views, you cannot be Prime Minister / FM as your views disqualify you from being a possible appointment."
Instead, we have this hypocritical standpoint where we pretend to be all tolerant and accepting but once someone comes along with such views, we then say why they are not acceptable.
Maybe we should stop looking at this through a particular moral lens. It is not true (as KF suggests) that having any religious conviction whatever bars you from office in a democracy.
To be in office involves winning contests, ones which have a hierarchy that anyone can join from the moment they are 18. Committees, party members, voters and fellow elected people do all the deciding. All can stand, all can join, all can vote. That's democracy.
I think it's sad and mistaken if in fact X won't be voted in because of a moral or religious principle which is in no way eccentric - as may happen with KF. But what I think doesn't matter. Democracy is what it is. If, on the whole, it likes Boris or Salmond, Orban or Putin, Trump or Berlusconi better than Kate Forbes let it be. Though I think there is a price to pay.
You can have religious conviction but keep it to yourself and that is not controversial. I'm sure many do.
Where there's a problem is when you expect the law of the land to be shaped by your convictions. That is a serious problem when it comes to politics, for anyone who doesn't share your convictions, which given that all religions are minorities is going to be a majority of people not sharing your faith.
As it happens here, her views are very, very eccentric.
A good rule for modern politicians is never ever talk about sex, and even when you have to, keep it brief and perfunctory. then obfuscate. Demur. Waffle. Then move on. At best anything you say will be mortifying and cringe, at worst it will end your career
Never go into details!
Thatcher knew this and practiced it, cleverly,, to the extent that even now there are well-informed people who believe she was at heart very libertine and tolerant, and others, equally well informed, who believe she was uptight and puritan
Tony Blair too, I expect he was privately more devoutly religious than some of his successors but when seeking office simply said he wouldn't talk about it.
Make it a non issue and move on. If you can't make it a non issue, then we have a problem.
Queen Elizabeth I got it right, 500 years ago. “Do not seek to make windows into men’s souls”
What is private, is private. Thus she squared the Protestant-Catholic circle in a bitterly divided nation, and became one of our greatest monarchs
Kate Forbes wants to peer through her window into your soul, and she will find you lacking
Auld Liz literally made windows into Jesuits' abdominal cavities when she had them hung, drawn and quartered. Is that the kind of squaring of the circle you meant?
There is no reason London buses cannot be run by TfL directly, only stupid Government rules. They have at least made the best of a bad situation and TfL's technology is very good.
Too many people in politics obsess about ownership structures.
There is good management and bad management in the world, and you find both in the public and private sectors. There are also advantages from size (economies of scale, buying power) and disadvantages (bureaucracy, slowness).
The two main reasons to keep something in the public sector are control, and where public good is incompatible with the profit motive. You can replicate control to some extent through regulation of private providers though we all see the issues. You can fix the profit motive incompatibility issue by subsidising private companies - eg to run unprofitable bus routes - but that can create inefficiencies.
The main reasons to have something private are competition and innovation. Efforts to replicate these in the public sector have a chequered history. But privatisation doesn’t always lead to either real competition or innovation. That’s why I don’t think ownership per se is the most important factor.
I know you alluded to it but competition and innovation do seem to drift into rent seeking and financialisaton.
Which is why markets need regulating. Monopolies and all that.
The US space launch industry is a fascinating example of the varying models and why they cause problems.
You mean that spending $20bn on turning a dozen re-usable rocket motors, into disposable rocket motors, isn’t good value for the American taxpayer?
Rocket engines. Motors are solids, by convention.
SLS is the totally state controlled mode. Then you have ULA who are supposed to be the tame contractors. Then you have SpaceX - the pirates who are tearing the market place up Then you have Blue Origin - who are turning a lot of money into.... not a lot.
It is costing SpaceX $20 million and falling to get 16 tons (and growing) to LEO. None of the other come close to matching that. Why?
Why don't they want to do that? Yes, they don't want to do that.
Yes yes, engines and motors.
It does indeed appear that no-one wants to challenge SX in the commercial and government LEO space, preferring instead to do their own thing on a different basis, that sees them take no business risk.
The mad one is Blue Origin. The whole business of which, with hindsight, seemed to be about Bezos getting his personal joyride - and now it happened, no-one there cares about the bigger project any more.
You then end up with another danger, of an effective private monopoly in launch services which needs regulating at some point. Thankfully, so far SX have been behaving themselves in this regard, including stepping in to launch OneWeb hardware when the Russians got boycotted.
No-one really knows what Blue Origin is for. Bezos seems to have a love for space in a kind of Big Coffee Table Book kind of way. Not actually mad about the details of how you get the coatings to stick inside an oxygen rich pre burner or anything, but likes Space. Hence the F1 engine recovery project. According to people who've spoken to him, he's an O'Neil colony fan.
New Shepard was just a test project. It was the rockets beyond that are supposed to be the core of the company. Pun intended. But they've oscillated around, changing plans.
True, SpaceX have changed their plans quite radically - but always with a focus on doing stuff. More tons, cheaper, upstairs.
Consider the good that Bridenstine did at NASA - he gave focus and goals to several projects. Webb was finally launched because he suggested that, instead of giving out bonuses for eternal delays, he was going to ask the cost of termination. SLS was given a purpose (Artemis) which had political support and was doable (sort of) - it launched. He mandated the helicopter on Mars - which was a balance between the future capabilities groups and the science instrument guys. Another goal. And so on.
Great point on Bridenstine, one of Trump’s positive achievements in office.
Presidents need to find more people like him, to run departments and agencies - although the political process of appointments and resignations must be debilitating to an organisation, especially during a transition period which can often take several months. A new President should be be able to canvas, and be given a list of people who are willing to stay on in post for another term, rather than have thousands of leaders all resign on Jan 20th.
Bridenstine was excellent. At the beginning of Covid, he did an interview with a podcast where he went through the work that NASA was doing to keep its people safe, continue their work, and help with the pandemic. It was fairly detailed, and seemingly from memory. Impressive, IMO.
He also pi**ed Tump off, which was nice. I get the impression that whilst Bridenstine is an out-and-out Republican, he was no friend of Trumps. There were rumours that if Trump won a second term, Bridenstine was going to be chucked, t be replaced with a Trump sycophant.
Agreed, I admire her for sticking to her principles. The answer to her question is probably yes however: If the tenets of your faith put you out of step with the mainstream of UK opinion on social issues & you’re public about it, you’re going to have problems politically. There’s a reason Alasdair Campbell cut off questions about Blair’s faith with “We don’t do God”.
The UK is very socially liberal these days on many questions that in the past would have been much more controversial & that holds true across the political spectrum. It’s one of the reasons I’m still proud to be British.
We should just be honest then and say "if you hold strong religious views, you cannot be Prime Minister / FM as your views disqualify you from being a possible appointment."
Instead, we have this hypocritical standpoint where we pretend to be all tolerant and accepting but once someone comes along with such views, we then say why they are not acceptable.
Maybe we should stop looking at this through a particular moral lens. It is not true (as KF suggests) that having any religious conviction whatever bars you from office in a democracy.
To be in office involves winning contests, ones which have a hierarchy that anyone can join from the moment they are 18. Committees, party members, voters and fellow elected people do all the deciding. All can stand, all can join, all can vote. That's democracy.
I think it's sad and mistaken if in fact X won't be voted in because of a moral or religious principle which is in no way eccentric - as may happen with KF. But what I think doesn't matter. Democracy is what it is. If, on the whole, it likes Boris or Salmond, Orban or Putin, Trump or Berlusconi better than Kate Forbes let it be. Though I think there is a price to pay.
You can have religious conviction but keep it to yourself and that is not controversial. I'm sure many do.
Where there's a problem is when you expect the law of the land to be shaped by your convictions. That is a serious problem when it comes to politics, for anyone who doesn't share your convictions, which given that all religions are minorities is going to be a majority of people not sharing your faith.
As it happens here, her views are very, very eccentric.
A good rule for modern politicians is never ever talk about sex, and even when you have to, keep it brief and perfunctory. then obfuscate. Demur. Waffle. Then move on. At best anything you say will be mortifying and cringe, at worst it will end your career
Never go into details!
Thatcher knew this and practiced it, cleverly,, to the extent that even now there are well-informed people who believe she was at heart very libertine and tolerant, and others, equally well informed, who believe she was uptight and puritan
Tony Blair too, I expect he was privately more devoutly religious than some of his successors but when seeking office simply said he wouldn't talk about it.
Make it a non issue and move on. If you can't make it a non issue, then we have a problem.
Queen Elizabeth I got it right, 500 years ago. “Do not seek to make windows into men’s souls”
What is private, is private. Thus she squared the Protestant-Catholic circle in a bitterly divided nation, and became one of our greatest monarchs
Kate Forbes wants to peer through her window into your soul, and she will find you lacking
Liz made it a crime not explicitly accept and avow her version of Christianity. Turn up at church on Sunday or else.
The fines from that were a major source of government income!
In the interests of balance BBC R4 WATO has a Putin apologist defending "Russia's liberation of Ukraine" by the "illegal Neo-Nazi regime" in Kyiv.
In the interests of balance the BBC really needs to lose its charter.
