I’m so bored I might go to Manila. Has anyone here ever been to Manila?
I hear it’s an absolute shit hole but at least it wouid. be different and interestingly violent
I was there about a month before the pandemic. Stayed in the central business district, but even there the overwhelming smell of the open sewers was dominant.
Plenty of ‘billiards bars’ where the LBFMs hang out, just like Bangkok.
I hear it’s really boring, quite dangerous, and the food is - uniquely for Asia - terrible
True?
Yep. Didn’t see much in the way of danger or crime in Makati, but there’s not a lot to do and didn’t find anywhere really fancy to eat. Grand Hyatt hotel has a nice terrace bar.
When Mrs J worked for a very large multinational tech company, they had rules for staff visiting various countries. Like in China, to use only certain hotels and taxis booked from listed companies. In other countries (e.g. EU), the rules were laxer.
But in some, they were "If you need to go there, we'll get you security." And in a few: "Why the **** do you want to go there!!!!"
Re cost of living Asda have a single can of Heinz tomato soup for £1.70 but if you buy 2 x 6 packs they are 75p each
Huge difference
Assuming you have £9. And want to only eat tomato soup. Then that's OK then. Thanks for your input. Exactly the kind of stuff that's winning Tory support.
I was demonstrating the difference and not making a political point to be fair
And that's why you don't get it. And why many can't understand why the government is so unpopular.
Never mind, Drakeford's latest policy is to ban all multi buy offers in Wales
I don't like travelling at a maximum speed of 20mph. Living where I do, I do not intend to dispose of my car and take non-existent public transport as Drakeford demands by his cancellation of all road projects.. Even Andrew RT Davies looks attractive after that last policy.
But I am with Shaky Drakey over the multi buy ban. Encouraging excessive purchasing is potentially wasteful and potentially encourages gluttony. It is all about supermarkets maximising customer spend per visit, with an expectation of wastage so you come back for more anyway. Just price at the best price like Aldi and Lidl, it's simple really. The big 4 supermarket cabal is the instrument of the Devil. Unfair to farmers and producers, unfair to consumers. A plague on their supply of salad vegetables. Oh wait...
Also unfair on the poor. There is that. If they are selling soup for xp single cans but x/yp for 12 when y is not far off two, then the single can is overcharged for.
I’m so bored I might go to Manila. Has anyone here ever been to Manila?
I hear it’s an absolute shit hole but at least it wouid. be different and interestingly violent
I was there about a month before the pandemic. Stayed in the central business district, but even there the overwhelming smell of the open sewers was dominant.
Plenty of ‘billiards bars’ where the LBFMs hang out, just like Bangkok.
I hear it’s really boring, quite dangerous, and the food is - uniquely for Asia - terrible
True?
The food is certainly different. I work with a lot of Filipino nurses, and they are a lovely bunch. I will get there one day myself, though suspect that like Jakarta, the capital city is far from the best bit of the country.
They have really weird combinations of flavours in their meals, and even in snacks that they bring back. It is a bit of an acquired taste.
It’s one of the weird laws of international cuisine that ex Spanish colonies have the worst food in the world
True across South America. True in Central America. True in Asia.
Yet Spain itself has wonderful food.
Mexico is one of the few exceptions to this bizarre rule
I’m so bored I might go to Manila. Has anyone here ever been to Manila?
I hear it’s an absolute shit hole but at least it wouid. be different and interestingly violent
I was there about a month before the pandemic. Stayed in the central business district, but even there the overwhelming smell of the open sewers was dominant.
Plenty of ‘billiards bars’ where the LBFMs hang out, just like Bangkok.
I hear it’s really boring, quite dangerous, and the food is - uniquely for Asia - terrible
True?
Yep. Didn’t see much in the way of danger or crime in Makati, but there’s not a lot to do and didn’t find anywhere really fancy to eat. Grand Hyatt hotel has a nice terrace bar.
When Mrs J worked for a very large multinational tech company, they had rules for staff visiting various countries. Like in China, to use only certain hotels and taxis booked from listed companies. In other countries (e.g. EU), the rules were laxer.
But in some, they were "If you need to go there, we'll get you security." And in a few: "Why the **** do you want to go there!!!!"
Yup! I once worked for a company with an office in Lagos. They spent a lot of money on (armed!) security, and a lot more money on persuading people to work there for a few months at a time. Fair to say there weren’t a lot of hands up, except for a few old and single @Leon types who could turn anywhere into a party.
Re cost of living Asda have a single can of Heinz tomato soup for £1.70 but if you buy 2 x 6 packs they are 75p each
Huge difference
Assuming you have £9. And want to only eat tomato soup. Then that's OK then. Thanks for your input. Exactly the kind of stuff that's winning Tory support.
I was demonstrating the difference and not making a political point to be fair
And that's why you don't get it. And why many can't understand why the government is so unpopular.
Never mind, Drakeford's latest policy is to ban all multi buy offers in Wales
I don't like travelling at a maximum speed of 20mph. Living where I do, I do not intend to dispose of my car and take non-existent public transport as Drakeford demands by his cancellation of all road projects.. Even Andrew RT Davies looks attractive after that last policy.
But I am with Shaky Drakey over the multi buy ban. Encouraging excessive purchasing is potentially wasteful and potentially encourages gluttony. It is all about supermarkets maximising customer spend per visit, with an expectation of wastage so you come back for more anyway. Just price at the best price like Aldi and Lidl, it's simple really. The big 4 supermarket cabal is the instrument of the Devil. Unfair to farmers and producers, unfair to consumers. A plague on their supply of salad vegetables. Oh wait...
An argument that makes sense for fresh food, but much less for tinned goods which can be kept more or less indefinitely.
Well, looks like Kate Forbes is winning over the English right wingers.
The same people who were muttering that Putin had a point on social issues, up to round about this time last year.
They really hate our country.
There is an interesting and legitimate debate about religion, personal belief, public service, rights.
It’s another area where rights of different groups and individuals intersect. The right to stand for public office. Freedom of religion. Freedom from great and repression by minority groups.
I said, very early on, that I couldn’t see how Forbes could lead a progressive European political party. It would be like leading a socialist party, while publicly declaring that state benefits should be withdrawn from the unemployed.
Here’s a question to ask yourself - how many politicians from various parties are lying? There are a couple of religions where, if you denounced the sexiest and misogynistic bits (for example) you would be a heretic. An outcast. Yet there are politicians who say they are practising X, and keeping quiet on their views on those issues.
Who are they lying to? Us? Their coreligionists? Themselves?
Consider Catholic Ireland. There was a news item recently about the first non-denominational primary school in County Tipperary. One of the issues raised was about how First Communion would be organised for the Catholic children. The status quo is that first communion is organised, in school time, by Catholic primary schools, which is to say, almost every primary school in the country. Needless to say, Ireland is still a very Catholic country.
The very Catholic country of Ireland voted by 66% in 2018 to amend the constitution to allow abortion.
There are clearly lots of people who see themselves as religious adherents, to one degree or another, but who come to their own conclusions when it comes to various points of religious doctrine. Why should we be surprised to find the same is true of those believers who are politicians?
Catholicism has evolved to tolerate a wide range of public beliefs. Not all other religions have.
The U.K.’s equalities minister, Kemi Badenoch, launched a full-throated defense of under-fire Scottish National Party leadership hopeful Kate Forbes amid a bitter row over same-sex marriage....
.... Badenoch told a POLITICO event in London Tuesday night that she would defend the right of Forbes to hold those views, and refused to condemn her comments in her role as equalities minister.
“I think that is sad because I believe in freedom of conscience,” she said of the backlash. “That’s one of the things that makes this country great. It’s one of the reasons why many people want to live here.”...
“It’d be very easy for her to tell lies, just so that she could win that election,” Badenoch said of Forbes. “And she’s not doing that, and I think that that’s something that people need to take into account.”
Badenoch also condemned SNP politicians who have yanked their support from the under-fire contender. Shelved endorsements of Forbes, she argued, show “the level of un-seriousness of many of the people who engage in political activity and commentary.”
I mean, she’s not wrong. Kate Forbes is totally free to believe what she wants to believe. And people are totally free to make their own minds up on whether they think she should be FM and hold those beliefs.
Surprised (pleasantly) by that from Badenoch.
Telling lies would, indeed have been easy.
The backers claiming that they didn’t know is risible.
The issue isn't lies versus truth. The issue is one of professionalism.
Freedom of conscience is very important and everyone is free to hold whatever religious or non-religious beliefs they choose, in the privacy of their own home and their own Church etc. But when you go to work, especially as a politician or in the legal sphere etc you should be professional enough to check your personal religion at the door and not let it dominate. So long as you are prepared to have your own beliefs, but accept that others have their own beliefs that may be very different, then people are free to choose and there's no need for religion and politics to mix. Forbes could be ultra-orthodox and I wouldn't give a damn, if she was able to keep her religion and politics separate but she has been unable to do so.
