November. Sheesh, they're going to drag this out to the bitter end aren't they ?
The bitter end would be 28 January 2025. Don’t rule it out.
This hits the celebrated, and unresolved 'surprise test' problem in philosophy.
Which is: Teacher: 'During this term you shall have surprise test on Tudor History'.
As it is a surprise it can't be the last day of term; so it can't be the day before, etc and so on for each day. So there can't be a surprise test at all...
That's a logic fail. The surprise would be that they waited until the last day. Or the test might not happen at all.
So no option is ruled out.
(Admittedly the just doesn't happen option is a bit more problematic with general elections.)
No. At the end of final day of term -1 you already know the test will be tomorrow. No surprise.
People are focused on the better recent economic news as providing a more advantageous backdrop for the Tories next year. But in the markets the focus is on US inflation and the Fed and there is a widespread expectation that one way or another the Fed will have to see the US falling into recession later this year to squeeze inflation out of the system. The likelihood of a soft landing for the US economy is generally seen as low. If that happens can we be confident that the UK economy won't follow the US into recession? I would be wary of thinking the economic backdrop in 18 months' time is necessarily going to be that supportive to the Conservatives' chances.
Remember that all the predictions on here in Autumn 2022 were that by Spring 2023 the UK would be in economic armageddon and that there was no chance of the economy recovering by the next GE.
It might be fine in the People's Republic of Southampton, but have you been to Lidl lately?
Why would anyone want to unless you want stollen and gingerbread for Christmas.
The prices don't seem to be any lower than Asda or Tesco, the quality is low and the experience is dreadful.
I have a theory that the people extolling Lidl and Aldi are Waitrose shoppers who are too snobby to go to Asda but either have money problems and/or are 'fashionably slumming it'.
Surely Johnson will face a by-election then? Another Labour gain?
Possibly. I still expect the committee to pull its punch. It isn't that they don't conclude he is guilty as sin. Its that they fear a big punishment will be contested by mince MPs and bring the committee itself into disrepute.
So I expect a sanction just below the recall point which will slip by without much noise before his loyal followers start ramping him up as having been vindicated.
There are a lot of Unionist votes to be squeezed there. Labour really should win this. If they don't the SNP are once again proving a lot more resilient than some of us hope.
But for most people, they will just see "Labour beat SNP in a central belt seat".
This is a huge moment for the SNP and Labour. Labour must win it, and the SNP must get their expectation management right.
Interesting indeed. Especially *after* SKS, since the last GE, has gone full on Union Flegs behind the desk, anti-indy referendum, pro-Brexit. Which will have some effect on some Labour voters. So it's not all one way.
But if we're going to be characterising voters like that (and I'm slightly uncomfortable about doing so - SKS doesn't seem particularly pro-British to me, but granted he is much more so than his predecessor; and Labour voters won't be monolithic in their tastes in that respect, and nor will voters for other parties) it should be noted that there is a not inconsiderable Con vote there to squeeze, which SKS will be much better placed to do than his predecessor. Plus of course a not inconsiderable DNV bloc, ditto.
Surely Johnson will face a by-election then? Another Labour gain?
Possibly. I still expect the committee to pull its punch. It isn't that they don't conclude he is guilty as sin. Its that they fear a big punishment will be contested by mince MPs and bring the committee itself into disrepute.
So I expect a sanction just below the recall point which will slip by without much noise before his loyal followers start ramping him up as having been vindicated.
You are probably right but in politics just now expect the unexpected
One of Scotland's main police control rooms used a fake system to manipulate response time targets for eight years, according to documents seen by the BBC.
These are the sorts of thing where generally no-one goes to prison. And these sorts of corruptions are more common than they should be. It is top people in the system who should be serving prison sentences for this kind of corrupt failure. Only then will values improve.
Some low level people may lose their jobs.
The person who was in charge of this will be moved to another, more responsible and better paid job.
Brows will be furrowed. Lessons Will Be Learned.
You do realise it stopped in 2015 so I suspect most will have moved , retired, resigned etc. Including the latest chancer who threw in the towel recently
Why would that change the outcome? It’s a performative dance, not actually about doing something.
"Edward Leigh, the Conservative MP whose Gainsborough constituency contains RAF Scampton, which was the base for the Dambusters bomber squadron in the second world war, said the council would seek an injunction to stop it being used and that he supported it."
Will WW2 EVER be over for the English? What the fuck does what happened 80 years ago have to do with what happens to the site now?
Well it was also the base for RAFAT until about a year ago. You know those red planes that are a great recruiting tool and represent the country abroad do nothing much?
I’ll yield to superior knowledge here (ie Dura Ace), but has anyone ever joined the RAF because of the Red Arrows? Even when I was a pre adolescent fanboi, an RA aircraft never made it into my gluey air wing of model aircraft (Folland Gnats in my day I think). I’d imagine the RAF are pretty oversubscribed for air crew candidates at the best of times.
I was an instructor at 4FTS for three years so I met a LOT of RAF student pilots. Nobody ever mentioned the RA as a reason for embarking on a career with a light blue uniform that makes you look like a steward on a cross channel ferry. It might have a marginal effect for other trades (I don't know) but the RAF, in common with all of the services, has a retention problem not a recruitment problem and the RA do fuck all for that.
I also did quite a few Hawk familiarisation flights for foreign officers (the night out with the Bahrainis in Hull was a five star epic) and none of them ever mentioned the RA as a reason for clicking Buy It Now on the Hawk.
Their Airships would love to get shot but it's politically impossible.
Surely Johnson will face a by-election then? Another Labour gain?
Possibly. I still expect the committee to pull its punch. It isn't that they don't conclude he is guilty as sin. Its that they fear a big punishment will be contested by mince MPs and bring the committee itself into disrepute.
So I expect a sanction just below the recall point which will slip by without much noise before his loyal followers start ramping him up as having been vindicated.
You are probably right but in politics just now expect the unexpected
I think the precedent just set is significant; making it slightly harder for Boris to get away with it.
November. Sheesh, they're going to drag this out to the bitter end aren't they ?
The bitter end would be 28 January 2025. Don’t rule it out.
This hits the celebrated, and unresolved 'surprise test' problem in philosophy.
Which is: Teacher: 'During this term you shall have surprise test on Tudor History'.
As it is a surprise it can't be the last day of term; so it can't be the day before, etc and so on for each day. So there can't be a surprise test at all.
But in reality there can. Elections are the same. Until the last three weeks - when it can't be a surprise. Surprise is important for the party in government.
This suggests September or October for the election.
Edit: I see turbotubbs has been thinking the same.
I am intrigued that you think a surprise test on Tudor history is as bad as being shot at dawn on a day to be determined.
You must have had a really rubbish History teacher for there to be such trauma.
Its in keeping with the attrition rate for those in the Tudor royal circle...
Thoughts on SKS and Labour council tax freeze policy this AM…. Hmmmm.
Might be smart politics but I’m not sure this bodes well for a 2024 manifesto. Once again the tax on the 1% is being wheeled out to allow for a CT freeze.
This constant reusing of windfall tax/tax on high earners could lay them open to claims of lacking seriousness.
I still maintain they are the best option for 2024 and it would take a lot, put bluntly, for me to change my mind on that front but I am starting to have concerns that they haven’t really grasped just how fundamentally transformative their government needs to be to make the tough decisions needed.
Reeves needs to be careful with her promises for the use of never ending windfall taxes
Labour's policy is to decimate the Scottish oil and gas industry with no new licences and high taxes resulting in much diminished taxes anyway
Furthermore what happens next year when council taxes rise again plus this year's or is her idea to continue subsidising these rises which is our case this year was 9.9% as I posted earlier
Of course she can make these promises knowing that she will not be in power to implement them so it is a free hit, it may be politics but it certainly is not economics
Let’s not forget that local government is really in need of extra investment too.
I don’t have a problem with Labour making arguments that those with broader shoulders can contribute more (they can, within reason), or to transform elements of the economy (if they can demonstrate ways of doing so that will make economic sense). The problem is at the moment there is no big idea. Tinkering round the edges and playing the soak the rich tune. Where’s the dynamism and new ways of thinking that we need from a new government?
I will give them the benefit of the doubt that they are keeping their powder dry but… hmmm. I’m unenthusiastic right now.
Sorry to hark back to discussion on the previous thread, but you can’t blame Cameron and Osborne for the use of the registered electorate, rather than population, as the basis for revising Parliamentary boundaries. This practice has been in place since long before either of them was born: it was first adopted for the interim review of exceptionally large seats that took effect at the 1945 GE and it has applied at every review since then. The last general review to be based on population rather than electorate was that of 1918, 105 years ago.
Do try to keep up.
Cameron and Osborne first purged the rolls and made registration harder in order to reduced the number of registered electors, and hence seats, in Labour-leaning areas and increase those in Conservative-leaning areas. Do try to keep up.
"Edward Leigh, the Conservative MP whose Gainsborough constituency contains RAF Scampton, which was the base for the Dambusters bomber squadron in the second world war, said the council would seek an injunction to stop it being used and that he supported it."
Will WW2 EVER be over for the English? What the fuck does what happened 80 years ago have to do with what happens to the site now?
Well it was also the base for RAFAT until about a year ago. You know those red planes that are a great recruiting tool and represent the country abroad do nothing much?
I’ll yield to superior knowledge here (ie Dura Ace), but has anyone ever joined the RAF because of the Red Arrows? Even when I was a pre adolescent fanboi, an RA aircraft never made it into my gluey air wing of model aircraft (Folland Gnats in my day I think). I’d imagine the RAF are pretty oversubscribed for air crew candidates at the best of times.
Anecdotal evidence I know, but they definitely piqued my interest in planes at the 1988 Farnborough airshow. The Reds, and standing right behind Concorde as it took off!
Concorde was wonderful but a bit of a damp squib when the speed on the cabin went to Mach 2. V nice Beef Wellington for Lunch iirc. Pleased to have been on it if only round the Bay of Biscay...
There are a lot of Unionist votes to be squeezed there. Labour really should win this. If they don't the SNP are once again proving a lot more resilient than some of us hope.
But for most people, they will just see "Labour beat SNP in a central belt seat".
This is a huge moment for the SNP and Labour. Labour must win it, and the SNP must get their expectation management right.
Interesting indeed. Especially *after* SKS, since the last GE, has gone full on Union Flegs behind the desk, anti-indy referendum, pro-Brexit. Which will have some effect on some Labour voters. So it's not all one way.
But if we're going to be characterising voters like that (and I'm slightly uncomfortable about doing so - SKS doesn't seem particularly pro-British to me, but granted he is much more so than his predecessor; and Labour voters won't be monolithic in their tastes in that respect, and nor will voters for other parties) it should be noted that there is a not inconsiderable Con vote there to squeeze, which SKS will be much better placed to do than his predecessor. Plus of course a not inconsiderable DNV bloc, ditto.
Sure, but that is already covered in the previous post. And SKS's change of tone over the referendum issue has been marked. PLus remmber Brexit is not popular in Scotland, even with some of those who voted for it.
Thoughts on SKS and Labour council tax freeze policy this AM…. Hmmmm.
Might be smart politics but I’m not sure this bodes well for a 2024 manifesto. Once again the tax on the 1% is being wheeled out to allow for a CT freeze.
This constant reusing of windfall tax/tax on high earners could lay them open to claims of lacking seriousness.
I still maintain they are the best option for 2024 and it would take a lot, put bluntly, for me to change my mind on that front but I am starting to have concerns that they haven’t really grasped just how fundamentally transformative their government needs to be to make the tough decisions needed.
Reeves needs to be careful with her promises for the use of never ending windfall taxes
Labour's policy is to decimate the Scottish oil and gas industry with no new licences and high taxes resulting in much diminished taxes anyway
Furthermore what happens next year when council taxes rise again plus this year's or is her idea to continue subsidising these rises which is our case this year was 9.9% as I posted earlier
Of course she can make these promises knowing that she will not be in power to implement them so it is a free hit, it may be politics but it certainly is not economics
Let’s not forget that local government is really in need of extra investment too.
I don’t have a problem with Labour making arguments that those with broader shoulders can contribute more (they can, within reason), or to transform elements of the economy (if they can demonstrate ways of doing so that will make economic sense). The problem is at the moment there is no big idea. Tinkering round the edges and playing the soak the rich tune. Where’s the dynamism and new ways of thinking that we need from a new government?
I will give them the benefit of the doubt that they are keeping their powder dry but… hmmm. I’m unenthusiastic right now.
They're starting to show their hand now and it's looking like the same old stuff. As I was rather afraid of - if they had big ideas they would have been talking about them months ago.
"Edward Leigh, the Conservative MP whose Gainsborough constituency contains RAF Scampton, which was the base for the Dambusters bomber squadron in the second world war, said the council would seek an injunction to stop it being used and that he supported it."
Will WW2 EVER be over for the English? What the fuck does what happened 80 years ago have to do with what happens to the site now?
Well it was also the base for RAFAT until about a year ago. You know those red planes that are a great recruiting tool and represent the country abroad do nothing much?
I’ll yield to superior knowledge here (ie Dura Ace), but has anyone ever joined the RAF because of the Red Arrows? Even when I was a pre adolescent fanboi, an RA aircraft never made it into my gluey air wing of model aircraft (Folland Gnats in my day I think). I’d imagine the RAF are pretty oversubscribed for air crew candidates at the best of times.
I was an instructor at 4FTS for three years so I met a LOT of RAF student pilots. Nobody ever mentioned the RA as a reason for embarking on a career with a light blue uniform that makes you look like a steward on a cross channel ferry. It might have a marginal effect for other trades (I don't know) but the RAF, in common with all of the services, has a retention problem not a recruitment problem and the RA do fuck all for that.
I also did quite a few Hawk familiarisation flights for foreign officers (the night out with the Bahrainis in Hull was a five star epic) and none of them ever mentioned the RA as a reason for clicking Buy It Now on the Hawk.
Their Airships would love to get shot but it's politically impossible.
Sorry to hark back to discussion on the previous thread, but you can’t blame Cameron and Osborne for the use of the registered electorate, rather than population, as the basis for revising Parliamentary boundaries. This practice has been in place since long before either of them was born: it was first adopted for the interim review of exceptionally large seats that took effect at the 1945 GE and it has applied at every review since then. The last general review to be based on population rather than electorate was that of 1918, 105 years ago.
Do try to keep up.
Cameron and Osborne first purged the rolls and made registration harder in order to reduced the number of registered electors, and hence seats, in Labour-leaning areas and increase those in Conservative-leaning areas. Do try to keep up.
They didn't make registration harder. Do try to keep up.
People are focused on the better recent economic news as providing a more advantageous backdrop for the Tories next year. But in the markets the focus is on US inflation and the Fed and there is a widespread expectation that one way or another the Fed will have to see the US falling into recession later this year to squeeze inflation out of the system. The likelihood of a soft landing for the US economy is generally seen as low. If that happens can we be confident that the UK economy won't follow the US into recession? I would be wary of thinking the economic backdrop in 18 months' time is necessarily going to be that supportive to the Conservatives' chances.