I assume the BBC is seeking to understand the context and reasons behind the war.
Watching a bit of Putin this morning on the BBC he was full of Western aggression this, and encirclement that.
All helping to understand the Russian viewpoint and justification for the war.
I suggest that if you are unable to listen critically to different points of view then perhaps the BBC is an intellectual step too far for you.
Thing is, if you make the BBC into a propaganda machine then sure as eggs is eggs it will eventually turn on you because you will be on the wrong side of "the accepted" viewpoint.
There is no reason London buses cannot be run by TfL directly, only stupid Government rules. They have at least made the best of a bad situation and TfL's technology is very good.
Too many people in politics obsess about ownership structures.
There is good management and bad management in the world, and you find both in the public and private sectors. There are also advantages from size (economies of scale, buying power) and disadvantages (bureaucracy, slowness).
The two main reasons to keep something in the public sector are control, and where public good is incompatible with the profit motive. You can replicate control to some extent through regulation of private providers though we all see the issues. You can fix the profit motive incompatibility issue by subsidising private companies - eg to run unprofitable bus routes - but that can create inefficiencies.
The main reasons to have something private are competition and innovation. Efforts to replicate these in the public sector have a chequered history. But privatisation doesn’t always lead to either real competition or innovation. That’s why I don’t think ownership per se is the most important factor.
I know you alluded to it but competition and innovation do seem to drift into rent seeking and financialisaton.
Which is why markets need regulating. Monopolies and all that.
The US space launch industry is a fascinating example of the varying models and why they cause problems.
You mean that spending $20bn on turning a dozen re-usable rocket motors, into disposable rocket motors, isn’t good value for the American taxpayer?
Rocket engines. Motors are solids, by convention.
SLS is the totally state controlled mode. Then you have ULA who are supposed to be the tame contractors. Then you have SpaceX - the pirates who are tearing the market place up Then you have Blue Origin - who are turning a lot of money into.... not a lot.
It is costing SpaceX $20 million and falling to get 16 tons (and growing) to LEO. None of the other come close to matching that. Why?
Why don't they want to do that? Yes, they don't want to do that.
Yes yes, engines and motors.
It does indeed appear that no-one wants to challenge SX in the commercial and government LEO space, preferring instead to do their own thing on a different basis, that sees them take no business risk.
The mad one is Blue Origin. The whole business of which, with hindsight, seemed to be about Bezos getting his personal joyride - and now it happened, no-one there cares about the bigger project any more.
You then end up with another danger, of an effective private monopoly in launch services which needs regulating at some point. Thankfully, so far SX have been behaving themselves in this regard, including stepping in to launch OneWeb hardware when the Russians got boycotted.
No-one really knows what Blue Origin is for. Bezos seems to have a love for space in a kind of Big Coffee Table Book kind of way. Not actually mad about the details of how you get the coatings to stick inside an oxygen rich pre burner or anything, but likes Space. Hence the F1 engine recovery project. According to people who've spoken to him, he's an O'Neil colony fan.
(Snip)
I utterly disagree with that, and sadly it comes across as a bit of a Musk-loving diatribe. It also follows the rather dubious idea that Musk himself knows how 'you get the coatings to stick inside an oxygen rich pre burner'. Given his proclaimed software 'knowledge', that's dubious. It also rather assumes the most useful a boss of a massive, multi-faceted organisation can be doing is mirco-managing.
Bezos has had a love of space from when he was a kid; IIRC his speech at uni was on man's future in space. Musk, in comparison, is a newcomer.
If you look, SpaceX has done *nothing* for space science, let alone Mars. Yes, they've launched probes (and been paid handsomely for it), but the amount of space science done is negligible. They have leant heavily on NASA and DOD contracts; 'inventions' like their PICA-X are just rehashed NASA research.
As for Blue Origin; they just seem to be getting on with what they're doing. e.g. the following:
Actually, SpaceX have been doing quite bit of original research. Retro propulsion for one. Hence NASA sending the WB-57 out to watch the relights during entry. That was something that NASA wanted for a long long time, but couldn't get funded for test.
The NASA plan to retrieve the samples from Mars they are laying down depends on retro-propulsion for the lander. The current techniques don't scale to something large enough to get back to Mars orbit.
PICA-X is an interesting one - the original NASA version had severe problems with cost and getting a uniform structure. As often happens, the research was canned because of a lack of immediate use. SpaceX hired the guys who'd worked on it and got them to productionise it.
Their work on FFSC is pretty unique as well. First ever FFSC for non-storables (RD-270 was hydrazine)
Yes, but that's research towards the *launch* market. It's not actual reasearch into space, or living in space. There are massive issues that await any Mars attempt, and SpaceX are ignoring them.
IMO that is the difference between the two organisations: there is clear evidence that BO is working on many different thing simultaneously. SpaceX is just launch and MAKING MONEY!!!!
1) Scots are not socially liberal - certainly no more so than the English. 2) The SNP are a mass membership party and the members, therefore, are more likely to be socially conservative than the inhabitants of the Holyrood bubble who are having a fit of the vapours at the moment. 3) Kate, and her Wee Free views, are authentically Scottish, not to say Highland Scots. SNP members, and others beside, will kinda like that. 4) And, most importantly, she IS NOT Humza "Useless" Yousaf. Who in their right mind would vote for him? A walking disaster area, when he isn't falling over in front of BBC cameramen.
Maybe the prayers of @Carnyx will be answered and someone from on high will intervene? (Though perhaps "He" already has).
I think those are all valid points. I would also add an extra one when it comes to the members. Having seen the monumental car crash on GRR and the Isla B story, a fair few SNP members may be thinking the last thing they need is continuity Sturgeon and more someone who is least likely to get them into this mess.
Agreed, I admire her for sticking to her principles. The answer to her question is probably yes however: If the tenets of your faith put you out of step with the mainstream of UK opinion on social issues & you’re public about it, you’re going to have problems politically. There’s a reason Alasdair Campbell cut off questions about Blair’s faith with “We don’t do God”.
The UK is very socially liberal these days on many questions that in the past would have been much more controversial & that holds true across the political spectrum. It’s one of the reasons I’m still proud to be British.
We should just be honest then and say "if you hold strong religious views, you cannot be Prime Minister / FM as your views disqualify you from being a possible appointment."
Instead, we have this hypocritical standpoint where we pretend to be all tolerant and accepting but once someone comes along with such views, we then say why they are not acceptable.
Maybe we should stop looking at this through a particular moral lens. It is not true (as KF suggests) that having any religious conviction whatever bars you from office in a democracy.
To be in office involves winning contests, ones which have a hierarchy that anyone can join from the moment they are 18. Committees, party members, voters and fellow elected people do all the deciding. All can stand, all can join, all can vote. That's democracy.
I think it's sad and mistaken if in fact X won't be voted in because of a moral or religious principle which is in no way eccentric - as may happen with KF. But what I think doesn't matter. Democracy is what it is. If, on the whole, it likes Boris or Salmond, Orban or Putin, Trump or Berlusconi better than Kate Forbes let it be. Though I think there is a price to pay.
You can have religious conviction but keep it to yourself and that is not controversial. I'm sure many do.
Where there's a problem is when you expect the law of the land to be shaped by your convictions. That is a serious problem when it comes to politics, for anyone who doesn't share your convictions, which given that all religions are minorities is going to be a majority of people not sharing your faith.
As it happens here, her views are very, very eccentric.
A good rule for modern politicians is never ever talk about sex, and even when you have to, keep it brief and perfunctory. then obfuscate. Demur. Waffle. Then move on. At best anything you say will be mortifying and cringe, at worst it will end your career
Never go into details!
Thatcher knew this and practiced it, cleverly,, to the extent that even now there are well-informed people who believe she was at heart very libertine and tolerant, and others, equally well informed, who believe she was uptight and puritan
Tony Blair too, I expect he was privately more devoutly religious than some of his successors but when seeking office simply said he wouldn't talk about it.
Make it a non issue and move on. If you can't make it a non issue, then we have a problem.
Queen Elizabeth I got it right, 500 years ago. “Do not seek to make windows into men’s souls”
What is private, is private. Thus she squared the Protestant-Catholic circle in a bitterly divided nation, and became one of our greatest monarchs
Kate Forbes wants to peer through her window into your soul, and she will find you lacking
Liz made it a crime not explicitly accept and avow her version of Christianity. Turn up at church on Sunday or else.
The fines from that were a major source of government income!
And the compulsory tithes boosted Church of England coffers too, as well as the compulsory attendance at a Church of England church each Sunday with fines for non attendance.
Welby would have no problems if Liz 1 was still monarch
Jeez, she just can't stop talking about this stuff. Is it time for an intervention, from above or otherwise?
She has surely fucked her campaign, as her very own campaign aide says (never a good sign in a campaign). However in the interests of diversity and equality I REALLY hope some journalist is going to ask the same questions of Humza Yousaf. He may well have some interesting answers, and it would never do to encourage the perception that Muslims are given an easier ride than Wee Free white Hebrideans
Yousaf said at his own launch that "I don't legislate on the basis of my faith", arguing that as a member of a minority group he knows his rights "don't exist in some kind of vacuum... My rights are interdependent on other people's rights... I'll always fight for the equal rights of others regardless of who they are." This seems to me exactly the right answer to the question that Forbes was asked, and I'm not sure that Yousaf really needs to say anything else on the subject.