Religion is like a penis. Its OK to have one, its OK to be proud of it, and its OK to exercise it however you want with other consenting adults, even in ways other people find weird. But don't take it out and put it on display in the workplace, and whatever you do don't try and shove it down other people's throats against their will.
She just said what she thought. I know that's naïve, that we really don't want politicians saying what they think. It's about our judgement of character, and the more they lie about themselves the better we think their character is.
And what she thinks shows she is unsuitable for high office. What she said shows she thinks that as a politician, her own morals and judging others for being sinners, is appropriate. It is not.
If you want to spread your morals, then go into the clergy. If you go into politics, then your job is to represent all people of all religions and none, not your own, just as Yousaf did - while being completely open and honest in doing so. If asked a question, you should be professional enough to not put yourself and your own faith ahead of everyone else's. She isn't. She is unsuited for office and should be rejected.
You're pretending that your stupid rules are somehow consistent, when they're clearly anything but. Forbes is entitled not only to have whatever views and moral code she chooses, but also to let those views and moral code to inform her political decisions. To suggest otherwise is the most absurdly Stalinist thing from someone pertaining to be liberal that I've ever heard.
Don't be stupid.
There should be no law against Forbes selfishly allowing her private beliefs to shape what she thinks the law should be.
There equally is no law, nor any problem, in the majority of people like myself who don't share her beliefs [and even many who do share her beliefs but oppose her making those beliefs political] to think that her enforcing her views on others is problematic and should be opposed.
Indeed opposing one person trying to force their personal beliefs onto everyone else via the law isn't illiberal, its pretty much the definition of liberalism. I do not want a law forcing my views onto Forbes, Forbes can not say the same, that is why she is not fit for office, and that is a perfectly liberal answer.
You're tying yourself in knots. There's nothing 'selfish' about Forbes pursuing policies dictated by her beliefs - in actuality she has not done that, but if she were to do so, that would be in line with every other politician (or in an ideal world it would be).
Of course those opposed to her beliefs also have the right to campaign for their own vision and beliefs, and if they're in the majority, to prevail, but you cannot say there is no 'forcing of beliefs' because that is not the case - Churches being compelled to solemnise gay marriages is one incidence of a belief in gay marriage being forced upon those who don't believe it.
Your argument that Forbes should be disapproved of or drummed out of politics for her traditional Christian beliefs (which by the way have not even lead her to campaign against any of the reforms you support) is totally inconsistent with any form of liberalism, and it would be a pleasant surprise if you had the humility and strength of character to acknowledge the fact.
You really don't get it do you? I don't have a problem with Forbes having her own 'traditional Christian beliefs', if she keeps them to herself, or in her Church.
I do have a problem with Forbes expressing such beliefs as a politician, when a politician is to represent all beliefs, not her own.
To be perfectly frank, I personally don't like Yousaf's religion [I don't like any organised religion], but when asked about it he gave a very appropriate answer about the difference between religion and politics. That to me means, that regardless of his religion, there's no reason why his religion should disqualify him from politics.
If he's prepared to keep religion and politics separate, then he can keep privately whatever beliefs he wants. Even those I dislike. That's liberalism. That's what Forbes failed to do.
So if religious people want to represent the people of Britain they have to acknowledge that they will be representing a lot of non-religious people and they can't use their dogma as a political guide book. Or else non-religious people won't vote for them.
I don't really know how realistic this is to be honest. Plenty of religious people get by just fine until their faith becomes a talking point, as there's going to be something in their creed which will upset someone. Then suddenly people question their potential actions.
At what point does one's faith deeply influencing the policies and ideas a politician adopts cross over into using dogma as a guide book?
I do think this Forbes free speech stuff is overblown, at the end of the day she can believe what she wants and if people don't like what she believes there's nothing wrong with people deciding they don't want to support her even if she promises her beliefs won't affect specific policies, but speaking as a non-religious person I find it hard to imagine how someone could be driven by their faith or a specific ideology and not have that be relevant to their politics, even if they are not about to legislate that people follow the bible/communist manifesto or whatever.
The problem is that you are arbitrarily deciding which beliefs are deemed "acceptable" enough whereby someone is considered suitable for office.It should be up to the members to decide. .
What are you on about? I'm not arbitrarily deciding anything about acceptability and not said anything about which beliefs make someone unsuitable for office. I was saying if others want to decide they don't like someones beliefs and so not vote for them that's their prerogative.
My point was those saying personal beliefs should be divorced from political actions are probably aiming for an unachievable goal. It always would impact to some degree, people would just keep quiet about their beliefs.
I'd rather know what beliefs people have even I dislike those beliefs.
Re cost of living Asda have a single can of Heinz tomato soup for £1.70 but if you buy 2 x 6 packs they are 75p each
Huge difference
Assuming you have £9. And want to only eat tomato soup. Then that's OK then. Thanks for your input. Exactly the kind of stuff that's winning Tory support.
I was demonstrating the difference and not making a political point to be fair
And that's why you don't get it. And why many can't understand why the government is so unpopular.
Never mind, Drakeford's latest policy is to ban all multi buy offers in Wales
I don't like travelling at a maximum speed of 20mph. Living where I do, I do not intend to dispose of my car and take non-existent public transport as Drakeford demands by his cancellation of all road projects.. Even Andrew RT Davies looks attractive after that last policy.
But I am with Shaky Drakey over the multi buy ban. Encouraging excessive purchasing is potentially wasteful and potentially encourages gluttony. It is all about supermarkets maximising customer spend per visit, with an expectation of wastage so you come back for more anyway. Just price at the best price like Aldi and Lidl, it's simple really. The big 4 supermarket cabal is the instrument of the Devil. Unfair to farmers and producers, unfair to consumers. A plague on their supply of salad vegetables. Oh wait...
Also unfair on the poor. There is that. If they are selling soup for xp single cans but x/yp for 12 when y is not far off two, then the single can is overcharged for.
The logistical cost of getting a single can and a 6 pack of cans on the shelf and then processing the sale are probably the same for the supermarket. This gives them the opportunity to charge less per unit for the larger item. It is hard to see how you change this without disproportionate intervention.
I don’t agree with Kate Forbes on gay marriage. I don’t agree with her on Gender recognition certificates provided that adequate safeguards are introduced. I do agree with her that reducing the age to 16 was just wrong. But what I really want to know is what she thinks she can do about the Scottish economy. Recognising the importance of infrastructure such as dualling the A9 is a good start as is the recognition that we must exploit our remaining oil and gas resources as our economy switches to renewable energy.
What else? Under Sturgeon Scotland was more heavily taxed than the rest of the UK to show how much she “cared”. This does not assist in attracting or retaining high earners in Scotland. It doesn’t help fill vacancies for NHS consultants either. Is she willing to address this?
What are we going to do to address the very real problems of limited space for Scots at Scottish universities (an inevitable consequence of the state paying very restricted fees for a limited number of places) ? How do we make Scotland a better place to invest, build businesses and live? The debate seems to have got stuck before it even starts, dominated by her religious beliefs. But these questions are important for all Scots, not just those that get to vote for our new FM.
I use the A9 every other weekend and I don't really get the economic case for dualling it (certainly understand the safety aspect). I'd have thought getting the A96 sorted would be more important to the economy.
The usual reminder that Scotland's economy isn't that bad compared with rUK- it's our much higher public spending that is the challenge. And it's only going to get worse, as a proportion of GDP, as our population ages more quickly.
The focus for the SG should be our fertility rate above all else, and afaik no one has talked about that yet. It's bad for our economy and it's bad as we come an ever smaller proportion of the UK population, and more likely to be ignored (only about 8% at the moment).
I’m so bored I might go to Manila. Has anyone here ever been to Manila?
I hear it’s an absolute shit hole but at least it wouid. be different and interestingly violent
I was there about a month before the pandemic. Stayed in the central business district, but even there the overwhelming smell of the open sewers was dominant.
Plenty of ‘billiards bars’ where the LBFMs hang out, just like Bangkok.
I hear it’s really boring, quite dangerous, and the food is - uniquely for Asia - terrible
True?
The food is certainly different. I work with a lot of Filipino nurses, and they are a lovely bunch. I will get there one day myself, though suspect that like Jakarta, the capital city is far from the best bit of the country.
They have really weird combinations of flavours in their meals, and even in snacks that they bring back. It is a bit of an acquired taste.
It’s one of the weird laws of international cuisine that ex Spanish colonies have the worst food in the world
True across South America. True in Central America. True in Asia.
Yet Spain itself has wonderful food.
Mexico is one of the few exceptions to this bizarre rule
I think Filipino food doubly cursed by being an American colony too for many years.
Lovely people to work with though. Friendly, hard working, professional, generally speak good English. I will get there one day.
One of the curiosities is the way that the Philippines seems to have been bypassed by the economic development of other countries in SE and NE Asia, despite the many talents of its people. Really crap governments seem to be their thing.
