In the 1960s the UK resisted becoming involved in Vietnam (like Canada, but unlike Australia) and we could have avoided Iraq too... but our leaders still believe(d) in the "Special Relationship", for which we get ever diminishing returns as the US looks away from Europe and towards Asia. While the current Brexit mess leaves us even more dependent on a Washington that actually doesn´t care about a second rank declining power, the time is coming where we will need to face some critical home truths about ourselves, our interests and our capabilities.
I did too. It was America at its worst and Blair at his worst. And did he lie to get his way? As near as makes no difference. Deserves all the shit that comes his way for the whole debacle.
However you do get a kind of retro-wise pile-on when it comes to the evil Tony and Iraq. Wildly exaggerated things get said quite freely. Often by people who were not massively opposed at the time. Certainly if they are Tory supporters they probably weren't.
Although of course everybody was passionately opposed at the time now, weren't they? The whole country were writing into the papers and on that march.
Yup. I did go on the march. I thought it would be a disaster, I thought that Blair exaggerated the degree of confidence he had in the evidence on Saddam's danger to the West, which was disgracefully dishonest. On the other hand, I think that Blair did genuinely believe he was doing the right thing and I respect his motives if not his actions. And I think Bush would have got his war with or without us. Whether Iraq is better off or worse off now as a result of the war is I think almost impossible to know. But going to war on a false prospectus is I think unforgivable. I would also add that I think we are better off having some distance between us and the US, to avoid these kinds of entanglements when they lose the plot, which is one reason why I opposed Brexit. Outside the EU I think it is inevitable we move closer to the US orbit.
How about delaying university entrance one year after A levels.
Thus allowing school leavers to do do some work or travel or something for themselves for a year and so get some experience outside a controlled academic environment.
They might then have a better idea of whether university is the thing for them or at least whether the course they wanted is still the right one.
Where are the jobs to do that?
30 years ago I managed to get a job between A levels and Uni but few other pupils had the opportunity to do so.
And having seen the chances my children got I suspect it would be harder now than then to find a job - 30 years ago many people went straight from School to Uni now most places want you to have a degree...
No shortage of job vacancies currently.
And 30 years ago you didn't leave university £50k in debt.
Encouraging teenagers to do that now before they have any experience of the outside world is financial abuse.
So go and drum that story into every Secondary School head because the current route to work for anyone bright is -> School -> 6 form -> Uni.
Now a few people will hit lucky and discover what a degree apprenticeship is and most haven't a clue that they exist but that comes at a cost of losing your school friends who go off to uni.
The 'one size fits all' approach.
Which usually benefits the producers more than the consumers.
The period since 2016 has truly been a low, dishonest decade.
1997 to 2007.....
Whatabout it ?
An equally appalling period in our lifetime millions died as a result of Blair cosying up to George Bush jnr
That's a nonsense though. Iraq would have happened without the UK. Bush & Co were set on it.
Maybe, but it didnt mean our government had go along with it and to lie in order to go along with it,
There's no 'maybe' about it. The US were doing Iraq anyway so the statement that "millions died as a result of Blair cosying up to George Bush jnr" is inaccurate and therefore merited a correction.
As to the whole thing being a shitshow that shouldn't have happened and that in any case we should have stayed out of - well yes obviously. Is there anybody at all these days who thinks any different?
The war part and deposing Saddam Hussein worked fine. What caused the shitshow was the utter failure to plan in advance for what happened after the initial aim was achieved.
This seems oddly familiar, somehow.
Yes, although I wouldn't say 'worked fine' because you can't divorce the invasion from the aftermath and the aftermath was never modellable.
There's been far too little discussion of some of the strikingly repressive legislation passed yesterday.
As I expect Cyclefree and other lawyers will often confirm, it's now only a matter of time before powers with as wide a scope as stopping and searching any protestors police believe are "intending to cause disruption" are widely abused. Likewise, on previous form, the new powers on stopping any demonstration "blocking infrastructure and roads" are eventually likely to become widely abused, to prevent any demonstration using a public road that some or other authorities don't like. This is just in the nature of policing and exercise of power, once you give people very wide leeway.
This is serious stuff, and requires much wider discussion.
Most of our neighbours do not have laws like this.
The parallels between the politics of the British Conservative party and the Italian FdI are quite strong in 2023.
That can reasonably be used to make two quite distinct, even opposite, arguments about the nature of those two parties, but that is still not necessarily a comfortable place to be.
How about delaying university entrance one year after A levels.
Thus allowing school leavers to do do some work or travel or something for themselves for a year and so get some experience outside a controlled academic environment.
They might then have a better idea of whether university is the thing for them or at least whether the course they wanted is still the right one.
Where are the jobs to do that?
30 years ago I managed to get a job between A levels and Uni but few other pupils had the opportunity to do so.
And having seen the chances my children got I suspect it would be harder now than then to find a job - 30 years ago many people went straight from School to Uni now most places want you to have a degree...
No shortage of job vacancies currently.
And 30 years ago you didn't leave university £50k in debt.
Encouraging teenagers to do that now before they have any experience of the outside world is financial abuse.
So go and drum that story into every Secondary School head because the current route to work for anyone bright is -> School -> 6 form -> Uni.
Now a few people will hit lucky and discover what a degree apprenticeship is and most haven't a clue that they exist but that comes at a cost of losing your school friends who go off to uni.
The 'one size fits all' approach.
Which usually benefits the producers more than the consumers.
No - it's a lack of knowledge resulting in schools and 6 form colleges offering the easier options.
The only reason I knew that degree apprenticeships existed is because for a while 10 or so years ago I sat alongside the apprenticeship manager for BAe.
Which is why in the street I live in 3 19-21 year olds are all on degree apprenticeships - probably a higher percentage than anywhere else in the country.
And that tells me 2 things - 1 given a choice a lot of students would prefer an apprenticeship to Uni 2) most people don't know they exist because the odds of all 3 people getting them if everyone knew and applied for them is zilch.
As an aside when twin A moves department next month her pay goes up to £3x,000 a year. Add on a 27% pension contribution and a paid for degree (with time off for study) and a civil service degree apprenticeship is the best possible option for an 18-21 year old. Mind you it's hard work when the time you need to spend on your degree is factored in.
How about delaying university entrance one year after A levels.
Thus allowing school leavers to do do some work or travel or something for themselves for a year and so get some experience outside a controlled academic environment.
Where are the jobs to do that?
30 years ago I managed to get a job between A levels and Uni but few other pupils had the opportunity to do so.
And having seen the chances my children got I suspect it would be harder now than then to find a job - 30 years ago many people went straight from School to Uni now most places want you to have a degree...
Mmm -- I suspect you'd end up with a load of middle-class parents grabbing whatever placement opportunities their employers had for their kids and/or subsidising gap years...
For a lot of employers a year's work from a school-leaver is going to only be worth having to the extent that it's an extended interview and opportunity to start training somebody who's going to join you after they graduate -- and with a three year delay that's a rather delayed payoff.
In the 1960s the UK resisted becoming involved in Vietnam (like Canada, but unlike Australia) and we could have avoided Iraq too... but our leaders still believe(d) in the "Special Relationship", for which we get ever diminishing returns as the US looks away from Europe and towards Asia. While the current Brexit mess leaves us even more dependent on a Washington that actually doesn´t care about a second rank declining power, the time is coming where we will need to face some critical home truths about ourselves, our interests and our capabilities.
I did too. It was America at its worst and Blair at his worst. And did he lie to get his way? As near as makes no difference. Deserves all the shit that comes his way for the whole debacle.
However you do get a kind of retro-wise pile-on when it comes to the evil Tony and Iraq. Wildly exaggerated things get said quite freely. Often by people who were not massively opposed at the time. Certainly if they are Tory supporters they probably weren't.
Although of course everybody was passionately opposed at the time now, weren't they? The whole country were writing into the papers and on that march.
Wrong, 63% of British voters backed sending troops into Iraq in 2003 as did I.
Blair and Bush as I said got it right, Iraq is now Saddam free. If Gore had won in 2000 Saddam would still be leading Iraq and backing Putin and Islamic militants. While it was under Biden that Afghanistan has returned to the Taliban. So in retrospect it is Gore and Biden who made the biggest mistakes in the Middle East, not Bush and Blair
Not wrong because that's exactly my point! Not that it was right - it very much wasn't - but that lots of people who say now what an abomination it was were supportive or at least sanguine about it when it was happening. You're in a minority in not indulging in this. You stick like a mule with being wrong about it being right and there's a kind of perverse credit in that in my book. Better this imo than right wingers who use Iraq to pile into their hate figure Blair when they didn't oppose Iraq at the time.
There is also some similarity with Brexit here.
Whether it was right or wrong to go to war, the management of the war was terrible.
Whether Brexit was right or wrong, the management of Brexit has been terrible.
The period since 2016 has truly been a low, dishonest decade.
1997 to 2007.....
Whatabout it ?
An equally appalling period in our lifetime millions died as a result of Blair cosying up to George Bush jnr
That's a nonsense though. Iraq would have happened without the UK. Bush & Co were set on it.
Maybe, but it didnt mean our government had go along with it and to lie in order to go along with it,
There's no 'maybe' about it. The US were doing Iraq anyway so the statement that "millions died as a result of Blair cosying up to George Bush jnr" is inaccurate and therefore merited a correction.
As to the whole thing being a shitshow that shouldn't have happened and that in any case we should have stayed out of - well yes obviously. Is there anybody at all these days who thinks any different?
The war part and deposing Saddam Hussein worked fine. What caused the shitshow was the utter failure to plan in advance for what happened after the initial aim was achieved.
This seems oddly familiar, somehow.
How do 'subsequent shitshows' now rank between Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya ?
British forces have flown 8,000 combat missions over Iraq and Syria since 2015 without any noticeable results so Iraq must easily be the gold standard of shit shows.
The RAF are now just continuing with it to make closing Akrotiri problematic. Sucks for the Iraqis but we face difficult choices in a turbulent world.
Afghanistan ended unfortunately but it was surely a success in its own terms. It deprived Al Qaeda of a base from which to launch Jihad against the West, eventually leading to the tracking down and assassination of Bin Laden in Pakistan. By the time the Taliban were back in they had evolved into simpler fundamentalists with seemingly only domestic aims and no intention of housing foreign terror cells.
It didn't succeed in nation building but that wasn't really the original war aim (unlike Iraq).