Remember that all the predictions on here in Autumn 2022 were that by Spring 2023 the UK would be in economic armageddon and that there was no chance of the economy recovering by the next GE.
It might be fine in the People's Republic of Southampton, but have you been to Lidl lately?
Read back some of the economic predictions for Spring 2023 on here 6 months ago.
At the time I was one of the optimists indicating that the economy would be flat and that an actual recession was unlikely. It now looks like we will have some very modest growth.
"Edward Leigh, the Conservative MP whose Gainsborough constituency contains RAF Scampton, which was the base for the Dambusters bomber squadron in the second world war, said the council would seek an injunction to stop it being used and that he supported it."
Will WW2 EVER be over for the English? What the fuck does what happened 80 years ago have to do with what happens to the site now?
Well it was also the base for RAFAT until about a year ago. You know those red planes that are a great recruiting tool and represent the country abroad do nothing much?
I’ll yield to superior knowledge here (ie Dura Ace), but has anyone ever joined the RAF because of the Red Arrows? Even when I was a pre adolescent fanboi, an RA aircraft never made it into my gluey air wing of model aircraft (Folland Gnats in my day I think). I’d imagine the RAF are pretty oversubscribed for air crew candidates at the best of times.
I was an instructor at 4FTS for three years so I met a LOT of RAF student pilots. Nobody ever mentioned the RA as a reason for embarking on a career with a light blue uniform that makes you look like a steward on a cross channel ferry. It might have a marginal effect for other trades (I don't know) but the RAF, in common with all of the services, has a retention problem not a recruitment problem and the RA do fuck all for that.
I also did quite a few Hawk familiarisation flights for foreign officers (the night out with the Bahrainis in Hull was a five star epic) and none of them ever mentioned the RA as a reason for clicking Buy It Now on the Hawk.
Their Airships would love to get shot but it's politically impossible.
Sorry to hark back to discussion on the previous thread, but you can’t blame Cameron and Osborne for the use of the registered electorate, rather than population, as the basis for revising Parliamentary boundaries. This practice has been in place since long before either of them was born: it was first adopted for the interim review of exceptionally large seats that took effect at the 1945 GE and it has applied at every review since then. The last general review to be based on population rather than electorate was that of 1918, 105 years ago.
Do try to keep up.
Cameron and Osborne first purged the rolls and made registration harder in order to reduced the number of registered electors, and hence seats, in Labour-leaning areas and increase those in Conservative-leaning areas. Do try to keep up.
They didn't make registration harder. Do try to keep up.
Yes they did. Saying "no they didn't" doesn't make it so. Individual registration was designed very specifically to slow the registration rate of young people as they came of age. Successfully so. A lot of work needed by non-Tory activists to ensure people actually got themselves registered after that change.
Sorry to hark back to discussion on the previous thread, but you can’t blame Cameron and Osborne for the use of the registered electorate, rather than population, as the basis for revising Parliamentary boundaries. This practice has been in place since long before either of them was born: it was first adopted for the interim review of exceptionally large seats that took effect at the 1945 GE and it has applied at every review since then. The last general review to be based on population rather than electorate was that of 1918, 105 years ago.
Do try to keep up.
Cameron and Osborne first purged the rolls and made registration harder in order to reduced the number of registered electors, and hence seats, in Labour-leaning areas and increase those in Conservative-leaning areas. Do try to keep up.
They didn't make registration harder. Do try to keep up.
Yes they did. Saying "no they didn't" doesn't make it so. Individual registration was designed very specifically to slow the registration rate of young people as they came of age. Successfully so. A lot of work needed by non-Tory activists to ensure people actually got themselves registered after that change.
That's not what IER was designed for, and once again you're assuming what you're trying to prove.
Sorry to hark back to discussion on the previous thread, but you can’t blame Cameron and Osborne for the use of the registered electorate, rather than population, as the basis for revising Parliamentary boundaries. This practice has been in place since long before either of them was born: it was first adopted for the interim review of exceptionally large seats that took effect at the 1945 GE and it has applied at every review since then. The last general review to be based on population rather than electorate was that of 1918, 105 years ago.
Do try to keep up.
Cameron and Osborne first purged the rolls and made registration harder in order to reduced the number of registered electors, and hence seats, in Labour-leaning areas and increase those in Conservative-leaning areas. Do try to keep up.
They didn't make registration harder. Do try to keep up.
Yes they did. Saying "no they didn't" doesn't make it so. Individual registration was designed very specifically to slow the registration rate of young people as they came of age. Successfully so. A lot of work needed by non-Tory activists to ensure people actually got themselves registered after that change.
Was individual registration not a recommendation of the impartial Electoral Commission following the Lutfur Rahman trial, when it was determined that there were numerous cases of a dozen people registered in a small apartment?
Sorry to hark back to discussion on the previous thread, but you can’t blame Cameron and Osborne for the use of the registered electorate, rather than population, as the basis for revising Parliamentary boundaries. This practice has been in place since long before either of them was born: it was first adopted for the interim review of exceptionally large seats that took effect at the 1945 GE and it has applied at every review since then. The last general review to be based on population rather than electorate was that of 1918, 105 years ago.
Do try to keep up.
Cameron and Osborne first purged the rolls and made registration harder in order to reduced the number of registered electors, and hence seats, in Labour-leaning areas and increase those in Conservative-leaning areas. Do try to keep up.
They didn't make registration harder. Do try to keep up.
Yes they did. Saying "no they didn't" doesn't make it so. Individual registration was designed very specifically to slow the registration rate of young people as they came of age. Successfully so. A lot of work needed by non-Tory activists to ensure people actually got themselves registered after that change.
Was individual registration not a recommendation of the impartial Electoral Commission following the Lutfur Rahman trial, when it was determined that there were numerous cases of a dozen people registered in a small apartment?
Don't confuse him with facts, he'd rather wallow in his hatred.
That bit in Gran Turismo 7 when the Red Arrows fly over the S/F line at Goodwood when you're beating the balls out of a Mini Cooper is undeniably spectacular however.
On current Scottish GE polling Labour should win Rutherglen and Hamilton West. But this won't be a walk in the park. Humsa and the SNP will throw everything at this, so Labour will need too. The consequences could potentially be pretty dire if they don't; raising questions as to whether they can win a majority.
Sorry to hark back to discussion on the previous thread, but you can’t blame Cameron and Osborne for the use of the registered electorate, rather than population, as the basis for revising Parliamentary boundaries. This practice has been in place since long before either of them was born: it was first adopted for the interim review of exceptionally large seats that took effect at the 1945 GE and it has applied at every review since then. The last general review to be based on population rather than electorate was that of 1918, 105 years ago.
Do try to keep up.
Cameron and Osborne first purged the rolls and made registration harder in order to reduced the number of registered electors, and hence seats, in Labour-leaning areas and increase those in Conservative-leaning areas. Do try to keep up.
They didn't make registration harder. Do try to keep up.
Yes they did. Saying "no they didn't" doesn't make it so. Individual registration was designed very specifically to slow the registration rate of young people as they came of age. Successfully so. A lot of work needed by non-Tory activists to ensure people actually got themselves registered after that change.
Was individual registration not a recommendation of the impartial Electoral Commission following the Lutfur Rahman trial, when it was determined that there were numerous cases of a dozen people registered in a small apartment?
Don't confuse him with facts, he'd rather wallow in his hatred.
Laughable. Pitiful even. "Hatred" is giggle-inducing. Does rather tell us what you see in the mirror though.
Sorry to hark back to discussion on the previous thread, but you can’t blame Cameron and Osborne for the use of the registered electorate, rather than population, as the basis for revising Parliamentary boundaries. This practice has been in place since long before either of them was born: it was first adopted for the interim review of exceptionally large seats that took effect at the 1945 GE and it has applied at every review since then. The last general review to be based on population rather than electorate was that of 1918, 105 years ago.
Do try to keep up.
Cameron and Osborne first purged the rolls and made registration harder in order to reduced the number of registered electors, and hence seats, in Labour-leaning areas and increase those in Conservative-leaning areas. Do try to keep up.
They didn't make registration harder. Do try to keep up.
Yes they did. Saying "no they didn't" doesn't make it so. Individual registration was designed very specifically to slow the registration rate of young people as they came of age. Successfully so. A lot of work needed by non-Tory activists to ensure people actually got themselves registered after that change.
Was individual registration not a recommendation of the impartial Electoral Commission following the Lutfur Rahman trial, when it was determined that there were numerous cases of a dozen people registered in a small apartment?
Don't confuse him with facts, he'd rather wallow in his hatred.
Laughable. Pitiful even. "Hatred" is giggle-inducing. Does rather tell us what you see in the mirror though.
On current Scottish GE polling Labour should win Rutherglen and Hamilton West. But this won't be a walk in the park. Humsa and the SNP will throw everything at this, so Labour will need too. The consequences could potentially be pretty dire if they don't; raising questions as to whether they can win a majority.
Not really. All by-elections tell us is how pissed off (or not) people are with the government at a particular moment, not how the next election will turn out. The Conservatives lost Monmouth and Kincardine and Deeside in 1991 but won them back the following year. Heck, it's only two years since they picked up Hartlepool. As for Copeland...
The snag for the SNP is that they *are* part of the government people may be pissed off with. That's surely what Labour have to focus on if they are to win.
"Edward Leigh, the Conservative MP whose Gainsborough constituency contains RAF Scampton, which was the base for the Dambusters bomber squadron in the second world war, said the council would seek an injunction to stop it being used and that he supported it."
Will WW2 EVER be over for the English? What the fuck does what happened 80 years ago have to do with what happens to the site now?
Well it was also the base for RAFAT until about a year ago. You know those red planes that are a great recruiting tool and represent the country abroad do nothing much?
I’ll yield to superior knowledge here (ie Dura Ace), but has anyone ever joined the RAF because of the Red Arrows? Even when I was a pre adolescent fanboi, an RA aircraft never made it into my gluey air wing of model aircraft (Folland Gnats in my day I think). I’d imagine the RAF are pretty oversubscribed for air crew candidates at the best of times.
Anecdotal evidence I know, but they definitely piqued my interest in planes at the 1988 Farnborough airshow. The Reds, and standing right behind Concorde as it took off!
Concorde was wonderful but a bit of a damp squib when the speed on the cabin went to Mach 2. V nice Beef Wellington for Lunch iirc. Pleased to have been on it if only round the Bay of Biscay...
But the defining moment was not reaching Mach 2 but the point where the Bristol Channel was cleared and the pilot put the burners on… with a tail wind, reached JFK in about 3h20m on the one occasion I had the pleasure of flying, still have a bag with all the tickets, luggage tags, menu etc somewhere…
"Edward Leigh, the Conservative MP whose Gainsborough constituency contains RAF Scampton, which was the base for the Dambusters bomber squadron in the second world war, said the council would seek an injunction to stop it being used and that he supported it."
Will WW2 EVER be over for the English? What the fuck does what happened 80 years ago have to do with what happens to the site now?
In fairness, the Council's issue is that they already had a regeneration scheme planned for the site and this will at least delay it.
The Dambusters point adds a bit of colour but I agree it's meaningless and odd to mention - the site closed as an RAF base last year, so it will have to be something else and the sooner the better really.
Sorry to hark back to discussion on the previous thread, but you can’t blame Cameron and Osborne for the use of the registered electorate, rather than population, as the basis for revising Parliamentary boundaries. This practice has been in place since long before either of them was born: it was first adopted for the interim review of exceptionally large seats that took effect at the 1945 GE and it has applied at every review since then. The last general review to be based on population rather than electorate was that of 1918, 105 years ago.
Do try to keep up.
Cameron and Osborne first purged the rolls and made registration harder in order to reduced the number of registered electors, and hence seats, in Labour-leaning areas and increase those in Conservative-leaning areas. Do try to keep up.
They didn't make registration harder. Do try to keep up.
Yes they did. Saying "no they didn't" doesn't make it so. Individual registration was designed very specifically to slow the registration rate of young people as they came of age. Successfully so. A lot of work needed by non-Tory activists to ensure people actually got themselves registered after that change.
Was individual registration not a recommendation of the impartial Electoral Commission following the Lutfur Rahman trial, when it was determined that there were numerous cases of a dozen people registered in a small apartment?
It was, and there was a real issue with certain households in certain ethnic & religious groups. The change to IER wasn't the issue, it was how it was applied that created the problem.
My old university made registration to vote part of its freshers process. Others less so, with a corresponding drop off in the number of people able to vote. Ideal for a government happy to see fewer new voters.
Sorry to hark back to discussion on the previous thread, but you can’t blame Cameron and Osborne for the use of the registered electorate, rather than population, as the basis for revising Parliamentary boundaries. This practice has been in place since long before either of them was born: it was first adopted for the interim review of exceptionally large seats that took effect at the 1945 GE and it has applied at every review since then. The last general review to be based on population rather than electorate was that of 1918, 105 years ago.
Do try to keep up.
Cameron and Osborne first purged the rolls and made registration harder in order to reduced the number of registered electors, and hence seats, in Labour-leaning areas and increase those in Conservative-leaning areas. Do try to keep up.
They didn't make registration harder. Do try to keep up.
Yes they did. Saying "no they didn't" doesn't make it so. Individual registration was designed very specifically to slow the registration rate of young people as they came of age. Successfully so. A lot of work needed by non-Tory activists to ensure people actually got themselves registered after that change.
Was individual registration not a recommendation of the impartial Electoral Commission following the Lutfur Rahman trial, when it was determined that there were numerous cases of a dozen people registered in a small apartment?
Don't confuse him with facts, he'd rather wallow in his hatred.
Laughable. Pitiful even. "Hatred" is giggle-inducing. Does rather tell us what you see in the mirror though.
I'm sorry you can't recognise what drives you.
Well as this was brought in by the coalition government and I am a member of one of the parties which was in that coalition, perhaps you think my hatred is aimed at myself?
IF there is a by election in Rutherglen then surely LAB HAVE to win if they are to appear to be in real contention for major gains in Scotland in GE 2024?
Sorry to hark back to discussion on the previous thread, but you can’t blame Cameron and Osborne for the use of the registered electorate, rather than population, as the basis for revising Parliamentary boundaries. This practice has been in place since long before either of them was born: it was first adopted for the interim review of exceptionally large seats that took effect at the 1945 GE and it has applied at every review since then. The last general review to be based on population rather than electorate was that of 1918, 105 years ago.
Do try to keep up.
Cameron and Osborne first purged the rolls and made registration harder in order to reduced the number of registered electors, and hence seats, in Labour-leaning areas and increase those in Conservative-leaning areas. Do try to keep up.
They didn't make registration harder. Do try to keep up.
Yes they did. Saying "no they didn't" doesn't make it so. Individual registration was designed very specifically to slow the registration rate of young people as they came of age. Successfully so. A lot of work needed by non-Tory activists to ensure people actually got themselves registered after that change.