Does all this mean Forbes has no hope of becoming first minister? Not necessarily. But I think she and her aides may have misidentified the resistance she is facing. Secular voters are fine with religion as culture. We’re a’ Jock Tamson’s bairns. They are even fine with religion as a moral purpose in politics. It is the fire and brimstone they have a problem with. The weeping and gnashing of teeth. The smiting. Leviticus is a bit of a downer.
Forbes needs to make some things clear. Although a product of fundamentalist Presbyterianism, she is not its prisoner. Although a believer, she is not a proselytiser. Although she is living a religious life, the rest of us can live whatever lives we goddam like, and she will defend our right to do so. Is she capable of giving those answers?
Re cost of living Asda have a single can of Heinz tomato soup for £1.70 but if you buy 2 x 6 packs they are 75p each
Huge difference
Assuming you have £9. And want to only eat tomato soup. Then that's OK then. Thanks for your input. Exactly the kind of stuff that's winning Tory support.
I was demonstrating the difference and not making a political point to be fair
And that's why you don't get it. And why many can't understand why the government is so unpopular.
Never mind, Drakeford's latest policy is to ban all multi buy offers in Wales
I don't like travelling at a maximum speed of 20mph. Living where I do, I do not intend to dispose of my car and take non-existent public transport as Drakeford demands by his cancellation of all road projects.. Even Andrew RT Davies looks attractive after that last policy.
But I am with Shaky Drakey over the multi buy ban. Encouraging excessive purchasing is potentially wasteful and potentially encourages gluttony. It is all about supermarkets maximising customer spend per visit, with an expectation of wastage so you come back for more anyway. Just price at the best price like Aldi and Lidl, it's simple really. The big 4 supermarket cabal is the instrument of the Devil. Unfair to farmers and producers, unfair to consumers. A plague on their supply of salad vegetables. Oh wait...
Also unfair on the poor. There is that. If they are selling soup for xp single cans but x/yp for 12 when y is not far off two, then the single can is overcharged for.
The logistical cost of getting a single can and a 6 pack of cans on the shelf and then processing the sale are probably the same for the supermarket. This gives them the opportunity to charge less per unit for the larger item. It is hard to see how you change this without disproportionate intervention.
Indeed. But the impact on the customer is different. The mathematics works both ways.
The other point - as indeed BigG himself supported with his comments yesterday - is the unreliability of such offers and their pricing. Which? consistently note it as an issue, and Trading Standards don't like it either (if there is ideed a TS officer still available in the relevant council).
Why would anyone give a toss about what she thinks about it?
Actually her comments in this were well worth reading.
Aside from saying that Forbes honest was something to admire, she pointed out that condemning people’s religiously inspired beliefs actually goes against one of the specific roles of an Equality Minister in the U.K.
Protection of the right to worship as you chose.
I could compile a list of religions that have issues with the modern liberal world. The short version is that if you want to go to war with them, you would be going to war with quite a few immigrants.
No one is opposing her right to worship as she chooses, just opposing her as a prospective FM.
Personally I am quite OK with her views on these things, despite coming from a much more liberal church.
It would be interesting to hear more on her role as Finance Minister, and views on a further Sindyref. I suspect those would be less to the taste of our Wokefinder Generals.
There is also the question of local politics. Do we ban people with religious views from holding power there? There are plenty of areas where allowing religious beliefs to influence politics has a very real effect e.g. education, social services etc.
@Malmesbury's point is an interesting one though. If you take the reaction against Forbes, we essentially would be saying a fair good percentage of the immigrant population would effectively be disbarred from being in charge.
Who wants to go first at saying that?
You seem to have missed my point. Despite disagreeing with her views, I am quite OK about Kate Fobes as a national politician.
I have no problem with similar views expressed by African Christians or Asian Muslims either.
All these views are fine as long as people respect the law and do not try to legislate their morality onto other people.
It isn't possible to keep belief, politics, morality, legislation, secularity, religion, worldview all is separate boxes.
Religion is merely a subsample of 'beliefs' generally. Certainty is so elusive that most of what we think are beliefs. Politics brings together a mass of diffuse people all with competing agendas, axes to grind and mixed motives and weirdly diverse beliefs. The liberal principle restricts what the law compels or forbids to the minimum, so that ideas and lives can flourish.
The moral debate in the old fashioned sense with legislators is in the boundary, gray area, between what is acceptable or tolerable and what is not. This is why abortion is intellectually insoluble, because genuine beliefs differ as the the moral status of the unborn, and always will.
Gay marriage is similar. Some people (a minority at the moment which Forbes and I are both in though we probably differ about most things) think that marriage is better defined such that it is only between one man and one woman, and that is objectively better for society. Genuine beliefs differ. Gosh. Fancy that.
Re cost of living Asda have a single can of Heinz tomato soup for £1.70 but if you buy 2 x 6 packs they are 75p each
Huge difference
Assuming you have £9. And want to only eat tomato soup. Then that's OK then. Thanks for your input. Exactly the kind of stuff that's winning Tory support.
I was demonstrating the difference and not making a political point to be fair
And that's why you don't get it. And why many can't understand why the government is so unpopular.
Never mind, Drakeford's latest policy is to ban all multi buy offers in Wales
I don't like travelling at a maximum speed of 20mph. Living where I do, I do not intend to dispose of my car and take non-existent public transport as Drakeford demands by his cancellation of all road projects.. Even Andrew RT Davies looks attractive after that last policy.
But I am with Shaky Drakey over the multi buy ban. Encouraging excessive purchasing is potentially wasteful and potentially encourages gluttony. It is all about supermarkets maximising customer spend per visit, with an expectation of wastage so you come back for more anyway. Just price at the best price like Aldi and Lidl, it's simple really. The big 4 supermarket cabal is the instrument of the Devil. Unfair to farmers and producers, unfair to consumers. A plague on their supply of salad vegetables. Oh wait...
An argument that makes sense for fresh food, but much less for tinned goods which can be kept more or less indefinitely.
I don't think he has in mind a ban on multi packs but multi- buy offers, although with Drakey you never know. There's always something like a three for two offer on chilled date coded produce, Wasteful and immoral.
I was listening to LBC yesterday and they had the guy who runs Covent Garden Market. He was suggesting that EU producers are diverting short supplied produce from UK to EU because our supermarkets have driven prices down to sometimes below cost, so the Spanish producer makes significantly more selling his tomatoes to Portugal and paying Tesco a penalty for not fulfilling the contract to the supermarket. The supermarket this makes money whether they stock or don't stock.
Why would anyone give a toss about what she thinks about it?
Actually her comments in this were well worth reading.
Aside from saying that Forbes honest was something to admire, she pointed out that condemning people’s religiously inspired beliefs actually goes against one of the specific roles of an Equality Minister in the U.K.
Protection of the right to worship as you chose.
I could compile a list of religions that have issues with the modern liberal world. The short version is that if you want to go to war with them, you would be going to war with quite a few immigrants.
No one is opposing her right to worship as she chooses, just opposing her as a prospective FM.
Personally I am quite OK with her views on these things, despite coming from a much more liberal church.
It would be interesting to hear more on her role as Finance Minister, and views on a further Sindyref. I suspect those would be less to the taste of our Wokefinder Generals.
There is also the question of local politics. Do we ban people with religious views from holding power there? There are plenty of areas where allowing religious beliefs to influence politics has a very real effect e.g. education, social services etc.
@Malmesbury's point is an interesting one though. If you take the reaction against Forbes, we essentially would be saying a fair good percentage of the immigrant population would effectively be disbarred from being in charge.
Who wants to go first at saying that?
Still going on about people being disbarred!
Corbyn is essentially "disbarred" from being leader of the Conservative party - because he holds completely opposite views to party policy and membership - in the same way that someone with very old fashioned socially conservative views is hardly going to be an effective leader of a progressive party that has aimed itself very much at the younger half of the population.
If someone with socially conservative views wants to be a leader of a mainstream party their best bet, is unsurprisingly with the Conservative party.
Actually probably now RefUK or UKIP. Even most Tory leaders are social liberals now, the last properly socially conservative Conservative Leader was probably Michael Howard
Re cost of living Asda have a single can of Heinz tomato soup for £1.70 but if you buy 2 x 6 packs they are 75p each
Huge difference
Assuming you have £9. And want to only eat tomato soup. Then that's OK then. Thanks for your input. Exactly the kind of stuff that's winning Tory support.
I was demonstrating the difference and not making a political point to be fair
And that's why you don't get it. And why many can't understand why the government is so unpopular.
Never mind, Drakeford's latest policy is to ban all multi buy offers in Wales
I don't like travelling at a maximum speed of 20mph. Living where I do, I do not intend to dispose of my car and take non-existent public transport as Drakeford demands by his cancellation of all road projects.. Even Andrew RT Davies looks attractive after that last policy.