Libya was probably the most ham-fisted of the lot, but it's difficult to know what an alternative course of action would have been short of letting Gaddafi run riot.
The period since 2016 has truly been a low, dishonest decade.
1997 to 2007.....
Whatabout it ?
An equally appalling period in our lifetime millions died as a result of Blair cosying up to George Bush jnr
That's a nonsense though. Iraq would have happened without the UK. Bush & Co were set on it.
Maybe, but it didnt mean our government had go along with it and to lie in order to go along with it,
There's no 'maybe' about it. The US were doing Iraq anyway so the statement that "millions died as a result of Blair cosying up to George Bush jnr" is inaccurate and therefore merited a correction.
As to the whole thing being a shitshow that shouldn't have happened and that in any case we should have stayed out of - well yes obviously. Is there anybody at all these days who thinks any different?
The war part and deposing Saddam Hussein worked fine. What caused the shitshow was the utter failure to plan in advance for what happened after the initial aim was achieved.
This seems oddly familiar, somehow.
Yes, although I wouldn't say 'worked fine' because you can't divorce the invasion from the aftermath and the aftermath was never modellable.
It was very obvious even to a casual observer, soon after the invasion started, that the US had no real plans for the aftermath.
The repercussions across the region were malign, and while it's impossible to know what might have transpired had it not happened, it's quite conceivable that the international order would be less fractured than it now is. Certainly conducting a war of aggression on what turned out to be an entirely false prospectus set a very bad precedent indeed, which is not forgotten by considerably more malign actors.
There's been far too little discussion of some of the strikingly repressive legislation passed yesterday.
As I expect Cyclefree and other lawyers will often confirm, it's now only a matter of time before powers with as wide a scope as stopping and searching any protestors police believe are "intending to cause disruption" are widely abused. Likewise, on previous form, the new powers on stopping any demonstration "blocking infrastructure and roads" are eventually likely to become widely abused, to prevent any demonstration using a public road that some or other authorities don't like. This is just in the nature of policing and exercise of power, once you give people very wide leeway.
This is serious stuff, and requires much wider discussion.
Most of our neighbours do not have laws like this.
Police rarely enforce existing laws against these protestors - and when they do, the courts tend to let them off with a slap on the wrist at most - so I'm not sure how new laws will make any difference in reality.
In the 1960s the UK resisted becoming involved in Vietnam (like Canada, but unlike Australia) and we could have avoided Iraq too... but our leaders still believe(d) in the "Special Relationship", for which we get ever diminishing returns as the US looks away from Europe and towards Asia. While the current Brexit mess leaves us even more dependent on a Washington that actually doesn´t care about a second rank declining power, the time is coming where we will need to face some critical home truths about ourselves, our interests and our capabilities.
I did too. It was America at its worst and Blair at his worst. And did he lie to get his way? As near as makes no difference. Deserves all the shit that comes his way for the whole debacle.
However you do get a kind of retro-wise pile-on when it comes to the evil Tony and Iraq. Wildly exaggerated things get said quite freely. Often by people who were not massively opposed at the time. Certainly if they are Tory supporters they probably weren't.
Although of course everybody was passionately opposed at the time now, weren't they? The whole country were writing into the papers and on that march.
Wrong, 63% of British voters backed sending troops into Iraq in 2003 as did I.
Blair and Bush as I said got it right, Iraq is now Saddam free. If Gore had won in 2000 Saddam would still be leading Iraq and backing Putin and Islamic militants. While it was under Biden that Afghanistan has returned to the Taliban. So in retrospect it is Gore and Biden who made the biggest mistakes in the Middle East, not Bush and Blair
Not wrong because that's exactly my point! Not that it was right - it very much wasn't - but that lots of people who say now what an abomination it was were supportive or at least sanguine about it when it was happening. You're in a minority in not indulging in this. You stick like a mule with being wrong about it being right and there's a kind of perverse credit in that in my book. Better this imo than right wingers who use Iraq to pile into their hate figure Blair when they didn't oppose Iraq at the time.
I was no fan of Tony Blair, and opposed was opposed to the second Iraq war, but for me Iraq doesn't come in the top give things I disliked about him. I was opposed to British involvement in the second Iraq war at the time not because of the principle - would we make the world a better place by removing Saddam? it was at least arguable that we would - but because I didn't think we would be successful. I was happy to be proved wrong on that. Was the world made a better place? Again, the answer is arguable. Worth noting in favour of the warmongers that one positive result was cutting off a major source of funding for Palestinian suicide bombers.
The period since 2016 has truly been a low, dishonest decade.
1997 to 2007.....
Whatabout it ?
An equally appalling period in our lifetime millions died as a result of Blair cosying up to George Bush jnr
That's a nonsense though. Iraq would have happened without the UK. Bush & Co were set on it.
Maybe, but it didnt mean our government had go along with it and to lie in order to go along with it,
There's no 'maybe' about it. The US were doing Iraq anyway so the statement that "millions died as a result of Blair cosying up to George Bush jnr" is inaccurate and therefore merited a correction.
As to the whole thing being a shitshow that shouldn't have happened and that in any case we should have stayed out of - well yes obviously. Is there anybody at all these days who thinks any different?
The war part and deposing Saddam Hussein worked fine. What caused the shitshow was the utter failure to plan in advance for what happened after the initial aim was achieved.
This seems oddly familiar, somehow.
How do 'subsequent shitshows' now rank between Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya ?
British forces have flown 8,000 combat missions over Iraq and Syria since 2015 without any noticeable results so Iraq must easily be the gold standard of shit shows.
The RAF are now just continuing with it to make closing Akrotiri problematic. Sucks for the Iraqis but we face difficult choices in a turbulent world.
Afghanistan ended unfortunately but it was surely a success in its own terms. It deprived Al Qaeda of a base from which to launch Jihad against the West, eventually leading to the tracking down and assassination of Bin Laden in Pakistan. By the time the Taliban were back in they had evolved into simpler fundamentalists with seemingly only domestic aims and no intention of housing foreign terror cells.
It didn't succeed in nation building but that wasn't really the original war aim (unlike Iraq).
Libya was probably the most ham-fisted of the lot, but it's difficult to know what an alternative course of action would have been short of letting Gaddafi run riot.
Allowing Gadaffi to conduct a massacre was indeed, the only alternative. And, Gadaffi may not even have won.
Saddam ought to have been removed, back in 1991, before Iraq was ground down by sanctions.
SKS is pretty sh*te at politics as well as being a sh*te leader. However, he is far better than the cabal he replaced - it’s not that long ago that people like Dianne “can’t add up” Abbott and Dawn “thick as mince” Butler were in frontline politics. Thank God these characters have been banished.
Anyway, SKS is the best we have currently and he will most likely eject this awful Government who have presided over 13 years of mis-rule.
The 2 examples you give fits you perfectly with SKSs hierarchy of racism Party
In the 1960s the UK resisted becoming involved in Vietnam (like Canada, but unlike Australia) and we could have avoided Iraq too... but our leaders still believe(d) in the "Special Relationship", for which we get ever diminishing returns as the US looks away from Europe and towards Asia. While the current Brexit mess leaves us even more dependent on a Washington that actually doesn´t care about a second rank declining power, the time is coming where we will need to face some critical home truths about ourselves, our interests and our capabilities.
I did too. It was America at its worst and Blair at his worst. And did he lie to get his way? As near as makes no difference. Deserves all the shit that comes his way for the whole debacle.
However you do get a kind of retro-wise pile-on when it comes to the evil Tony and Iraq. Wildly exaggerated things get said quite freely. Often by people who were not massively opposed at the time. Certainly if they are Tory supporters they probably weren't.
Although of course everybody was passionately opposed at the time now, weren't they? The whole country were writing into the papers and on that march.
Wrong, 63% of British voters backed sending troops into Iraq in 2003 as did I.
Blair and Bush as I said got it right, Iraq is now Saddam free. If Gore had won in 2000 Saddam would still be leading Iraq and backing Putin and Islamic militants. While it was under Biden that Afghanistan has returned to the Taliban. So in retrospect it is Gore and Biden who made the biggest mistakes in the Middle East, not Bush and Blair
Not wrong because that's exactly my point! Not that it was right - it very much wasn't - but that lots of people who say now what an abomination it was were supportive or at least sanguine about it when it was happening. You're in a minority in not indulging in this. You stick like a mule with being wrong about it being right and there's a kind of perverse credit in that in my book. Better this imo than right wingers who use Iraq to pile into their hate figure Blair when they didn't oppose Iraq at the time.
It was reasonable for the general public to assume that Blair and Bush had a plan for what would happen after Saddam was toppled. Maybe not for the top level politicians on the opposition benches though?
On 'world press freedom day', the world press freedom index. 🔴 #RSFIndex RSF unveils the 2023 World Press Freedom Index:
1: Norway 🇳🇴 2: Ireland 🇮🇪 3: Denmark 🇩🇰 24: France 🇫🇷 26: United Kingdom 🇬🇧 45: United States 🇺🇸 68: Japan 🇯🇵 92: Brazil 🇧🇷 161: India 🇮🇳 136: Algeria 🇩🇿 179: China 🇨🇳 180: North Korea 🇰🇵
There's been far too little discussion of some of the strikingly repressive legislation passed yesterday.
As I expect Cyclefree and other lawyers will often confirm, it's now only a matter of time before powers with as wide a scope as stopping and searching any protestors police believe are "intending to cause disruption" are widely abused. Likewise, on previous form, the new powers on stopping any demonstration "blocking infrastructure and roads" are eventually likely to become widely abused, to prevent any demonstration using a public road that some or other authorities don't like. This is just in the nature of policing and exercise of power, once you give people very wide leeway.
This is serious stuff, and requires much wider discussion.
Most of our neighbours do not have laws like this.
Police rarely enforce existing laws against these protestors - and when they do, the courts tend to let them off with a slap on the wrist at most - so I'm not sure how new laws will make any difference in reality.
If past developments are any guide, we may now get a much worse pattern instead ; police first using these powers in a more limited way on XR, and then enjoying the leeway to use them much more widely and ad hoc, whenever someone doesn't like a protest, and as authorities always tend to do once once handed an increase power.
I did in fact post it yesterday. Only second class though, so it might be a few days before it shows up
Seriously though, as Cyclefree said, so many things went wrong here for so long that it's hard to know where to start. The willingness to accept a computer system as infallible and proof of guilt is itself shocking, but the apparent lack of accountability for what went wrong baffles me.