Was individual registration not a recommendation of the impartial Electoral Commission following the Lutfur Rahman trial, when it was determined that there were numerous cases of a dozen people registered in a small apartment?
Don't confuse him with facts, he'd rather wallow in his hatred.
It was actually first introduced to Parliament before the Rahman trial. The first recommmendation for IER from the Commission was after the “Banana Republic” trial of 2005, but the Brown government didn’t implement it.
Surely Johnson will face a by-election then? Another Labour gain?
Possibly. I still expect the committee to pull its punch. It isn't that they don't conclude he is guilty as sin. Its that they fear a big punishment will be contested by mince MPs and bring the committee itself into disrepute.
So I expect a sanction just below the recall point which will slip by without much noise before his loyal followers start ramping him up as having been vindicated.
I don't agree. This decision makes it incredibly difficult in practice to justify a lighter sanction for Johnson. A bar has been set.
IF there is a by election in Rutherglen then surely LAB HAVE to win if they are to appear to be in real contention for major gains in Scotland in GE 2024?
Sorry to hark back to discussion on the previous thread, but you can’t blame Cameron and Osborne for the use of the registered electorate, rather than population, as the basis for revising Parliamentary boundaries. This practice has been in place since long before either of them was born: it was first adopted for the interim review of exceptionally large seats that took effect at the 1945 GE and it has applied at every review since then. The last general review to be based on population rather than electorate was that of 1918, 105 years ago.
Do try to keep up.
Cameron and Osborne first purged the rolls and made registration harder in order to reduced the number of registered electors, and hence seats, in Labour-leaning areas and increase those in Conservative-leaning areas. Do try to keep up.
They didn't make registration harder. Do try to keep up.
Yes they did. Saying "no they didn't" doesn't make it so. Individual registration was designed very specifically to slow the registration rate of young people as they came of age. Successfully so. A lot of work needed by non-Tory activists to ensure people actually got themselves registered after that change.
Was individual registration not a recommendation of the impartial Electoral Commission following the Lutfur Rahman trial, when it was determined that there were numerous cases of a dozen people registered in a small apartment?
Don't confuse him with facts, he'd rather wallow in his hatred.
It was actually first introduced to Parliament before the Rahman trial. The first recommmendation for IER from the Commission was after the “Banana Republic” trial of 2005, but the Brown government didn’t implement it.
Pakistani-heritage patriarchs voting for their daughters was a problem. Individual registration didn't really solve it though. Had the government combined IER with a push to encourage people to register then it would have been fine. Instead we saw a big drop off in new voters getting onto the register.
On current Scottish GE polling Labour should win Rutherglen and Hamilton West. But this won't be a walk in the park. Humsa and the SNP will throw everything at this, so Labour will need too. The consequences could potentially be pretty dire if they don't; raising questions as to whether they can win a majority.
Not really. All by-elections tell us is how pissed off (or not) people are with the government at a particular moment, not how the next election will turn out. The Conservatives lost Monmouth and Kincardine and Deeside in 1991 but won them back the following year. Heck, it's only two years since they picked up Hartlepool. As for Copeland...
The snag for the SNP is that they *are* part of the government people may be pissed off with. That's surely what Labour have to focus on if they are to win.
Oh I agree that Labour not winning the by-election doesn't mean they won't go onto win it at the general. My concern is that it will help create a narrative a SLAB recovery isn't happening, which the Tories will use to argue that Labour can't win a majority.
Sorry to hark back to discussion on the previous thread, but you can’t blame Cameron and Osborne for the use of the registered electorate, rather than population, as the basis for revising Parliamentary boundaries. This practice has been in place since long before either of them was born: it was first adopted for the interim review of exceptionally large seats that took effect at the 1945 GE and it has applied at every review since then. The last general review to be based on population rather than electorate was that of 1918, 105 years ago.
Do try to keep up.
Cameron and Osborne first purged the rolls and made registration harder in order to reduced the number of registered electors, and hence seats, in Labour-leaning areas and increase those in Conservative-leaning areas. Do try to keep up.
They didn't make registration harder. Do try to keep up.
Yes they did. Saying "no they didn't" doesn't make it so. Individual registration was designed very specifically to slow the registration rate of young people as they came of age. Successfully so. A lot of work needed by non-Tory activists to ensure people actually got themselves registered after that change.
You are absolutely right. In fact it the effect went far further than that. The initial process of automatic transfer across based on name matches worked in homeowning areas where people were settled, so almost all pensioners didn't even need to bother to register. Yet the process was ineffective in areas of transient population so people in those areas found they had to re-register. We did a study by polling district in our local authority and the difference was stark. 95% transferred across in the most Conservative areas, barely 50% in the deprived areas especially those with private renting and ethnic minorities.
The net effect of the manipulation of the electoral register is that there are relatively more seats in Conservative areas than there should be, and the voters in those seats are also more skewed towards the Conservatives than they should be. By design, not accident.
I think that, with all the different instances of voter suppression that have taken place over the Conservative years, there is going to be a huge reaction when a non-Conservative government takes power in 2024. We will see a move to boundaries based on ONS population estimates (as in the US), an efficient system of electoral registration that draws heavily on administrative records to automatically register people by default and hopefully has effective sanctions* for those who don't keep their registration up to date, and an overturning of the latest voter ID requirements.
*Effective sanctions = Making registration a condition for receiving any form of state support, effectively the system in place in Germany.
Surely Johnson will face a by-election then? Another Labour gain?
Possibly. I still expect the committee to pull its punch. It isn't that they don't conclude he is guilty as sin. Its that they fear a big punishment will be contested by mince MPs and bring the committee itself into disrepute.
So I expect a sanction just below the recall point which will slip by without much noise before his loyal followers start ramping him up as having been vindicated.
I don't agree. This decision makes it incredibly difficult in practice to justify a lighter sanction for Johnson. A bar has been set.
It will be fun finding out! My consideration is the political shit storm which an appropriate sanction would bring upon the committee. I think they will bottle it. I hope I am wrong and they throw the book at him.
Thoughts on SKS and Labour council tax freeze policy this AM…. Hmmmm.
Might be smart politics but I’m not sure this bodes well for a 2024 manifesto. Once again the tax on the 1% is being wheeled out to allow for a CT freeze.
This constant reusing of windfall tax/tax on high earners could lay them open to claims of lacking seriousness.
I still maintain they are the best option for 2024 and it would take a lot, put bluntly, for me to change my mind on that front but I am starting to have concerns that they haven’t really grasped just how fundamentally transformative their government needs to be to make the tough decisions needed.
It's not a "windfall" tax. It's a capitalism tax.
Nick Palmer on the previous thread rather gave the game away. Anything not in an "ethical" pension is going to be fair game. Oil and gas - it's evil! Let's leave several billion barrels of the most intense energy source there is under our seabeds. Let the industry vanish too. Good riddance. Armaments makers? Same. House builders? They deserve all that is coming to them. Banks? Banks! Enough said. And don't get me started on private medical providers. As for education...
It will be the same Old Labour, going after the same old targets. And they will wonder why unemployment will be higher when they leave office than they inherited. Yet again.
Um, NONE of that is what I said - if you're going to make misleading arguments don't try to use me for them. My point was that pension funds aren't massively invested in oil and gas (and some aren't at all), so the argument that doing anything that helps people now because it will devastate their pensions N years hence is a feeble argument.
But you know I'm right....
No. I'd like Labour to be more left-wing than it is, but these days it simply isn't, and people like me have to suck it up.
Sorry to hark back to discussion on the previous thread, but you can’t blame Cameron and Osborne for the use of the registered electorate, rather than population, as the basis for revising Parliamentary boundaries. This practice has been in place since long before either of them was born: it was first adopted for the interim review of exceptionally large seats that took effect at the 1945 GE and it has applied at every review since then. The last general review to be based on population rather than electorate was that of 1918, 105 years ago.
Do try to keep up.
Cameron and Osborne first purged the rolls and made registration harder in order to reduced the number of registered electors, and hence seats, in Labour-leaning areas and increase those in Conservative-leaning areas. Do try to keep up.
They didn't make registration harder. Do try to keep up.
Yes they did. Saying "no they didn't" doesn't make it so. Individual registration was designed very specifically to slow the registration rate of young people as they came of age. Successfully so. A lot of work needed by non-Tory activists to ensure people actually got themselves registered after that change.
You are absolutely right. In fact it the effect went far further than that. The initial process of automatic transfer across based on name matches worked in homeowning areas where people were settled, so almost all pensioners didn't even need to bother to register. Yet the process was ineffective in areas of transient population so people in those areas found they had to re-register. We did a study by polling district in our local authority and the difference was stark. 95% transferred across in the most Conservative areas, barely 50% in the deprived areas especially those with private renting and ethnic minorities.
The net effect of the manipulation of the electoral register is that there are relatively more seats in Conservative areas than there should be, and the voters in those seats are also more skewed towards the Conservatives than they should be. By design, not accident.
I think that, with all the different instances of voter suppression that have taken place over the Conservative years, there is going to be a huge reaction when a non-Conservative government takes power in 2024. We will see a move to boundaries based on ONS population estimates (as in the US), an efficient system of electoral registration that draws heavily on administrative records to automatically register people by default and hopefully has effective sanctions* for those who don't keep their registration up to date, and an overturning of the latest voter ID requirements.
*Effective sanctions = Making registration a condition for receiving any form of state support, effectively the system in place in Germany.
No no. Don't post evidence. That only proves your hatred apparently...
"Edward Leigh, the Conservative MP whose Gainsborough constituency contains RAF Scampton, which was the base for the Dambusters bomber squadron in the second world war, said the council would seek an injunction to stop it being used and that he supported it."
Will WW2 EVER be over for the English? What the fuck does what happened 80 years ago have to do with what happens to the site now?
Well it was also the base for RAFAT until about a year ago. You know those red planes that are a great recruiting tool and represent the country abroad do nothing much?
I’ll yield to superior knowledge here (ie Dura Ace), but has anyone ever joined the RAF because of the Red Arrows? Even when I was a pre adolescent fanboi, an RA aircraft never made it into my gluey air wing of model aircraft (Folland Gnats in my day I think). I’d imagine the RAF are pretty oversubscribed for air crew candidates at the best of times.
Anecdotal evidence I know, but they definitely piqued my interest in planes at the 1988 Farnborough airshow. The Reds, and standing right behind Concorde as it took off!
Concorde was wonderful but a bit of a damp squib when the speed on the cabin went to Mach 2. V nice Beef Wellington for Lunch iirc. Pleased to have been on it if only round the Bay of Biscay...
But the defining moment was not reaching Mach 2 but the point where the Bristol Channel was cleared and the pilot put the burners on… with a tail wind, reached JFK in about 3h20m on the one occasion I had the pleasure of flying, still have a bag with all the tickets, luggage tags, menu etc somewhere…
Sure it was but my trip iirc was 199 quid. Jfk was thousands return
Sorry to hark back to discussion on the previous thread, but you can’t blame Cameron and Osborne for the use of the registered electorate, rather than population, as the basis for revising Parliamentary boundaries. This practice has been in place since long before either of them was born: it was first adopted for the interim review of exceptionally large seats that took effect at the 1945 GE and it has applied at every review since then. The last general review to be based on population rather than electorate was that of 1918, 105 years ago.
Do try to keep up.
Cameron and Osborne first purged the rolls and made registration harder in order to reduced the number of registered electors, and hence seats, in Labour-leaning areas and increase those in Conservative-leaning areas. Do try to keep up.
They didn't make registration harder. Do try to keep up.
Yes they did. Saying "no they didn't" doesn't make it so. Individual registration was designed very specifically to slow the registration rate of young people as they came of age. Successfully so. A lot of work needed by non-Tory activists to ensure people actually got themselves registered after that change.
Was individual registration not a recommendation of the impartial Electoral Commission following the Lutfur Rahman trial, when it was determined that there were numerous cases of a dozen people registered in a small apartment?
Don't confuse him with facts, he'd rather wallow in his hatred.
When my flatmate had his vote stolen, it had been re-registered, along with a few others, at a flat. Don’t know the size of the flat, of hand, but IIRC there were 8 voters registered there.
"Edward Leigh, the Conservative MP whose Gainsborough constituency contains RAF Scampton, which was the base for the Dambusters bomber squadron in the second world war, said the council would seek an injunction to stop it being used and that he supported it."
Will WW2 EVER be over for the English? What the fuck does what happened 80 years ago have to do with what happens to the site now?
Well it was also the base for RAFAT until about a year ago. You know those red planes that are a great recruiting tool and represent the country abroad do nothing much?
I’ll yield to superior knowledge here (ie Dura Ace), but has anyone ever joined the RAF because of the Red Arrows? Even when I was a pre adolescent fanboi, an RA aircraft never made it into my gluey air wing of model aircraft (Folland Gnats in my day I think). I’d imagine the RAF are pretty oversubscribed for air crew candidates at the best of times.
Anecdotal evidence I know, but they definitely piqued my interest in planes at the 1988 Farnborough airshow. The Reds, and standing right behind Concorde as it took off!
Concorde was wonderful but a bit of a damp squib when the speed on the cabin went to Mach 2. V nice Beef Wellington for Lunch iirc. Pleased to have been on it if only round the Bay of Biscay...
But the defining moment was not reaching Mach 2 but the point where the Bristol Channel was cleared and the pilot put the burners on… with a tail wind, reached JFK in about 3h20m on the one occasion I had the pleasure of flying, still have a bag with all the tickets, luggage tags, menu etc somewhere…
Sure it was but my trip iirc was 199 quid. Jfk was thousands return
In 1989 paid £1,500* for Concorde -> NYC -> 5 nights in Waldorf Astoria -> QE2 to Southampton… seemed a bargain at the time.
Surely Johnson will face a by-election then? Another Labour gain?
Possibly. I still expect the committee to pull its punch. It isn't that they don't conclude he is guilty as sin. Its that they fear a big punishment will be contested by mince MPs and bring the committee itself into disrepute.
So I expect a sanction just below the recall point which will slip by without much noise before his loyal followers start ramping him up as having been vindicated.
I don't agree. This decision makes it incredibly difficult in practice to justify a lighter sanction for Johnson. A bar has been set.
In Johnson's case the lawbreaking is not the issue with the Standards Committee, it is the misleading of Parliament. Johnson claims he is wholly innocent, and If Johnson can demonstrate he is so ludicrously stupid as be unclear that a room full of booze, a buffet, party hats tinsel and a karaoke machine was not a work event he is home and hosed.
"Edward Leigh, the Conservative MP whose Gainsborough constituency contains RAF Scampton, which was the base for the Dambusters bomber squadron in the second world war, said the council would seek an injunction to stop it being used and that he supported it."
Will WW2 EVER be over for the English? What the fuck does what happened 80 years ago have to do with what happens to the site now?
In fairness, the Council's issue is that they already had a regeneration scheme planned for the site and this will at least delay it.