But I am with Shaky Drakey over the multi buy ban. Encouraging excessive purchasing is potentially wasteful and potentially encourages gluttony. It is all about supermarkets maximising customer spend per visit, with an expectation of wastage so you come back for more anyway. Just price at the best price like Aldi and Lidl, it's simple really. The big 4 supermarket cabal is the instrument of the Devil. Unfair to farmers and producers, unfair to consumers. A plague on their supply of salad vegetables. Oh wait...
I don’t agree with Kate Forbes on gay marriage. I don’t agree with her on Gender recognition certificates provided that adequate safeguards are introduced. I do agree with her that reducing the age to 16 was just wrong. But what I really want to know is what she thinks she can do about the Scottish economy. Recognising the importance of infrastructure such as dualling the A9 is a good start as is the recognition that we must exploit our remaining oil and gas resources as our economy switches to renewable energy.
What else? Under Sturgeon Scotland was more heavily taxed than the rest of the UK to show how much she “cared”. This does not assist in attracting or retaining high earners in Scotland. It doesn’t help fill vacancies for NHS consultants either. Is she willing to address this?
What are we going to do to address the very real problems of limited space for Scots at Scottish universities (an inevitable consequence of the state paying very restricted fees for a limited number of places) ? How do we make Scotland a better place to invest, build businesses and live? The debate seems to have got stuck before it even starts, dominated by her religious beliefs. But these questions are important for all Scots, not just those that get to vote for our new FM.
I use the A9 every other weekend and I don't really get the economic case for dualling it (certainly understand the safety aspect). I'd have thought getting the A96 sorted would be more important to the economy.
The usual reminder that Scotland's economy isn't that bad compared with rUK- it's our much higher public spending that is the challenge. And it's only going to get worse, as a proportion of GDP, as our population ages more quickly.
The focus for the SG should be our fertility rate above all else, and afaik no one has talked about that yet. It's bad for our economy and it's bad as we come an ever smaller proportion of the UK population, and more likely to be ignored (only about 8% at the moment).
I agree about the A96. I have an ongoing case in Elgin and it’s a hell of a place to get to. The economic case for the A9 is that it would help link Inverness and points north to the rest of the country, facilitating the transport of larger items and goods and assisting growth. It would also probably boost tourism in the further north.
More generally, we need to focus on what is inhibiting investment. The A1 is N obvious example as is the parts of the M8 that are only 2 lanes. We need to be open for business and encourage manufacturing not by picking winners but by creating opportunities.
Port Moresby nearly impossible to reach. Maybe one of the Stans? Uzbekistan
Which parts of the Middle East have you been to? Jordan is supposed to be fun if you haven’t been.
Done Jordan. I’ve done Jordan so much I have slept in a car park in Amman. True story
Didn’t know we were both car park aficionados! Love a good car park me. I am only four away from parking in every NCP car park in Kent for at least two hours. The wife’s going to make me a nice steak as a reward when I’ve done them all. At the moment, though, there’s an argument about the Medway Unitary Authority. Does that count as Kent for these purposes? I say not but the wife insists it does and won’t buy the steak unless I park in all the NCPs in Chatham, Rochester and Gillingham. Personally I think it’s unfair - what next? Are we going to repeal the 1964 changes meaning I have to do Bromley and Bexley too? I think that would be unreasonable.
Admire you for doing Jordan though. How many car parks are there in Amman?
Re cost of living Asda have a single can of Heinz tomato soup for £1.70 but if you buy 2 x 6 packs they are 75p each
Huge difference
Assuming you have £9. And want to only eat tomato soup. Then that's OK then. Thanks for your input. Exactly the kind of stuff that's winning Tory support.
I was demonstrating the difference and not making a political point to be fair
And that's why you don't get it. And why many can't understand why the government is so unpopular.
Never mind, Drakeford's latest policy is to ban all multi buy offers in Wales
I don't like travelling at a maximum speed of 20mph. Living where I do, I do not intend to dispose of my car and take non-existent public transport as Drakeford demands by his cancellation of all road projects.. Even Andrew RT Davies looks attractive after that last policy.
But I am with Shaky Drakey over the multi buy ban. Encouraging excessive purchasing is potentially wasteful and potentially encourages gluttony. It is all about supermarkets maximising customer spend per visit, with an expectation of wastage so you come back for more anyway. Just price at the best price like Aldi and Lidl, it's simple really. The big 4 supermarket cabal is the instrument of the Devil. Unfair to farmers and producers, unfair to consumers. A plague on their supply of salad vegetables. Oh wait...
An argument that makes sense for fresh food, but much less for tinned goods which can be kept more or less indefinitely.
I don't think he has in mind a ban on multi packs but multi- buy offers, although with Drakey you never know. There's always something like a three for two offer on chilled date coded produce, Wasteful and immoral.
I was listening to LBC yesterday and they had the guy who runs Covent Garden Market. He was suggesting that EU producers are diverting short supplied produce from UK to EU because our supermarkets have driven prices down to sometimes below cost, so the Spanish producer makes significantly more selling his tomatoes to Portugal and paying Tesco a penalty for not fulfilling the contract to the supermarket. The supermarket this makes money whether they stock or don't stock.
The DM story was very preliminary and very short on detail. Clickbait for pensioners.
With Drakeford, assume if he is offered a same option and a batshit crazy option that even Susan Acland-Hood or Dominic Cummings would recognise as unworkable, divisive and expensive, he will unhesitatingly chose the latter.
Ash Regan it is then. Victory for the blank canvas.
Not quite…..a tale of three tweets:
I will not support an accelerated net zero path which sees us turn off the North Sea taps, throw 10s of 1000s of oil workers out of jobs, hollow out NE & H&I communities whist still using and importing hydrocarbons. I will stand up for our oil workers and their communities.….
The dualling of the A9 must be accelerated & A96 must commence without delay. There are too many accidents and near misses. We need these completed to release the full economic potential of the NE and Highlands and to connect communities. This is my #1 infrastructure priority.
50%+1 of combined votes from pro-independence parties in any WM or HR election is a clear instruction from the electorate that we commence withdrawal negotiations from the U.K. Independence - nothing less
I don’t agree with Kate Forbes on gay marriage. I don’t agree with her on Gender recognition certificates provided that adequate safeguards are introduced. I do agree with her that reducing the age to 16 was just wrong. But what I really want to know is what she thinks she can do about the Scottish economy. Recognising the importance of infrastructure such as dualling the A9 is a good start as is the recognition that we must exploit our remaining oil and gas resources as our economy switches to renewable energy.
What else? Under Sturgeon Scotland was more heavily taxed than the rest of the UK to show how much she “cared”. This does not assist in attracting or retaining high earners in Scotland. It doesn’t help fill vacancies for NHS consultants either. Is she willing to address this?
What are we going to do to address the very real problems of limited space for Scots at Scottish universities (an inevitable consequence of the state paying very restricted fees for a limited number of places) ? How do we make Scotland a better place to invest, build businesses and live? The debate seems to have got stuck before it even starts, dominated by her religious beliefs. But these questions are important for all Scots, not just those that get to vote for our new FM.
I use the A9 every other weekend and I don't really get the economic case for dualling it (certainly understand the safety aspect). I'd have thought getting the A96 sorted would be more important to the economy.
The usual reminder that Scotland's economy isn't that bad compared with rUK- it's our much higher public spending that is the challenge. And it's only going to get worse, as a proportion of GDP, as our population ages more quickly.
The focus for the SG should be our fertility rate above all else, and afaik no one has talked about that yet. It's bad for our economy and it's bad as we come an ever smaller proportion of the UK population, and more likely to be ignored (only about 8% at the moment).
Are you procreating and helping alleviate the problem?
What we are currently discovering is just how good a leader of the SNP Nicola Sturgeon has been. Of course, that is very different to saying she has been a good First Minister.
Third! The interesting part of the graph is the movement over the last month when there hasn’t been a particular issue to move the graph. Edit; not third.
Yes, surely there is. Food, leccy, inflation, under inflation pay rises, the after-Christmas deficit, and all that.
And today the Government is proposing a 3.5% pay rise for millions working for a living, while inflation is over 10%.
And yet they have enough money to give a 10% pay rise to those who are not working for a living.
Don't have to be very interested in politics to see a problem with that.
here come the greedy layabouts , whining about pensioners getting £9K a year.
I’m so bored I might go to Manila. Has anyone here ever been to Manila?
I hear it’s an absolute shit hole but at least it wouid. be different and interestingly violent
I was there about a month before the pandemic. Stayed in the central business district, but even there the overwhelming smell of the open sewers was dominant.
Plenty of ‘billiards bars’ where the LBFMs hang out, just like Bangkok.
I hear it’s really boring, quite dangerous, and the food is - uniquely for Asia - terrible
True?
The food is certainly different. I work with a lot of Filipino nurses, and they are a lovely bunch. I will get there one day myself, though suspect that like Jakarta, the capital city is far from the best bit of the country.