It's such an awful incredible story. Ordinary decent people getting criminalized, their lives ruined and in some cases ended, by the Post Office. How can it possibly have happened? I struggle to get my head around it.
The period since 2016 has truly been a low, dishonest decade.
1997 to 2007.....
Whatabout it ?
An equally appalling period in our lifetime millions died as a result of Blair cosying up to George Bush jnr
That's a nonsense though. Iraq would have happened without the UK. Bush & Co were set on it.
Maybe, but it didnt mean our government had go along with it and to lie in order to go along with it,
There's no 'maybe' about it. The US were doing Iraq anyway so the statement that "millions died as a result of Blair cosying up to George Bush jnr" is inaccurate and therefore merited a correction.
As to the whole thing being a shitshow that shouldn't have happened and that in any case we should have stayed out of - well yes obviously. Is there anybody at all these days who thinks any different?
The war part and deposing Saddam Hussein worked fine. What caused the shitshow was the utter failure to plan in advance for what happened after the initial aim was achieved.
This seems oddly familiar, somehow.
How do 'subsequent shitshows' now rank between Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya ?
British forces have flown 8,000 combat missions over Iraq and Syria since 2015 without any noticeable results so Iraq must easily be the gold standard of shit shows.
The RAF are now just continuing with it to make closing Akrotiri problematic. Sucks for the Iraqis but we face difficult choices in a turbulent world.
Afghanistan ended unfortunately but it was surely a success in its own terms. It deprived Al Qaeda of a base from which to launch Jihad against the West, eventually leading to the tracking down and assassination of Bin Laden in Pakistan. By the time the Taliban were back in they had evolved into simpler fundamentalists with seemingly only domestic aims and no intention of housing foreign terror cells.
It didn't succeed in nation building but that wasn't really the original war aim (unlike Iraq).
Libya was probably the most ham-fisted of the lot, but it's difficult to know what an alternative course of action would have been short of letting Gaddafi run riot.
Allowing Gadaffi to conduct a massacre was indeed, the only alternative. And, Gadaffi may not even have won.
Saddam ought to have been removed, back in 1991, before Iraq was ground down by sanctions.
Thatcher wanted to do so but Bush Snr wouldn't and Major replaced her once the War was under way. A rare case of the UK PM being more hawkish than the US President
His model compares the national polling 4 years ago with polling now to give a forecast based on historic movements.
Forecast Con -490 Lab +400 LD +20 Others +70
Stephen Fisher works on the exit poll so I am not doubting his psephological skills but that Lib Dem figure seems low to me.
The LDs got 19% in 2019, much higher than their current voteshare and gained councils from Chelmsford to Guildford and South Oxfordshire they are now defending
If anything the Conservatives could end up being thumped across the Home Counties.
Hunt's Council, Waverley, is already LD controlled even if Gove's isn't.
My parents live in Tunbridge Wells where the LDs took control last year and the local Tories will likely gain seats there due to the unpopular budget and parking restrictions the LD administration is imposing
To be precise, Waverley is governed by a LD/Lab/Green/Residents coalition (I'm on the Executive). No party has an overall majority at present. Prior to 2019, it was a very safely Conservative borough.
The period since 2016 has truly been a low, dishonest decade.
1997 to 2007.....
Whatabout it ?
An equally appalling period in our lifetime millions died as a result of Blair cosying up to George Bush jnr
That's a nonsense though. Iraq would have happened without the UK. Bush & Co were set on it.
Maybe, but it didnt mean our government had go along with it and to lie in order to go along with it,
There's no 'maybe' about it. The US were doing Iraq anyway so the statement that "millions died as a result of Blair cosying up to George Bush jnr" is inaccurate and therefore merited a correction.
As to the whole thing being a shitshow that shouldn't have happened and that in any case we should have stayed out of - well yes obviously. Is there anybody at all these days who thinks any different?
The war part and deposing Saddam Hussein worked fine. What caused the shitshow was the utter failure to plan in advance for what happened after the initial aim was achieved.
This seems oddly familiar, somehow.
Yes, although I wouldn't say 'worked fine' because you can't divorce the invasion from the aftermath and the aftermath was never modellable.
Well, "worked reasonably well according to plan" (given Moltke's maxim)?
In the 1960s the UK resisted becoming involved in Vietnam (like Canada, but unlike Australia) and we could have avoided Iraq too... but our leaders still believe(d) in the "Special Relationship", for which we get ever diminishing returns as the US looks away from Europe and towards Asia. While the current Brexit mess leaves us even more dependent on a Washington that actually doesn´t care about a second rank declining power, the time is coming where we will need to face some critical home truths about ourselves, our interests and our capabilities.
I did too. It was America at its worst and Blair at his worst. And did he lie to get his way? As near as makes no difference. Deserves all the shit that comes his way for the whole debacle.
However you do get a kind of retro-wise pile-on when it comes to the evil Tony and Iraq. Wildly exaggerated things get said quite freely. Often by people who were not massively opposed at the time. Certainly if they are Tory supporters they probably weren't.
Although of course everybody was passionately opposed at the time now, weren't they? The whole country were writing into the papers and on that march.
Wrong, 63% of British voters backed sending troops into Iraq in 2003 as did I.
Blair and Bush as I said got it right, Iraq is now Saddam free. If Gore had won in 2000 Saddam would still be leading Iraq and backing Putin and Islamic militants. While it was under Biden that Afghanistan has returned to the Taliban. So in retrospect it is Gore and Biden who made the biggest mistakes in the Middle East, not Bush and Blair
Not wrong because that's exactly my point! Not that it was right - it very much wasn't - but that lots of people who say now what an abomination it was were supportive or at least sanguine about it when it was happening. You're in a minority in not indulging in this. You stick like a mule with being wrong about it being right and there's a kind of perverse credit in that in my book. Better this imo than right wingers who use Iraq to pile into their hate figure Blair when they didn't oppose Iraq at the time.
There is also some similarity with Brexit here.
Whether it was right or wrong to go to war, the management of the war was terrible.
Whether Brexit was right or wrong, the management of Brexit has been terrible.
There's a pattern, which gets to the core of the Centrist Dad critique of recent British government in general and this government in particular.
You can want things, say things and pass laws as much as you want. But without a degree of capability and competence, it's just words howling at the moon.
His model compares the national polling 4 years ago with polling now to give a forecast based on historic movements.
Forecast Con -490 Lab +400 LD +20 Others +70
Stephen Fisher works on the exit poll so I am not doubting his psephological skills but that Lib Dem figure seems low to me.
The LDs got 19% in 2019, much higher than their current voteshare and gained councils from Chelmsford to Guildford and South Oxfordshire they are now defending
If anything the Conservatives could end up being thumped across the Home Counties.
Hunt's Council, Waverley, is already LD controlled even if Gove's isn't.
My parents live in Tunbridge Wells where the LDs took control last year and the local Tories will likely gain seats there due to the unpopular budget and parking restrictions the LD administration is imposing
To be precise, Waverley is governed by a LD/Lab/Green/Residents coalition (I'm on the Executive). No party has an overall majority at present. Prior to 2019, it was a very safely Conservative borough.
OK but the Tories are still in opposition to the administration you are part of and will hope to make a few gains in Waverley therefore on Thursday
I get that most on here don't rate Starmer, and I have doubts myself. However, the current state of the opinion polls, and the betting odds for the next GE, suggest that he must be doing something right. Especially given the dire state of the Labour Party when he took over a mere three years ago.
Objectively, he's achieved a remarkable amount to put Labour back in serious contention for power, and it's lazy thinking to attribute all of that to Tory shortcomings and external shocks. If he's so useless, how's he managed it? I suspect he's being underestimated by most (me included).
I get that most on here don't rate Starmer, and I have doubts myself. However, the current state of the opinion polls, and the betting odds for the next GE, suggest that he must be doing something right. Especially given the dire state of the Labour Party when he took over a mere three years ago.
Objectively, he's achieved a remarkable amount to put Labour back in serious contention for power, and it's lazy thinking to attribute all of that to Tory shortcomings and external shocks. If he's so useless, how's he managed it? I suspect he's being underestimated by most (me included).
Kinnock was even further ahead than Starmer is at the moment, about 18 months before an election he failed to win. So being ahead in the polls isn't that special for an opposition leader.
In the 1960s the UK resisted becoming involved in Vietnam (like Canada, but unlike Australia) and we could have avoided Iraq too... but our leaders still believe(d) in the "Special Relationship", for which we get ever diminishing returns as the US looks away from Europe and towards Asia. While the current Brexit mess leaves us even more dependent on a Washington that actually doesn´t care about a second rank declining power, the time is coming where we will need to face some critical home truths about ourselves, our interests and our capabilities.
I did too. It was America at its worst and Blair at his worst. And did he lie to get his way? As near as makes no difference. Deserves all the shit that comes his way for the whole debacle.
However you do get a kind of retro-wise pile-on when it comes to the evil Tony and Iraq. Wildly exaggerated things get said quite freely. Often by people who were not massively opposed at the time. Certainly if they are Tory supporters they probably weren't.
Although of course everybody was passionately opposed at the time now, weren't they? The whole country were writing into the papers and on that march.
One of my exhilarating experiences, along with seeing the Clash at The Rainbow and SAHB at the Apollo.
Totally agree - one single ice cube in a double Whisky is just enough to chill the drink, take the edge off and enhance the taste. American bartenders who fill the glass full of half melted ice should be shot - and there is a special corner of hell reserved for anyone who drinks whisky with Coke.
In the 1960s the UK resisted becoming involved in Vietnam (like Canada, but unlike Australia) and we could have avoided Iraq too... but our leaders still believe(d) in the "Special Relationship", for which we get ever diminishing returns as the US looks away from Europe and towards Asia. While the current Brexit mess leaves us even more dependent on a Washington that actually doesn´t care about a second rank declining power, the time is coming where we will need to face some critical home truths about ourselves, our interests and our capabilities.
I did too. It was America at its worst and Blair at his worst. And did he lie to get his way? As near as makes no difference. Deserves all the shit that comes his way for the whole debacle.
However you do get a kind of retro-wise pile-on when it comes to the evil Tony and Iraq. Wildly exaggerated things get said quite freely. Often by people who were not massively opposed at the time. Certainly if they are Tory supporters they probably weren't.