Agreed, I admire her for sticking to her principles. The answer to her question is probably yes however: If the tenets of your faith put you out of step with the mainstream of UK opinion on social issues & you’re public about it, you’re going to have problems politically. There’s a reason Alasdair Campbell cut off questions about Blair’s faith with “We don’t do God”.
The UK is very socially liberal these days on many questions that in the past would have been much more controversial & that holds true across the political spectrum. It’s one of the reasons I’m still proud to be British.
We should just be honest then and say "if you hold strong religious views, you cannot be Prime Minister / FM as your views disqualify you from being a possible appointment."
Instead, we have this hypocritical standpoint where we pretend to be all tolerant and accepting but once someone comes along with such views, we then say why they are not acceptable.
Maybe we should stop looking at this through a particular moral lens. It is not true (as KF suggests) that having any religious conviction whatever bars you from office in a democracy.
To be in office involves winning contests, ones which have a hierarchy that anyone can join from the moment they are 18. Committees, party members, voters and fellow elected people do all the deciding. All can stand, all can join, all can vote. That's democracy.
I think it's sad and mistaken if in fact X won't be voted in because of a moral or religious principle which is in no way eccentric - as may happen with KF. But what I think doesn't matter. Democracy is what it is. If, on the whole, it likes Boris or Salmond, Orban or Putin, Trump or Berlusconi better than Kate Forbes let it be. Though I think there is a price to pay.
You can have religious conviction but keep it to yourself and that is not controversial. I'm sure many do.
Where there's a problem is when you expect the law of the land to be shaped by your convictions. That is a serious problem when it comes to politics, for anyone who doesn't share your convictions, which given that all religions are minorities is going to be a majority of people not sharing your faith.
As it happens here, her views are very, very eccentric.
A good rule for modern politicians is never ever talk about sex, and even when you have to, keep it brief and perfunctory. then obfuscate. Demur. Waffle. Then move on. At best anything you say will be mortifying and cringe, at worst it will end your career
Never go into details!
Thatcher knew this and practiced it, cleverly,, to the extent that even now there are well-informed people who believe she was at heart very libertine and tolerant, and others, equally well informed, who believe she was uptight and puritan
Tony Blair too, I expect he was privately more devoutly religious than some of his successors but when seeking office simply said he wouldn't talk about it.
Make it a non issue and move on. If you can't make it a non issue, then we have a problem.
Queen Elizabeth I got it right, 500 years ago. “Do not seek to make windows into men’s souls”
What is private, is private. Thus she squared the Protestant-Catholic circle in a bitterly divided nation, and became one of our greatest monarchs
Kate Forbes wants to peer through her window into your soul, and she will find you lacking
Auld Liz literally made windows into Jesuits' abdominal cavities when she had them hung, drawn and quartered. Is that the kind of squaring of the circle you meant?
Well the Jesuits tortured and burned Protestants and atheist heretics too under Mary Tudor and during the Spanish Inquisition
Agreed, I admire her for sticking to her principles. The answer to her question is probably yes however: If the tenets of your faith put you out of step with the mainstream of UK opinion on social issues & you’re public about it, you’re going to have problems politically. There’s a reason Alasdair Campbell cut off questions about Blair’s faith with “We don’t do God”.
The UK is very socially liberal these days on many questions that in the past would have been much more controversial & that holds true across the political spectrum. It’s one of the reasons I’m still proud to be British.
We should just be honest then and say "if you hold strong religious views, you cannot be Prime Minister / FM as your views disqualify you from being a possible appointment."
Instead, we have this hypocritical standpoint where we pretend to be all tolerant and accepting but once someone comes along with such views, we then say why they are not acceptable.
What would be really honest would be if she were to say that that is what she believes herself rather than what her "religion" tells her she has to believe.
Anyone who outsources her thinking to religious leaders to the extent that she appears to is not to be trusted as far as I am concerned.
If she generally believes all this stuff about children out of wedlock, gay rights and so on why does she need to hide behind her religion other than in the hope that that gives her a free pass?
Jeez, she just can't stop talking about this stuff. Is it time for an intervention, from above or otherwise?
She has surely fucked her campaign, as her very own campaign aide says (never a good sign in a campaign). However in the interests of diversity and equality I REALLY hope some journalist is going to ask the same questions of Humza Yousaf. He may well have some interesting answers, and it would never do to encourage the perception that Muslims are given an easier ride than Wee Free white Hebrideans
Yousaf said at his own launch that "I don't legislate on the basis of my faith", arguing that as a member of a minority group he knows his rights "don't exist in some kind of vacuum... My rights are interdependent on other people's rights... I'll always fight for the equal rights of others regardless of who they are." This seems to me exactly the right answer to the question that Forbes was asked, and I'm not sure that Yousaf really needs to say anything else on the subject.
Agreed, I admire her for sticking to her principles. The answer to her question is probably yes however: If the tenets of your faith put you out of step with the mainstream of UK opinion on social issues & you’re public about it, you’re going to have problems politically. There’s a reason Alasdair Campbell cut off questions about Blair’s faith with “We don’t do God”.
The UK is very socially liberal these days on many questions that in the past would have been much more controversial & that holds true across the political spectrum. It’s one of the reasons I’m still proud to be British.
We should just be honest then and say "if you hold strong religious views, you cannot be Prime Minister / FM as your views disqualify you from being a possible appointment."
Instead, we have this hypocritical standpoint where we pretend to be all tolerant and accepting but once someone comes along with such views, we then say why they are not acceptable.
Maybe we should stop looking at this through a particular moral lens. It is not true (as KF suggests) that having any religious conviction whatever bars you from office in a democracy.
To be in office involves winning contests, ones which have a hierarchy that anyone can join from the moment they are 18. Committees, party members, voters and fellow elected people do all the deciding. All can stand, all can join, all can vote. That's democracy.
I think it's sad and mistaken if in fact X won't be voted in because of a moral or religious principle which is in no way eccentric - as may happen with KF. But what I think doesn't matter. Democracy is what it is. If, on the whole, it likes Boris or Salmond, Orban or Putin, Trump or Berlusconi better than Kate Forbes let it be. Though I think there is a price to pay.
You can have religious conviction but keep it to yourself and that is not controversial. I'm sure many do.
Where there's a problem is when you expect the law of the land to be shaped by your convictions. That is a serious problem when it comes to politics, for anyone who doesn't share your convictions, which given that all religions are minorities is going to be a majority of people not sharing your faith.
As it happens here, her views are very, very eccentric.
A good rule for modern politicians is never ever talk about sex, and even when you have to, keep it brief and perfunctory. then obfuscate. Demur. Waffle. Then move on. At best anything you say will be mortifying and cringe, at worst it will end your career
Never go into details!
Thatcher knew this and practiced it, cleverly,, to the extent that even now there are well-informed people who believe she was at heart very libertine and tolerant, and others, equally well informed, who believe she was uptight and puritan
Tony Blair too, I expect he was privately more devoutly religious than some of his successors but when seeking office simply said he wouldn't talk about it.
Make it a non issue and move on. If you can't make it a non issue, then we have a problem.
Queen Elizabeth I got it right, 500 years ago. “Do not seek to make windows into men’s souls”
What is private, is private. Thus she squared the Protestant-Catholic circle in a bitterly divided nation, and became one of our greatest monarchs
Kate Forbes wants to peer through her window into your soul, and she will find you lacking
Auld Liz literally made windows into Jesuits' abdominal cavities when she had them hung, drawn and quartered. Is that the kind of squaring of the circle you meant?
Well the Jesuits tortured and burned Protestants and atheist heretics too under Mary Tudor and during the Spanish Inquisition
1) Scots are not socially liberal - certainly no more so than the English. 2) The SNP are a mass membership party and the members, therefore, are more likely to be socially conservative than the inhabitants of the Holyrood bubble who are having a fit of the vapours at the moment. 3) Kate, and her Wee Free views, are authentically Scottish, not to say Highland Scots. SNP members, and others beside, will kinda like that. 4) And, most importantly, she IS NOT Humza "Useless" Yousaf. Who in their right mind would vote for him? A walking disaster area, when he isn't falling over in front of BBC cameramen.
Maybe the prayers of @Carnyx will be answered and someone from on high will intervene? (Though perhaps "He" already has).
I think those are all valid points. I would also add an extra one when it comes to the members. Having seen the monumental car crash on GRR and the Isla B story, a fair few SNP members may be thinking the last thing they need is continuity Sturgeon and more someone who is least likely to get them into this mess.
What we need, is some detailed polling into the social attitudes of: 1. Scots as a whole 2. SNP members 3. SNP politicians 4. Commentators and hournists covering Scottish politics
My suspicion is that they get more liberal, the further down the list you go…
Therefore, Kate is a value trading bet for a few days, as her odds are lengthening today.
The tone and mood around the Forbes debacle amounts to this: She is expected to take a properly liberal view about those she disagrees with, but no-one is expected to take a properly liberal view about her.
I don't agree with the SNP on independence, and I don't agree with most of the evangelical take on the world. But KF seems to me to be acting in a more genuinely liberal way than her army of detractors. it looks to me like bullying.
