Spectacular! Fiona Bruce: “There are more people in this audience who voted for Boris Johnson than any other single Party here. So let’s have a show of hands shall we, who believes Boris Johnson was telling the truth?”#bbcqt #QuestionTime pic.twitter.com/iKJW1yVm2q
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But remember this about people who voted Conservative in December 2019; many - most? - did so not out of enthusiasm for Boris but horror of the alternative. We voted Boris knowing he might have driven the country into the ground but also that unlike his counterpart in the Labour Party he wouldn't have actively been trying to do so.
I reckon if you'd asked a similar question on the day after the election you'd have got a similarly damning result. No-one was expecting feats of great competence or honesty.
13 years of @SpaceX Florida liftoffs.
See the frequency skyrocketing as the years go by with a peak at the end
[📹Hazegrayart: https://buff.ly/42MXeD5]
https://twitter.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1638946761141108739?s=20P
https://twitter.com/i/status/1639076142899404803
https://twitter.com/i/status/1639002812582445056
...
HOW CGT HAS CHANGED
1965 – Labour's James Callaghan introduces capital gains tax at 30%
1988 – Conservative Chancellor Nigel Lawson aligns CGT with income tax bands, with the top rate at 40%
2008 – Alistair Darling cuts rates to a single 18% charge
2010 – George Osborne introduces higher 28% rate
2016 – Osborne cuts headline rate to 20% for investments, while keeping the 28% levy for residential property
2022 – Jeremy Hunt announces cut in CGT allowance from £12,300 to £6,000 a year from April 2023
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/03/23/labour-capital-gains-tax-rishi-sunak-taxes-keir-starmer/ (£££)
What really matters here is the ISA allowance. Will Labour dare touch that?
As long as you can put £20k into an ISA every year then only very, very rich people are going to be paying CGT at all.
So a £1,000 investment that grew to £2,000 over five years would be measured as a £1,300 investment as far as entry price goes.
Much lolz when the one-time anti-Corbo voter told the Tory minister to “shut his gob”…
Since no-one did you can't necessarily conclude that no-one believes Boris (although that might indeed be the case) but that no-one had the confidence to put up their hand up to say so, particularly because a microphone might have immediately been stuffed in their faces to explain themselves had they done so in the face of a hostile audience.
This is why we have a secret ballot.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/mar/23/ron-desantis-ukraine-war-russia-territorial-dispute
“I just don’t think that’s a sufficient interest for us to escalate more involvement. I would not want to see American troops involved there. But the idea that I think somehow Russia was justified [in invading] – that’s nonsense.”
So hard to see how he differs from Biden on this.
Actually that is quite funny and not at all surprising
Johnson's political career is over as his colleagues close ranks behind Sunak
Indeed Sunak's attitude to government is refreshing not least as Mark Drakeford joins him on Anglesey to endorse Holyhead as a new freeport. This collegiate approach would not have happened under Johnson or Truss
Anglesey freeport will give 'rocket boosters' to economy
https://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/anglesey-freeport-rocket-boost-economy-26544560#ICID=Android_DailyPostNewsApp_AppShare
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-64907379
That’s pretty bloody clear to me.
Part of the issue seems to be that a specific campaign group focused only on increasing pay won a majority of seats
But where you have got one union demanding 35% when even one else is getting mid single digits plus a one off payment there is no basis for negotiation.
They are just being unreasonable
The BJP are claiming the remarks were a slur on the OBC (Other Backward Class) community, but I don't think this is right as the name Modi doesn't seem to be associated with OBCs, but rather more with the Vaishya community. (Although Narendra Modi himself does come from an OBC community.)
I understand it is based on catching up on the losses they have suffered by settlements over the past 15 years. But using industrial action against the nation's health to get a monster inflation-causing settlement is unlikely to get them a place in the people's hearts.
The junior doctors got paid through Covid; they got their pension contributions met through Covid, they knew their employment was secure through Covid. Not many in the private sector could say that.
It’s exasperating when people make this error. Almost as bad as that stupid ‘average energy bills are capped at X.’ Who the fuck cares? Give us the actual price per unit and standing charge rate.
