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The problem for Sunak remains – most voters think Brexit was wrong – politicalbetting.com
The problem for Sunak remains – most voters think Brexit was wrong – politicalbetting.com
Yesterday was undoubtedly a big victory for Sunak but that is not the end of the matter. At some stage he will have to face up to the change in opinion on Brexit itself as evidenced in all the polls.
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That's Sunak's problem.
Constance Marten and Mark Gordon had not been seen since their car broke down near Bolton on 5 January.
The pair were found after a sighting by a member of the public in the Stanmer Villas area on Monday evening.
Police have launched an "urgent search" for the baby, thought to have been just days old when they disappeared.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-64794712
One patient dies every 23 minutes in England after long delay in A&E
More than 20,000 people died in 2022 after spending at least 12 hours waiting for care, figures show
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/feb/28/one-patient-dies-every-23-minutes-in-england-after-long-delay-in-ae
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11800537/Gary-Linekers-lawyers-say-HMRC-assessed-BBC-4-9-million-tax-battle.html
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-64727516
If you turn up in their car, to their studio, use their microphone; and do so on a regular basis for most of the year, then you’re an employee.
The one that got away was Lorraine Kelly at ITV, who argued that she had significant editorial control over her show, and that she played a character on screen rather than herself.
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2023/feb/27/gary-linekers-lawyers-say-hmrc-tax-probe-looking-in-the-wrong-place
Sooner or later parties need to acknowledge where the voters are, and that Brexit was a mistake. A mistake that we have to live with for present perhaps, but a mistake nonetheless.
But, I grant you, I could be wrong.
The law was changed a couple of years ago IIRC, so the onus is now on the employing company rather than the contractor to ensure IR35 compliance.
The whole area is one big mess now, with the new rules making it impossible for contractors to claim travel, lodging, and subsistence expenses from pre-tax income. So contract rates have gone through the roof, and companies are scared to hire them lest they be found in breach years later.
Why did so many of you keep confidently predicting an England victory? It’s your fault!
#SeerInAllThings
An obvious early step will be to remove all the cost of our threatened dealignment with EEA standards. There will be harrumphing. And "do you want to stay poor?" will be the disarm.
https://twitter.com/DavidMills73/status/1630461915531968513
Sunak is probably going to fall a long way short, but unlike Major, he has at least a chance to retrieve a bit of support in the next year and a half.
*) Left-wing person/organisation does legal tax avoidance: perfectly fine, nothing to see.
*) Right-wing person/organisation does legal tax avoidance: BURN THEM!!!!
I'm not into football, but from the little I see of him on the screen, Lineker comes across as a bit of a pillock - and worse, a poor communicator. He just doesn't seem to have any presence. But as I say, I don't see him much, so that might be unfair.
https://twitter.com/Channel4/status/1629858836055199744?t=BDj0s2q7omHfhxMvdNpPqA&s=19
I suspect we've just witnessed the death of Brexit As A Belief System. Go back a few years and it was possible to say "this is a sellout" the moment the deal was announced. Now, nobody more mainstream than Richard Tice is trying that.
So without the old time religion, does this hang together? It might, but I'm not sure it does. So the ingredients of UK divergence have to stand by their own merits.
I suspect that points to a lot of Brapprochment. For all the bluster of "we'll just make arrangements with better scientists instead", being in Horizon makes sense. The same is probably true of Erasmus. There simply aren't alternative trade deals that are worth giving up on the SM and CU for.
Presented as a list of something for something steps, my hunch is that every substep up Barnier's Staircase would be individually popular. You only get to 52% by adding lots of individual complaints. So the choice for future UK is to start making those steps or stay where we are for fear of where future future UK will end up.
The trickiness I think will be with engaging the EU who have at least ten higher priorities than new arrangements with the UK.
There is a load of theoretical hot air thrown around as "betrayal" of something which was described as the polar opposite during the referendum campaign. So I expect little resistance from the public - and the remaining ERG foamers will be pilloried.
https://www.espncricinfo.com/series/australia-tour-of-england-and-scotland-2005-139019/england-vs-australia-2nd-test-215010/full-scorecard
So I may need to invest in new kit as my channel has accelerated hard on every metric and I have half a dozen videos shot / partly edited. Haven't used a Mac in decades so not going to buy one of those. More PC power perhaps as I don't think my otherwise fabulous Surface Pro 8 was designed for this.
And broadband? With my current deal up looking seriously at Starlink...
Today, Temba Bavuma will captain South Africa in a Test for the first time.
He is the third non-white South African Test captain after Ashwell Prince and Hashim Amla.
But he is the first black African.
It's something of a shame that it will be overshadowed by questions about his place in the side, given his Hick-like inability to put regular big scores on the board, but it's still a big moment.
And it's against the West Indies, to underline the symbolism further.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/feb/28/cancelling-fuel-duty-freeze-could-pay-for-public-sector-pay-rise-says-ifs
The HP Z Series are pretty good.
https://www.hp.com/emea_middle_east-en/workstations/desktop-workstation-pc.html
Starlink’s uplink speed is around 8mbps.
If Rishi can continue down this path then I genuinely believe that Brexit will become a non issue for all except a tiny minority who are obsessed with it and the loss of their EU citizenship. This minority will no doubt be loud, just as the ERG nutters/Farage were loud in the past, but the vast majority will simply not care anymore. We will just have to fill our threads up with something else.