They have really weird combinations of flavours in their meals, and even in snacks that they bring back. It is a bit of an acquired taste.
It’s one of the weird laws of international cuisine that ex Spanish colonies have the worst food in the world
True across South America. True in Central America. True in Asia.
Yet Spain itself has wonderful food.
Mexico is one of the few exceptions to this bizarre rule
I think Filipino food doubly cursed by being an American colony too for many years.
Lovely people to work with though. Friendly, hard working, professional, generally speak good English. I will get there one day.
One of the curiosities is the way that the Philippines seems to have been bypassed by the economic development of other countries in SE and NE Asia, despite the many talents of its people. Really crap governments seem to be their thing.
The biggest problem they have is emigration - anyone with any skills goes to work somewhere else. Not an easy problem to solve though, IIRC people are the country’s largest export category, and millions of Filipinos rely on remittances from family working abroad. Lovely people, as you say.
Why would anyone give a toss about what she thinks about it?
Actually her comments in this were well worth reading.
Aside from saying that Forbes honest was something to admire, she pointed out that condemning people’s religiously inspired beliefs actually goes against one of the specific roles of an Equality Minister in the U.K.
Protection of the right to worship as you chose.
I could compile a list of religions that have issues with the modern liberal world. The short version is that if you want to go to war with them, you would be going to war with quite a few immigrants.
No one is opposing her right to worship as she chooses, just opposing her as a prospective FM.
Personally I am quite OK with her views on these things, despite coming from a much more liberal church.
It would be interesting to hear more on her role as Finance Minister, and views on a further Sindyref. I suspect those would be less to the taste of our Wokefinder Generals.
There is also the question of local politics. Do we ban people with religious views from holding power there? There are plenty of areas where allowing religious beliefs to influence politics has a very real effect e.g. education, social services etc.
@Malmesbury's point is an interesting one though. If you take the reaction against Forbes, we essentially would be saying a fair good percentage of the immigrant population would effectively be disbarred from being in charge.
Who wants to go first at saying that?
Still going on about people being disbarred!
Corbyn is essentially "disbarred" from being leader of the Conservative party - because he holds completely opposite views to party policy and membership - in the same way that someone with very old fashioned socially conservative views is hardly going to be an effective leader of a progressive party that has aimed itself very much at the younger half of the population.
If someone with socially conservative views wants to be a leader of a mainstream party their best bet, is unsurprisingly with the Conservative party.
Actually probably now RefUK or UKIP. Even most Tory leaders are social liberals now, the last properly socially conservative Conservative Leader was probably Michael Howard
I was going to suggest UKIP as they used to have a new leader every couple of months, but the Tories have gone even more extreme on that criteria now as well.
I thought it was a straight membership vote, but Wiki says " ... candidates must have the nomination of at least 100 members, from at least 20 branches".
What does this mean? Have the three declared candidates already secured this first hurdle of nomination?
Re cost of living Asda have a single can of Heinz tomato soup for £1.70 but if you buy 2 x 6 packs they are 75p each
Huge difference
Assuming you have £9. And want to only eat tomato soup. Then that's OK then. Thanks for your input. Exactly the kind of stuff that's winning Tory support.
I was demonstrating the difference and not making a political point to be fair
And that's why you don't get it. And why many can't understand why the government is so unpopular.
Never mind, Drakeford's latest policy is to ban all multi buy offers in Wales
Same mindset as they had in Scotland when they banned BOGOF.
I thought it was a straight membership vote, but Wiki says " ... candidates must have the nomination of at least 100 members, from at least 20 branches".
What does this mean? Have the three declared candidates already secured this first hurdle of nomination?
Not sure, but given their prominence it would be very surprising if they didn't. Remember that there are a number of branches in each constituency. And that there is no need to have approval from the branch committee itself. it only depends where the members are.
By contrast in 1959 only 45% would vote for an atheist
'Oct 1959: If the party of your choice nominated a generally well-qualified person as parliamentary candidate, would you vote for him/her if he/she were one of the following? Roman Catholic 82% Yes Woman 76% Jew 71% Coloured person 61% Atheist 45%'
Re cost of living Asda have a single can of Heinz tomato soup for £1.70 but if you buy 2 x 6 packs they are 75p each
Huge difference
Assuming you have £9. And want to only eat tomato soup. Then that's OK then. Thanks for your input. Exactly the kind of stuff that's winning Tory support.
I was demonstrating the difference and not making a political point to be fair
And that's why you don't get it. And why many can't understand why the government is so unpopular.
Never mind, Drakeford's latest policy is to ban all multi buy offers in Wales
Same mindset as they had in Scotland when they banned BOGOF.
If I see a BOGOF and only want one I just walk away.
Similarly, with BigG's soup example - I would never pay £1.70 for a can when 75p was available.
Port Moresby nearly impossible to reach. Maybe one of the Stans? Uzbekistan
Which parts of the Middle East have you been to? Jordan is supposed to be fun if you haven’t been.
Done Jordan. I’ve done Jordan so much I have slept in a car park in Amman. True story
Didn’t know we were both car park aficionados! Love a good car park me. I am only four away from parking in every NCP car park in Kent for at least two hours. The wife’s going to make me a nice steak as a reward when I’ve done them all. At the moment, though, there’s an argument about the Medway Unitary Authority. Does that count as Kent for these purposes? I say not but the wife insists it does and won’t buy the steak unless I park in all the NCPs in Chatham, Rochester and Gillingham. Personally I think it’s unfair - what next? Are we going to repeal the 1964 changes meaning I have to do Bromley and Bexley too? I think that would be unreasonable.
Admire you for doing Jordan though. How many car parks are there in Amman?
There are car parks in Amman? Last time I was there, cars were simply abandoned outside the destination, with little regard to whether they were double or even triple parked, nor whether they were blocking a main road full of traffic. It’s the only place I’ve ever been, where I didn’t want to drive. I ended up going around in the back of my customer’s rather nice S-Class. He didn’t like to drive either!
By contrast in 1959 only 45% would vote for an atheist
'Oct 1959: If the party of your choice nominated a generally well-qualified person as parliamentary candidate, would you vote for him/her if he/she were one of the following? Roman Catholic 82% Yes Woman 76% Jew 71% Coloured person 61% Atheist 45%'
Port Moresby nearly impossible to reach. Maybe one of the Stans? Uzbekistan
Which parts of the Middle East have you been to? Jordan is supposed to be fun if you haven’t been.
Done Jordan. I’ve done Jordan so much I have slept in a car park in Amman. True story
Didn’t know we were both car park aficionados! Love a good car park me. I am only four away from parking in every NCP car park in Kent for at least two hours. The wife’s going to make me a nice steak as a reward when I’ve done them all. At the moment, though, there’s an argument about the Medway Unitary Authority. Does that count as Kent for these purposes? I say not but the wife insists it does and won’t buy the steak unless I park in all the NCPs in Chatham, Rochester and Gillingham. Personally I think it’s unfair - what next? Are we going to repeal the 1964 changes meaning I have to do Bromley and Bexley too? I think that would be unreasonable.
Admire you for doing Jordan though. How many car parks are there in Amman?
There are car parks in Amman? Last time I was there, cars were simply abandoned outside the destination, with little regard to whether they were double or even triple parked, nor whether they were blocking a main road full of traffic. It’s the only place I’ve ever been, where I didn’t want to drive. I ended up going around in the back of my customer’s rather nice S-Class. He didn’t like to drive either!
Leon said he slept in one. Nothing Leon says ever proves to be incorrect. Which is why you and I are the only two people left on Earth, eating insects in an post nuclear irradiated wasteland, cowering from super Covid infected AI bots, but at least Liz Truss surprised on the upside.
Third! The interesting part of the graph is the movement over the last month when there hasn’t been a particular issue to move the graph. Edit; not third.
Yes, surely there is. Food, leccy, inflation, under inflation pay rises, the after-Christmas deficit, and all that.
And today the Government is proposing a 3.5% pay rise for millions working for a living, while inflation is over 10%.
And yet they have enough money to give a 10% pay rise to those who are not working for a living.
Don't have to be very interested in politics to see a problem with that.
It looks like there might be some movement on the nurses at least. But that will still leave a lot of very sensitive groups in education, junior doctors, trains (because of their effect on so many others) etc. Again, Sunak needs to put himself out front and find agreements, not hide behind pay boards.
I think the "independent" pay boards have effectively collapsed. The NHS staff unions are not engaging with a fixed process that works to government rules. Want no strikes? Then must have payboards out of government control with staffside representatives.
Yes, I think that system has run out of road.
Like in the real world they should give them all inflation increases based on productivity , clear out of dross and sack the bottom 10% performers. That si what happens in the real world where money does not grow on trees.
What we are currently discovering is just how good a leader of the SNP Nicola Sturgeon has been. Of course, that is very different to saying she has been a good First Minister.
I agree ... except a good leader has thought about succession planning.
Sturgeon was truly exceptional as a leader of a political party.