Although of course everybody was passionately opposed at the time now, weren't they? The whole country were writing into the papers and on that march.
Wrong, 63% of British voters backed sending troops into Iraq in 2003 as did I.
Blair and Bush as I said got it right, Iraq is now Saddam free. If Gore had won in 2000 Saddam would still be leading Iraq and backing Putin and Islamic militants. While it was under Biden that Afghanistan has returned to the Taliban. So in retrospect it is Gore and Biden who made the biggest mistakes in the Middle East, not Bush and Blair
Not wrong because that's exactly my point! Not that it was right - it very much wasn't - but that lots of people who say now what an abomination it was were supportive or at least sanguine about it when it was happening. You're in a minority in not indulging in this. You stick like a mule with being wrong about it being right and there's a kind of perverse credit in that in my book. Better this imo than right wingers who use Iraq to pile into their hate figure Blair when they didn't oppose Iraq at the time.
There is also some similarity with Brexit here.
Whether it was right or wrong to go to war, the management of the war was terrible.
Whether Brexit was right or wrong, the management of Brexit has been terrible.
True. And one further similarity perhaps. In the years to come will many people discover an 'adjusted' memory of how they voted in 2016? Will it become a touch harder to find Leave voters than one might expect? It wouldn't surprise me if this happens.
Totally agree - one single ice cube in a double Whisky is just enough to chill the drink, take the edge off and enhance the taste. American bartenders who fill the glass full of half melted ice should be shot - and there is a special corner of hell reserved for anyone who drinks whisky with Coke.
In the 1960s the UK resisted becoming involved in Vietnam (like Canada, but unlike Australia) and we could have avoided Iraq too... but our leaders still believe(d) in the "Special Relationship", for which we get ever diminishing returns as the US looks away from Europe and towards Asia. While the current Brexit mess leaves us even more dependent on a Washington that actually doesn´t care about a second rank declining power, the time is coming where we will need to face some critical home truths about ourselves, our interests and our capabilities.
I did too. It was America at its worst and Blair at his worst. And did he lie to get his way? As near as makes no difference. Deserves all the shit that comes his way for the whole debacle.
However you do get a kind of retro-wise pile-on when it comes to the evil Tony and Iraq. Wildly exaggerated things get said quite freely. Often by people who were not massively opposed at the time. Certainly if they are Tory supporters they probably weren't.
Although of course everybody was passionately opposed at the time now, weren't they? The whole country were writing into the papers and on that march.
One of my exhilarating experiences, along with seeing the Clash at The Rainbow and SAHB at the Apollo.
Ah well I never doubted you'd have been there. Or OLB for that matter. You guys are real deal progs. Confession: I did just a little bit of the march. Made the mistake of diving off into the pub - which with my drink problem back then meant 'end of'.
I did in fact post it yesterday. Only second class though, so it might be a few days before it shows up
Seriously though, as Cyclefree said, so many things went wrong here for so long that it's hard to know where to start. The willingness to accept a computer system as infallible and proof of guilt is itself shocking, but the apparent lack of accountability for what went wrong baffles me.
It's such an awful incredible story. Ordinary decent people getting criminalized, their lives ruined and in some cases ended, by the Post Office. How can it possibly have happened? I struggle to get my head around it.
Options
1) Senior, Important People admit a mistake and take responsibility for their actions. Harm to Small People reduced. 2) Senior Important People protect their "reputations". Some Small People die.
In the 1960s the UK resisted becoming involved in Vietnam (like Canada, but unlike Australia) and we could have avoided Iraq too... but our leaders still believe(d) in the "Special Relationship", for which we get ever diminishing returns as the US looks away from Europe and towards Asia. While the current Brexit mess leaves us even more dependent on a Washington that actually doesn´t care about a second rank declining power, the time is coming where we will need to face some critical home truths about ourselves, our interests and our capabilities.
I did too. It was America at its worst and Blair at his worst. And did he lie to get his way? As near as makes no difference. Deserves all the shit that comes his way for the whole debacle.
However you do get a kind of retro-wise pile-on when it comes to the evil Tony and Iraq. Wildly exaggerated things get said quite freely. Often by people who were not massively opposed at the time. Certainly if they are Tory supporters they probably weren't.
Although of course everybody was passionately opposed at the time now, weren't they? The whole country were writing into the papers and on that march.
Wrong, 63% of British voters backed sending troops into Iraq in 2003 as did I.
Blair and Bush as I said got it right, Iraq is now Saddam free. If Gore had won in 2000 Saddam would still be leading Iraq and backing Putin and Islamic militants. While it was under Biden that Afghanistan has returned to the Taliban. So in retrospect it is Gore and Biden who made the biggest mistakes in the Middle East, not Bush and Blair
Not wrong because that's exactly my point! Not that it was right - it very much wasn't - but that lots of people who say now what an abomination it was were supportive or at least sanguine about it when it was happening. You're in a minority in not indulging in this. You stick like a mule with being wrong about it being right and there's a kind of perverse credit in that in my book. Better this imo than right wingers who use Iraq to pile into their hate figure Blair when they didn't oppose Iraq at the time.
There is also some similarity with Brexit here.
Whether it was right or wrong to go to war, the management of the war was terrible.
Whether Brexit was right or wrong, the management of Brexit has been terrible.
True. And one further similarity perhaps. In the years to come will many people discover an 'adjusted' memory of how they voted in 2016? Will it become a touch harder to find Leave voters than one might expect? It wouldn't surprise me if this happens.
I think Leave voters are still sticking with their decision for the moment, but the narrative of 'Silly old Boris buggered up Brexit' is certainly becoming commonplace.
In the 1960s the UK resisted becoming involved in Vietnam (like Canada, but unlike Australia) and we could have avoided Iraq too... but our leaders still believe(d) in the "Special Relationship", for which we get ever diminishing returns as the US looks away from Europe and towards Asia. While the current Brexit mess leaves us even more dependent on a Washington that actually doesn´t care about a second rank declining power, the time is coming where we will need to face some critical home truths about ourselves, our interests and our capabilities.
I did too. It was America at its worst and Blair at his worst. And did he lie to get his way? As near as makes no difference. Deserves all the shit that comes his way for the whole debacle.
However you do get a kind of retro-wise pile-on when it comes to the evil Tony and Iraq. Wildly exaggerated things get said quite freely. Often by people who were not massively opposed at the time. Certainly if they are Tory supporters they probably weren't.
Although of course everybody was passionately opposed at the time now, weren't they? The whole country were writing into the papers and on that march.
I wasn't (opposed). Thought the WMD stuff was exagerated (and more of a threat to Iraq's neighbours, if existing at all, than to us) and that Iraq had no involvement in 9/11 or Islamist terrorism, but I naively took the view that on balance it would be better for Saddam to be deposed - so I was no war opponent, but also no war cheerleader. I did assume there would be a bit of a plan for nation building after the war (also naive, I guess).
I was wrong, clearly. Although I don't know enough to judge whether Iraq now is better or worse than Iraq now would have been had we done nothing. There was a massive shit show after the war, the war was very very bad for many people (those who died, had friends/family who died, who lost homes, businesses). Is the average Iraqi now better or worse off then under Saddam? I've no idea. The media have lost interest. To an extent, I guess, so have I, not having thought much about Iraq the past five years or so.
The period since 2016 has truly been a low, dishonest decade.
1997 to 2007.....
Whatabout it ?
An equally appalling period in our lifetime millions died as a result of Blair cosying up to George Bush jnr
That's a nonsense though. Iraq would have happened without the UK. Bush & Co were set on it.
Maybe, but it didnt mean our government had go along with it and to lie in order to go along with it,
There's no 'maybe' about it. The US were doing Iraq anyway so the statement that "millions died as a result of Blair cosying up to George Bush jnr" is inaccurate and therefore merited a correction.
As to the whole thing being a shitshow that shouldn't have happened and that in any case we should have stayed out of - well yes obviously. Is there anybody at all these days who thinks any different?
The war part and deposing Saddam Hussein worked fine. What caused the shitshow was the utter failure to plan in advance for what happened after the initial aim was achieved.
This seems oddly familiar, somehow.
Yes, although I wouldn't say 'worked fine' because you can't divorce the invasion from the aftermath and the aftermath was never modellable.
It was very obvious even to a casual observer, soon after the invasion started, that the US had no real plans for the aftermath.
The repercussions across the region were malign, and while it's impossible to know what might have transpired had it not happened, it's quite conceivable that the international order would be less fractured than it now is. Certainly conducting a war of aggression on what turned out to be an entirely false prospectus set a very bad precedent indeed, which is not forgotten by considerably more malign actors.
Yep, goodbye moral high ground (if we could ever have had claims). This sounds like a soft wishy-washy concept but it isn't because it impacts choices and reactions now.
I get that most on here don't rate Starmer, and I have doubts myself. However, the current state of the opinion polls, and the betting odds for the next GE, suggest that he must be doing something right. Especially given the dire state of the Labour Party when he took over a mere three years ago.
Objectively, he's achieved a remarkable amount to put Labour back in serious contention for power, and it's lazy thinking to attribute all of that to Tory shortcomings and external shocks. If he's so useless, how's he managed it? I suspect he's being underestimated by most (me included).
People want change
Whilst I do want rid of the corrupt Conservative government, I simply cannot, in good faith, vote for Labour. SKS has shifted the party centre-right, dragging it down into a cesspit of lies,racism, bullying and scandal - serving only the privileged few.
In the 1960s the UK resisted becoming involved in Vietnam (like Canada, but unlike Australia) and we could have avoided Iraq too... but our leaders still believe(d) in the "Special Relationship", for which we get ever diminishing returns as the US looks away from Europe and towards Asia. While the current Brexit mess leaves us even more dependent on a Washington that actually doesn´t care about a second rank declining power, the time is coming where we will need to face some critical home truths about ourselves, our interests and our capabilities.
I did too. It was America at its worst and Blair at his worst. And did he lie to get his way? As near as makes no difference. Deserves all the shit that comes his way for the whole debacle.
However you do get a kind of retro-wise pile-on when it comes to the evil Tony and Iraq. Wildly exaggerated things get said quite freely. Often by people who were not massively opposed at the time. Certainly if they are Tory supporters they probably weren't.
Although of course everybody was passionately opposed at the time now, weren't they? The whole country were writing into the papers and on that march.