The Dambusters point adds a bit of colour but I agree it's meaningless and odd to mention - the site closed as an RAF base last year, so it will have to be something else and the sooner the better really.
Barnes Wallis grew up in New Cross, where he attended the school my kids go to. There's a plaque to him on New Cross Road and a community centre in his name. Our area was bombed extensively during WW2 but that was related to the gun battery at the top of the hill I think, and perhaps stray bombs aimed at Surrey Docks, rather than any grudge against Wallis! I was reminded of The Dambusters the other day as I saw a primary school brass band play the theme tune. I'm guessing none of them had seen the film, at least not in unredacted form.
Sorry to hark back to discussion on the previous thread, but you can’t blame Cameron and Osborne for the use of the registered electorate, rather than population, as the basis for revising Parliamentary boundaries. This practice has been in place since long before either of them was born: it was first adopted for the interim review of exceptionally large seats that took effect at the 1945 GE and it has applied at every review since then. The last general review to be based on population rather than electorate was that of 1918, 105 years ago.
Do try to keep up.
Cameron and Osborne first purged the rolls and made registration harder in order to reduced the number of registered electors, and hence seats, in Labour-leaning areas and increase those in Conservative-leaning areas. Do try to keep up.
They didn't make registration harder. Do try to keep up.
Yes they did. Saying "no they didn't" doesn't make it so. Individual registration was designed very specifically to slow the registration rate of young people as they came of age. Successfully so. A lot of work needed by non-Tory activists to ensure people actually got themselves registered after that change.
You are absolutely right. In fact it the effect went far further than that. The initial process of automatic transfer across based on name matches worked in homeowning areas where people were settled, so almost all pensioners didn't even need to bother to register. Yet the process was ineffective in areas of transient population so people in those areas found they had to re-register. We did a study by polling district in our local authority and the difference was stark. 95% transferred across in the most Conservative areas, barely 50% in the deprived areas especially those with private renting and ethnic minorities.
The net effect of the manipulation of the electoral register is that there are relatively more seats in Conservative areas than there should be, and the voters in those seats are also more skewed towards the Conservatives than they should be. By design, not accident.
I think that, with all the different instances of voter suppression that have taken place over the Conservative years, there is going to be a huge reaction when a non-Conservative government takes power in 2024. We will see a move to boundaries based on ONS population estimates (as in the US), an efficient system of electoral registration that draws heavily on administrative records to automatically register people by default and hopefully has effective sanctions* for those who don't keep their registration up to date, and an overturning of the latest voter ID requirements.
*Effective sanctions = Making registration a condition for receiving any form of state support, effectively the system in place in Germany.
In my experience, I've always had to re-register every year, both before and after IER.
It's good to see you again admit that Labour intend to rig the system for what they perceive as their benefit.
Surely Johnson will face a by-election then? Another Labour gain?
Possibly. I still expect the committee to pull its punch. It isn't that they don't conclude he is guilty as sin. Its that they fear a big punishment will be contested by mince MPs and bring the committee itself into disrepute.
So I expect a sanction just below the recall point which will slip by without much noise before his loyal followers start ramping him up as having been vindicated.
I don't agree. This decision makes it incredibly difficult in practice to justify a lighter sanction for Johnson. A bar has been set.
It will be fun finding out! My consideration is the political shit storm which an appropriate sanction would bring upon the committee. I think they will bottle it. I hope I am wrong and they throw the book at him.
They'll get the sh1tstorm whether they throw the book at him or not. If they find he misled the House, regardless of the penalty, Johnson allies will cry "witchhunt". While if they impose a lenient penalty, everyone else will cry "whitewash!" and now add, "the SNP (ex) MP got 30 days, and she didn't actually lie to the Commons about it..."
So they may as well stick to their guns, say he lied, say that's very serious, and slap him with six weeks at the very least. I am increasingly confident that will happen - and this news adds to that.
Sorry to hark back to discussion on the previous thread, but you can’t blame Cameron and Osborne for the use of the registered electorate, rather than population, as the basis for revising Parliamentary boundaries. This practice has been in place since long before either of them was born: it was first adopted for the interim review of exceptionally large seats that took effect at the 1945 GE and it has applied at every review since then. The last general review to be based on population rather than electorate was that of 1918, 105 years ago.
Do try to keep up.
Cameron and Osborne first purged the rolls and made registration harder in order to reduced the number of registered electors, and hence seats, in Labour-leaning areas and increase those in Conservative-leaning areas. Do try to keep up.
They didn't make registration harder. Do try to keep up.
Yes they did. Saying "no they didn't" doesn't make it so. Individual registration was designed very specifically to slow the registration rate of young people as they came of age. Successfully so. A lot of work needed by non-Tory activists to ensure people actually got themselves registered after that change.
You are absolutely right. In fact it the effect went far further than that. The initial process of automatic transfer across based on name matches worked in homeowning areas where people were settled, so almost all pensioners didn't even need to bother to register. Yet the process was ineffective in areas of transient population so people in those areas found they had to re-register. We did a study by polling district in our local authority and the difference was stark. 95% transferred across in the most Conservative areas, barely 50% in the deprived areas especially those with private renting and ethnic minorities.
The net effect of the manipulation of the electoral register is that there are relatively more seats in Conservative areas than there should be, and the voters in those seats are also more skewed towards the Conservatives than they should be. By design, not accident.
I think that, with all the different instances of voter suppression that have taken place over the Conservative years, there is going to be a huge reaction when a non-Conservative government takes power in 2024. We will see a move to boundaries based on ONS population estimates (as in the US), an efficient system of electoral registration that draws heavily on administrative records to automatically register people by default and hopefully has effective sanctions* for those who don't keep their registration up to date, and an overturning of the latest voter ID requirements.
*Effective sanctions = Making registration a condition for receiving any form of state support, effectively the system in place in Germany.
No no. Don't post evidence. That only proves your hatred apparently...
Oh, he at least is admitting that Labour want to rig the system and undo the changes that the Electoral Commission asked for.
Sorry to hark back to discussion on the previous thread, but you can’t blame Cameron and Osborne for the use of the registered electorate, rather than population, as the basis for revising Parliamentary boundaries. This practice has been in place since long before either of them was born: it was first adopted for the interim review of exceptionally large seats that took effect at the 1945 GE and it has applied at every review since then. The last general review to be based on population rather than electorate was that of 1918, 105 years ago.
Do try to keep up.
Cameron and Osborne first purged the rolls and made registration harder in order to reduced the number of registered electors, and hence seats, in Labour-leaning areas and increase those in Conservative-leaning areas. Do try to keep up.
They didn't make registration harder. Do try to keep up.
Yes they did. Saying "no they didn't" doesn't make it so. Individual registration was designed very specifically to slow the registration rate of young people as they came of age. Successfully so. A lot of work needed by non-Tory activists to ensure people actually got themselves registered after that change.
You are absolutely right. In fact it the effect went far further than that. The initial process of automatic transfer across based on name matches worked in homeowning areas where people were settled, so almost all pensioners didn't even need to bother to register. Yet the process was ineffective in areas of transient population so people in those areas found they had to re-register. We did a study by polling district in our local authority and the difference was stark. 95% transferred across in the most Conservative areas, barely 50% in the deprived areas especially those with private renting and ethnic minorities.
The net effect of the manipulation of the electoral register is that there are relatively more seats in Conservative areas than there should be, and the voters in those seats are also more skewed towards the Conservatives than they should be. By design, not accident.
I think that, with all the different instances of voter suppression that have taken place over the Conservative years, there is going to be a huge reaction when a non-Conservative government takes power in 2024. We will see a move to boundaries based on ONS population estimates (as in the US), an efficient system of electoral registration that draws heavily on administrative records to automatically register people by default and hopefully has effective sanctions* for those who don't keep their registration up to date, and an overturning of the latest voter ID requirements.
*Effective sanctions = Making registration a condition for receiving any form of state support, effectively the system in place in Germany.
In my experience, I've always had to re-register every year, both before and after IER.
It's good to see you again admit that Labour intend to rig the system for what they perceive as their benefit.
One person's rigging is another person's unrigging. Only God knows the truth.
Sorry to hark back to discussion on the previous thread, but you can’t blame Cameron and Osborne for the use of the registered electorate, rather than population, as the basis for revising Parliamentary boundaries. This practice has been in place since long before either of them was born: it was first adopted for the interim review of exceptionally large seats that took effect at the 1945 GE and it has applied at every review since then. The last general review to be based on population rather than electorate was that of 1918, 105 years ago.
Do try to keep up.
Cameron and Osborne first purged the rolls and made registration harder in order to reduced the number of registered electors, and hence seats, in Labour-leaning areas and increase those in Conservative-leaning areas. Do try to keep up.
They didn't make registration harder. Do try to keep up.
Yes they did. Saying "no they didn't" doesn't make it so. Individual registration was designed very specifically to slow the registration rate of young people as they came of age. Successfully so. A lot of work needed by non-Tory activists to ensure people actually got themselves registered after that change.
You are absolutely right. In fact it the effect went far further than that. The initial process of automatic transfer across based on name matches worked in homeowning areas where people were settled, so almost all pensioners didn't even need to bother to register. Yet the process was ineffective in areas of transient population so people in those areas found they had to re-register. We did a study by polling district in our local authority and the difference was stark. 95% transferred across in the most Conservative areas, barely 50% in the deprived areas especially those with private renting and ethnic minorities.
The net effect of the manipulation of the electoral register is that there are relatively more seats in Conservative areas than there should be, and the voters in those seats are also more skewed towards the Conservatives than they should be. By design, not accident.
I think that, with all the different instances of voter suppression that have taken place over the Conservative years, there is going to be a huge reaction when a non-Conservative government takes power in 2024. We will see a move to boundaries based on ONS population estimates (as in the US), an efficient system of electoral registration that draws heavily on administrative records to automatically register people by default and hopefully has effective sanctions* for those who don't keep their registration up to date, and an overturning of the latest voter ID requirements.
*Effective sanctions = Making registration a condition for receiving any form of state support, effectively the system in place in Germany.
On sanctions and ID, moneysavingexpert email this week pointing out that 2m photo driving licenses have been expired, which comes with a potential £1,000 fine.
Must admit I had forgotten all about renewing mine as previously had always changed address within 10 years, fortunately its not til next year.
If the government has such a process in place it really needs to communicate it better, leaving 2m people exposed to such a fine is simply unacceptable imo.
Thoughts on SKS and Labour council tax freeze policy this AM…. Hmmmm.
Might be smart politics but I’m not sure this bodes well for a 2024 manifesto. Once again the tax on the 1% is being wheeled out to allow for a CT freeze.
This constant reusing of windfall tax/tax on high earners could lay them open to claims of lacking seriousness.
I still maintain they are the best option for 2024 and it would take a lot, put bluntly, for me to change my mind on that front but I am starting to have concerns that they haven’t really grasped just how fundamentally transformative their government needs to be to make the tough decisions needed.
Reeves needs to be careful with her promises for the use of never ending windfall taxes
Labour's policy is to decimate the Scottish oil and gas industry with no new licences and high taxes resulting in much diminished taxes anyway
Furthermore what happens next year when council taxes rise again plus this year's or is her idea to continue subsidising these rises which is our case this year was 9.9% as I posted earlier
Of course she can make these promises knowing that she will not be in power to implement them so it is a free hit, it may be politics but it certainly is not economics
Let’s not forget that local government is really in need of extra investment too.
I don’t have a problem with Labour making arguments that those with broader shoulders can contribute more (they can, within reason), or to transform elements of the economy (if they can demonstrate ways of doing so that will make economic sense). The problem is at the moment there is no big idea. Tinkering round the edges and playing the soak the rich tune. Where’s the dynamism and new ways of thinking that we need from a new government?
I will give them the benefit of the doubt that they are keeping their powder dry but… hmmm. I’m unenthusiastic right now.
They're starting to show their hand now and it's looking like the same old stuff. As I was rather afraid of - if they had big ideas they would have been talking about them months ago.
'Unenthusiastic' is the best a party can hope for to win an election at the moment. To be not actually hated and execrated is the aim.
There is currently £2.4 trn debt, £100 bn deficit, every single group in the public sector thinks it is massively underpaid, tax levels are at recent record highs, inflation is in double figures, and it politically toxic both to support or oppose Brexit. It is also politically toxic to have any views whatever on the migrant/refugee/boats crisis.
Labour might think up a few retail policies to ice the non-cake. But as for Big Ideas....Even PBers are notably short of ones which could win elections without at the same time losing them. SKS is doing well in a very tricky minefield. And that's even without bearing in mind he still has Diane Abbott and Richard Burgon in the party.
Surely Johnson will face a by-election then? Another Labour gain?
Possibly. I still expect the committee to pull its punch. It isn't that they don't conclude he is guilty as sin. Its that they fear a big punishment will be contested by mince MPs and bring the committee itself into disrepute.
So I expect a sanction just below the recall point which will slip by without much noise before his loyal followers start ramping him up as having been vindicated.
I don't agree. This decision makes it incredibly difficult in practice to justify a lighter sanction for Johnson. A bar has been set.
I would say, from the limited evidence of her interviews, that Margaret Ferrier is not especially bright.
She found herself by inadvertence in a difficult position and did not behave well.
I feel a bit sorry for her. She did a stupid thing, but her fault is stupidity.
I'm not sure that I would be in favour of a recall, if I lived in R&HW.
(And although not bright, she is far from the stupidest MP. She is probably somewhere in the middle of the pack).
Thoughts on SKS and Labour council tax freeze policy this AM…. Hmmmm.
Might be smart politics but I’m not sure this bodes well for a 2024 manifesto. Once again the tax on the 1% is being wheeled out to allow for a CT freeze.
This constant reusing of windfall tax/tax on high earners could lay them open to claims of lacking seriousness.
I still maintain they are the best option for 2024 and it would take a lot, put bluntly, for me to change my mind on that front but I am starting to have concerns that they haven’t really grasped just how fundamentally transformative their government needs to be to make the tough decisions needed.
Reeves needs to be careful with her promises for the use of never ending windfall taxes
Labour's policy is to decimate the Scottish oil and gas industry with no new licences and high taxes resulting in much diminished taxes anyway
Furthermore what happens next year when council taxes rise again plus this year's or is her idea to continue subsidising these rises which is our case this year was 9.9% as I posted earlier
Of course she can make these promises knowing that she will not be in power to implement them so it is a free hit, it may be politics but it certainly is not economics
Let’s not forget that local government is really in need of extra investment too.
I don’t have a problem with Labour making arguments that those with broader shoulders can contribute more (they can, within reason), or to transform elements of the economy (if they can demonstrate ways of doing so that will make economic sense). The problem is at the moment there is no big idea. Tinkering round the edges and playing the soak the rich tune. Where’s the dynamism and new ways of thinking that we need from a new government?
I will give them the benefit of the doubt that they are keeping their powder dry but… hmmm. I’m unenthusiastic right now.
They're starting to show their hand now and it's looking like the same old stuff. As I was rather afraid of - if they had big ideas they would have been talking about them months ago.