No, it’s more than that
She morally disapproves - in a really quite serious, “you are going to hell“ fashion - of gay marriage, of children born out of wedlock, even just sex outside marriage. She thinks people that do this - ie 90% of Scots? - are evil sinners. Sure, they can be redeemed, IF THEY JOIN HER CHURCH AND SHAPE UP, but until then they are evil sinners
Those who call the FCS and FPCS "evangelical" use the word differently from how I use it. They are nothing like evangelical churches in say Brazil or evangelical networks in the CofE, which try to practice happiness and work hard to win adherents.
I can't see how predestination and evangelism can go together without specious logic-chopping.
They don't want us in their church, Leon. They think God predestined us to go to hell.
There is no reason London buses cannot be run by TfL directly, only stupid Government rules. They have at least made the best of a bad situation and TfL's technology is very good.
Too many people in politics obsess about ownership structures.
There is good management and bad management in the world, and you find both in the public and private sectors. There are also advantages from size (economies of scale, buying power) and disadvantages (bureaucracy, slowness).
The two main reasons to keep something in the public sector are control, and where public good is incompatible with the profit motive. You can replicate control to some extent through regulation of private providers though we all see the issues. You can fix the profit motive incompatibility issue by subsidising private companies - eg to run unprofitable bus routes - but that can create inefficiencies.
The main reasons to have something private are competition and innovation. Efforts to replicate these in the public sector have a chequered history. But privatisation doesn’t always lead to either real competition or innovation. That’s why I don’t think ownership per se is the most important factor.
I know you alluded to it but competition and innovation do seem to drift into rent seeking and financialisaton.
Which is why markets need regulating. Monopolies and all that.
The US space launch industry is a fascinating example of the varying models and why they cause problems.
You mean that spending $20bn on turning a dozen re-usable rocket motors, into disposable rocket motors, isn’t good value for the American taxpayer?
Rocket engines. Motors are solids, by convention.
SLS is the totally state controlled mode. Then you have ULA who are supposed to be the tame contractors. Then you have SpaceX - the pirates who are tearing the market place up Then you have Blue Origin - who are turning a lot of money into.... not a lot.
It is costing SpaceX $20 million and falling to get 16 tons (and growing) to LEO. None of the other come close to matching that. Why?
Why don't they want to do that? Yes, they don't want to do that.
Yes yes, engines and motors.
It does indeed appear that no-one wants to challenge SX in the commercial and government LEO space, preferring instead to do their own thing on a different basis, that sees them take no business risk.
The mad one is Blue Origin. The whole business of which, with hindsight, seemed to be about Bezos getting his personal joyride - and now it happened, no-one there cares about the bigger project any more.
You then end up with another danger, of an effective private monopoly in launch services which needs regulating at some point. Thankfully, so far SX have been behaving themselves in this regard, including stepping in to launch OneWeb hardware when the Russians got boycotted.
No-one really knows what Blue Origin is for. Bezos seems to have a love for space in a kind of Big Coffee Table Book kind of way. Not actually mad about the details of how you get the coatings to stick inside an oxygen rich pre burner or anything, but likes Space. Hence the F1 engine recovery project. According to people who've spoken to him, he's an O'Neil colony fan.
(Snip)
I utterly disagree with that, and sadly it comes across as a bit of a Musk-loving diatribe. It also follows the rather dubious idea that Musk himself knows how 'you get the coatings to stick inside an oxygen rich pre burner'. Given his proclaimed software 'knowledge', that's dubious. It also rather assumes the most useful a boss of a massive, multi-faceted organisation can be doing is mirco-managing.
Bezos has had a love of space from when he was a kid; IIRC his speech at uni was on man's future in space. Musk, in comparison, is a newcomer.
If you look, SpaceX has done *nothing* for space science, let alone Mars. Yes, they've launched probes (and been paid handsomely for it), but the amount of space science done is negligible. They have leant heavily on NASA and DOD contracts; 'inventions' like their PICA-X are just rehashed NASA research.
As for Blue Origin; they just seem to be getting on with what they're doing. e.g. the following:
Actually, SpaceX have been doing quite bit of original research. Retro propulsion for one. Hence NASA sending the WB-57 out to watch the relights during entry. That was something that NASA wanted for a long long time, but couldn't get funded for test.
The NASA plan to retrieve the samples from Mars they are laying down depends on retro-propulsion for the lander. The current techniques don't scale to something large enough to get back to Mars orbit.
PICA-X is an interesting one - the original NASA version had severe problems with cost and getting a uniform structure. As often happens, the research was canned because of a lack of immediate use. SpaceX hired the guys who'd worked on it and got them to productionise it.
Their work on FFSC is pretty unique as well. First ever FFSC for non-storables (RD-270 was hydrazine)
Yes, but that's research towards the *launch* market. It's not actual reasearch into space, or living in space. There are massive issues that await any Mars attempt, and SpaceX are ignoring them.
IMO that is the difference between the two organisations: there is clear evidence that BO is working on many different thing simultaneously. SpaceX is just launch and MAKING MONEY!!!!
It's a structural difference that began in the difference of their funding sources.
Ultimately, however, further space development is reliant on reducing the cost of doing stuff in space.
1) Scots are not socially liberal - certainly no more so than the English. 2) The SNP are a mass membership party and the members, therefore, are more likely to be socially conservative than the inhabitants of the Holyrood bubble who are having a fit of the vapours at the moment. 3) Kate, and her Wee Free views, are authentically Scottish, not to say Highland Scots. SNP members, and others beside, will kinda like that. 4) And, most importantly, she IS NOT Humza "Useless" Yousaf. Who in their right mind would vote for him? A walking disaster area, when he isn't falling over in front of BBC cameramen.
Maybe the prayers of @Carnyx will be answered and someone from on high will intervene? (Though perhaps "He" already has).
Scottish Conservatives are praying for Yousaf. He will have even less appeal to their 2019 voters than Sturgeon.
Scottish Labour and the Greens however are praying for Forbes who will turn social liberals and leftwingers off the SNP
Can someone please open a book on whether Ireland will rejoin the Commonwealth. Lump on No at almost any price. A united Ireland won't ever be pink on the map.
As for the notion that unionist parties shouldn't be allowed to join a united Ireland government, it seems time flows differently west of the Irish Sea. If the DUP took seats in the Dail, they'd need to have "recognised" it first. They wouldn't be unionist any more, except perhaps in name. They wouldn't bother running on a manifesto promise of getting into government in Dublin and then splitting the 6C off again to rejoin GB. That could never be achieved, and GB probably wouldn't want them anyway. But if they weren't allowed in the government there'd be little point in them standing for election. The older and crazier would reach for the Book of Revelations and then their balaclavas.
Politically the drumbashers are nuts, ranting about "No border in the Irish Sea", whereas anybody who has crossed into or out of NI across both the Irish Sea and the land border knows which one has the most checks.
I'm sure there's a small constituency in the Republic for closer ties with Britain, otherwise there wouldn't be the West Brit stereotype/insult.
No reason why Northern Unionists couldn't stand candidates across the island of Ireland to argue in the Dail for a special relationship with Britain.
There is already a "special relationship with Britain" (see CTA for example). If rejoining the Commonwealth gets reunification over the line then RoI will go for it.
I reckon KCIII and the rest of the family have been working hard over several years to charm the Irish into the Commonwealth to help create a more peaceful future relationship. But I think it's a tough ask.
The Irish people I've mentioned the idea of it to have been very hostile. Surprisingly so. Try it yourself.
Agreed, I admire her for sticking to her principles. The answer to her question is probably yes however: If the tenets of your faith put you out of step with the mainstream of UK opinion on social issues & you’re public about it, you’re going to have problems politically. There’s a reason Alasdair Campbell cut off questions about Blair’s faith with “We don’t do God”.
The UK is very socially liberal these days on many questions that in the past would have been much more controversial & that holds true across the political spectrum. It’s one of the reasons I’m still proud to be British.
We should just be honest then and say "if you hold strong religious views, you cannot be Prime Minister / FM as your views disqualify you from being a possible appointment."
Instead, we have this hypocritical standpoint where we pretend to be all tolerant and accepting but once someone comes along with such views, we then say why they are not acceptable.
Actually it isn't. If you want to be a leader of a party and a government you are required to defend the policies of your party and the decisions of your government. You can't do the job otherwise, but it is the same for everyone.
Kate Forbes seems to think her moral principles take precedence over her colleagues' That's a problem.
Does she though? She's just saying she has certain beliefs, not that they've affected governance.
At any rate, this is exactly how radical movements fail, they fracture and split over things that have nothing to do with the central goal. Oh well! We are where we are.
Either we vote for people taking on the quality of their character (which we do), or we don't,
Beliefs and values either matter, or they don't. The history of politics is that both of them matter.
In the interests of balance BBC R4 WATO has a Putin apologist defending "Russia's liberation of Ukraine" by the "illegal Neo-Nazi regime" in Kyiv.
In the interests of balance the BBC really needs to lose its charter.
I assume the BBC is seeking to understand the context and reasons behind the war.
Watching a bit of Putin this morning on the BBC he was full of Western aggression this, and encirclement that.
All helping to understand the Russian viewpoint and justification for the war.