One of my exhilarating experiences, along with seeing the Clash at The Rainbow and SAHB at the Apollo.
There’s a good diversion for the day: which is the one concert I would relive if I could… for me it would be either Lynyrd Skynyrd at Leeds Uni (Feb 13 1977) or Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers at Hull College of Further Education ( May 7 1977)
The Black Sheep Brewery announces intention to appoint administrators after facing 'perfect storm' The Black Sheep Brewery has announced that it intends to appoint administrators to protect the interests of its creditors after the business was hit by a “perfect storm” caused by the pandemic and rising costs.
George IV sounds like fun. Peers rained with hot wax must have added dignity to the occasion.
Edward VII looks like the Tsar, in that picture.
George IV sounds like a car crash from start to finish.
I don't know how The Times, and this was back then, got away from a totally justified but utterly excoriating editorial about him.
Genetic lottery, that’s what happens. We keep telling you.
And far too many of your ilk see that as a killer point, so keep repeating it ad-infinitum in the hope it will eventually resonate.
It isn't and it won't.
The point of monarchy is to have undisputed accession of an apolitical figure who is above politics, personifies the history and heritage of Britain, protects our constitution and can collectively unify us and represent us on the global stage - it demands an unbroken and traceable lineage behind him/her to provide those roots and that anchor.
But, if the individual monarch at the time can't learn to do that and play by the rules, you jump and skip to the next one. That's how you manage it. Not up upending the lot.
You might object to it 'on principle' but not everyone will think your principle is as important as you think it is and, indeed, will prioritise different things.
I actually started an article on this a few days ago. It will probably be my next one. There is so much that has gone wrong that it is almost overwhelming.
(I have not finished it because I have been dealing with fee-paying work, some serious medical news and, more pleasingly, writing on gardening and other non-PB topics for my new website - https://www.cyclefree.co.uk/.)
As well as the obvious villains - the Post Office - the lawyers - both in-house and external, politicians and Fujitsu have some very serious questions to answer.
Here's just one. Why in God's name are Fujitsu still being given government contracts despite their role in this? Why is one of their former CEO's in charge of them during some of the relevant time a Crown representative (with responsibility for contracts with BaE) in the Cabinet Office? He boasts about his extensive IT experience but not any responsibility for one of the worst IT failings ever. Utterly coincidentally, he is married to a current Cabinet Minister and is the son of a former Conservative MP.
The lawyers involved too have not behaved well, to put it mildly.
The Black Sheep Brewery announces intention to appoint administrators after facing 'perfect storm' The Black Sheep Brewery has announced that it intends to appoint administrators to protect the interests of its creditors after the business was hit by a “perfect storm” caused by the pandemic and rising costs.
Hope they survive. Black Sheep Ale and especially Riggwelter are superb.
I get that most on here don't rate Starmer, and I have doubts myself. However, the current state of the opinion polls, and the betting odds for the next GE, suggest that he must be doing something right. Especially given the dire state of the Labour Party when he took over a mere three years ago.
Objectively, he's achieved a remarkable amount to put Labour back in serious contention for power, and it's lazy thinking to attribute all of that to Tory shortcomings and external shocks. If he's so useless, how's he managed it? I suspect he's being underestimated by most (me included).
Kinnock was even further ahead than Starmer is at the moment, about 18 months before an election he failed to win. So being ahead in the polls isn't that special for an opposition leader.
If we go on wiki averages, only just (Kinnock's biggest lead on the Wikiworm was L46 C33) and only briefly (the peak of the Poll Tax anger was already dissipating when Maggie was deposed).
And the Conservative recovery meant ditching their leader and flagship policy.
Starmer remains in that maddening grey area where he's clearly doing better than Kinnock or EdM, but not as well as Blair.
Totally agree - one single ice cube in a double Whisky is just enough to chill the drink, take the edge off and enhance the taste. American bartenders who fill the glass full of half melted ice should be shot - and there is a special corner of hell reserved for anyone who drinks whisky with Coke.
Proper whisky deserves to be sipped neat.
Which drinks are best downed at speed?
- Lager: on a hot afternoon - Coke: as above - Vodka: when drowning sorrows or having a jovial time with friends from former soviet countries - various local firewaters and moonshines of the Raki/Rakia variety: when toasting newfound companions on a trip somewhere - Champagne or ESW (or even Cava/Prosecco): after entering a formal occasion where you don't know anybody and being handed one from a tray - Espresso: from a coffee stall on a street corner - Fake whisky or brandy from a decanter on the counter: when acting in a Hollywood movie scene in the office of some hotshot business tyrant
In the 1960s the UK resisted becoming involved in Vietnam (like Canada, but unlike Australia) and we could have avoided Iraq too... but our leaders still believe(d) in the "Special Relationship", for which we get ever diminishing returns as the US looks away from Europe and towards Asia. While the current Brexit mess leaves us even more dependent on a Washington that actually doesn´t care about a second rank declining power, the time is coming where we will need to face some critical home truths about ourselves, our interests and our capabilities.
I did too. It was America at its worst and Blair at his worst. And did he lie to get his way? As near as makes no difference. Deserves all the shit that comes his way for the whole debacle.
However you do get a kind of retro-wise pile-on when it comes to the evil Tony and Iraq. Wildly exaggerated things get said quite freely. Often by people who were not massively opposed at the time. Certainly if they are Tory supporters they probably weren't.
Although of course everybody was passionately opposed at the time now, weren't they? The whole country were writing into the papers and on that march.
One of my exhilarating experiences, along with seeing the Clash at The Rainbow and SAHB at the Apollo.
Ah well I never doubted you'd have been there. Or OLB for that matter. You guys are real deal progs. Confession: I did just a little bit of the march. Made the mistake of diving off into the pub - which with my drink problem back then meant 'end of'.
To be clear I wasn't at the Clash or SAHB gigs but wish I had been
My most abiding take from the whole thing was the revelation that all those hard headed realpolitik guys had just as much potential to be clueless jerks as rest of us, with perhaps an added soupçon of dubious moral reasoning.
Abolishing tuition fees > Status Quo but also Something in Between > Abolishing tuition fees. Lets see what their proposals are come the election.
And people who expect policies to be identical 3 years on are a tad weird.
Yes, but it wasn't just the defeated 2019 manifesto, made obsolete by being rejected at the ballot box, but rather his own leadership manifesto afterwards.
Good for LDs though. Labour campaigners won't want to bang on about Tuition fees betrayal anymore.
I think universal free tuition fees has had its time now and does not make much sense for 2024-2034.
Should we stop charging students silly amounts of interest on debt that are significantly more than mortgage rates? Of course
Should we make university courses that meet skills shortages the country needs, cheap or free? Sure
Can we do more to offer more flexible and cheaper university level training generally? Yes, much more.
But in a world where we actually need more plumbers, electricians, builders and many generic knowledge jobs are being threatened by AI it is now time to move on from universal free 3 year tuition being covered.
The Tories wanted tuition fees. The LibDems wanted a graduate tax. The Coalition introduced something that looks like fees, but in operation is sometimes more like a tax. It’s a compromise that has some good points, but no-one who wants to champion those good points.
One of the problems with a straight graduate tax was EU free movement of people as this meant EU students could come to the UK for their education but not pay back via the graduate tax as they then return to their home country. Post-Brexit, you could do something closer to a graduate tax.
I get that most on here don't rate Starmer, and I have doubts myself. However, the current state of the opinion polls, and the betting odds for the next GE, suggest that he must be doing something right. Especially given the dire state of the Labour Party when he took over a mere three years ago.
Objectively, he's achieved a remarkable amount to put Labour back in serious contention for power, and it's lazy thinking to attribute all of that to Tory shortcomings and external shocks. If he's so useless, how's he managed it? I suspect he's being underestimated by most (me included).
People want change
Whilst I do want rid of the corrupt Conservative government, I simply cannot, in good faith, vote for Labour. SKS has shifted the party centre-right, dragging it down into a cesspit of lies,racism, bullying and scandal - serving only the privileged few.
"Lies,racism, bullying and scandal"! You lined up with Farage and Johnson (who you said you admire) to vote Brexit!
The Black Sheep Brewery announces intention to appoint administrators after facing 'perfect storm' The Black Sheep Brewery has announced that it intends to appoint administrators to protect the interests of its creditors after the business was hit by a “perfect storm” caused by the pandemic and rising costs.
Hope they survive. Black Sheep Ale and especially Riggwelter are superb.
We have common ground.
I dont normally like IPA but their Monty Python range is excellent
At the time of his appointment I thought it extraordinary that someone could go from running the private office of Prince William to being cabinet secretary. The soon to arrive car crash shouldn't have surprised anyone.
What about Tom Scholar as a replacement? There is much to recommend him.
What a fuckwit. I mean the history of prohibition has been sooo successful after all.
I also like this bit.
"He said arguments that it was unfair to impose extra taxes in times of recession “do not wash”, and the food industry is “more than capable” of absorbing new restrictions."
Surely if the food industry is absorbing the new restrictions then the extra tax burden is not being transferred to the consumer so the economic deterent effect does not work.
This guy was a tosser when he was Chancellor and apparently remains so.
The period since 2016 has truly been a low, dishonest decade.
1997 to 2007.....
Whatabout it ?
An equally appalling period in our lifetime millions died as a result of Blair cosying up to George Bush jnr
That's a nonsense though. Iraq would have happened without the UK. Bush & Co were set on it.
Maybe, but it didnt mean our government had go along with it and to lie in order to go along with it,
There's no 'maybe' about it. The US were doing Iraq anyway so the statement that "millions died as a result of Blair cosying up to George Bush jnr" is inaccurate and therefore merited a correction.
As to the whole thing being a shitshow that shouldn't have happened and that in any case we should have stayed out of - well yes obviously. Is there anybody at all these days who thinks any different?
The war part and deposing Saddam Hussein worked fine. What caused the shitshow was the utter failure to plan in advance for what happened after the initial aim was achieved.
This seems oddly familiar, somehow.
Yes, although I wouldn't say 'worked fine' because you can't divorce the invasion from the aftermath and the aftermath was never modellable.
Well, "worked reasonably well according to plan" (given Moltke's maxim)?
Yes but what I mean is the aftermath was the hard part. Not to disrespect the skill and bravery of those dropping the bombs but that - the initial pulverizing invasion - was the slam dunk phase of the endeavour. It was never going to 'fail' at that hurdle. Not as if the enemy had any weapons of mass destruction to respond with after all.