'Unenthusiastic' is the best a party can hope for to win an election at the moment. To be not actually hated and execrated is the aim.
Sure, if all you care about is winning the election.
If you want to actually do something with power, you need more.
Surely Johnson will face a by-election then? Another Labour gain?
Possibly. I still expect the committee to pull its punch. It isn't that they don't conclude he is guilty as sin. Its that they fear a big punishment will be contested by mince MPs and bring the committee itself into disrepute.
So I expect a sanction just below the recall point which will slip by without much noise before his loyal followers start ramping him up as having been vindicated.
I don't agree. This decision makes it incredibly difficult in practice to justify a lighter sanction for Johnson. A bar has been set.
I would say, from the limited evidence of her interviews, that Margaret Ferrier is not especially bright.
She found herself by inadvertence in a difficult position and did not behave well.
I feel a bit sorry for her. She did a stupid thing, but her fault is stupidity.
I'm not sure that I would be in favour of a recall, if I lived in R&HW.
(And although not bright, she is far from the stupidest MP. She is probably somewhere in the middle of the pack).
If she really is not that bright how on earth did she get selected by the SNP, unless she was a paper candidate that got lucky ?
Thoughts on SKS and Labour council tax freeze policy this AM…. Hmmmm.
Might be smart politics but I’m not sure this bodes well for a 2024 manifesto. Once again the tax on the 1% is being wheeled out to allow for a CT freeze.
This constant reusing of windfall tax/tax on high earners could lay them open to claims of lacking seriousness.
I still maintain they are the best option for 2024 and it would take a lot, put bluntly, for me to change my mind on that front but I am starting to have concerns that they haven’t really grasped just how fundamentally transformative their government needs to be to make the tough decisions needed.
Reeves needs to be careful with her promises for the use of never ending windfall taxes
Labour's policy is to decimate the Scottish oil and gas industry with no new licences and high taxes resulting in much diminished taxes anyway
Furthermore what happens next year when council taxes rise again plus this year's or is her idea to continue subsidising these rises which is our case this year was 9.9% as I posted earlier
Of course she can make these promises knowing that she will not be in power to implement them so it is a free hit, it may be politics but it certainly is not economics
Let’s not forget that local government is really in need of extra investment too.
I don’t have a problem with Labour making arguments that those with broader shoulders can contribute more (they can, within reason), or to transform elements of the economy (if they can demonstrate ways of doing so that will make economic sense). The problem is at the moment there is no big idea. Tinkering round the edges and playing the soak the rich tune. Where’s the dynamism and new ways of thinking that we need from a new government?
I will give them the benefit of the doubt that they are keeping their powder dry but… hmmm. I’m unenthusiastic right now.
They're starting to show their hand now and it's looking like the same old stuff. As I was rather afraid of - if they had big ideas they would have been talking about them months ago.
'Unenthusiastic' is the best a party can hope for to win an election at the moment. To be not actually hated and execrated is the aim.
There is currently £2.4 trn debt, £100 bn deficit, every single group in the public sector thinks it is massively underpaid, tax levels are at recent record highs, inflation is in double figures, and it politically toxic both to support or oppose Brexit. It is also politically toxic to have any views whatever on the migrant/refugee/boats crisis.
Labour might think up a few retail policies to ice the non-cake. But as for Big Ideas....Even PBers are notably short of ones which could win elections without at the same time losing them. SKS is doing well in a very tricky minefield. And that's even without bearing in mind he still has Diane Abbott and Richard Burgon in the party.
Surely Johnson will face a by-election then? Another Labour gain?
Possibly. I still expect the committee to pull its punch. It isn't that they don't conclude he is guilty as sin. Its that they fear a big punishment will be contested by mince MPs and bring the committee itself into disrepute.
So I expect a sanction just below the recall point which will slip by without much noise before his loyal followers start ramping him up as having been vindicated.
I don't agree. This decision makes it incredibly difficult in practice to justify a lighter sanction for Johnson. A bar has been set.
In Johnson's case the lawbreaking is not the issue with the Standards Committee, it is the misleading of Parliament. Johnson claims he is wholly innocent, and If Johnson can demonstrate he is so ludicrously stupid as be unclear that a room full of booze, a buffet, party hats tinsel and a karaoke machine was not a work event he is home and hosed.
I appreciate that, but a benchmark has still been set. Ferrers is recommended for a 30 day suspension, based on one ill-judged offence in relation to Covid. Johnson's were bad enough and were serial offences, but the fact that he then perjured himself before Parliament raises his offending to a whole new level compared to that of Ferrers. No way will he be able to get away with less than 10 days suspension now.
Surely Johnson will face a by-election then? Another Labour gain?
Possibly. I still expect the committee to pull its punch. It isn't that they don't conclude he is guilty as sin. Its that they fear a big punishment will be contested by mince MPs and bring the committee itself into disrepute.
So I expect a sanction just below the recall point which will slip by without much noise before his loyal followers start ramping him up as having been vindicated.
I don't agree. This decision makes it incredibly difficult in practice to justify a lighter sanction for Johnson. A bar has been set.
I would say, from the limited evidence of her interviews, that Margaret Ferrier is not especially bright.
She found herself by inadvertence in a difficult position and did not behave well.
I feel a bit sorry for her. She did a stupid thing, but her fault is stupidity.
I'm not sure that I would be in favour of a recall, if I lived in R&HW.
(And although not bright, she is far from the stupidest MP. She is probably somewhere in the middle of the pack).
If she really is not that bright how on earth did she get selected by the SNP, unless she was a paper candidate that got lucky ?
Thoughts on SKS and Labour council tax freeze policy this AM…. Hmmmm.
Might be smart politics but I’m not sure this bodes well for a 2024 manifesto. Once again the tax on the 1% is being wheeled out to allow for a CT freeze.
This constant reusing of windfall tax/tax on high earners could lay them open to claims of lacking seriousness.
I still maintain they are the best option for 2024 and it would take a lot, put bluntly, for me to change my mind on that front but I am starting to have concerns that they haven’t really grasped just how fundamentally transformative their government needs to be to make the tough decisions needed.
Reeves needs to be careful with her promises for the use of never ending windfall taxes
Labour's policy is to decimate the Scottish oil and gas industry with no new licences and high taxes resulting in much diminished taxes anyway
Furthermore what happens next year when council taxes rise again plus this year's or is her idea to continue subsidising these rises which is our case this year was 9.9% as I posted earlier
Of course she can make these promises knowing that she will not be in power to implement them so it is a free hit, it may be politics but it certainly is not economics
Let’s not forget that local government is really in need of extra investment too.
I don’t have a problem with Labour making arguments that those with broader shoulders can contribute more (they can, within reason), or to transform elements of the economy (if they can demonstrate ways of doing so that will make economic sense). The problem is at the moment there is no big idea. Tinkering round the edges and playing the soak the rich tune. Where’s the dynamism and new ways of thinking that we need from a new government?
I will give them the benefit of the doubt that they are keeping their powder dry but… hmmm. I’m unenthusiastic right now.
They're starting to show their hand now and it's looking like the same old stuff. As I was rather afraid of - if they had big ideas they would have been talking about them months ago.
'Unenthusiastic' is the best a party can hope for to win an election at the moment. To be not actually hated and execrated is the aim.
Sure, if all you care about is winning the election.
If you want to actually do something with power, you need more.
Thanks. You have omitted all the bit from me (above) about why that is difficult/impossible at the moment.
The big policies which would win an election, be economically possible, not split the party etc are awaited. If there were some clear winners, actually I think they would be all over PB by now. Like all the lawful, humane and electorally possible solutions we have failed to find for boats/migrants/refugees. For Labour and the next election multiply this by about 20 and you have SKS's position.
For example I would like SKS to promise to seek to join EFTA/EEA. But to have a Brexit policy of any sort (apart from unicorns) is toxic, whichever one it is, to most voters. So I comprehend why he doesn't.
"Edward Leigh, the Conservative MP whose Gainsborough constituency contains RAF Scampton, which was the base for the Dambusters bomber squadron in the second world war, said the council would seek an injunction to stop it being used and that he supported it."
Will WW2 EVER be over for the English? What the fuck does what happened 80 years ago have to do with what happens to the site now?
Well it was also the base for RAFAT until about a year ago. You know those red planes that are a great recruiting tool and represent the country abroad do nothing much?
I’ll yield to superior knowledge here (ie Dura Ace), but has anyone ever joined the RAF because of the Red Arrows? Even when I was a pre adolescent fanboi, an RA aircraft never made it into my gluey air wing of model aircraft (Folland Gnats in my day I think). I’d imagine the RAF are pretty oversubscribed for air crew candidates at the best of times.
Anecdotal evidence I know, but they definitely piqued my interest in planes at the 1988 Farnborough airshow. The Reds, and standing right behind Concorde as it took off!
Concorde was wonderful but a bit of a damp squib when the speed on the cabin went to Mach 2. V nice Beef Wellington for Lunch iirc. Pleased to have been on it if only round the Bay of Biscay...
But the defining moment was not reaching Mach 2 but the point where the Bristol Channel was cleared and the pilot put the burners on… with a tail wind, reached JFK in about 3h20m on the one occasion I had the pleasure of flying, still have a bag with all the tickets, luggage tags, menu etc somewhere…
Sure it was but my trip iirc was 199 quid. Jfk was thousands return
In 1989 paid £1,500* for Concorde -> NYC -> 5 nights in Waldorf Astoria -> QE2 to Southampton… seemed a bargain at the time.
Edit: *£3,674 in today’s money
You got a good deal. In the late ‘90s, when I looked into it, the Biscay joyride was £995, and one way to JFK was around £3k.
Thoughts on SKS and Labour council tax freeze policy this AM…. Hmmmm.
Might be smart politics but I’m not sure this bodes well for a 2024 manifesto. Once again the tax on the 1% is being wheeled out to allow for a CT freeze.
This constant reusing of windfall tax/tax on high earners could lay them open to claims of lacking seriousness.
I still maintain they are the best option for 2024 and it would take a lot, put bluntly, for me to change my mind on that front but I am starting to have concerns that they haven’t really grasped just how fundamentally transformative their government needs to be to make the tough decisions needed.
Reeves needs to be careful with her promises for the use of never ending windfall taxes
Labour's policy is to decimate the Scottish oil and gas industry with no new licences and high taxes resulting in much diminished taxes anyway
Furthermore what happens next year when council taxes rise again plus this year's or is her idea to continue subsidising these rises which is our case this year was 9.9% as I posted earlier
Of course she can make these promises knowing that she will not be in power to implement them so it is a free hit, it may be politics but it certainly is not economics
Let’s not forget that local government is really in need of extra investment too.
I don’t have a problem with Labour making arguments that those with broader shoulders can contribute more (they can, within reason), or to transform elements of the economy (if they can demonstrate ways of doing so that will make economic sense). The problem is at the moment there is no big idea. Tinkering round the edges and playing the soak the rich tune. Where’s the dynamism and new ways of thinking that we need from a new government?
I will give them the benefit of the doubt that they are keeping their powder dry but… hmmm. I’m unenthusiastic right now.
They're starting to show their hand now and it's looking like the same old stuff. As I was rather afraid of - if they had big ideas they would have been talking about them months ago.
'Unenthusiastic' is the best a party can hope for to win an election at the moment. To be not actually hated and execrated is the aim.
Sure, if all you care about is winning the election.
If you want to actually do something with power, you need more.
The lack of self-awareness from PB Johnsonians is mind boggling.
"Edward Leigh, the Conservative MP whose Gainsborough constituency contains RAF Scampton, which was the base for the Dambusters bomber squadron in the second world war, said the council would seek an injunction to stop it being used and that he supported it."
Will WW2 EVER be over for the English? What the fuck does what happened 80 years ago have to do with what happens to the site now?
Well it was also the base for RAFAT until about a year ago. You know those red planes that are a great recruiting tool and represent the country abroad do nothing much?
I’ll yield to superior knowledge here (ie Dura Ace), but has anyone ever joined the RAF because of the Red Arrows? Even when I was a pre adolescent fanboi, an RA aircraft never made it into my gluey air wing of model aircraft (Folland Gnats in my day I think). I’d imagine the RAF are pretty oversubscribed for air crew candidates at the best of times.
Anecdotal evidence I know, but they definitely piqued my interest in planes at the 1988 Farnborough airshow. The Reds, and standing right behind Concorde as it took off!
Concorde was wonderful but a bit of a damp squib when the speed on the cabin went to Mach 2. V nice Beef Wellington for Lunch iirc. Pleased to have been on it if only round the Bay of Biscay...
But the defining moment was not reaching Mach 2 but the point where the Bristol Channel was cleared and the pilot put the burners on… with a tail wind, reached JFK in about 3h20m on the one occasion I had the pleasure of flying, still have a bag with all the tickets, luggage tags, menu etc somewhere…
Sure it was but my trip iirc was 199 quid. Jfk was thousands return
In 1989 paid £1,500* for Concorde -> NYC -> 5 nights in Waldorf Astoria -> QE2 to Southampton… seemed a bargain at the time.
Edit: *£3,674 in today’s money
You got a good deal. In the late ‘90s, when I looked into it, the Biscay joyride was £995, and one way to JFK was around £3k.
Towards the end, the last few flights were zillions.. if you could get one. A beautiful aircraft to look at close up. At least I can say Kilroy was there once ...!
Surely Johnson will face a by-election then? Another Labour gain?
Possibly. I still expect the committee to pull its punch. It isn't that they don't conclude he is guilty as sin. Its that they fear a big punishment will be contested by mince MPs and bring the committee itself into disrepute.
So I expect a sanction just below the recall point which will slip by without much noise before his loyal followers start ramping him up as having been vindicated.
I don't agree. This decision makes it incredibly difficult in practice to justify a lighter sanction for Johnson. A bar has been set.
I would say, from the limited evidence of her interviews, that Margaret Ferrier is not especially bright.
She found herself by inadvertence in a difficult position and did not behave well.
I feel a bit sorry for her. She did a stupid thing, but her fault is stupidity.
I'm not sure that I would be in favour of a recall, if I lived in R&HW.
(And although not bright, she is far from the stupidest MP. She is probably somewhere in the middle of the pack).
If she really is not that bright how on earth did she get selected by the SNP, unless she was a paper candidate that got lucky ?
The selection of MPs is not an IQ test.
No kidding. But it is a test of their character and personality.
But there is still a process for candidate approval and then candidate selection for the seat.
"Edward Leigh, the Conservative MP whose Gainsborough constituency contains RAF Scampton, which was the base for the Dambusters bomber squadron in the second world war, said the council would seek an injunction to stop it being used and that he supported it."
Will WW2 EVER be over for the English? What the fuck does what happened 80 years ago have to do with what happens to the site now?
Well it was also the base for RAFAT until about a year ago. You know those red planes that are a great recruiting tool and represent the country abroad do nothing much?