I suggest that if you are unable to listen critically to different points of view then perhaps the BBC is an intellectual step too far for you.
Thing is, if you make the BBC into a propaganda machine then sure as eggs is eggs it will eventually turn on you because you will be on the wrong side of "the accepted" viewpoint.
Such guests shouldn't be banned but I very much hope they were challenged.
Do you want that person running the country, and looking down on you, demanding you pay tax despite her regarding you as evil? Do you want her shaping social policies? For me, that’s a big No (but of course I am not Scottish etc). No more than I would want a strictly Orthodox Jew or fundamentalist Muslim running the UK, for pretty much the same reason
I say No too, but possibly she regards most of us as wicked sinners rather than evil.
Lord Mackay who was Lord Chancellor 1987-97 was a member of a Scottish Presbyterian church that was even further out in the loonysphere than Kate Forbes's.
Has anyone ever asked Jacob Rees-Mogg's view on premarital sex?
It must be a hoot in the Commons when the devouties and staunchies all have to go through the same voting lobby for religious reasons.
You're being unfair there, at least partly. Lord Mackay's treatment by the FPC leadershipfor attending the RC requiem mass of a fellow judge upset so many members they had a split there and then over the issue.
Agreed, I admire her for sticking to her principles. The answer to her question is probably yes however: If the tenets of your faith put you out of step with the mainstream of UK opinion on social issues & you’re public about it, you’re going to have problems politically. There’s a reason Alasdair Campbell cut off questions about Blair’s faith with “We don’t do God”.
The UK is very socially liberal these days on many questions that in the past would have been much more controversial & that holds true across the political spectrum. It’s one of the reasons I’m still proud to be British.
We should just be honest then and say "if you hold strong religious views, you cannot be Prime Minister / FM as your views disqualify you from being a possible appointment."
Instead, we have this hypocritical standpoint where we pretend to be all tolerant and accepting but once someone comes along with such views, we then say why they are not acceptable.
Maybe we should stop looking at this through a particular moral lens. It is not true (as KF suggests) that having any religious conviction whatever bars you from office in a democracy.
To be in office involves winning contests, ones which have a hierarchy that anyone can join from the moment they are 18. Committees, party members, voters and fellow elected people do all the deciding. All can stand, all can join, all can vote. That's democracy.
I think it's sad and mistaken if in fact X won't be voted in because of a moral or religious principle which is in no way eccentric - as may happen with KF. But what I think doesn't matter. Democracy is what it is. If, on the whole, it likes Boris or Salmond, Orban or Putin, Trump or Berlusconi better than Kate Forbes let it be. Though I think there is a price to pay.
You can have religious conviction but keep it to yourself and that is not controversial. I'm sure many do.
Where there's a problem is when you expect the law of the land to be shaped by your convictions. That is a serious problem when it comes to politics, for anyone who doesn't share your convictions, which given that all religions are minorities is going to be a majority of people not sharing your faith.
As it happens here, her views are very, very eccentric.
A good rule for modern politicians is never ever talk about sex, and even when you have to, keep it brief and perfunctory. then obfuscate. Demur. Waffle. Then move on. At best anything you say will be mortifying and cringe, at worst it will end your career
Never go into details!
Thatcher knew this and practiced it, cleverly,, to the extent that even now there are well-informed people who believe she was at heart very libertine and tolerant, and others, equally well informed, who believe she was uptight and puritan
Tony Blair too, I expect he was privately more devoutly religious than some of his successors but when seeking office simply said he wouldn't talk about it.
Make it a non issue and move on. If you can't make it a non issue, then we have a problem.
Queen Elizabeth I got it right, 500 years ago. “Do not seek to make windows into men’s souls”
What is private, is private. Thus she squared the Protestant-Catholic circle in a bitterly divided nation, and became one of our greatest monarchs
Kate Forbes wants to peer through her window into your soul, and she will find you lacking
Elizabeth I also cemented the idea of the Church of England as a Catholic and Apostolic Church except with the monarch as head not the Pope.
The BCP was neither too low nor too high. It had something for both Protestants and former Catholics therefore
In the interests of balance BBC R4 WATO has a Putin apologist defending "Russia's liberation of Ukraine" by the "illegal Neo-Nazi regime" in Kyiv.
In the interests of balance the BBC really needs to lose its charter.
I assume the BBC is seeking to understand the context and reasons behind the war.
Watching a bit of Putin this morning on the BBC he was full of Western aggression this, and encirclement that.
All helping to understand the Russian viewpoint and justification for the war.
I suggest that if you are unable to listen critically to different points of view then perhaps the BBC is an intellectual step too far for you.
Thing is, if you make the BBC into a propaganda machine then sure as eggs is eggs it will eventually turn on you because you will be on the wrong side of "the accepted" viewpoint.
It wasn't an alternative viewpoint it was pro-Putin propaganda. Just read the absurd language I have quoted. It gave Team Putin an opportunity to propagate their bullsh*t narrative.
The BBC are so lost in the notion of non-partisanship they insist on balance when none is needed.
That’s really not a controversial view, is it? A huge number of people wait until they’re married to have children, and the statistics say that outcomes for the children (in general) are much better when living in a stable household with both parents.
It is a controversial view.
I certainly waited until marriage before having children, but many of my friends and peers did not. They did nothing wrong in my eyes.
What Forbes doesn't seem to understand is that there's nothing wrong having a faith, but keeping that faith private. Its when you, especially in the political sphere, start trying to foist your faith onto others that we have a problem.
It’s a view held by millions of Brits, in practice as well as in theory.
There’s been no indication of any intention to legislate for her views, in fact such moral issues have almost always been free votes in Parliament and she gives no indication of changing that.
What it does look like, from a long way away, is journalists and opponents looking for something they can frame as a ‘gotcha’.
No it is not.
Opposing sex before marriage is not a view held by millions of Brits in either practice or theory. Certainly not amongst the young where it matters. That is a very eccentric and extreme view nowadays.
There is no reason to believe that those who wait until marriage to have kids, like myself, have a philosophical or moral objection to those that made a different choice. Or were virgins when they got married. If you offer me a choice of chicken or beef and I choose chicken, it doesn't mean I have a moral objection to beef. Waiting until marriage can simply be a choice, no morals necessary.
She has proposed to have faith exemptions to the law, which is legislating for her faith. That is a problem.
Strict Roman Catholics, Protestant evangelicals, Muslims and Orthodox Jews will all tend to abstain from sex before marriage regardless of age
There is no reason London buses cannot be run by TfL directly, only stupid Government rules. They have at least made the best of a bad situation and TfL's technology is very good.
Too many people in politics obsess about ownership structures.
There is good management and bad management in the world, and you find both in the public and private sectors. There are also advantages from size (economies of scale, buying power) and disadvantages (bureaucracy, slowness).
The two main reasons to keep something in the public sector are control, and where public good is incompatible with the profit motive. You can replicate control to some extent through regulation of private providers though we all see the issues. You can fix the profit motive incompatibility issue by subsidising private companies - eg to run unprofitable bus routes - but that can create inefficiencies.
The main reasons to have something private are competition and innovation. Efforts to replicate these in the public sector have a chequered history. But privatisation doesn’t always lead to either real competition or innovation. That’s why I don’t think ownership per se is the most important factor.
I know you alluded to it but competition and innovation do seem to drift into rent seeking and financialisaton.
Which is why markets need regulating. Monopolies and all that.
The US space launch industry is a fascinating example of the varying models and why they cause problems.
You mean that spending $20bn on turning a dozen re-usable rocket motors, into disposable rocket motors, isn’t good value for the American taxpayer?
Rocket engines. Motors are solids, by convention.
SLS is the totally state controlled mode. Then you have ULA who are supposed to be the tame contractors. Then you have SpaceX - the pirates who are tearing the market place up Then you have Blue Origin - who are turning a lot of money into.... not a lot.
It is costing SpaceX $20 million and falling to get 16 tons (and growing) to LEO. None of the other come close to matching that. Why?
Why don't they want to do that? Yes, they don't want to do that.
Yes yes, engines and motors.
It does indeed appear that no-one wants to challenge SX in the commercial and government LEO space, preferring instead to do their own thing on a different basis, that sees them take no business risk.
The mad one is Blue Origin. The whole business of which, with hindsight, seemed to be about Bezos getting his personal joyride - and now it happened, no-one there cares about the bigger project any more.
You then end up with another danger, of an effective private monopoly in launch services which needs regulating at some point. Thankfully, so far SX have been behaving themselves in this regard, including stepping in to launch OneWeb hardware when the Russians got boycotted.
No-one really knows what Blue Origin is for. Bezos seems to have a love for space in a kind of Big Coffee Table Book kind of way. Not actually mad about the details of how you get the coatings to stick inside an oxygen rich pre burner or anything, but likes Space. Hence the F1 engine recovery project. According to people who've spoken to him, he's an O'Neil colony fan.
(Snip)
I utterly disagree with that, and sadly it comes across as a bit of a Musk-loving diatribe. It also follows the rather dubious idea that Musk himself knows how 'you get the coatings to stick inside an oxygen rich pre burner'. Given his proclaimed software 'knowledge', that's dubious. It also rather assumes the most useful a boss of a massive, multi-faceted organisation can be doing is mirco-managing.