I get that most on here don't rate Starmer, and I have doubts myself. However, the current state of the opinion polls, and the betting odds for the next GE, suggest that he must be doing something right. Especially given the dire state of the Labour Party when he took over a mere three years ago.
Objectively, he's achieved a remarkable amount to put Labour back in serious contention for power, and it's lazy thinking to attribute all of that to Tory shortcomings and external shocks. If he's so useless, how's he managed it? I suspect he's being underestimated by most (me included).
Kinnock was even further ahead than Starmer is at the moment, about 18 months before an election he failed to win. So being ahead in the polls isn't that special for an opposition leader.
If we go on wiki averages, only just (Kinnock's biggest lead on the Wikiworm was L46 C33) and only briefly (the peak of the Poll Tax anger was already dissipating when Maggie was deposed).
And the Conservative recovery meant ditching their leader and flagship policy.
Starmer remains in that maddening grey area where he's clearly doing better than Kinnock or EdM, but not as well as Blair.
Probably all right.
The poll tax anger was the equivalent phase in Tory fortunes I'd say to the Truss debacle, with Sunak being the Major. So on those terms I think Starmer's lead is 4 or 5% greater than Kinnock's was. There is also arguably a better prospect for tactical voting this time than in 1992.
As you say, this is probably neither 1992/2015 nor 1997. This is 2024. It'll be different again.
I am torn on what I want. Part of me wants the Tories to be thrashed, just for the catharsis that would bring about. But that means a big Labour majority and no prospect of electoral reform. So the other part wants a hung parliament and only the Lib Dems available as C&S or coalition partners.
If it's a narrow Labour win then I think there are 2 directions for the conservatives: 1. they keep Sunak, and stand a good chance of winning again in a few years, 2. Sunak walks and they go a bit bonkers and elect another liability like Truss or ideologue like JRM.
I get that most on here don't rate Starmer, and I have doubts myself. However, the current state of the opinion polls, and the betting odds for the next GE, suggest that he must be doing something right. Especially given the dire state of the Labour Party when he took over a mere three years ago.
Objectively, he's achieved a remarkable amount to put Labour back in serious contention for power, and it's lazy thinking to attribute all of that to Tory shortcomings and external shocks. If he's so useless, how's he managed it? I suspect he's being underestimated by most (me included).
Kinnock was even further ahead than Starmer is at the moment, about 18 months before an election he failed to win. So being ahead in the polls isn't that special for an opposition leader.
In the 1960s the UK resisted becoming involved in Vietnam (like Canada, but unlike Australia) and we could have avoided Iraq too... but our leaders still believe(d) in the "Special Relationship", for which we get ever diminishing returns as the US looks away from Europe and towards Asia. While the current Brexit mess leaves us even more dependent on a Washington that actually doesn´t care about a second rank declining power, the time is coming where we will need to face some critical home truths about ourselves, our interests and our capabilities.
I did too. It was America at its worst and Blair at his worst. And did he lie to get his way? As near as makes no difference. Deserves all the shit that comes his way for the whole debacle.
However you do get a kind of retro-wise pile-on when it comes to the evil Tony and Iraq. Wildly exaggerated things get said quite freely. Often by people who were not massively opposed at the time. Certainly if they are Tory supporters they probably weren't.
Although of course everybody was passionately opposed at the time now, weren't they? The whole country were writing into the papers and on that march.
One of my exhilarating experiences, along with seeing the Clash at The Rainbow and SAHB at the Apollo.
There’s a good diversion for the day: which is the one concert I would relive if I could… for me it would be either Lynyrd Skynyrd at Leeds Uni (Feb 13 1977) or Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers at Hull College of Further Education ( May 7 1977)
Edit to correct Leeds date
For me it would be Magazine at Aberdeen University Union (at which I got a mild kicking) c.1980 and Motorhead (edit) Capitol Theatre Aberdeen also c.1980.
I get that most on here don't rate Starmer, and I have doubts myself. However, the current state of the opinion polls, and the betting odds for the next GE, suggest that he must be doing something right. Especially given the dire state of the Labour Party when he took over a mere three years ago.
Objectively, he's achieved a remarkable amount to put Labour back in serious contention for power, and it's lazy thinking to attribute all of that to Tory shortcomings and external shocks. If he's so useless, how's he managed it? I suspect he's being underestimated by most (me included).
Kinnock was even further ahead than Starmer is at the moment, about 18 months before an election he failed to win. So being ahead in the polls isn't that special for an opposition leader.
If we go on wiki averages, only just (Kinnock's biggest lead on the Wikiworm was L46 C33) and only briefly (the peak of the Poll Tax anger was already dissipating when Maggie was deposed).
And the Conservative recovery meant ditching their leader and flagship policy.
Starmer remains in that maddening grey area where he's clearly doing better than Kinnock or EdM, but not as well as Blair.
Probably all right.
The poll tax anger was the equivalent phase in Tory fortunes I'd say to the Truss debacle, with Sunak being the Major. So on those terms I think Starmer's lead is 4 or 5% greater than Kinnock's was. There is also arguably a better prospect for tactical voting this time than in 1992.
As you say, this is probably neither 1992/2015 nor 1997. This is 2024. It'll be different again.
I am torn on what I want. Part of me wants the Tories to be thrashed, just for the catharsis that would bring about. But that means a big Labour majority and no prospect of electoral reform. So the other part wants a hung parliament and only the Lib Dems available as C&S or coalition partners.
If it's a narrow Labour win then I think there are 2 directions for the conservatives: 1. they keep Sunak, and stand a good chance of winning again in a few years, 2. Sunak walks and they go a bit bonkers and elect another liability like Truss or ideologue like JRM.
Is Rishi Sunak goes Kemi Badenoch must have a reasonable chance of becoming leader.
The period since 2016 has truly been a low, dishonest decade.
1997 to 2007.....
Whatabout it ?
An equally appalling period in our lifetime millions died as a result of Blair cosying up to George Bush jnr
That's a nonsense though. Iraq would have happened without the UK. Bush & Co were set on it.
Maybe, but it didnt mean our government had go along with it and to lie in order to go along with it,
There's no 'maybe' about it. The US were doing Iraq anyway so the statement that "millions died as a result of Blair cosying up to George Bush jnr" is inaccurate and therefore merited a correction.
As to the whole thing being a shitshow that shouldn't have happened and that in any case we should have stayed out of - well yes obviously. Is there anybody at all these days who thinks any different?
The war part and deposing Saddam Hussein worked fine. What caused the shitshow was the utter failure to plan in advance for what happened after the initial aim was achieved.
This seems oddly familiar, somehow.
How do 'subsequent shitshows' now rank between Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya ?
British forces have flown 8,000 combat missions over Iraq and Syria since 2015 without any noticeable results so Iraq must easily be the gold standard of shit shows.
The RAF are now just continuing with it to make closing Akrotiri problematic. Sucks for the Iraqis but we face difficult choices in a turbulent world.
Afghanistan ended unfortunately but it was surely a success in its own terms. It deprived Al Qaeda of a base from which to launch Jihad against the West, eventually leading to the tracking down and assassination of Bin Laden in Pakistan. By the time the Taliban were back in they had evolved into simpler fundamentalists with seemingly only domestic aims and no intention of housing foreign terror cells.
It didn't succeed in nation building but that wasn't really the original war aim (unlike Iraq).
Libya was probably the most ham-fisted of the lot, but it's difficult to know what an alternative course of action would have been short of letting Gaddafi run riot.
Allowing Gadaffi to conduct a massacre was indeed, the only alternative. And, Gadaffi may not even have won.
Saddam ought to have been removed, back in 1991, before Iraq was ground down by sanctions.
Sometimes, in foreign policy, there are only two awful choices and you will vociferously criticised for either course you take or, indeed, no decision - which is also a decision.
What a fuckwit. I mean the history of prohibition has been sooo successful after all.
I also like this bit.
"He said arguments that it was unfair to impose extra taxes in times of recession “do not wash”, and the food industry is “more than capable” of absorbing new restrictions."
Surely if the food industry is absorbing the new restrictions then the extra tax burden is not being transferred to the consumer so the economic deterent effect does not work.
This guy was a tosser when he was Chancellor and apparently remains so.
His approach to politics is indistinguishable from Gordon Brown's. Treasury brain is a serious affliction.
In the 1960s the UK resisted becoming involved in Vietnam (like Canada, but unlike Australia) and we could have avoided Iraq too... but our leaders still believe(d) in the "Special Relationship", for which we get ever diminishing returns as the US looks away from Europe and towards Asia. While the current Brexit mess leaves us even more dependent on a Washington that actually doesn´t care about a second rank declining power, the time is coming where we will need to face some critical home truths about ourselves, our interests and our capabilities.
I did too. It was America at its worst and Blair at his worst. And did he lie to get his way? As near as makes no difference. Deserves all the shit that comes his way for the whole debacle.
However you do get a kind of retro-wise pile-on when it comes to the evil Tony and Iraq. Wildly exaggerated things get said quite freely. Often by people who were not massively opposed at the time. Certainly if they are Tory supporters they probably weren't.
Although of course everybody was passionately opposed at the time now, weren't they? The whole country were writing into the papers and on that march.
One of my exhilarating experiences, along with seeing the Clash at The Rainbow and SAHB at the Apollo.
Ah well I never doubted you'd have been there. Or OLB for that matter. You guys are real deal progs. Confession: I did just a little bit of the march. Made the mistake of diving off into the pub - which with my drink problem back then meant 'end of'.
To be clear I wasn't at the Clash or SAHB gigs but wish I had been
My most abiding take from the whole thing was the revelation that all those hard headed realpolitik guys had just as much potential to be clueless jerks as rest of us, with perhaps an added soupçon of dubious moral reasoning.
I was. At the Clash at the Rainbow. Remote Control tour, I believe, could be wrong, I was very young, too young for the White Riot tour. Suicide supporting. I saw a few dates on that tour. It was not untypical for someone from the (then skinhead-dominated) crowd to jump up on stage and attack Suicide.
His model compares the national polling 4 years ago with polling now to give a forecast based on historic movements.
Forecast Con -490 Lab +400 LD +20 Others +70
Stephen Fisher works on the exit poll so I am not doubting his psephological skills but that Lib Dem figure seems low to me.