I’ll yield to superior knowledge here (ie Dura Ace), but has anyone ever joined the RAF because of the Red Arrows? Even when I was a pre adolescent fanboi, an RA aircraft never made it into my gluey air wing of model aircraft (Folland Gnats in my day I think). I’d imagine the RAF are pretty oversubscribed for air crew candidates at the best of times.
Anecdotal evidence I know, but they definitely piqued my interest in planes at the 1988 Farnborough airshow. The Reds, and standing right behind Concorde as it took off!
Concorde was wonderful but a bit of a damp squib when the speed on the cabin went to Mach 2. V nice Beef Wellington for Lunch iirc. Pleased to have been on it if only round the Bay of Biscay...
But the defining moment was not reaching Mach 2 but the point where the Bristol Channel was cleared and the pilot put the burners on… with a tail wind, reached JFK in about 3h20m on the one occasion I had the pleasure of flying, still have a bag with all the tickets, luggage tags, menu etc somewhere…
Sure it was but my trip iirc was 199 quid. Jfk was thousands return
In 1989 paid £1,500* for Concorde -> NYC -> 5 nights in Waldorf Astoria -> QE2 to Southampton… seemed a bargain at the time.
Edit: *£3,674 in today’s money
I'm not sure if this was a joke or not, but I read somewhere recently that about 10 years after Concorde started carrying passengers they did some research into whether the mostly wealthy passengers using it thought the fares were too expensive, too cheap, or about right. Apparently most of the replies said that they were expecting it to cost a lot more than it did, and after that they put the fares up. Sounds like a slightly weird story though.
The annoying part (For me) about a post September 24 GE is that it would render any likely improvement in a Labour manifesto for upping the Tories' offer on Childcare to say 30 hrs for 2 yr olds in Sep '24 void.
Thoughts on SKS and Labour council tax freeze policy this AM…. Hmmmm.
Might be smart politics but I’m not sure this bodes well for a 2024 manifesto. Once again the tax on the 1% is being wheeled out to allow for a CT freeze.
This constant reusing of windfall tax/tax on high earners could lay them open to claims of lacking seriousness.
I still maintain they are the best option for 2024 and it would take a lot, put bluntly, for me to change my mind on that front but I am starting to have concerns that they haven’t really grasped just how fundamentally transformative their government needs to be to make the tough decisions needed.
Reeves needs to be careful with her promises for the use of never ending windfall taxes
Labour's policy is to decimate the Scottish oil and gas industry with no new licences and high taxes resulting in much diminished taxes anyway
Furthermore what happens next year when council taxes rise again plus this year's or is her idea to continue subsidising these rises which is our case this year was 9.9% as I posted earlier
Of course she can make these promises knowing that she will not be in power to implement them so it is a free hit, it may be politics but it certainly is not economics
Let’s not forget that local government is really in need of extra investment too.
I don’t have a problem with Labour making arguments that those with broader shoulders can contribute more (they can, within reason), or to transform elements of the economy (if they can demonstrate ways of doing so that will make economic sense). The problem is at the moment there is no big idea. Tinkering round the edges and playing the soak the rich tune. Where’s the dynamism and new ways of thinking that we need from a new government?
I will give them the benefit of the doubt that they are keeping their powder dry but… hmmm. I’m unenthusiastic right now.
They're starting to show their hand now and it's looking like the same old stuff. As I was rather afraid of - if they had big ideas they would have been talking about them months ago.
'Unenthusiastic' is the best a party can hope for to win an election at the moment. To be not actually hated and execrated is the aim.
Sure, if all you care about is winning the election.
If you want to actually do something with power, you need more.
Thanks. You have omitted all the bit from me (above) about why that is difficult/impossible at the moment.
The big policies which would win an election, be economically possible, not split the party etc are awaited. If there were some clear winners, actually I think they would be all over PB by now. Like all the lawful, humane and electorally possible solutions we have failed to find for boats/migrants/refugees. For Labour and the next election multiply this by about 20 and you have SKS's position.
For example I would like SKS to promise to seek to join EFTA/EEA. But to have a Brexit policy of any sort (apart from unicorns) is toxic, whichever one it is, to most voters. So I comprehend why he doesn't.
Which is fine as far as it goes.
But.
It only works if he gets a big majority to force through what he wants to do. If he only gets a small majority he needs to have rolled the pitch.
Yeah. Labour is fighting two different elections against two different opponents in Scotland versus E&W. The two are connected of course but not that much. Still, I would hope and expect Labour to win this byelection.
"Edward Leigh, the Conservative MP whose Gainsborough constituency contains RAF Scampton, which was the base for the Dambusters bomber squadron in the second world war, said the council would seek an injunction to stop it being used and that he supported it."
Will WW2 EVER be over for the English? What the fuck does what happened 80 years ago have to do with what happens to the site now?
Well it was also the base for RAFAT until about a year ago. You know those red planes that are a great recruiting tool and represent the country abroad do nothing much?
I’ll yield to superior knowledge here (ie Dura Ace), but has anyone ever joined the RAF because of the Red Arrows? Even when I was a pre adolescent fanboi, an RA aircraft never made it into my gluey air wing of model aircraft (Folland Gnats in my day I think). I’d imagine the RAF are pretty oversubscribed for air crew candidates at the best of times.
Anecdotal evidence I know, but they definitely piqued my interest in planes at the 1988 Farnborough airshow. The Reds, and standing right behind Concorde as it took off!
Concorde was wonderful but a bit of a damp squib when the speed on the cabin went to Mach 2. V nice Beef Wellington for Lunch iirc. Pleased to have been on it if only round the Bay of Biscay...
But the defining moment was not reaching Mach 2 but the point where the Bristol Channel was cleared and the pilot put the burners on… with a tail wind, reached JFK in about 3h20m on the one occasion I had the pleasure of flying, still have a bag with all the tickets, luggage tags, menu etc somewhere…
Sure it was but my trip iirc was 199 quid. Jfk was thousands return
In 1989 paid £1,500* for Concorde -> NYC -> 5 nights in Waldorf Astoria -> QE2 to Southampton… seemed a bargain at the time.
Edit: *£3,674 in today’s money
You got a good deal. In the late ‘90s, when I looked into it, the Biscay joyride was £995, and one way to JFK was around £3k.
A couple of friends booked a flight to NY with Concorde, back on a 747. When they got to Heathrow, they were told, by BA sorry, it will be 747 out, Concorde back.
They were disappointed, but their disappointment was compensated for with a quarter of a million BA air-miles each. Kept them travelling free for an age.
(Former gf's father was a Concorde pilot. Ultimate licence to shag....)
£34 traded on Labour at 1.38 (Not my money but the Smarkets total matched). Looks about right to me tbh - if it was in England against the Tories Lab would be a 1.01 shot but there's a smaller move against the SNP in Scotland. SNP held Airdrie and Shotts but I can't see enough Nats heading to the polls to hold this one with Yousuff in charge. Verdict - Lab Gain but no value or liquidity in the market.
I'd say a lot depends on the quality of the SNP & other candidates. What about Nicola?
It is probably way less stressful criticising the Govt in Westminster as an MP than having to run the Scottish Govt.
Who knows what Alba will do? If I lived in R&HW, I'd certainly vote for @malcolmg if he stands
Circumstances of a by-election are quite important. That the SNP chose someone so unsuited to the role was very clear by her conduct. They are going to have to find a candidate of unparalled excellence to get a hearing.
Yeah. Labour is fighting two different elections against two different opponents in Scotland versus E&W. The two are connected of course but not that much. Still, I would hope and expect Labour to win this byelection.
Oh, yeah. Mid-term both in Scotland and the UK, and Labour are the principal opposition in both (even if not mathematically so in Holyrood at the moment) as well as in this seat in particular.
Failing to take it would be a strong sign that we would need a big re-analysis of the political landscape. It really should be a question of "by how much" not "if".
Thoughts on SKS and Labour council tax freeze policy this AM…. Hmmmm.
Might be smart politics but I’m not sure this bodes well for a 2024 manifesto. Once again the tax on the 1% is being wheeled out to allow for a CT freeze.
This constant reusing of windfall tax/tax on high earners could lay them open to claims of lacking seriousness.
I still maintain they are the best option for 2024 and it would take a lot, put bluntly, for me to change my mind on that front but I am starting to have concerns that they haven’t really grasped just how fundamentally transformative their government needs to be to make the tough decisions needed.
Reeves needs to be careful with her promises for the use of never ending windfall taxes
Labour's policy is to decimate the Scottish oil and gas industry with no new licences and high taxes resulting in much diminished taxes anyway
Furthermore what happens next year when council taxes rise again plus this year's or is her idea to continue subsidising these rises which is our case this year was 9.9% as I posted earlier
Of course she can make these promises knowing that she will not be in power to implement them so it is a free hit, it may be politics but it certainly is not economics
Let’s not forget that local government is really in need of extra investment too.
I don’t have a problem with Labour making arguments that those with broader shoulders can contribute more (they can, within reason), or to transform elements of the economy (if they can demonstrate ways of doing so that will make economic sense). The problem is at the moment there is no big idea. Tinkering round the edges and playing the soak the rich tune. Where’s the dynamism and new ways of thinking that we need from a new government?
I will give them the benefit of the doubt that they are keeping their powder dry but… hmmm. I’m unenthusiastic right now.
They're starting to show their hand now and it's looking like the same old stuff. As I was rather afraid of - if they had big ideas they would have been talking about them months ago.
'Unenthusiastic' is the best a party can hope for to win an election at the moment. To be not actually hated and execrated is the aim.
Sure, if all you care about is winning the election.
If you want to actually do something with power, you need more.
Thanks. You have omitted all the bit from me (above) about why that is difficult/impossible at the moment.
The big policies which would win an election, be economically possible, not split the party etc are awaited. If there were some clear winners, actually I think they would be all over PB by now. Like all the lawful, humane and electorally possible solutions we have failed to find for boats/migrants/refugees. For Labour and the next election multiply this by about 20 and you have SKS's position.
For example I would like SKS to promise to seek to join EFTA/EEA. But to have a Brexit policy of any sort (apart from unicorns) is toxic, whichever one it is, to most voters. So I comprehend why he doesn't.
Which is fine as far as it goes.
But.
It only works if he gets a big majority to force through what he wants to do. If he only gets a small majority he needs to have rolled the pitch.
All true and soundly based. But he still has to win an election; and he can't if he goes into it with policies that won't get the votes because not enough people support them (eg any rational policy on post-Brexit or refugees/migrants) or policies that everyone else will think are economically impossible when UKplc has already maxed out of tax levels, deficit, debt and public spending.
I am sure SKS will welcome all useable suggestions. His principal weapon, it seems to me, is the moral one of not being the party of Boris, Truss, Paterson, Patel, Braverman, Raab, JRM, Williamson and (his trump card) Jezza.
"Edward Leigh, the Conservative MP whose Gainsborough constituency contains RAF Scampton, which was the base for the Dambusters bomber squadron in the second world war, said the council would seek an injunction to stop it being used and that he supported it."
Will WW2 EVER be over for the English? What the fuck does what happened 80 years ago have to do with what happens to the site now?
Well it was also the base for RAFAT until about a year ago. You know those red planes that are a great recruiting tool and represent the country abroad do nothing much?
I’ll yield to superior knowledge here (ie Dura Ace), but has anyone ever joined the RAF because of the Red Arrows? Even when I was a pre adolescent fanboi, an RA aircraft never made it into my gluey air wing of model aircraft (Folland Gnats in my day I think). I’d imagine the RAF are pretty oversubscribed for air crew candidates at the best of times.
Anecdotal evidence I know, but they definitely piqued my interest in planes at the 1988 Farnborough airshow. The Reds, and standing right behind Concorde as it took off!
Concorde was wonderful but a bit of a damp squib when the speed on the cabin went to Mach 2. V nice Beef Wellington for Lunch iirc. Pleased to have been on it if only round the Bay of Biscay...
But the defining moment was not reaching Mach 2 but the point where the Bristol Channel was cleared and the pilot put the burners on… with a tail wind, reached JFK in about 3h20m on the one occasion I had the pleasure of flying, still have a bag with all the tickets, luggage tags, menu etc somewhere…
Sure it was but my trip iirc was 199 quid. Jfk was thousands return
In 1989 paid £1,500* for Concorde -> NYC -> 5 nights in Waldorf Astoria -> QE2 to Southampton… seemed a bargain at the time.
Edit: *£3,674 in today’s money
I'm not sure if this was a joke or not, but I read somewhere recently that about 10 years after Concorde started carrying passengers they did some research into whether the mostly wealthy passengers using it thought the fares were too expensive, too cheap, or about right. Apparently most of the replies said that they were expecting it to cost a lot more than it did, and after that they put the fares up. Sounds like a slightly weird story though.
This was because the majority of travellers on Concorde were high level business people, or the rich.
In both cases they weren’t booking their travel themselves - PAs were doing it.
So actual price wasn’t as critical as for, say, economy flights.
Surely Johnson will face a by-election then? Another Labour gain?
Possibly. I still expect the committee to pull its punch. It isn't that they don't conclude he is guilty as sin. Its that they fear a big punishment will be contested by mince MPs and bring the committee itself into disrepute.
So I expect a sanction just below the recall point which will slip by without much noise before his loyal followers start ramping him up as having been vindicated.
I don't agree. This decision makes it incredibly difficult in practice to justify a lighter sanction for Johnson. A bar has been set.
I would say, from the limited evidence of her interviews, that Margaret Ferrier is not especially bright.
She found herself by inadvertence in a difficult position and did not behave well.
I feel a bit sorry for her. She did a stupid thing, but her fault is stupidity.
I'm not sure that I would be in favour of a recall, if I lived in R&HW.
(And although not bright, she is far from the stupidest MP. She is probably somewhere in the middle of the pack).
If she really is not that bright how on earth did she get selected by the SNP, unless she was a paper candidate that got lucky ?
The selection of MPs is not an IQ test.
No kidding. But it is a test of their character and personality.
But there is still a process for candidate approval and then candidate selection for the seat.
Have you not heard Daniel Kawczynski MP speak ? Or Carolyn Harris MP ?
There are many very thick MPs.
The saddest in recent history was I think Jim Devine, the Labour MP for Livingston who ended up in prison.
He was so thick he admitted to expenses fraud on prime time TV because he did not even understand that what he had done was fraud. I felt alarmed when he was being interviewed, it was painful.
A pb.com poll for the Thickest MP would be genuinely very competitive.
(The standard of the Welsh Senedd Members is -- disturbingly enough -- even lower than the MPs).
Yeah. Labour is fighting two different elections against two different opponents in Scotland versus E&W. The two are connected of course but not that much. Still, I would hope and expect Labour to win this byelection.
Oh, yeah. Mid-term both in Scotland and the UK, and Labour are the principal opposition in both (even if not mathematically so in Holyrood at the moment) as well as in this seat in particular.
Failing to take it would be a strong sign that we would need a big re-analysis of the political landscape. It really should be a question of "by how much" not "if".