The U.K.’s equalities minister, Kemi Badenoch, launched a full-throated defense of under-fire Scottish National Party leadership hopeful Kate Forbes amid a bitter row over same-sex marriage....
.... Badenoch told a POLITICO event in London Tuesday night that she would defend the right of Forbes to hold those views, and refused to condemn her comments in her role as equalities minister.
“I think that is sad because I believe in freedom of conscience,” she said of the backlash. “That’s one of the things that makes this country great. It’s one of the reasons why many people want to live here.”...
“It’d be very easy for her to tell lies, just so that she could win that election,” Badenoch said of Forbes. “And she’s not doing that, and I think that that’s something that people need to take into account.”
Badenoch also condemned SNP politicians who have yanked their support from the under-fire contender. Shelved endorsements of Forbes, she argued, show “the level of un-seriousness of many of the people who engage in political activity and commentary.”
I mean, she’s not wrong. Kate Forbes is totally free to believe what she wants to believe. And people are totally free to make their own minds up on whether they think she should be FM and hold those beliefs.
Surprised (pleasantly) by that from Badenoch.
Telling lies would, indeed have been easy.
The backers claiming that they didn’t know is risible.
The issue isn't lies versus truth. The issue is one of professionalism.
Freedom of conscience is very important and everyone is free to hold whatever religious or non-religious beliefs they choose, in the privacy of their own home and their own Church etc. But when you go to work, especially as a politician or in the legal sphere etc you should be professional enough to check your personal religion at the door and not let it dominate. So long as you are prepared to have your own beliefs, but accept that others have their own beliefs that may be very different, then people are free to choose and there's no need for religion and politics to mix. Forbes could be ultra-orthodox and I wouldn't give a damn, if she was able to keep her religion and politics separate but she has been unable to do so.
Religion is like a penis. Its OK to have one, its OK to be proud of it, and its OK to exercise it however you want with other consenting adults, even in ways other people find weird. But don't take it out and put it on display in the workplace, and whatever you do don't try and shove it down other people's throats against their will.
She just said what she thought. I know that's naïve, that we really don't want politicians saying what they think. It's about our judgement of character, and the more they lie about themselves the better we think their character is.
And what she thinks shows she is unsuitable for high office. What she said shows she thinks that as a politician, her own morals and judging others for being sinners, is appropriate. It is not.
If you want to spread your morals, then go into the clergy. If you go into politics, then your job is to represent all people of all religions and none, not your own, just as Yousaf did - while being completely open and honest in doing so. If asked a question, you should be professional enough to not put yourself and your own faith ahead of everyone else's. She isn't. She is unsuited for office and should be rejected.
You're pretending that your stupid rules are somehow consistent, when they're clearly anything but. Forbes is entitled not only to have whatever views and moral code she chooses, but also to let those views and moral code to inform her political decisions. To suggest otherwise is the most absurdly Stalinist thing from someone pertaining to be liberal that I've ever heard.
Don't be stupid.
There should be no law against Forbes selfishly allowing her private beliefs to shape what she thinks the law should be.
There equally is no law, nor any problem, in the majority of people like myself who don't share her beliefs [and even many who do share her beliefs but oppose her making those beliefs political] to think that her enforcing her views on others is problematic and should be opposed.
Indeed opposing one person trying to force their personal beliefs onto everyone else via the law isn't illiberal, its pretty much the definition of liberalism. I do not want a law forcing my views onto Forbes, Forbes can not say the same, that is why she is not fit for office, and that is a perfectly liberal answer.
You're tying yourself in knots. There's nothing 'selfish' about Forbes pursuing policies dictated by her beliefs - in actuality she has not done that, but if she were to do so, that would be in line with every other politician (or in an ideal world it would be).
Of course those opposed to her beliefs also have the right to campaign for their own vision and beliefs, and if they're in the majority, to prevail, but you cannot say there is no 'forcing of beliefs' because that is not the case - Churches being compelled to solemnise gay marriages is one incidence of a belief in gay marriage being forced upon those who don't believe it.
Your argument that Forbes should be disapproved of or drummed out of politics for her traditional Christian beliefs (which by the way have not even lead her to campaign against any of the reforms you support) is totally inconsistent with any form of liberalism, and it would be a pleasant surprise if you had the humility and strength of character to acknowledge the fact.
Bart is thicker than a barrel of mince , you just wasted 1 minute of your life replying to an idiot.
Third! The interesting part of the graph is the movement over the last month when there hasn’t been a particular issue to move the graph. Edit; not third.
Yes, surely there is. Food, leccy, inflation, under inflation pay rises, the after-Christmas deficit, and all that.
And today the Government is proposing a 3.5% pay rise for millions working for a living, while inflation is over 10%.
And yet they have enough money to give a 10% pay rise to those who are not working for a living.
Don't have to be very interested in politics to see a problem with that.
Yes. You're on the opposite side of politics to me. But it's obvious to you. It's actually very simple.
I double checked - the statement is on their Facebook page.
Not a surprise if you live in Scotland
I don't understand why this guy is odds-on favourite. I smell a campaign against Forbes. Is she value now?
He's fav because Ms Forbes looks as if she has done a kamikaze (I'm not quite so sure) and the southern media haven't bothered to look up Ms Regan and do some research instead of relying on lazy sterotypes about island hellfire preachers like something out of Wicker Man (the FCS, for one thing, not being a specifically island kirk). I don't think the betting is likely to be particularly well informed by the standard of such things.
I see the pensions website on gov.uk is still down. Martin Lewis has a helluva following.
Hmm. This is a time when we have had a major change to regs on topping up, too. And when people will want to know if their extra payments got in OK before the deadline.
Re cost of living Asda have a single can of Heinz tomato soup for £1.70 but if you buy 2 x 6 packs they are 75p each
Huge difference
Assuming you have £9. And want to only eat tomato soup. Then that's OK then. Thanks for your input. Exactly the kind of stuff that's winning Tory support.
I was demonstrating the difference and not making a political point to be fair
And that's why you don't get it. And why many can't understand why the government is so unpopular.
Never mind, Drakeford's latest policy is to ban all multi buy offers in Wales
I don't like travelling at a maximum speed of 20mph. Living where I do, I do not intend to dispose of my car and take non-existent public transport as Drakeford demands by his cancellation of all road projects.. Even Andrew RT Davies looks attractive after that last policy.
But I am with Shaky Drakey over the multi buy ban. Encouraging excessive purchasing is potentially wasteful and potentially encourages gluttony. It is all about supermarkets maximising customer spend per visit, with an expectation of wastage so you come back for more anyway. Just price at the best price like Aldi and Lidl, it's simple really. The big 4 supermarket cabal is the instrument of the Devil. Unfair to farmers and producers, unfair to consumers. A plague on their supply of salad vegetables. Oh wait...
The argument is that the food is cheaper if bought together ... which is, err, bad.
No that is a fair point, particularly when the snack element can be fruit to be consumed immediately. You've tumbled my game, FM Andrew RT Davies it is then (and I am not being flippant).
The U.K.’s equalities minister, Kemi Badenoch, launched a full-throated defense of under-fire Scottish National Party leadership hopeful Kate Forbes amid a bitter row over same-sex marriage....
.... Badenoch told a POLITICO event in London Tuesday night that she would defend the right of Forbes to hold those views, and refused to condemn her comments in her role as equalities minister.
“I think that is sad because I believe in freedom of conscience,” she said of the backlash. “That’s one of the things that makes this country great. It’s one of the reasons why many people want to live here.”...
“It’d be very easy for her to tell lies, just so that she could win that election,” Badenoch said of Forbes. “And she’s not doing that, and I think that that’s something that people need to take into account.”
Badenoch also condemned SNP politicians who have yanked their support from the under-fire contender. Shelved endorsements of Forbes, she argued, show “the level of un-seriousness of many of the people who engage in political activity and commentary.”
I mean, she’s not wrong. Kate Forbes is totally free to believe what she wants to believe. And people are totally free to make their own minds up on whether they think she should be FM and hold those beliefs.
Surprised (pleasantly) by that from Badenoch.
Telling lies would, indeed have been easy.
The backers claiming that they didn’t know is risible.
The issue isn't lies versus truth. The issue is one of professionalism.
Freedom of conscience is very important and everyone is free to hold whatever religious or non-religious beliefs they choose, in the privacy of their own home and their own Church etc. But when you go to work, especially as a politician or in the legal sphere etc you should be professional enough to check your personal religion at the door and not let it dominate. So long as you are prepared to have your own beliefs, but accept that others have their own beliefs that may be very different, then people are free to choose and there's no need for religion and politics to mix. Forbes could be ultra-orthodox and I wouldn't give a damn, if she was able to keep her religion and politics separate but she has been unable to do so.
Religion is like a penis. Its OK to have one, its OK to be proud of it, and its OK to exercise it however you want with other consenting adults, even in ways other people find weird. But don't take it out and put it on display in the workplace, and whatever you do don't try and shove it down other people's throats against their will.