The LDs got 19% in 2019, much higher than their current voteshare and gained councils from Chelmsford to Guildford and South Oxfordshire they are now defending
You've been told several times that you're wrong.
The Lib Dems were getting 9-10% in the polls in April 2019. Not 19%. There are routes where the LDs end up losing out to the Tories (due to defending records, or local factors), but not due to the polls.
If you're continuing to compare the largest NEV you can find from 2019 to the GE election polls after all the correction, that's starting to be outright dishonest.
Even so you are saying their position is at most unchanged, so again answers TSE's point on why the LDs will not make big gains on Thursday given the Tory voteshare is also similar to May 2019
I believe the big drivers of LD gains/losses will be:
- What degree of tactical voting has come about or reduced since 2019? - How well/badly have incumbents done in either defending their record or boosting their personal vote? - How well/badly has targeting done? - How has local party strength (both for LDs and whoever they're fighting) increased/diminished in the areas being fought? - How accurate are/aren't the polls? - How will/badly Independents do in defending seats they won last time with widespread "sod the lot of you" mindsets? - How much will Voter ID affect the vote (either for or against)?
The actual opinion polls are within MoE (damn near identical) to how they were last time around, so these variables will, I believe be the key ones. My best guess right now is that anywhere between -50 and +250 is likely, depending on how those factors play out on the day.
In the 1960s the UK resisted becoming involved in Vietnam (like Canada, but unlike Australia) and we could have avoided Iraq too... but our leaders still believe(d) in the "Special Relationship", for which we get ever diminishing returns as the US looks away from Europe and towards Asia. While the current Brexit mess leaves us even more dependent on a Washington that actually doesn´t care about a second rank declining power, the time is coming where we will need to face some critical home truths about ourselves, our interests and our capabilities.
I did too. It was America at its worst and Blair at his worst. And did he lie to get his way? As near as makes no difference. Deserves all the shit that comes his way for the whole debacle.
However you do get a kind of retro-wise pile-on when it comes to the evil Tony and Iraq. Wildly exaggerated things get said quite freely. Often by people who were not massively opposed at the time. Certainly if they are Tory supporters they probably weren't.
Although of course everybody was passionately opposed at the time now, weren't they? The whole country were writing into the papers and on that march.
One of my exhilarating experiences, along with seeing the Clash at The Rainbow and SAHB at the Apollo.
There’s a good diversion for the day: which is the one concert I would relive if I could… for me it would be either Lynyrd Skynyrd at Leeds Uni (Feb 13 1977) or Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers at Hull College of Further Education ( May 7 1977)
Edit to correct Leeds date
2nd October 2015. I saw David Gilmour at the Royal Albert Hall, and it was brilliant. So wish I had seen the On An Island tour a decade earlier. Didn't get the album, but live it was transformed!
But, that RAH visit in October 2015. Literally days before Steven Wilson was playing the Hand. Cannot. Erase. tour. I hadn't at that point discovered Steven Wilson, which is a pity as I now rate HCE as a top 10 album. It's magnificent. And I missed him by days
Totally agree - one single ice cube in a double Whisky is just enough to chill the drink, take the edge off and enhance the taste. American bartenders who fill the glass full of half melted ice should be shot - and there is a special corner of hell reserved for anyone who drinks whisky with Coke.
Proper whisky deserves to be sipped neat.
Which drinks are best downed at speed?
- Lager: on a hot afternoon - Coke: as above - Vodka: when drowning sorrows or having a jovial time with friends from former soviet countries - various local firewaters and moonshines of the Raki/Rakia variety: when toasting newfound companions on a trip somewhere - Champagne or ESW (or even Cava/Prosecco): after entering a formal occasion where you don't know anybody and being handed one from a tray - Espresso: from a coffee stall on a street corner - Fake whisky or brandy from a decanter on the counter: when acting in a Hollywood movie scene in the office of some hotshot business tyrant
What a fuckwit. I mean the history of prohibition has been sooo successful after all.
I also like this bit.
"He said arguments that it was unfair to impose extra taxes in times of recession “do not wash”, and the food industry is “more than capable” of absorbing new restrictions."
Surely if the food industry is absorbing the new restrictions then the extra tax burden is not being transferred to the consumer so the economic deterent effect does not work.
This guy was a tosser when he was Chancellor and apparently remains so.
His approach to politics is indistinguishable from Gordon Brown's. Treasury brain is a serious affliction.
To be fair, once full legalisation of MJ has occurred, the drug cartels need a replacement.
There has already been a plot line in several American TV shows about tobacco companies swapping tobacco growing information for MJ growing information with Bad People.
HYUFD, I understand that the return of postal votes here is about 50%, normally 80% and the backbone of the local Cons vote. I suspect that this is being repeated over the country even in Tunbridge Wells. Not a good omen.
The period since 2016 has truly been a low, dishonest decade.
1997 to 2007.....
Whatabout it ?
An equally appalling period in our lifetime millions died as a result of Blair cosying up to George Bush jnr
That's a nonsense though. Iraq would have happened without the UK. Bush & Co were set on it.
Maybe, but it didnt mean our government had go along with it and to lie in order to go along with it,
There's no 'maybe' about it. The US were doing Iraq anyway so the statement that "millions died as a result of Blair cosying up to George Bush jnr" is inaccurate and therefore merited a correction.
As to the whole thing being a shitshow that shouldn't have happened and that in any case we should have stayed out of - well yes obviously. Is there anybody at all these days who thinks any different?
The war part and deposing Saddam Hussein worked fine. What caused the shitshow was the utter failure to plan in advance for what happened after the initial aim was achieved.
This seems oddly familiar, somehow.
How do 'subsequent shitshows' now rank between Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya ?
British forces have flown 8,000 combat missions over Iraq and Syria since 2015 without any noticeable results so Iraq must easily be the gold standard of shit shows.
The RAF are now just continuing with it to make closing Akrotiri problematic. Sucks for the Iraqis but we face difficult choices in a turbulent world.
Afghanistan ended unfortunately but it was surely a success in its own terms. It deprived Al Qaeda of a base from which to launch Jihad against the West, eventually leading to the tracking down and assassination of Bin Laden in Pakistan. By the time the Taliban were back in they had evolved into simpler fundamentalists with seemingly only domestic aims and no intention of housing foreign terror cells.
It didn't succeed in nation building but that wasn't really the original war aim (unlike Iraq).
Libya was probably the most ham-fisted of the lot, but it's difficult to know what an alternative course of action would have been short of letting Gaddafi run riot.
Allowing Gadaffi to conduct a massacre was indeed, the only alternative. And, Gadaffi may not even have won.
Saddam ought to have been removed, back in 1991, before Iraq was ground down by sanctions.
As John Major has pointed out we would have lost the support of the Arab world for a generation in doing so as they did not want regime change and their support was conditional on that. And what would we have ended up with instead?
His model compares the national polling 4 years ago with polling now to give a forecast based on historic movements.
Forecast Con -490 Lab +400 LD +20 Others +70
Stephen Fisher works on the exit poll so I am not doubting his psephological skills but that Lib Dem figure seems low to me.
The LDs got 19% in 2019, much higher than their current voteshare and gained councils from Chelmsford to Guildford and South Oxfordshire they are now defending
You've been told several times that you're wrong.
The Lib Dems were getting 9-10% in the polls in April 2019. Not 19%. There are routes where the LDs end up losing out to the Tories (due to defending records, or local factors), but not due to the polls.
If you're continuing to compare the largest NEV you can find from 2019 to the GE election polls after all the correction, that's starting to be outright dishonest.
Even so you are saying their position is at most unchanged, so again answers TSE's point on why the LDs will not make big gains on Thursday given the Tory voteshare is also similar to May 2019
I believe the big drivers of LD gains/losses will be:
- What degree of tactical voting has come about or reduced since 2019? - How well/badly have incumbents done in either defending their record or boosting their personal vote? - How well/badly has targeting done? - How has local party strength (both for LDs and whoever they're fighting) increased/diminished in the areas being fought? - How accurate are/aren't the polls? - How will/badly Independents do in defending seats they won last time with widespread "sod the lot of you" mindsets? - How much will Voter ID affect the vote (either for or against)?
The actual opinion polls are within MoE (damn near identical) to how they were last time around, so these variables will, I believe be the key ones. My best guess right now is that anywhere between -50 and +250 is likely, depending on how those factors play out on the day.
The Lib Dems always surprise. They either surprise on the upside, or the downside. Rarely if ever do they perform broadly in line with expectations. The only recent times I can think of that happening were the 2001 and 2017 GEs. The surprise this week might be strong performance vs Tories and lots of losses to Labour.
What a fuckwit. I mean the history of prohibition has been sooo successful after all.
I also like this bit.
"He said arguments that it was unfair to impose extra taxes in times of recession “do not wash”, and the food industry is “more than capable” of absorbing new restrictions."
Surely if the food industry is absorbing the new restrictions then the extra tax burden is not being transferred to the consumer so the economic deterent effect does not work.
This guy was a tosser when he was Chancellor and apparently remains so.
George was great! When he was Chancellor the biggest furore was over VAT on sausage rolls. It's only when the libertarians took over that, for example, wiping out the entire British pension fund became just one of those things. George presided over a golden age of tranquillity, benevolence and peace.
I get that most on here don't rate Starmer, and I have doubts myself. However, the current state of the opinion polls, and the betting odds for the next GE, suggest that he must be doing something right. Especially given the dire state of the Labour Party when he took over a mere three years ago.
Objectively, he's achieved a remarkable amount to put Labour back in serious contention for power, and it's lazy thinking to attribute all of that to Tory shortcomings and external shocks. If he's so useless, how's he managed it? I suspect he's being underestimated by most (me included).
I agree. He's ruthlessly targeting the voter groups he needs to win the GE next year. If 'good at politics' doesn't mean this I don't know what it does mean. As for what he's all about in terms of changing the country I'll judge him on that if and when he's in a position to provide the hard evidence - ie in government rather than opposition. His job now is to get from one to the other via an election. Let's not underestimate the achievement if he pulls this off. No Labour leader bar Tony Blair has managed it in the last half a century.
The period since 2016 has truly been a low, dishonest decade.
1997 to 2007.....
Whatabout it ?
An equally appalling period in our lifetime millions died as a result of Blair cosying up to George Bush jnr
That's a nonsense though. Iraq would have happened without the UK. Bush & Co were set on it.