All the evidence of a massive SNP collapse is anecdotal. Labour remain well adrift in the opinion polls, just not as well adrift as they once were.
I'd say a lot depends on the quality of the SNP & other candidates. What about Nicola?
It is probably way less stressful criticising the Govt in Westminster as an MP than having to run the Scottish Govt.
Who knows what Alba will do? If I lived in R&HW, I'd certainly vote for @malcolmg if he stands
Circumstances of a by-election are quite important. That the SNP chose someone so unsuited to the role was very clear by her conduct. They are going to have to find a candidate of unparalled excellence to get a hearing.
No. City of Chester just reelected a Labour MP when the previous MP was kicked out for sexual harassment. Labour were not punished because they had previously chosen someone unsuitable.
I think the SNP need a good candidate, sure, but not an unparalleled one.
Thoughts on SKS and Labour council tax freeze policy this AM…. Hmmmm.
Might be smart politics but I’m not sure this bodes well for a 2024 manifesto. Once again the tax on the 1% is being wheeled out to allow for a CT freeze.
This constant reusing of windfall tax/tax on high earners could lay them open to claims of lacking seriousness.
I still maintain they are the best option for 2024 and it would take a lot, put bluntly, for me to change my mind on that front but I am starting to have concerns that they haven’t really grasped just how fundamentally transformative their government needs to be to make the tough decisions needed.
Reeves needs to be careful with her promises for the use of never ending windfall taxes
Labour's policy is to decimate the Scottish oil and gas industry with no new licences and high taxes resulting in much diminished taxes anyway
Furthermore what happens next year when council taxes rise again plus this year's or is her idea to continue subsidising these rises which is our case this year was 9.9% as I posted earlier
Of course she can make these promises knowing that she will not be in power to implement them so it is a free hit, it may be politics but it certainly is not economics
Let’s not forget that local government is really in need of extra investment too.
I don’t have a problem with Labour making arguments that those with broader shoulders can contribute more (they can, within reason), or to transform elements of the economy (if they can demonstrate ways of doing so that will make economic sense). The problem is at the moment there is no big idea. Tinkering round the edges and playing the soak the rich tune. Where’s the dynamism and new ways of thinking that we need from a new government?
I will give them the benefit of the doubt that they are keeping their powder dry but… hmmm. I’m unenthusiastic right now.
They're starting to show their hand now and it's looking like the same old stuff. As I was rather afraid of - if they had big ideas they would have been talking about them months ago.
'Unenthusiastic' is the best a party can hope for to win an election at the moment. To be not actually hated and execrated is the aim.
Sure, if all you care about is winning the election.
If you want to actually do something with power, you need more.
Thanks. You have omitted all the bit from me (above) about why that is difficult/impossible at the moment.
The big policies which would win an election, be economically possible, not split the party etc are awaited. If there were some clear winners, actually I think they would be all over PB by now. Like all the lawful, humane and electorally possible solutions we have failed to find for boats/migrants/refugees. For Labour and the next election multiply this by about 20 and you have SKS's position.
For example I would like SKS to promise to seek to join EFTA/EEA. But to have a Brexit policy of any sort (apart from unicorns) is toxic, whichever one it is, to most voters. So I comprehend why he doesn't.
Which is fine as far as it goes.
But.
It only works if he gets a big majority to force through what he wants to do. If he only gets a small majority he needs to have rolled the pitch.
All true and soundly based. But he still has to win an election; and he can't if he goes into it with policies that won't get the votes because not enough people support them (eg any rational policy on post-Brexit or refugees/migrants) or policies that everyone else will think are economically impossible when UKplc has already maxed out of tax levels, deficit, debt and public spending.
I am sure SKS will welcome all useable suggestions. His principal weapon, it seems to me, is the moral one of not being the party of Boris, Truss, Paterson, Patel, Braverman, Raab, JRM, Williamson and (his trump card) Jezza.
Right, but the point is he has that principal weapon, and that gives him enough of a head start that he can afford to lose a few votes with some vision and policies to back it up.
Thoughts on SKS and Labour council tax freeze policy this AM…. Hmmmm.
Might be smart politics but I’m not sure this bodes well for a 2024 manifesto. Once again the tax on the 1% is being wheeled out to allow for a CT freeze.
This constant reusing of windfall tax/tax on high earners could lay them open to claims of lacking seriousness.
I still maintain they are the best option for 2024 and it would take a lot, put bluntly, for me to change my mind on that front but I am starting to have concerns that they haven’t really grasped just how fundamentally transformative their government needs to be to make the tough decisions needed.
Reeves needs to be careful with her promises for the use of never ending windfall taxes
Labour's policy is to decimate the Scottish oil and gas industry with no new licences and high taxes resulting in much diminished taxes anyway
Furthermore what happens next year when council taxes rise again plus this year's or is her idea to continue subsidising these rises which is our case this year was 9.9% as I posted earlier
Of course she can make these promises knowing that she will not be in power to implement them so it is a free hit, it may be politics but it certainly is not economics
Let’s not forget that local government is really in need of extra investment too.
I don’t have a problem with Labour making arguments that those with broader shoulders can contribute more (they can, within reason), or to transform elements of the economy (if they can demonstrate ways of doing so that will make economic sense). The problem is at the moment there is no big idea. Tinkering round the edges and playing the soak the rich tune. Where’s the dynamism and new ways of thinking that we need from a new government?
I will give them the benefit of the doubt that they are keeping their powder dry but… hmmm. I’m unenthusiastic right now.
They're starting to show their hand now and it's looking like the same old stuff. As I was rather afraid of - if they had big ideas they would have been talking about them months ago.
'Unenthusiastic' is the best a party can hope for to win an election at the moment. To be not actually hated and execrated is the aim.
There is currently £2.4 trn debt, £100 bn deficit, every single group in the public sector thinks it is massively underpaid, tax levels are at recent record highs, inflation is in double figures, and it politically toxic both to support or oppose Brexit. It is also politically toxic to have any views whatever on the migrant/refugee/boats crisis.
Labour might think up a few retail policies to ice the non-cake. But as for Big Ideas....Even PBers are notably short of ones which could win elections without at the same time losing them. SKS is doing well in a very tricky minefield. And that's even without bearing in mind he still has Diane Abbott and Richard Burgon in the party.
I take the point, but it is exactly in times like these that we need parties who are willing to do some of the sunlit uplands stuff. Parties who are serious about tackling the challenges our country faces. There is no point winning power to tinker with budgets for a few years while things get worse.
Of course SKS is playing a tricky balancing act but then any party leader aspiring to power is. This didn’t prevent them from making strong and considered cases as to how their agenda will make peoples lives measurably better. At present, I hear a lot about tax burdens and competence, I hear very little about ideas and solutions.
Thoughts on SKS and Labour council tax freeze policy this AM…. Hmmmm.
Might be smart politics but I’m not sure this bodes well for a 2024 manifesto. Once again the tax on the 1% is being wheeled out to allow for a CT freeze.
This constant reusing of windfall tax/tax on high earners could lay them open to claims of lacking seriousness.
I still maintain they are the best option for 2024 and it would take a lot, put bluntly, for me to change my mind on that front but I am starting to have concerns that they haven’t really grasped just how fundamentally transformative their government needs to be to make the tough decisions needed.
Reeves needs to be careful with her promises for the use of never ending windfall taxes
Labour's policy is to decimate the Scottish oil and gas industry with no new licences and high taxes resulting in much diminished taxes anyway
Furthermore what happens next year when council taxes rise again plus this year's or is her idea to continue subsidising these rises which is our case this year was 9.9% as I posted earlier
Of course she can make these promises knowing that she will not be in power to implement them so it is a free hit, it may be politics but it certainly is not economics
Let’s not forget that local government is really in need of extra investment too.
I don’t have a problem with Labour making arguments that those with broader shoulders can contribute more (they can, within reason), or to transform elements of the economy (if they can demonstrate ways of doing so that will make economic sense). The problem is at the moment there is no big idea. Tinkering round the edges and playing the soak the rich tune. Where’s the dynamism and new ways of thinking that we need from a new government?
I will give them the benefit of the doubt that they are keeping their powder dry but… hmmm. I’m unenthusiastic right now.
They're starting to show their hand now and it's looking like the same old stuff. As I was rather afraid of - if they had big ideas they would have been talking about them months ago.
'Unenthusiastic' is the best a party can hope for to win an election at the moment. To be not actually hated and execrated is the aim.
There is currently £2.4 trn debt, £100 bn deficit, every single group in the public sector thinks it is massively underpaid, tax levels are at recent record highs, inflation is in double figures, and it politically toxic both to support or oppose Brexit. It is also politically toxic to have any views whatever on the migrant/refugee/boats crisis.
Labour might think up a few retail policies to ice the non-cake. But as for Big Ideas....Even PBers are notably short of ones which could win elections without at the same time losing them. SKS is doing well in a very tricky minefield. And that's even without bearing in mind he still has Diane Abbott and Richard Burgon in the party.
I take the point, but it is exactly in times like these that we need parties who are willing to do some of the sunlit uplands stuff. Parties who are serious about tackling the challenges our country faces. There is no point winning power to tinker with budgets for a few years while things get worse.
*cough* Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng * cough*
Tinkering is all that Mr Market will allow for now.
"Edward Leigh, the Conservative MP whose Gainsborough constituency contains RAF Scampton, which was the base for the Dambusters bomber squadron in the second world war, said the council would seek an injunction to stop it being used and that he supported it."
Will WW2 EVER be over for the English? What the fuck does what happened 80 years ago have to do with what happens to the site now?
Well it was also the base for RAFAT until about a year ago. You know those red planes that are a great recruiting tool and represent the country abroad do nothing much?
I’ll yield to superior knowledge here (ie Dura Ace), but has anyone ever joined the RAF because of the Red Arrows? Even when I was a pre adolescent fanboi, an RA aircraft never made it into my gluey air wing of model aircraft (Folland Gnats in my day I think). I’d imagine the RAF are pretty oversubscribed for air crew candidates at the best of times.
Anecdotal evidence I know, but they definitely piqued my interest in planes at the 1988 Farnborough airshow. The Reds, and standing right behind Concorde as it took off!
Concorde was wonderful but a bit of a damp squib when the speed on the cabin went to Mach 2. V nice Beef Wellington for Lunch iirc. Pleased to have been on it if only round the Bay of Biscay...
But the defining moment was not reaching Mach 2 but the point where the Bristol Channel was cleared and the pilot put the burners on… with a tail wind, reached JFK in about 3h20m on the one occasion I had the pleasure of flying, still have a bag with all the tickets, luggage tags, menu etc somewhere…
Sure it was but my trip iirc was 199 quid. Jfk was thousands return
In 1989 paid £1,500* for Concorde -> NYC -> 5 nights in Waldorf Astoria -> QE2 to Southampton… seemed a bargain at the time.
Edit: *£3,674 in today’s money
I'm not sure if this was a joke or not, but I read somewhere recently that about 10 years after Concorde started carrying passengers they did some research into whether the mostly wealthy passengers using it thought the fares were too expensive, too cheap, or about right. Apparently most of the replies said that they were expecting it to cost a lot more than it did, and after that they put the fares up. Sounds like a slightly weird story though.
Yes that’s true. Most passengers had no idea what the ticket cost, and thought it was a lot more than it actually was. So the prices went up to match the expectations of the customers. BA went from losing a fortune to breaking even on the Concorde fleet.
Thoughts on SKS and Labour council tax freeze policy this AM…. Hmmmm.
Might be smart politics but I’m not sure this bodes well for a 2024 manifesto. Once again the tax on the 1% is being wheeled out to allow for a CT freeze.
This constant reusing of windfall tax/tax on high earners could lay them open to claims of lacking seriousness.
I still maintain they are the best option for 2024 and it would take a lot, put bluntly, for me to change my mind on that front but I am starting to have concerns that they haven’t really grasped just how fundamentally transformative their government needs to be to make the tough decisions needed.
Reeves needs to be careful with her promises for the use of never ending windfall taxes
Labour's policy is to decimate the Scottish oil and gas industry with no new licences and high taxes resulting in much diminished taxes anyway
Furthermore what happens next year when council taxes rise again plus this year's or is her idea to continue subsidising these rises which is our case this year was 9.9% as I posted earlier
Of course she can make these promises knowing that she will not be in power to implement them so it is a free hit, it may be politics but it certainly is not economics
Let’s not forget that local government is really in need of extra investment too.
I don’t have a problem with Labour making arguments that those with broader shoulders can contribute more (they can, within reason), or to transform elements of the economy (if they can demonstrate ways of doing so that will make economic sense). The problem is at the moment there is no big idea. Tinkering round the edges and playing the soak the rich tune. Where’s the dynamism and new ways of thinking that we need from a new government?
I will give them the benefit of the doubt that they are keeping their powder dry but… hmmm. I’m unenthusiastic right now.
They're starting to show their hand now and it's looking like the same old stuff. As I was rather afraid of - if they had big ideas they would have been talking about them months ago.
'Unenthusiastic' is the best a party can hope for to win an election at the moment. To be not actually hated and execrated is the aim.
There is currently £2.4 trn debt, £100 bn deficit, every single group in the public sector thinks it is massively underpaid, tax levels are at recent record highs, inflation is in double figures, and it politically toxic both to support or oppose Brexit. It is also politically toxic to have any views whatever on the migrant/refugee/boats crisis.
Labour might think up a few retail policies to ice the non-cake. But as for Big Ideas....Even PBers are notably short of ones which could win elections without at the same time losing them. SKS is doing well in a very tricky minefield. And that's even without bearing in mind he still has Diane Abbott and Richard Burgon in the party.
I take the point, but it is exactly in times like these that we need parties who are willing to do some of the sunlit uplands stuff. Parties who are serious about tackling the challenges our country faces. There is no point winning power to tinker with budgets for a few years while things get worse.
*cough* Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng * cough*
Tinkering is all that Mr Market will allow for now.
Not true.
The markets hated Truss and Kwartengs budget because they were essentially betting the house on their theory being right I.e giving people more disposable income would generate growth in the economy would pay for itself.
After a period of financial largesse during covid and the energy crisis, this looked irresponsible.
Yes money is tight. That doesn’t prevent the government from carrying out reforms.
"Edward Leigh, the Conservative MP whose Gainsborough constituency contains RAF Scampton, which was the base for the Dambusters bomber squadron in the second world war, said the council would seek an injunction to stop it being used and that he supported it."
Will WW2 EVER be over for the English? What the fuck does what happened 80 years ago have to do with what happens to the site now?
Well it was also the base for RAFAT until about a year ago. You know those red planes that are a great recruiting tool and represent the country abroad do nothing much?
I’ll yield to superior knowledge here (ie Dura Ace), but has anyone ever joined the RAF because of the Red Arrows? Even when I was a pre adolescent fanboi, an RA aircraft never made it into my gluey air wing of model aircraft (Folland Gnats in my day I think). I’d imagine the RAF are pretty oversubscribed for air crew candidates at the best of times.