Bezos has had a love of space from when he was a kid; IIRC his speech at uni was on man's future in space. Musk, in comparison, is a newcomer.
If you look, SpaceX has done *nothing* for space science, let alone Mars. Yes, they've launched probes (and been paid handsomely for it), but the amount of space science done is negligible. They have leant heavily on NASA and DOD contracts; 'inventions' like their PICA-X are just rehashed NASA research.
As for Blue Origin; they just seem to be getting on with what they're doing. e.g. the following:
Actually, SpaceX have been doing quite bit of original research. Retro propulsion for one. Hence NASA sending the WB-57 out to watch the relights during entry. That was something that NASA wanted for a long long time, but couldn't get funded for test.
The NASA plan to retrieve the samples from Mars they are laying down depends on retro-propulsion for the lander. The current techniques don't scale to something large enough to get back to Mars orbit.
PICA-X is an interesting one - the original NASA version had severe problems with cost and getting a uniform structure. As often happens, the research was canned because of a lack of immediate use. SpaceX hired the guys who'd worked on it and got them to productionise it.
Their work on FFSC is pretty unique as well. First ever FFSC for non-storables (RD-270 was hydrazine)
Yes, but that's research towards the *launch* market. It's not actual reasearch into space, or living in space. There are massive issues that await any Mars attempt, and SpaceX are ignoring them.
IMO that is the difference between the two organisations: there is clear evidence that BO is working on many different thing simultaneously. SpaceX is just launch and MAKING MONEY!!!!
It's a structural difference that began in the difference of their funding sources.
Ultimately, however, further space development is reliant on reducing the cost of doing stuff in space.
Indeed. But it's also reliant on actually doing science and increasing the infrastructure in space. SpaceX have done a brilliant job of decreasing the cost of Earth to LEO. But they're not exactly doing a lot in LEO, aside from Starlink and rides to the ISS. Even their lunar plans (*) are largely funded by NASA. Where are the Mars probes? Where are the long-duration spaceflights? Heck, they've *lost* ambition since the days of Red Dragon.
I want both to succeed, because we need at least two such organisations in space. Hopefully they will complement each other.
(*) Remember how against going to the Moon Musk was a few years back? He was firmly a Mars-firster.
She has surely fucked her campaign, as her very own campaign aide says (never a good sign in a campaign). However in the interests of diversity and equality I REALLY hope some journalist is going to ask the same questions of Humza Yousaf. He may well have some interesting answers, and it would never do to encourage the perception that Muslims are given an easier ride than Wee Free white Hebrideans
Yousaf said at his own launch that "I don't legislate on the basis of my faith", arguing that as a member of a minority group he knows his rights "don't exist in some kind of vacuum... My rights are interdependent on other people's rights... I'll always fight for the equal rights of others regardless of who they are." This seems to me exactly the right answer to the question that Forbes was asked, and I'm not sure that Yousaf really needs to say anything else on the subject.
Unfortunately, Yousaf is an arsehole.
Not having followed any of it, why so?
He drafted a hate crimes bill so badly that it was criticised by both religious organisations and the National Secular Society. He also wanted to make it illegal to express "hateful" views in one's own home.
He and his wife first brought, than dropped, a legal actions against a nursery, alleging racial discrimination against their child.
In the interests of balance BBC R4 WATO has a Putin apologist defending "Russia's liberation of Ukraine" by the "illegal Neo-Nazi regime" in Kyiv.
In the interests of balance the BBC really needs to lose its charter.
I assume the BBC is seeking to understand the context and reasons behind the war.
Watching a bit of Putin this morning on the BBC he was full of Western aggression this, and encirclement that.
All helping to understand the Russian viewpoint and justification for the war.
I suggest that if you are unable to listen critically to different points of view then perhaps the BBC is an intellectual step too far for you.
Thing is, if you make the BBC into a propaganda machine then sure as eggs is eggs it will eventually turn on you because you will be on the wrong side of "the accepted" viewpoint.
Such guests shouldn't be banned but I very much hope they were challenged.
Abso-bloody-lutely and I'm sure they were (actually no idea).
But the fact is that there is a war going on more or less on our doorstep and the Russians believe they are wholly justified in having invaded Ukraine. I would like to know why that is.
I have mentioned several times on here last year around February/March (around the time that the PB Warriors were predicting the war's end with Russia's total defeat by April) that it is important to understand the context of the Russian actions.
When Russia asked to join NATO in 1991 they were roundly rebuffed with something IIRC along the lines of a comment of: The world is perfectly happy for the US to safeguard global security concerns. They then saw how might is right in Iraq in 2003. And they also on their terms believe that NATO is pushing up against their borders and that this is a threat or even provocative.
All this isn't support or sympathy for Russia, but it is an attempt to understand their motives.
I still think that NATO's failure to invite Russia to join 30 years ago could be the Versailles of our time.
Do you want that person running the country, and looking down on you, demanding you pay tax despite her regarding you as evil? Do you want her shaping social policies? For me, that’s a big No (but of course I am not Scottish etc). No more than I would want a strictly Orthodox Jew or fundamentalist Muslim running the UK, for pretty much the same reason
I say No too, but possibly she regards most of us as wicked sinners rather than evil.
Lord Mackay who was Lord Chancellor 1987-97 was a member of a Scottish Presbyterian church that was even further out in the loonysphere than Kate Forbes's.
Has anyone ever asked Jacob Rees-Mogg's view on premarital sex?
It must be a hoot in the Commons when the devouties and staunchies all have to go through the same voting lobby for religious reasons.
You're being unfair there, at least partly. Lord Mackay's treatment by the FPC leadershipfor attending the RC requiem mass of a fellow judge upset so many members they had a split there and then over the issue.
I met Lord Mackay once. A real gentleman. And a very signifcant legal reformer - especially over family law.
Agreed, I admire her for sticking to her principles. The answer to her question is probably yes however: If the tenets of your faith put you out of step with the mainstream of UK opinion on social issues & you’re public about it, you’re going to have problems politically. There’s a reason Alasdair Campbell cut off questions about Blair’s faith with “We don’t do God”.
The UK is very socially liberal these days on many questions that in the past would have been much more controversial & that holds true across the political spectrum. It’s one of the reasons I’m still proud to be British.
We should just be honest then and say "if you hold strong religious views, you cannot be Prime Minister / FM as your views disqualify you from being a possible appointment."
Instead, we have this hypocritical standpoint where we pretend to be all tolerant and accepting but once someone comes along with such views, we then say why they are not acceptable.
Maybe we should stop looking at this through a particular moral lens. It is not true (as KF suggests) that having any religious conviction whatever bars you from office in a democracy.
To be in office involves winning contests, ones which have a hierarchy that anyone can join from the moment they are 18. Committees, party members, voters and fellow elected people do all the deciding. All can stand, all can join, all can vote. That's democracy.
I think it's sad and mistaken if in fact X won't be voted in because of a moral or religious principle which is in no way eccentric - as may happen with KF. But what I think doesn't matter. Democracy is what it is. If, on the whole, it likes Boris or Salmond, Orban or Putin, Trump or Berlusconi better than Kate Forbes let it be. Though I think there is a price to pay.
You can have religious conviction but keep it to yourself and that is not controversial. I'm sure many do.
Where there's a problem is when you expect the law of the land to be shaped by your convictions. That is a serious problem when it comes to politics, for anyone who doesn't share your convictions, which given that all religions are minorities is going to be a majority of people not sharing your faith.
As it happens here, her views are very, very eccentric.
A good rule for modern politicians is never ever talk about sex, and even when you have to, keep it brief and perfunctory. then obfuscate. Demur. Waffle. Then move on. At best anything you say will be mortifying and cringe, at worst it will end your career
Never go into details!
Thatcher knew this and practiced it, cleverly,, to the extent that even now there are well-informed people who believe she was at heart very libertine and tolerant, and others, equally well informed, who believe she was uptight and puritan
Tony Blair too, I expect he was privately more devoutly religious than some of his successors but when seeking office simply said he wouldn't talk about it.
Make it a non issue and move on. If you can't make it a non issue, then we have a problem.
Queen Elizabeth I got it right, 500 years ago. “Do not seek to make windows into men’s souls”
What is private, is private. Thus she squared the Protestant-Catholic circle in a bitterly divided nation, and became one of our greatest monarchs
Kate Forbes wants to peer through her window into your soul, and she will find you lacking
Elizabeth I also cemented the idea of the Church of England as a Catholic and Apostolic Church except with the monarch as head not the Pope.
The BCP was neither too low nor too high. It had something for both Protestants and former Catholics therefore
Yes, she had something for vboth. The axe and/or a heap of firewood if they dared step out of line publicly.
Can someone please open a book on whether Ireland will rejoin the Commonwealth. Lump on No at almost any price. A united Ireland won't ever be pink on the map.
As for the notion that unionist parties shouldn't be allowed to join a united Ireland government, it seems time flows differently west of the Irish Sea. If the DUP took seats in the Dail, they'd need to have "recognised" it first. They wouldn't be unionist any more, except perhaps in name. They wouldn't bother running on a manifesto promise of getting into government in Dublin and then splitting the 6C off again to rejoin GB. That could never be achieved, and GB probably wouldn't want them anyway. But if they weren't allowed in the government there'd be little point in them standing for election. The older and crazier would reach for the Book of Revelations and then their balaclavas.