She just said what she thought. I know that's naïve, that we really don't want politicians saying what they think. It's about our judgement of character, and the more they lie about themselves the better we think their character is.
And what she thinks shows she is unsuitable for high office. What she said shows she thinks that as a politician, her own morals and judging others for being sinners, is appropriate. It is not.
If you want to spread your morals, then go into the clergy. If you go into politics, then your job is to represent all people of all religions and none, not your own, just as Yousaf did - while being completely open and honest in doing so. If asked a question, you should be professional enough to not put yourself and your own faith ahead of everyone else's. She isn't. She is unsuited for office and should be rejected.
You're pretending that your stupid rules are somehow consistent, when they're clearly anything but. Forbes is entitled not only to have whatever views and moral code she chooses, but also to let those views and moral code to inform her political decisions. To suggest otherwise is the most absurdly Stalinist thing from someone pertaining to be liberal that I've ever heard.
Don't be stupid.
There should be no law against Forbes selfishly allowing her private beliefs to shape what she thinks the law should be.
There equally is no law, nor any problem, in the majority of people like myself who don't share her beliefs [and even many who do share her beliefs but oppose her making those beliefs political] to think that her enforcing her views on others is problematic and should be opposed.
Indeed opposing one person trying to force their personal beliefs onto everyone else via the law isn't illiberal, its pretty much the definition of liberalism. I do not want a law forcing my views onto Forbes, Forbes can not say the same, that is why she is not fit for office, and that is a perfectly liberal answer.
You're tying yourself in knots. There's nothing 'selfish' about Forbes pursuing policies dictated by her beliefs - in actuality she has not done that, but if she were to do so, that would be in line with every other politician (or in an ideal world it would be).
Of course those opposed to her beliefs also have the right to campaign for their own vision and beliefs, and if they're in the majority, to prevail, but you cannot say there is no 'forcing of beliefs' because that is not the case - Churches being compelled to solemnise gay marriages is one incidence of a belief in gay marriage being forced upon those who don't believe it.
Your argument that Forbes should be disapproved of or drummed out of politics for her traditional Christian beliefs (which by the way have not even lead her to campaign against any of the reforms you support) is totally inconsistent with any form of liberalism, and it would be a pleasant surprise if you had the humility and strength of character to acknowledge the fact.
Bart is thicker than a barrel of mince , you just wasted 1 minute of your life replying to an idiot.
The to-and-fro between Barty and Luckyguy is classic John Rawls.
What is permissible to bring into the public square? Rawls started off agreeing with Barty but drifted (a tad) more in the direction of Luckyguy.
I double checked - the statement is on their Facebook page.
Not a surprise if you live in Scotland
I can't find any evidence of the "Muslim Council of the UK", and think it's an attempt to conflate with the Muslim Council of Britain.
Still digging into the Indian Council of Scotland, but they don't have a large online presence, at the very least.
The Indian Council of Scotland are on Facebook with 1k followers. As are the Muslim Council of the U.K. which appeared yesterday and has 3 followers….
The latter sounds somewhat less than legitimate, likely created purely for the purpose of sending the letter this morning. Is there any evidence of a company or charity formally registered under that name before yesterday?
Perhaps a bit of research may be useful before judging the merit of a statement from the "Indian Council of Scotland", which doesn't even have a website?
Of course she is suitable for office, but get real, Starmer would exploit the situation to make huge inroads with Scots under... 50? and those not committed to cultural conservatism. So it is like making a very generic appeal that fails in the specifics, like a slightly better version of the Jeremy Corbyn offer.
Starmer is a fanny , we know what labour is like , lying cheating no good bad un's. The likes of him milked Scotland for 40 years lying , cheating and enriching themselves, at least with the Tories they say they are going to mug you, whilst Labour do it from behind like the scumbags they are.
I see the pensions website on gov.uk is still down. Martin Lewis has a helluva following.
Hmm. This is a time when we have had a major change to regs on topping up, too. And when people will want to know if their extra payments got in OK before the deadline.
Third! The interesting part of the graph is the movement over the last month when there hasn’t been a particular issue to move the graph. Edit; not third.
Yes, surely there is. Food, leccy, inflation, under inflation pay rises, the after-Christmas deficit, and all that.
And today the Government is proposing a 3.5% pay rise for millions working for a living, while inflation is over 10%.
And yet they have enough money to give a 10% pay rise to those who are not working for a living.
Don't have to be very interested in politics to see a problem with that.
It looks like there might be some movement on the nurses at least. But that will still leave a lot of very sensitive groups in education, junior doctors, trains (because of their effect on so many others) etc. Again, Sunak needs to put himself out front and find agreements, not hide behind pay boards.
I think the "independent" pay boards have effectively collapsed. The NHS staff unions are not engaging with a fixed process that works to government rules. Want no strikes? Then must have payboards out of government control with staffside representatives.
Yes, I think that system has run out of road.
Like in the real world they should give them all inflation increases based on productivity , clear out of dross and sack the bottom 10% performers. That si what happens in the real world where money does not grow on trees.
I double checked - the statement is on their Facebook page.
Not a surprise if you live in Scotland
I don't understand why this guy is odds-on favourite. I smell a campaign against Forbes. Is she value now?
He's fav because Ms Forbes looks as if she has done a kamikaze (I'm not quite so sure) and the southern media haven't bothered to look up Ms Regan and do some research instead of relying on lazy sterotypes about island hellfire preachers like something out of Wicker Man (the FCS, for one thing, not being a specifically island kirk). I don't think the betting is likely to be particularly well informed by the standard of such things.
Well I'm laying Yousaf at these odds.
There is Regan and I'm not convinced that Forbes is out of it In the current climate - and he is surely vulnerable to another candidate trowing their hat in in the next two days.
I double checked - the statement is on their Facebook page.
Not a surprise if you live in Scotland
I don't understand why this guy is odds-on favourite. I smell a campaign against Forbes. Is she value now?
He's fav because Ms Forbes looks as if she has done a kamikaze (I'm not quite so sure) and the southern media haven't bothered to look up Ms Regan and do some research instead of relying on lazy sterotypes about island hellfire preachers like something out of Wicker Man (the FCS, for one thing, not being a specifically island kirk). I don't think the betting is likely to be particularly well informed by the standard of such things.
Wicker Man island was essentially pagan, it was the policeman who ended up in the Wicker Man who was an evangelical Christian
We went to a lesbian wedding a year or two ago. A pleasant and peaceful affair. Having spent a couple of decades playing rugby in my youth, I'm amazed any woman is heterosexual.
But as a committed Catholic, I'd vote for Forbes or Tim Farron. No problem with heretics at all.
Ash Regan it is then. Victory for the blank canvas.
Not quite…..a tale of three tweets:
I will not support an accelerated net zero path which sees us turn off the North Sea taps, throw 10s of 1000s of oil workers out of jobs, hollow out NE & H&I communities whist still using and importing hydrocarbons. I will stand up for our oil workers and their communities.….
The dualling of the A9 must be accelerated & A96 must commence without delay. There are too many accidents and near misses. We need these completed to release the full economic potential of the NE and Highlands and to connect communities. This is my #1 infrastructure priority.
50%+1 of combined votes from pro-independence parties in any WM or HR election is a clear instruction from the electorate that we commence withdrawal negotiations from the U.K. Independence - nothing less
To be fair, that's a reasonable programme. Not that I think Scotland would enjoy the reality of independence, but the third point is sound in constitutional theory. She's right about the roads. The first point is fair enough as long as she's also thought about how to manage the transition when the oil runs out, which may not be that far away.
She may have crazy stuff, like hanging all Welshmen in the Highlands, to come out but I don't see how anyone could take serious issue with the published stuff.
Edited because I didn't want people to think I have no issue with hanging Welshmen...
I double checked - the statement is on their Facebook page.
Not a surprise if you live in Scotland
I can't find any evidence of the "Muslim Council of the UK", and think it's an attempt to conflate with the Muslim Council of Britain.
Still digging into the Indian Council of Scotland, but they don't have a large online presence, at the very least.
The Indian Council of Scotland are on Facebook with 1k followers. As are the Muslim Council of the U.K. which appeared yesterday and has 3 followers….
The latter sounds somewhat less than legitimate, likely created purely for the purpose of sending the letter this morning. Is there any evidence of a company or charity formally registered under that name before yesterday?
Remember charities are different in Scotland. AFAICS OSCR has no hits for ICS. Or MCUK. But we do have a presumably quite unconnected MCS, est. 2010.
Port Moresby nearly impossible to reach. Maybe one of the Stans? Uzbekistan
Which parts of the Middle East have you been to? Jordan is supposed to be fun if you haven’t been.