England are box office right now. The secondary market for Ashes tickets is already over £500 for a day.
You're right, that's not going to be sufficient.
Suella Braverman hasn't resigned over it.
That's a blow, but on the whole I'm still inclined to say on balance this is a good deal.
As I always pull it back to - people voted for Brexit to be better off. So if dropping nonsense like dealignment, or allowing people to come work here for as long as is needed, or opening our borders to drop the trade and tourism barriers means that people feel a tangible benefit, it will happen.
Brexit has a direct impact on things like the current fruit and vegetable shortage. It didn't create the weather, or spike energy prices. But it did mean that labour costs for UK producers skyrocketed when they couldn't employ enough pickers, and the ones they could employ had to be hired TWICE as a 6 month work visa doesn't cover the 9 month requirement. And the import and travel costs meaning much more expensive to sell here than in the EEA hence what has been grown staying there.
People can now see that. Even the trade groups who hoped it would free them from regulations are now saying how much worse off they are. This basic reality can't be avoided forever. The ERG and DUP nutters increasingly sound as mentalist as flat earthers.
Situations such as the pandemic and the Ukraine war have shown not only the benefits of co-operation, but also how having rivals such as the UK (and Switzerland) sitting outside the bloc, can push decision-making in the right direction, perhaps faster than might otherwise be the case.
Oddly have found that exporting first to 1080p then to 4k is doing the job...
"She is often described as a "polarising figure" but that is not really true: everyone is agreed she is a nightmare...But monsters deserve justice too."
completely, and then gone. With them as 'bad cop' he was able to be 'good cop' and adopt a far more conciliatory stance, with the enduring threat of the bill behind him if the EU did not play ball. I agree with being friendly and playing well with others, but it gets you nowhere if you don't have the negotiating position/firmness of intention to back it up.
"A German rail operator took its trains out of service after apparently discovering a serious safety issue. but after four days of disruption they realised there was actually no fault and they had just taken incorrect measurements"
https://twitter.com/joncstone/status/1630313301925154818
Ooops. But better safe than sorry...
They are not the voters Rishi needs back.
I have vague memories of a company in Cambridge being done for selling processors that were not as specified. Vaguer memories point to them having altered the internal chip ID... though I can't say how possible that is now.
It'd be interesting to know if that's still an issue.
The EU put up a brick wall. Johnson and Frost butted against it.
Putin has done more to mend the UK-EU relationship than the Protocol Bill.
Next challenge of course is getting the bowler-hatted twats and the mouth-foamer ERG to at least acquiesce. I don't think this is done and dusted yet.
Some were rightly saying that enforcing the follow on means tired bowlers.
With Broad and Anderson not exactly in their prime, and Stokes with a dodgy knee, a rapid 250 dec would probably have been a better bet.
In trumpeting his Windsor deal @RishiSunak on @BBCr4today inadvertently makes the case against Brexit:
"Northern Ireland...has access to the EU market, which makes it an incredibly attractive place to invest for business."
Eighteen months out for the election the object is to pitch to the middle group, get some airtime, and give Labour spokespeople something to refer to as shorthand whenever they are asked what their priorities are.
For those of us wanting some idea of what Labour would actually do, it doesn't help much, and we can only hope there is more forthcoming before the election comes.
The match that ended last night was great, but still a level below 2005.
If Sunak want beyond yesterday's new deal with the EU on Northern Ireland to try and rejoin the EU he would not only lose most of that 34% to RefUK, he would also still fail to win most of the 53% who think Brexit was wrong and would stay Labour or LD.
The Tories would end up with about the 9% they got under May in the 2019 European elections and Farage would be Leader of the Opposition.
Starmer also is fully aware that while 48% voted Remain, 2/3 of Westminster constituencies voted Leave. So to get most seats or a majority under FPTP he has to respect the Brexit vote, even if he puts forward a softer Brexit Deal for GB than Boris got if he becomes UK PM
This alone has made the probability of rejoining fall quite a lot. It's become clear that the EU has moved on from denial and anger over Brexit and now would like to make the best of it, the best form of Brexit for both sides includes a green channel for trusted traders in both the UK and EU that can pre-clear goods for export. Eventually we should approach a state where 90-95% of goods are pre-cleared with only a small proportion requiring full customs checks.
There was no trust left with Johnson and the EU would never have given him those concessions.
But my point was simply that "it's the economy stupid" is not the be all and end all. If it was, the Conservatives would have won reelection in 1997, and Labour would have been utterly slaughtered in 2010.
After a prolonged period in Government, parties get tired. Talent departs and is replaced by mediocrity. Message discipline disappears. Scandals that might have been brushed off now loom large. Tactical voting bites you in the ass.
Two years ago, I was in full agreement with isam that a Conservative majority was underpriced. Now, I think that's a pretty unlikely outcome, because the government simply looks tired.
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/3876664-zero-calorie-sweetener-popular-in-keto-diets-linked-to-strokes-heart-attacks/
...Stanley Hazen, the director of the Center for Cardiovascular Diagnostics and Prevention at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner Research Institute and lead researcher on the study, told CNN that “the degree of risk was not modest.”
“If your blood level of erythritol was in the top 25 percent compared to the bottom 25 percent, there was about a two-fold higher risk for heart attack and stroke. It’s on par with the strongest of cardiac risk factors, like diabetes,” Hazen said...