Politically the drumbashers are nuts, ranting about "No border in the Irish Sea", whereas anybody who has crossed into or out of NI across both the Irish Sea and the land border knows which one has the most checks.
I'm sure there's a small constituency in the Republic for closer ties with Britain, otherwise there wouldn't be the West Brit stereotype/insult.
No reason why Northern Unionists couldn't stand candidates across the island of Ireland to argue in the Dail for a special relationship with Britain.
There is already a "special relationship with Britain" (see CTA for example). If rejoining the Commonwealth gets reunification over the line then RoI will go for it.
I reckon KCIII and the rest of the family have been working hard over several years to charm the Irish into the Commonwealth to help create a more peaceful future relationship. But I think it's a tough ask.
The Irish people I've mentioned the idea of it to have been very hostile. Surprisingly so. Try it yourself.
Most people in the Republic of Ireland would prefer to stay out of the Commonwealth which they see as a legacy of the British Empire, even at the cost of no United Ireland.
Most Northern Ireland Unionists and the DUP would also rather leave the Commonwealth than join a United Ireland
The tone and mood around the Forbes debacle amounts to this: She is expected to take a properly liberal view about those she disagrees with, but no-one is expected to take a properly liberal view about her.
I don't agree with the SNP on independence, and I don't agree with most of the evangelical take on the world. But KF seems to me to be acting in a more genuinely liberal way than her army of detractors. it looks to me like bullying.
No, it’s more than that
She morally disapproves - in a really quite serious, “you are going to hell“ fashion - of gay marriage, of children born out of wedlock, even just sex outside marriage. She thinks people that do this - ie 90% of Scots? - are evil sinners. Sure, they can be redeemed, IF THEY JOIN HER CHURCH AND SHAPE UP, but until then they are evil sinners
Those who call the FCS and FPCS "evangelical" use the word differently from how I use it. They are nothing like evangelical churches in say Brazil or evangelical networks in the CofE, which try to practice happiness and work hard to win adherents.
I can't see how predestination and evangelism can go together without specious logic-chopping.
They don't want us in their church, Leon. They think God predestined us to go to hell.
The meaning of the term "Evangelical" has changed recently. It was originally in strict contrast to Fundamentalism. Of which these small Presbyterian Scottish sects are prime examples. Thanks to the USA Right Evangelical tends to simply mean strongly Christian now.
Evangelical originally meant "attempting to win over converts". As opposed to those groups which don't overtly do so.
In the interests of balance BBC R4 WATO has a Putin apologist defending "Russia's liberation of Ukraine" by the "illegal Neo-Nazi regime" in Kyiv.
In the interests of balance the BBC really needs to lose its charter.
I assume the BBC is seeking to understand the context and reasons behind the war.
Watching a bit of Putin this morning on the BBC he was full of Western aggression this, and encirclement that.
All helping to understand the Russian viewpoint and justification for the war.
I suggest that if you are unable to listen critically to different points of view then perhaps the BBC is an intellectual step too far for you.
Thing is, if you make the BBC into a propaganda machine then sure as eggs is eggs it will eventually turn on you because you will be on the wrong side of "the accepted" viewpoint.
It wasn't an alternative viewpoint it was pro-Putin propaganda. Just read the absurd language I have quoted. It gave Team Putin an opportunity to propagate their bullsh*t narrative.
The BBC are so lost in the notion of non-partisanship they insist on balance when none is needed.
Stop being such a snowflake. Do you have no critical faculties or is it just you that could spot it was "pro-Putin propaganda" while everyone else would succumb.
This belief that "you" are able to discern the truth, while the masses will be fooled by the media is perhaps the surest indicator of someone being on the left of politics in the UK.
And you know what? I want to hear "pro-Putin propaganda". Know your enemy is a pretty reliable way forward in any conflict.
Comments
"One of these things is not like the others?"
Kumquats.
There’s been no indication of any intention to legislate for her views, in fact such moral issues have almost always been free votes in Parliament and she gives no indication of changing that.
What it does look like, from a long way away, is journalists and opponents looking for something they can frame as a ‘gotcha’.
Kate Forbes seems to think her moral principles take precedence over her colleagues' That's a problem.
The toast (of): good
He/she is toast: bad
Given the age profile of politicians I expect there are more religious politicians than there are religious people in general in this country.
The difference is that most keep their faith to themselves.
Having faith isn't a bar to office.
Wanting to enforce your faith on others isn't even a bar to office.
But the latter is a very good reason for people to vote against you.
Never go into details!
Thatcher knew this and practiced it, cleverly,, to the extent that even now there are well-informed people who believe she was at heart very libertine and tolerant, and others, equally well informed, who believe she was uptight and puritan
• She is not a anti-sex, homophobic bigot
• She is not a known incompetent
• She has red hair
• She has an unusual name
• She is @StuartDickson 's anointed successor, so must be Scottish subsample friendly
New Shepard was just a test project. It was the rockets beyond that are supposed to be the core of the company. Pun intended. But they've oscillated around, changing plans.
True, SpaceX have changed their plans quite radically - but always with a focus on doing stuff. More tons, cheaper, upstairs.
Consider the good that Bridenstine did at NASA - he gave focus and goals to several projects. Webb was finally launched because he suggested that, instead of giving out bonuses for eternal delays, he was going to ask the cost of termination. SLS was given a purpose (Artemis) which had political support and was doable (sort of) - it launched. He mandated the helicopter on Mars - which was a balance between the future capabilities groups and the science instrument guys. Another goal. And so on.
https://vf.politicalbetting.com/profile/justin124
I did think of putting a non-thing thing in there, but in the end I went for 100% things
Too many people and in actual politics (where tbf it matters less than on PB) carry outdated or I-want-it-to-be-so views of the Six Counties.
The shit: good
Shit: bad
I doubt many forge their faith from first principles and are usually lead by a person or a book or a story of some kind.
It is up to the guardians of those sources of faith to adapt. Or not (also perfectly legitimate) but if not then to be judged by the electorate accordingly.
And ideally not be in any chamber of our political decision-making.
In fact. It's against the Code
I don't agree with the SNP on independence, and I don't agree with most of the evangelical take on the world. But KF seems to me to be acting in a more genuinely liberal way than her army of detractors. it looks to me like bullying.
I think we can now see why
"The vast majority of the locals in Scalpay are Protestants. The island is home to two Presbyterian churches, the Free Church of Scotland and the Free Church of Scotland (Continuing)." As one might imagine, it seems the latter are a more doctrinally pure version of the FCS.
Opposing sex before marriage is not a view held by millions of Brits in either practice or theory. Certainly not amongst the young where it matters. That is a very eccentric and extreme view nowadays.
There is no reason to believe that those who wait until marriage to have kids, like myself, have a philosophical or moral objection to those that made a different choice. Or were virgins when they got married. If you offer me a choice of chicken or beef and I choose chicken, it doesn't mean I have a moral objection to beef. Waiting until marriage can simply be a choice, no morals necessary.
She has proposed to have faith exemptions to the law, which is legislating for her faith. That is a problem.
Quite embarrassing for the rest of us at times.
No reason why Northern Unionists couldn't stand candidates across the island of Ireland to argue in the Dail for a special relationship with Britain.
Look at how wasteful it is with 3 buses! Was much better when all 3 came at one fighting for customers. Then nothing for 30 minutes. On a service supposedly every 10 minutes alternating between operators.
She'd get tied up in knots on the shibari question for sure.
Bezos has had a love of space from when he was a kid; IIRC his speech at uni was on man's future in space. Musk, in comparison, is a newcomer.
If you look, SpaceX has done *nothing* for space science, let alone Mars. Yes, they've launched probes (and been paid handsomely for it), but the amount of space science done is negligible. They have leant heavily on NASA and DOD contracts; 'inventions' like their PICA-X are just rehashed NASA research.
As for Blue Origin; they just seem to be getting on with what they're doing. e.g. the following:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/02/blue-origin-makes-a-big-lunar-announcement-without-any-fanfare/
But if these attacks become any more vicious it will be hard to see KF in any one else’s cabinet.
As this race shows all too clearly the paucity of talent in Scottish politics is painful. Losing even modest talents like Forbes is something we cannot afford.
She morally disapproves - in a really quite serious, “you are going to hell“ fashion - of gay marriage, of children born out of wedlock, even just sex outside marriage. She thinks people that do this - ie 90% of Scots? - are evil sinners. Sure, they can be redeemed, IF THEY JOIN HER CHURCH AND SHAPE UP, but until then they are evil sinners
Do you want that person running the country, and looking down on you, demanding you pay tax despite her regarding you as evil? Do you want her shaping social policies? For me, that’s a big No (but of course I am not Scottish etc). No more than I would want a strictly Orthodox Jew or fundamentalist Muslim running the UK, for pretty much the same reason
I believe in not killing people, not stealing, the sanctity of Arsene Wenger, and a bunch of other stuff much of which would form a union set with Christians, Muslims, Jews, 7th Day Adventists and Zoroastrians.