- using CPI (not RPI) the claim would be 16%
- No individual doctor has seen their pay impacted like that as they have progressed in seniority
- They have cherry picked 2008 - using any year before or after that the claim would be lower
Basically they over reached from a negotiating position
non financially aware.
So the telling part about the show of (no) hands is that there will have been a good batch of Tory members in that audience.
Johnson ‘cried cake’ - the game of offering non-existent benefits.
https://twitter.com/ShaunLintern/status/1638964128617312256?t=-Za_H5r1BvQbzqJYFJX88A&s=19
The Juniors got 2% last year, with 11% CPI, a real terms pay cut of 9%, equivalent to a month's pay in the year. No wonder they voted 98% to strike, and the strike was so solid.
Barclay refusing to even make any sort of counter offer, and pissing them about on negotiations is why they announced the strike over the Easter week.
F1: said it before, but the 5.5 (5.75 with boost) on Ladbrokes for Perez each way is too long. He should always, on pace, be in the top 2 until the other teams get their act together.
They have said - not a formal offer - that negotiations would be on the basis of a deal that would be the same structure as the other medical professionals
If there is no landing zone for a deal you don’t have to counter an offer
Incidentally, if the negotiations for Consultants and GPs don't progress by 1st April, we too are balloting to strike. 86% voted to strike in the BMA indicative ballot a few weeks ago.
( I voted for action short of strike myself, such as an over time ban and refusal to cover rota gaps, or go to management meetings etc).
Trying to step away from your personal interest - do you think the government can feasibly accept a 35% increase regardless of how justified it might be? What do you think the implications would be for other parts of the public sector?
There is a massive retention problem for Juniors. GPs too think their new contract unreasonable.
I’m actually interested in your views on the negotiating tactics - I think the BMA have screwed it up
If the price of something is £100 for the whole of a base year x
And in year x+1 the monthly inflation of that item is 2%, 2%, 2%, 2%. 2%, 2%, 2%, 2%, 2%, 10%. 2%, 2%,
then this is pound terms is £102, £102, £102, £102, £102, £102, £102,£102, £102, £110, £102, £102
So the reduction in yearly inflation from month 10 to month 11 (10% to 2%) whilst still positive DOES mean a fall in price (£110 to £102).
The BMA Juniors got a 98% vote to support strike action over this issue. It isn't a tiny group of activists. The strike was pretty universally observed too, showing it not to be just saloon bar talk.
When he proved unable to step up to the role of being Prime Minister, he needed to be moved on, as I was one of the first Conservatives on here to call for.
That Rishi didn't get to step straight into his shoes was an abberation I had no part in, but was quickly corrected. I am happy to extend my support for Rishi through the foreseeable future, and lend my weight to getting him re-elected. I personally think he has a greater claim to be morally fit for the post than someone who spent three years in the Shadow Cabinet sat next to a Labour leader who failed to act on anti-semitisim running through his party.
I wouldn't have put my hand up in response to that question because we all know that Boris is lying and that he just didn't care. It is remarkable we are still contriving ways to debate this self evident fact.
Voter asking the question is not amused...
The "need" for a real terms rise is applicable to many.
But those many aren't in a position to leverage the suffering of sick people to force their cause.
Like I said, reprehensible from a "caring" profession.
Do you think Tories may bring this up in the campaign??
https://brexitcentral.com/starmer-must-account-coordinating-foreign-powers-opposed-government-policy/
And then wonder why they won't vote Tory again. Actually.
What else can people do when the government refuses to make an opening offer?
It's utterly embarrassing to say that Boris isn't a liar.
Ultimately though it is about market forces. If you don't pay enough, you don't get the staff. Isn't that what Brexit was about? Creating a high wage, high skills workforce?
The Conservatives were in a dismal place in summer 2019, but in large part that was because of the effects of rabble rousers like B Johnson Esq. Like Howard Kirk in The History Man, it's a bit galling for him to claim credit for solving a problem he had a large part in creating.
What it means is that people feel a brief respite. The price is not as mad as it was, but it is still rising, and is still higher than the point where we started.
The doublethink at the moment is that some have decided that inflation must be falling because the government have seen off the unions and because fuel prices are off the peak.