Done Jordan. I’ve done Jordan so much I have slept in a car park in Amman. True story
Didn’t know we were both car park aficionados! Love a good car park me. I am only four away from parking in every NCP car park in Kent for at least two hours. The wife’s going to make me a nice steak as a reward when I’ve done them all. At the moment, though, there’s an argument about the Medway Unitary Authority. Does that count as Kent for these purposes? I say not but the wife insists it does and won’t buy the steak unless I park in all the NCPs in Chatham, Rochester and Gillingham. Personally I think it’s unfair - what next? Are we going to repeal the 1964 changes meaning I have to do Bromley and Bexley too? I think that would be unreasonable.
Admire you for doing Jordan though. How many car parks are there in Amman?
There are car parks in Amman? Last time I was there, cars were simply abandoned outside the destination, with little regard to whether they were double or even triple parked, nor whether they were blocking a main road full of traffic. It’s the only place I’ve ever been, where I didn’t want to drive. I ended up going around in the back of my customer’s rather nice S-Class. He didn’t like to drive either!
Leon said he slept in one. Nothing Leon says ever proves to be incorrect. Which is why you and I are the only two people left on Earth, eating insects in an post nuclear irradiated wasteland, cowering from super Covid infected AI bots, but at least Liz Truss surprised on the upside.
Actually, I might have seen one at the big new mall. Not that anyone would ever park more than a minute’s walk from the entrance, even if that meant driving around for 15 minutes waiting for a space then blocking three cars in when they couldn’t find one. It was total chaos there, traffic lights were considered optional and roundabouts seemed to be two-way streets.
I double checked - the statement is on their Facebook page.
Not a surprise if you live in Scotland
I don't understand why this guy is odds-on favourite. I smell a campaign against Forbes. Is she value now?
He's fav because Ms Forbes looks as if she has done a kamikaze (I'm not quite so sure) and the southern media haven't bothered to look up Ms Regan and do some research instead of relying on lazy sterotypes about island hellfire preachers like something out of Wicker Man (the FCS, for one thing, not being a specifically island kirk). I don't think the betting is likely to be particularly well informed by the standard of such things.
Wicker Man island was essentially pagan, it was the policeman who ended up in the Wicker Man who was an evangelical Christian
Do you think the media grasp that? The polis was an outsider, the wickerperson enthusiasts were weird islanders.
Don't be daft. By that definition, Crace has 'bullied' every single politician of note over the last 10 years, including several in the article you link to. It's called satire.
Comments
But in some, they were "If you need to go there, we'll get you security." And in a few: "Why the **** do you want to go there!!!!"
True across South America. True in Central America. True in Asia.
Yet Spain itself has wonderful food.
Mexico is one of the few exceptions to this bizarre rule
My point was those saying personal beliefs should be divorced from political actions are probably aiming for an unachievable goal. It always would impact to some degree, people would just keep quiet about their beliefs.
I'd rather know what beliefs people have even I dislike those beliefs.
That Indian Council of Scotland and the UK, along with the Muslim Council of the UK, have issued an extraordinary joint statement saying that:
"The Indian community in Scotland would live in fear if Humza Yousaf becomes First Minister."
https://twitter.com/AgentP22/status/1628310817966809089?s=20
I double checked - the statement is on their Facebook page.
The usual reminder that Scotland's economy isn't that bad compared with rUK- it's our much higher public spending that is the challenge. And it's only going to get worse, as a proportion of GDP, as our population ages more quickly.
The focus for the SG should be our fertility rate above all else, and afaik no one has talked about that yet. It's bad for our economy and it's bad as we come an ever smaller proportion of the UK population, and more likely to be ignored (only about 8% at the moment).
Lovely people to work with though. Friendly, hard working, professional, generally speak good English. I will get there one day.
One of the curiosities is the way that the Philippines seems to have been bypassed by the economic development of other countries in SE and NE Asia, despite the many talents of its people. Really crap governments seem to be their thing.
The other point - as indeed BigG himself supported with his comments yesterday - is the unreliability of such offers and their pricing. Which? consistently note it as an issue, and Trading Standards don't like it either (if there is ideed a TS officer still available in the relevant council).
Edit: it isn't!
He "profoundly" disagrees despite own faith
SNP… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1628311940136067072
Religion is merely a subsample of 'beliefs' generally. Certainty is so elusive that most of what we think are beliefs. Politics brings together a mass of diffuse people all with competing agendas, axes to grind and mixed motives and weirdly diverse beliefs. The liberal principle restricts what the law compels or forbids to the minimum, so that ideas and lives can flourish.
The moral debate in the old fashioned sense with legislators is in the boundary, gray area, between what is acceptable or tolerable and what is not. This is why abortion is intellectually insoluble, because genuine beliefs differ as the the moral status of the unborn, and always will.
Gay marriage is similar. Some people (a minority at the moment which Forbes and I are both in though we probably differ about most things) think that marriage is better defined such that it is only between one man and one woman, and that is objectively better for society. Genuine beliefs differ. Gosh. Fancy that.
I was listening to LBC yesterday and they had the guy who runs Covent Garden Market. He was suggesting that EU producers are diverting short supplied produce from UK to EU because our supermarkets have driven prices down to sometimes below cost, so the Spanish producer makes significantly more selling his tomatoes to Portugal and paying Tesco a penalty for not fulfilling the contract to the supermarket. The supermarket this makes money whether they stock or don't stock.
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/whats-on/shopping/people-angry-idea-ban-meal-26275956
The argument is that the food is cheaper if bought together ... which is, err, bad.
More generally, we need to focus on what is inhibiting investment. The A1 is N obvious example as is the parts of the M8 that are only 2 lanes. We need to be open for business and encourage manufacturing not by picking winners but by creating opportunities.
While Indian Council of Scotland is Tory friendly the criticism of the Broughty Ferry Nursery Case is justified.
Admire you for doing Jordan though. How many car parks are there in Amman?
#Leondamus
https://twitter.com/MattChorley/status/1628313495535067136?s=20
I will not support an accelerated net zero path which sees us turn off the North Sea taps, throw 10s of 1000s of oil workers out of jobs, hollow out NE & H&I communities whist still using and importing hydrocarbons. I will stand up for our oil workers and their communities.….
The dualling of the A9 must be accelerated & A96 must commence without delay. There are too many accidents and near misses. We need these completed to release the full economic potential of the NE and Highlands and to connect communities. This is my #1 infrastructure priority.
50%+1 of combined votes from pro-independence parties in any WM or HR election is a clear instruction from the electorate that we commence withdrawal negotiations from the U.K. Independence - nothing less
https://twitter.com/AshReganSNP/status/1627723019668815877?s=20
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rishi-sunak-pmqs-boris-johnson-brexit-latest-news-live-2023-njf2080ml
I checked the Collected Papers of James Clerk Maxwell, but I could not find this.
https://twitter.com/JohnRentoul/status/1628027036940763138?s=20
Still digging into the Indian Council of Scotland, but they don't have a large online presence, at the very least.
I predict any digital ID proposal will be bloody awful, if the last deranged attempt at ID cards was anything to go by.
I thought it was a straight membership vote, but Wiki says " ... candidates must have the nomination of at least 100 members, from at least 20 branches".
What does this mean? Have the three declared candidates already secured this first hurdle of nomination?
Not a fan of SKS.
But, it does seem that the correct policy for Labour is to STFU.
At this rate, SKS is gonna win all 650 seats.
'Oct 1959: If the party of your choice nominated a generally well-qualified person as parliamentary candidate, would you vote for him/her if he/she were one of the following?
Roman Catholic 82% Yes
Woman 76%
Jew 71%
Coloured person 61%
Atheist 45%'
https://twitter.com/JohnRentoul/status/1627617259932860417?s=20
Similarly, with BigG's soup example - I would never pay £1.70 for a can when 75p was available.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/feb/21/forbes-doubles-down-and-torpedoes-snp-chances-pass-the-idiot-pills
Sturgeon was truly exceptional as a leader of a political party.
I see the pensions website on gov.uk is still down. Martin Lewis has a helluva following.
FM Andrew RT Davies it is then (and I am not being flippant).
What is permissible to bring into the public square? Rawls started off agreeing with Barty but drifted (a tad) more in the direction of Luckyguy.
Interesting.
https://www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/news/politics/indian-council-scotland-claim-new-28641874
Perhaps a bit of research may be useful before judging the merit of a statement from the "Indian Council of Scotland", which doesn't even have a website?
(In the episode 'The Test.' The latter quote is from 'A Wilson (Manager)?')
There is Regan and I'm not convinced that Forbes is out of it In the current climate - and he is surely vulnerable to another candidate trowing their hat in in the next two days.
But as a committed Catholic, I'd vote for Forbes or Tim Farron. No problem with heretics at all.
She may have crazy stuff, like hanging all Welshmen in the Highlands, to come out but I don't see how anyone could take serious issue with the published stuff.
Edited because I didn't want people to think I have no issue with hanging Welshmen...
https://www.oscr.org.uk/about-charities/search-the-register/charity-details?number=SC041819