It has nothing to do with "faith". I totally understand that people believe in Zeus, homeopathy, and the Holy Trinity and that Christ was risen on Day 3. I believe that they believe in them sincerely.
But crafting a set of political laws has fuck all to do with what supernatural entity you believe in.
Make it a non issue and move on. If you can't make it a non issue, then we have a problem.
Presidents need to find more people like him, to run departments and agencies - although the political process of appointments and resignations must be debilitating to an organisation, especially during a transition period which can often take several months. A new President should be be able to canvas, and be given a list of people who are willing to stay on in post for another term, rather than have thousands of leaders all resign on Jan 20th.
What is private, is private. Thus she squared the Protestant-Catholic circle in a bitterly divided nation, and became one of our greatest monarchs
Kate Forbes wants to peer through her window into your soul, and she will find you lacking
In the interests of balance BBC R4 WATO has a Putin apologist defending "Russia's liberation of Ukraine" by the "illegal Neo-Nazi regime" in Kyiv.
In the interests of balance the BBC really needs to lose its charter.
But I can’t see a leadership position - by anyone in Westminster / devolved govs - being held by someone who opposes gay marriage / children outside of marriage etc
Instead, she’s only being asked about her moral views on marriage and children, so that’s all that’s been reported. She needs to learn to ignore such questions, even if it gets to the point of walking out rather than answering. Because the walk-out will lead the news.
At any rate, this is exactly how radical movements fail, they fracture and split over things that have nothing to do with the central goal. Oh well! We are where we are.
Lord Mackay who was Lord Chancellor 1987-97 was a member of a Scottish Presbyterian church that was even further out in the loonysphere than Kate Forbes's.
Has anyone ever asked Jacob Rees-Mogg's view on premarital sex?
It must be a hoot in the Commons when the devouties and staunchies all have to go through the same voting lobby for religious reasons.
To which I replied: "Slava Ukrainia!"
1) Scots are not socially liberal - certainly no more so than the English.
2) The SNP are a mass membership party and the members, therefore, are more likely to be socially conservative than the inhabitants of the Holyrood bubble who are having a fit of the vapours at the moment.
3) Kate, and her Wee Free views, are authentically Scottish, not to say Highland Scots. SNP members, and others beside, will kinda like that.
4) And, most importantly, she IS NOT Humza "Useless" Yousaf. Who in their right mind would vote for him? A walking disaster area, when he isn't falling over in front of BBC cameramen.
Maybe the prayers of @Carnyx will be answered and someone from on high will intervene? (Though perhaps "He" already has).
Translation: Puck Futin.
Been there, got the T-shirt!
The NASA plan to retrieve the samples from Mars they are laying down depends on retro-propulsion for the lander. The current techniques don't scale to something large enough to get back to Mars orbit.
PICA-X is an interesting one - the original NASA version had severe problems with cost and getting a uniform structure. As often happens, the research was canned because of a lack of immediate use. SpaceX hired the guys who'd worked on it and got them to productionise it.
Their work on FFSC is pretty unique as well. First ever FFSC for non-storables (RD-270 was hydrazine)
He also pi**ed Tump off, which was nice. I get the impression that whilst Bridenstine is an out-and-out Republican, he was no friend of Trumps. There were rumours that if Trump won a second term, Bridenstine was going to be chucked, t be replaced with a Trump sycophant.
The fines from that were a major source of government income!
Watching a bit of Putin this morning on the BBC he was full of Western aggression this, and encirclement that.
All helping to understand the Russian viewpoint and justification for the war.
I suggest that if you are unable to listen critically to different points of view then perhaps the BBC is an intellectual step too far for you.
Thing is, if you make the BBC into a propaganda machine then sure as eggs is eggs it will eventually turn on you because you will be on the wrong side of "the accepted" viewpoint.
IMO that is the difference between the two organisations: there is clear evidence that BO is working on many different thing simultaneously. SpaceX is just launch and MAKING MONEY!!!!
Welby would have no problems if Liz 1 was still monarch
Anyone who outsources her thinking to religious leaders to the extent that she appears to is not to be trusted as far as I am concerned.
If she generally believes all this stuff about children out of wedlock, gay rights and so on why does she need to hide behind her religion other than in the hope that that gives her a free pass?
I got sodomy and voyeurism, but was struggling after that.
Do I need to get out more?
1. Scots as a whole
2. SNP members
3. SNP politicians
4. Commentators and hournists covering Scottish politics
My suspicion is that they get more liberal, the further down the list you go…
Therefore, Kate is a value trading bet for a few days, as her odds are lengthening today.
I can't see how predestination and evangelism can go together without specious logic-chopping.
They don't want us in their church, Leon. They think God predestined us to go to hell.
Ultimately, however, further space development is reliant on reducing the cost of doing stuff in space.
Scottish Labour and the Greens however are praying for Forbes who will turn social liberals and leftwingers off the SNP
The Irish people I've mentioned the idea of it to have been very hostile. Surprisingly so. Try it yourself.
Beliefs and values either matter, or they don't. The history of politics is that both of them matter.
https://tinyurl.com/yk58aevs
Non-COVID excess deaths below 500 for the first time since early December.
Week-ending | 5-year average | COVID deaths | non-COVID deaths | non-COVID deaths in excess of the 5-year average
07-Oct-22 | 9,835 | 400 | 10,807 | 972
14-Oct-22 | 10,091 | 565 | 11,134 | 1,043
21-Oct-22 | 10,224 | 687 | 11,251 | 1,027
28-Oct-22 | 10,013 | 651 | 10,594 | 581
04-Nov-22 | 10,278 | 650 | 11,145 | 867
11-Nov-22 | 10,743 | 518 | 11,020 | 277
18-Nov-22 | 10,786 | 423 | 11,156 | 370
25-Nov-22 | 10,705 | 348 | 11,135 | 430
02-Dec-22 | 10,725 | 317 | 10,990 | 265
09-Dec-22 | 11,007 | 326 | 11,368 | 361
16-Dec-22 | 11,203 | 390 | 11,999 | 796
23-Dec-22 | 12,037 | 429 | 14,101 | 2,064
30-Dec-22 | 7,925 | 393 | 9,124 | 1,199
06-Jan-23 | 12,037 | 739 | 14,244 | 2,207
13-Jan-23 | 13,749 | 922 | 16,459 | 2,710
20-Jan-23 | 13,098 | 781 | 15,023 | 1,925
27-Jan-23 | 12,562 | 579 | 13,588 | 1,026
03-Feb-23 | 12,108 | 499 | 12,913 | 805
10-Feb-23 | 11,794 | 446 | 12,226 | 432
The BCP was neither too low nor too high. It had something for both Protestants and former Catholics therefore
The BBC are so lost in the notion of non-partisanship they insist on balance when none is needed.
I want both to succeed, because we need at least two such organisations in space. Hopefully they will complement each other.
(*) Remember how against going to the Moon Musk was a few years back? He was firmly a Mars-firster.
She has surely fucked her campaign, as her very own campaign aide says (never a good sign in a campaign). However in the interests of diversity and equality I REALLY hope some journalist is going to ask the same questions of Humza Yousaf. He may well have some interesting answers, and it would never do to encourage the perception that Muslims are given an easier ride than Wee Free white Hebrideans
Yousaf said at his own launch that "I don't legislate on the basis of my faith", arguing that as a member of a minority group he knows his rights "don't exist in some kind of vacuum... My rights are interdependent on other people's rights... I'll always fight for the equal rights of others regardless of who they are."
This seems to me exactly the right answer to the question that Forbes was asked, and I'm not sure that Yousaf really needs to say anything else on the subject.
Unfortunately, Yousaf is an arsehole.
Not having followed any of it, why so?
He drafted a hate crimes bill so badly that it was criticised by both religious organisations and the National Secular Society. He also wanted to make it illegal to express "hateful" views in one's own home.
He and his wife first brought, than dropped, a legal actions against a nursery, alleging racial discrimination against their child.
But the fact is that there is a war going on more or less on our doorstep and the Russians believe they are wholly justified in having invaded Ukraine. I would like to know why that is.
I have mentioned several times on here last year around February/March (around the time that the PB Warriors were predicting the war's end with Russia's total defeat by April) that it is important to understand the context of the Russian actions.
When Russia asked to join NATO in 1991 they were roundly rebuffed with something IIRC along the lines of a comment of: The world is perfectly happy for the US to safeguard global security concerns. They then saw how might is right in Iraq in 2003. And they also on their terms believe that NATO is pushing up against their borders and that this is a threat or even provocative.
All this isn't support or sympathy for Russia, but it is an attempt to understand their motives.
I still think that NATO's failure to invite Russia to join 30 years ago could be the Versailles of our time.
He's still going - 95 years old.
Most Northern Ireland Unionists and the DUP would also rather leave the Commonwealth than join a United Ireland
Thanks to the USA Right Evangelical tends to simply mean strongly Christian now.
Evangelical originally meant "attempting to win over converts". As opposed to those groups which don't overtly do so.
This belief that "you" are able to discern the truth, while the masses will be fooled by the media is perhaps the surest indicator of someone being on the left of politics in the UK.
And you know what? I want to hear "pro-Putin propaganda". Know your enemy is a pretty reliable way forward in any conflict.