So we get statements about inflation falling. Whilst inflation is rising.
This isn't to say that the junior doctors arguments are sound or valid in every respect. This entire country has gone through the equivalent of a lost 15 years now in terms of wage growth. A lot of this has been driven by statistical nonsense, what we have seen in a reduction in the number of people earning super salaries in the City which has driven the average down considerably without the majority being worse off at all but the fact is that the country does not earn nearly as much as when financial services were at their peak and there is less money to go around. Trying to restore some hypothetical high point of real terms wages is not a reasonable or "fair" proposition when almost no one else can do so either.
The NHS is by far the biggest employer in the country, probably the biggest in western Europe. We indulge in silly fantasies about those who work there but they are no different from the rest of us. They want paid a rate for what they do that earns them the standard of living they aspire to. And if their employer won't give it to them they eventually have to act. That's the way of the world.
The Times has been told that Johnson is already planning for the “worst-case scenario”, a ten-day suspension from the Commons, which could trigger a by-election in Uxbridge & Ruislip.
Johnson has been more active in the constituency since becoming a backbencher and is campaigning for a new hospital in Hillingdon and a new police station in Uxbridge.
His efforts have been focused on local issues and his personal brand and he does not mention Rishi Sunak as prime minister on his website at all....
...The son of Sue Gray... ...has campaigned for [the Labour candidate] in the constituency.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/boris-johnson-partygate-latest-news-rishi-sunak-tory-party-live-2023-w2m6sd0bw
"Junior Doctor" has a £12,000/year shelf stacker sound to it.
As we know on here because several people pointed it out, the payscale and progression of "Junior Doctors" is something that most people in the country could only dream of. And AIUI there is huge competition to become one.
Everyone knows they are not getting 35% and they are using the nation's sick as leverage which I suppose they must live with. Oh but Barclay apparently didn't have time in his diary.
As for @Foxy striking - after all he has shared with us about his position that I'm afraid is hugely disappointing if not at all surprising from someone senior within the NHS. How did people on healthy six figure salaries get a pass from the left. Man the pickets for people earning now or at some time in the future £100k+.
I don't know about the Met Police but if we could somehow start again with our national health system we absolutely should.
Boris Johnson is a brazen, proven, repeated liar. We all know this. We have all the evidence about partygate. We have him openly lying to the enquiry about him lying to parliament and being called out for it by Jenkin and Howard. Yet to declare that he lied to parliament somehow makes me biased...
https://twitter.com/implausibleblog/status/1639044255942430722
As an example, the successful HIMARS systems are old, almost obsolete in American terms, and were due to be replaced anyway in the next couple of years. Putting a huge dollar value on them is misrepresentative, and drives a lot of the opposition in the US to helping the Ukranians.
https://twitter.com/implausibleblog/status/1639045921718804481
I know that the remaining PB Tory diehards get excited when they think the latest bit of sophistry has registered. So do I - because as I have said over and over, red wall voters aren't stupid. They may well be as ill-informed as most voters but they know when they are being patronised and lied to.
Andrew Bowie was a perfect example of today's modern Tory. When told that voters are fed up with being patted off with spin lines and not engaging on the actual issues (which he lists) Bowie responds by patting him on the head and actually telling him that his actual issues are the ones the PM is chasing because those are the British People's Issues.
Toast. Sadly for decent people like @Tissue_Price who going off last nights show is in danger of getting demolished,
That said, all of American public discourse at the moment is thoroughly toxic.
https://www.bma.org.uk/pay-and-contracts/pay/junior-doctors-pay-scales/pay-scales-for-junior-doctors-in-england
29k at the start, 58k at the top of the training scale, just over a decade later.
A lot, and consultants are paid more.
But there are plenty on the board who wouldn't get out of bed for that. We just don't hear about them, because their pay and bonuses aren't public.
We know that international aid is high on people’s list of things which government should spend less money, especially at a time of economic uncertainty at home.
The Biden adminstration’s use of huge numbers galvanises Republican opposition - although if it comes to spending real money on making new stuff for Ukraine, the Republican donors in the military industrial complex will make their view known.