Anecdotal evidence I know, but they definitely piqued my interest in planes at the 1988 Farnborough airshow. The Reds, and standing right behind Concorde as it took off!
Concorde was wonderful but a bit of a damp squib when the speed on the cabin went to Mach 2. V nice Beef Wellington for Lunch iirc. Pleased to have been on it if only round the Bay of Biscay...
But the defining moment was not reaching Mach 2 but the point where the Bristol Channel was cleared and the pilot put the burners on… with a tail wind, reached JFK in about 3h20m on the one occasion I had the pleasure of flying, still have a bag with all the tickets, luggage tags, menu etc somewhere…
Sure it was but my trip iirc was 199 quid. Jfk was thousands return
In 1989 paid £1,500* for Concorde -> NYC -> 5 nights in Waldorf Astoria -> QE2 to Southampton… seemed a bargain at the time.
Edit: *£3,674 in today’s money
You got a good deal. In the late ‘90s, when I looked into it, the Biscay joyride was £995, and one way to JFK was around £3k.
A couple of friends booked a flight to NY with Concorde, back on a 747. When they got to Heathrow, they were told, by BA sorry, it will be 747 out, Concorde back.
They were disappointed, but their disappointment was compensated for with a quarter of a million BA air-miles each. Kept them travelling free for an age.
(Former gf's father was a Concorde pilot. Ultimate licence to shag....)
After the Manchester 737 disaster BA used Concordes for a few domestic routes - such as NCL-LHR - never knew which flight it would be - a friend got to fly on one and of course as the plane needed hardly any fuel for the trip versus a loaded to the gills JFK run - and the natives were enchanted by the novelty rather than the racket the Concorde pilots enjoyed taking off at full welly in a light plane.
Surely Johnson will face a by-election then? Another Labour gain?
Possibly. I still expect the committee to pull its punch. It isn't that they don't conclude he is guilty as sin. Its that they fear a big punishment will be contested by mince MPs and bring the committee itself into disrepute.
So I expect a sanction just below the recall point which will slip by without much noise before his loyal followers start ramping him up as having been vindicated.
I don't agree. This decision makes it incredibly difficult in practice to justify a lighter sanction for Johnson. A bar has been set.
I would say, from the limited evidence of her interviews, that Margaret Ferrier is not especially bright.
She found herself by inadvertence in a difficult position and did not behave well.
I feel a bit sorry for her. She did a stupid thing, but her fault is stupidity.
I'm not sure that I would be in favour of a recall, if I lived in R&HW.
(And although not bright, she is far from the stupidest MP. She is probably somewhere in the middle of the pack).
If she really is not that bright how on earth did she get selected by the SNP, unless she was a paper candidate that got lucky ?
The selection of MPs is not an IQ test.
No kidding. But it is a test of their character and personality.
But there is still a process for candidate approval and then candidate selection for the seat.
Have you not heard Daniel Kawczynski MP speak ? Or Carolyn Harris MP ?
There are many very thick MPs.
The saddest in recent history was I think Jim Devine, the Labour MP for Livingston who ended up in prison.
He was so thick he admitted to expenses fraud on prime time TV because he did not even understand that what he had done was fraud. I felt alarmed when he was being interviewed, it was painful.
A pb.com poll for the Thickest MP would be genuinely very competitive.
(The standard of the Welsh Senedd Members is -- disturbingly enough -- even lower than the MPs).
No it wouldn’t. Although after we’ve all agreed it’s Richard Burgon second place might be a wide field…
Surely Johnson will face a by-election then? Another Labour gain?
Possibly. I still expect the committee to pull its punch. It isn't that they don't conclude he is guilty as sin. Its that they fear a big punishment will be contested by mince MPs and bring the committee itself into disrepute.
So I expect a sanction just below the recall point which will slip by without much noise before his loyal followers start ramping him up as having been vindicated.
I don't agree. This decision makes it incredibly difficult in practice to justify a lighter sanction for Johnson. A bar has been set.
I would say, from the limited evidence of her interviews, that Margaret Ferrier is not especially bright.
She found herself by inadvertence in a difficult position and did not behave well.
I feel a bit sorry for her. She did a stupid thing, but her fault is stupidity.
I'm not sure that I would be in favour of a recall, if I lived in R&HW.
(And although not bright, she is far from the stupidest MP. She is probably somewhere in the middle of the pack).
If she really is not that bright how on earth did she get selected by the SNP, unless she was a paper candidate that got lucky ?
The selection of MPs is not an IQ test.
No kidding. But it is a test of their character and personality.
But there is still a process for candidate approval and then candidate selection for the seat.
Have you not heard Daniel Kawczynski MP speak ? Or Carolyn Harris MP ?
There are many very thick MPs.
The saddest in recent history was I think Jim Devine, the Labour MP for Livingston who ended up in prison.
He was so thick he admitted to expenses fraud on prime time TV because he did not even understand that what he had done was fraud. I felt alarmed when he was being interviewed, it was painful.
A pb.com poll for the Thickest MP would be genuinely very competitive.
(The standard of the Welsh Senedd Members is -- disturbingly enough -- even lower than the MPs).
Carolyn Harris may speak with a thick Swansea brogue but her work on the menopause is quite exceptional. She has a strong local following. I would place her substantially higher than a significant number of MPs of all stripes. Labour MPs in Wales are so dreary I can't even think of that many, although Steve Kinnock deserves a mention. But hen-pecked Steve is a titan compared to funster heroes like Jamie Wallace and Rob Roberts.
I can't disagree with the Senedd intake, although even with most Labour members scoring a solid 0/10, we have RT, Paul Davies and Nick Ramsey struggling to score as high as a zero.
"Edward Leigh, the Conservative MP whose Gainsborough constituency contains RAF Scampton, which was the base for the Dambusters bomber squadron in the second world war, said the council would seek an injunction to stop it being used and that he supported it."
Will WW2 EVER be over for the English? What the fuck does what happened 80 years ago have to do with what happens to the site now?
Well it was also the base for RAFAT until about a year ago. You know those red planes that are a great recruiting tool and represent the country abroad do nothing much?
I’ll yield to superior knowledge here (ie Dura Ace), but has anyone ever joined the RAF because of the Red Arrows? Even when I was a pre adolescent fanboi, an RA aircraft never made it into my gluey air wing of model aircraft (Folland Gnats in my day I think). I’d imagine the RAF are pretty oversubscribed for air crew candidates at the best of times.
Anecdotal evidence I know, but they definitely piqued my interest in planes at the 1988 Farnborough airshow. The Reds, and standing right behind Concorde as it took off!
Concorde was wonderful but a bit of a damp squib when the speed on the cabin went to Mach 2. V nice Beef Wellington for Lunch iirc. Pleased to have been on it if only round the Bay of Biscay...
But the defining moment was not reaching Mach 2 but the point where the Bristol Channel was cleared and the pilot put the burners on… with a tail wind, reached JFK in about 3h20m on the one occasion I had the pleasure of flying, still have a bag with all the tickets, luggage tags, menu etc somewhere…
Sure it was but my trip iirc was 199 quid. Jfk was thousands return
In 1989 paid £1,500* for Concorde -> NYC -> 5 nights in Waldorf Astoria -> QE2 to Southampton… seemed a bargain at the time.
Edit: *£3,674 in today’s money
I'm not sure if this was a joke or not, but I read somewhere recently that about 10 years after Concorde started carrying passengers they did some research into whether the mostly wealthy passengers using it thought the fares were too expensive, too cheap, or about right. Apparently most of the replies said that they were expecting it to cost a lot more than it did, and after that they put the fares up. Sounds like a slightly weird story though.
Yes that’s true. Most passengers had no idea what the ticket cost, and thought it was a lot more than it actually was. So the prices went up to match the expectations of the customers. BA went from losing a fortune to breaking even on the Concorde fleet.
Only, iirc, after the Govt had written off most if not all of the development cost.....
Comments
The prices don't seem to be any lower than Asda or Tesco, the quality is low and the experience is dreadful.
I have a theory that the people extolling Lidl and Aldi are Waitrose shoppers who are too snobby to go to Asda but either have money problems and/or are 'fashionably slumming it'.
So I expect a sanction just below the recall point which will slip by without much noise before his loyal followers start ramping him up as having been vindicated.
I also did quite a few Hawk familiarisation flights for foreign officers (the night out with the Bahrainis in Hull was a five star epic) and none of them ever mentioned the RA as a reason for clicking Buy It Now on the Hawk.
Their Airships would love to get shot but it's politically impossible.
I don’t have a problem with Labour making arguments that those with broader shoulders can contribute more (they can, within reason), or to transform elements of the economy (if they can demonstrate ways of doing so that will make economic sense). The problem is at the moment there is no big idea. Tinkering round the edges and playing the soak the rich tune. Where’s the dynamism and new ways of thinking that we need from a new government?
I will give them the benefit of the doubt that they are keeping their powder dry but… hmmm. I’m unenthusiastic right now.
The first time a non pilot has made it to the top.
The snag for the SNP is that they *are* part of the government people may be pissed off with. That's surely what Labour have to focus on if they are to win.
The Dambusters point adds a bit of colour but I agree it's meaningless and odd to mention - the site closed as an RAF base last year, so it will have to be something else and the sooner the better really.
My old university made registration to vote part of its freshers process. Others less so, with a corresponding drop off in the number of people able to vote. Ideal for a government happy to see fewer new voters.
30 days for Boris, we hope
Life is too short to burn energy hating people.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/apr/05/politics.localgovernment
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individual_Electoral_Registration
The net effect of the manipulation of the electoral register is that there are relatively more seats in Conservative areas than there should be, and the voters in those seats are also more skewed towards the Conservatives than they should be. By design, not accident.
I think that, with all the different instances of voter suppression that have taken place over the Conservative years, there is going to be a huge reaction when a non-Conservative government takes power in 2024. We will see a move to boundaries based on ONS population estimates (as in the US), an efficient system of electoral registration that draws heavily on administrative records to automatically register people by default and hopefully has effective sanctions* for those who don't keep their registration up to date, and an overturning of the latest voter ID requirements.
*Effective sanctions = Making registration a condition for receiving any form of state support, effectively the system in place in Germany.
Edit: *£3,674 in today’s money
I was reminded of The Dambusters the other day as I saw a primary school brass band play the theme tune. I'm guessing none of them had seen the film, at least not in unredacted form.
It's good to see you again admit that Labour intend to rig the system for what they perceive as their benefit.
So they may as well stick to their guns, say he lied, say that's very serious, and slap him with six weeks at the very least. I am increasingly confident that will happen - and this news adds to that.
Must admit I had forgotten all about renewing mine as previously had always changed address within 10 years, fortunately its not til next year.
If the government has such a process in place it really needs to communicate it better, leaving 2m people exposed to such a fine is simply unacceptable imo.
There is currently £2.4 trn debt, £100 bn deficit, every single group in the public sector thinks it is massively underpaid, tax levels are at recent record highs, inflation is in double figures, and it politically toxic both to support or oppose Brexit. It is also politically toxic to have any views whatever on the migrant/refugee/boats crisis.
Labour might think up a few retail policies to ice the non-cake. But as for Big Ideas....Even PBers are notably short of ones which could win elections without at the same time losing them. SKS is doing well in a very tricky minefield. And that's even without bearing in mind he still has Diane Abbott and Richard Burgon in the party.
She found herself by inadvertence in a difficult position and did not behave well.
I feel a bit sorry for her. She did a stupid thing, but her fault is stupidity.
I'm not sure that I would be in favour of a recall, if I lived in R&HW.
(And although not bright, she is far from the stupidest MP. She is probably somewhere in the middle of the pack).
If you want to actually do something with power, you need more.
Very good. I shall be nicking that.
The big policies which would win an election, be economically possible, not split the party etc are awaited. If there were some clear winners, actually I think they would be all over PB by now. Like all the lawful, humane and electorally possible solutions we have failed to find for boats/migrants/refugees. For Labour and the next election multiply this by about 20 and you have SKS's position.
For example I would like SKS to promise to seek to join EFTA/EEA. But to have a Brexit policy of any sort (apart from unicorns) is toxic, whichever one it is, to most voters. So I comprehend why he doesn't.
...!
But there is still a process for candidate approval and then candidate selection for the seat.
I'd say a lot depends on the quality of the SNP & other candidates. What about Nicola?
It is probably way less stressful criticising the Govt in Westminster as an MP than having to run the Scottish Govt.
Who knows what Alba will do? If I lived in R&HW, I'd certainly vote for @malcolmg if he stands
Also, doesn't there have to be a recall petition first? Needs 10%, something like 8K signatures. Which seems doable.
But.
It only works if he gets a big majority to force through what he wants to do. If he only gets a small majority he needs to have rolled the pitch.
They were disappointed, but their disappointment was compensated for with a quarter of a million BA air-miles each. Kept them travelling free for an age.
(Former gf's father was a Concorde pilot. Ultimate licence to shag....)
SNP held Airdrie and Shotts but I can't see enough Nats heading to the polls to hold this one with Yousuff in charge.
Verdict - Lab Gain but no value or liquidity in the market.
Failing to take it would be a strong sign that we would need a big re-analysis of the political landscape. It really should be a question of "by how much" not "if".
I am sure SKS will welcome all useable suggestions. His principal weapon, it seems to me, is the moral one of not being the party of Boris, Truss, Paterson, Patel, Braverman, Raab, JRM, Williamson and (his trump card) Jezza.
In both cases they weren’t booking their travel themselves - PAs were doing it.
So actual price wasn’t as critical as for, say, economy flights.
There are many very thick MPs.
The saddest in recent history was I think Jim Devine, the Labour MP for Livingston who ended up in prison.
He was so thick he admitted to expenses fraud on prime time TV because he did not even understand that what he had done was fraud. I felt alarmed when he was being interviewed, it was painful.
A pb.com poll for the Thickest MP would be genuinely very competitive.
(The standard of the Welsh Senedd Members is -- disturbingly enough -- even lower than the MPs).
I think the SNP need a good candidate, sure, but not an unparalleled one.
https://twitter.com/paddypower/status/1640995126276128768?s=46
Of course SKS is playing a tricky balancing act but then any party leader aspiring to power is. This didn’t prevent them from making strong and considered cases as to how their agenda will make peoples lives measurably better. At present, I hear a lot about tax burdens and competence, I hear very little about ideas and solutions.
Tinkering is all that Mr Market will allow for now.
I think it would have been possible pre GRA with Sturgeon still in charge...
Not strictly true, my cat has developed a bit of a taste for any haggisy leavings on my plate.
The markets hated Truss and Kwartengs budget because they were essentially betting the house on their theory being right I.e giving people more disposable income would generate growth in the economy would pay for itself.
After a period of financial largesse during covid and the energy crisis, this looked irresponsible.
Yes money is tight. That doesn’t prevent the government from carrying out reforms.
I can't disagree with the Senedd intake, although even with most Labour members scoring a solid 0/10, we have RT, Paul Davies and Nick Ramsey struggling to score as high as a zero.