Maybe, but it didnt mean our government had go along with it and to lie in order to go along with it,
There's no 'maybe' about it. The US were doing Iraq anyway so the statement that "millions died as a result of Blair cosying up to George Bush jnr" is inaccurate and therefore merited a correction.
As to the whole thing being a shitshow that shouldn't have happened and that in any case we should have stayed out of - well yes obviously. Is there anybody at all these days who thinks any different?
The war part and deposing Saddam Hussein worked fine. What caused the shitshow was the utter failure to plan in advance for what happened after the initial aim was achieved.
This seems oddly familiar, somehow.
How do 'subsequent shitshows' now rank between Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya ?
British forces have flown 8,000 combat missions over Iraq and Syria since 2015 without any noticeable results so Iraq must easily be the gold standard of shit shows.
The RAF are now just continuing with it to make closing Akrotiri problematic. Sucks for the Iraqis but we face difficult choices in a turbulent world.
Afghanistan ended unfortunately but it was surely a success in its own terms. It deprived Al Qaeda of a base from which to launch Jihad against the West, eventually leading to the tracking down and assassination of Bin Laden in Pakistan. By the time the Taliban were back in they had evolved into simpler fundamentalists with seemingly only domestic aims and no intention of housing foreign terror cells.
It didn't succeed in nation building but that wasn't really the original war aim (unlike Iraq).
Libya was probably the most ham-fisted of the lot, but it's difficult to know what an alternative course of action would have been short of letting Gaddafi run riot.
Allowing Gadaffi to conduct a massacre was indeed, the only alternative. And, Gadaffi may not even have won.
Saddam ought to have been removed, back in 1991, before Iraq was ground down by sanctions.
As John Major has pointed out we would have lost the support of the Arab world for a generation in doing so as they did not want regime change and their support was conditional on that. And what would we have ended up with instead?
Interesting to speculate what would have happened to Saddam during the 2011 Arab Spring. A whole alternative history which would have had knock on impacts on the Syrian situation too.
“That would be the show in Glasgow in 1978 when someone threw an axe at my head”
Classic. People used to jump up on stage and just start hitting them. The front guy/lead singer (there were only two) used to kneel down at the front of the stage and this proved too tempting for some types, axe-throwers and non-axe-throwers alike.
Totally agree - one single ice cube in a double Whisky is just enough to chill the drink, take the edge off and enhance the taste. American bartenders who fill the glass full of half melted ice should be shot - and there is a special corner of hell reserved for anyone who drinks whisky with Coke.
Proper whisky deserves to be sipped neat.
Yes - it's already been diluted from cask strength
In the 1960s the UK resisted becoming involved in Vietnam (like Canada, but unlike Australia) and we could have avoided Iraq too... but our leaders still believe(d) in the "Special Relationship", for which we get ever diminishing returns as the US looks away from Europe and towards Asia. While the current Brexit mess leaves us even more dependent on a Washington that actually doesn´t care about a second rank declining power, the time is coming where we will need to face some critical home truths about ourselves, our interests and our capabilities.
I did too. It was America at its worst and Blair at his worst. And did he lie to get his way? As near as makes no difference. Deserves all the shit that comes his way for the whole debacle.
However you do get a kind of retro-wise pile-on when it comes to the evil Tony and Iraq. Wildly exaggerated things get said quite freely. Often by people who were not massively opposed at the time. Certainly if they are Tory supporters they probably weren't.
Although of course everybody was passionately opposed at the time now, weren't they? The whole country were writing into the papers and on that march.
Wrong, 63% of British voters backed sending troops into Iraq in 2003 as did I.
Blair and Bush as I said got it right, Iraq is now Saddam free. If Gore had won in 2000 Saddam would still be leading Iraq and backing Putin and Islamic militants. While it was under Biden that Afghanistan has returned to the Taliban. So in retrospect it is Gore and Biden who made the biggest mistakes in the Middle East, not Bush and Blair
Not wrong because that's exactly my point! Not that it was right - it very much wasn't - but that lots of people who say now what an abomination it was were supportive or at least sanguine about it when it was happening. You're in a minority in not indulging in this. You stick like a mule with being wrong about it being right and there's a kind of perverse credit in that in my book. Better this imo than right wingers who use Iraq to pile into their hate figure Blair when they didn't oppose Iraq at the time.
I was no fan of Tony Blair, and opposed was opposed to the second Iraq war, but for me Iraq doesn't come in the top give things I disliked about him. I was opposed to British involvement in the second Iraq war at the time not because of the principle - would we make the world a better place by removing Saddam? it was at least arguable that we would - but because I didn't think we would be successful. I was happy to be proved wrong on that. Was the world made a better place? Again, the answer is arguable. Worth noting in favour of the warmongers that one positive result was cutting off a major source of funding for Palestinian suicide bombers.
You can't prove a counterfactual but I'd say the weight of evidence is firmly with the 'made the world a worse place' proposition.
What a fuckwit. I mean the history of prohibition has been sooo successful after all.
I also like this bit.
"He said arguments that it was unfair to impose extra taxes in times of recession “do not wash”, and the food industry is “more than capable” of absorbing new restrictions."
Surely if the food industry is absorbing the new restrictions then the extra tax burden is not being transferred to the consumer so the economic deterent effect does not work.
This guy was a tosser when he was Chancellor and apparently remains so.
I hadn't realised how much of a tosser he was, until I read this.
We are heading for a relatively high number of Conservative MPs standing down at the next GE.
Matthew Offord of marginal Hendon is the latest to go. That's 36 MPs elected as Conservatives who are now going voluntarily. To put the number in perspective, after the last parliament to last its full term, in 2015 38 Conservatives chose to stand down but most of those announced their intentions only within the final year or so of that parliament. So with probably over a year to go we might reasonably expect to get to 50+ this time. In addition, 5 sitting Conservatives who want to stand won't be allow to stand in their successor constituencies (as Conservatives at least in the case of Bridgen.)
Looking at the list so far, more often than not they are in seats which are not safe, so it seems that the chicken run combined with boundary changes could be a reason for the high number.
In the 1960s the UK resisted becoming involved in Vietnam (like Canada, but unlike Australia) and we could have avoided Iraq too... but our leaders still believe(d) in the "Special Relationship", for which we get ever diminishing returns as the US looks away from Europe and towards Asia. While the current Brexit mess leaves us even more dependent on a Washington that actually doesn´t care about a second rank declining power, the time is coming where we will need to face some critical home truths about ourselves, our interests and our capabilities.
I did too. It was America at its worst and Blair at his worst. And did he lie to get his way? As near as makes no difference. Deserves all the shit that comes his way for the whole debacle.
However you do get a kind of retro-wise pile-on when it comes to the evil Tony and Iraq. Wildly exaggerated things get said quite freely. Often by people who were not massively opposed at the time. Certainly if they are Tory supporters they probably weren't.
Although of course everybody was passionately opposed at the time now, weren't they? The whole country were writing into the papers and on that march.
I wasn't (opposed). Thought the WMD stuff was exagerated (and more of a threat to Iraq's neighbours, if existing at all, than to us) and that Iraq had no involvement in 9/11 or Islamist terrorism, but I naively took the view that on balance it would be better for Saddam to be deposed - so I was no war opponent, but also no war cheerleader. I did assume there would be a bit of a plan for nation building after the war (also naive, I guess).
I was wrong, clearly. Although I don't know enough to judge whether Iraq now is better or worse than Iraq now would have been had we done nothing. There was a massive shit show after the war, the war was very very bad for many people (those who died, had friends/family who died, who lost homes, businesses). Is the average Iraqi now better or worse off then under Saddam? I've no idea. The media have lost interest. To an extent, I guess, so have I, not having thought much about Iraq the past five years or so.
Fair enough - in this case meant literally rather than its more usual "Ok, not really, but for one reason or another that's all I'm going to say".
The period since 2016 has truly been a low, dishonest decade.
1997 to 2007.....
Whatabout it ?
An equally appalling period in our lifetime millions died as a result of Blair cosying up to George Bush jnr
That's a nonsense though. Iraq would have happened without the UK. Bush & Co were set on it.
Maybe, but it didnt mean our government had go along with it and to lie in order to go along with it,
There's no 'maybe' about it. The US were doing Iraq anyway so the statement that "millions died as a result of Blair cosying up to George Bush jnr" is inaccurate and therefore merited a correction.
As to the whole thing being a shitshow that shouldn't have happened and that in any case we should have stayed out of - well yes obviously. Is there anybody at all these days who thinks any different?
The war part and deposing Saddam Hussein worked fine. What caused the shitshow was the utter failure to plan in advance for what happened after the initial aim was achieved.
This seems oddly familiar, somehow.
How do 'subsequent shitshows' now rank between Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya ?
British forces have flown 8,000 combat missions over Iraq and Syria since 2015 without any noticeable results so Iraq must easily be the gold standard of shit shows.
The RAF are now just continuing with it to make closing Akrotiri problematic. Sucks for the Iraqis but we face difficult choices in a turbulent world.
Afghanistan ended unfortunately but it was surely a success in its own terms. It deprived Al Qaeda of a base from which to launch Jihad against the West, eventually leading to the tracking down and assassination of Bin Laden in Pakistan. By the time the Taliban were back in they had evolved into simpler fundamentalists with seemingly only domestic aims and no intention of housing foreign terror cells.
It didn't succeed in nation building but that wasn't really the original war aim (unlike Iraq).
Libya was probably the most ham-fisted of the lot, but it's difficult to know what an alternative course of action would have been short of letting Gaddafi run riot.
Allowing Gadaffi to conduct a massacre was indeed, the only alternative. And, Gadaffi may not even have won.
Saddam ought to have been removed, back in 1991, before Iraq was ground down by sanctions.
As John Major has pointed out we would have lost the support of the Arab world for a generation in doing so as they did not want regime change and their support was conditional on that. And what would we have ended up with instead?
Had Saddam been toppled in 1991, Iraqi civilians would have been spared a ton of pain from sanctions.
HYUFD, I understand that the return of postal votes here is about 50%, normally 80% and the backbone of the local Cons vote. I suspect that this is being repeated over the country even in Tunbridge Wells. Not a good omen.
What a fuckwit. I mean the history of prohibition has been sooo successful after all.
I also like this bit.
"He said arguments that it was unfair to impose extra taxes in times of recession “do not wash”, and the food industry is “more than capable” of absorbing new restrictions."
Surely if the food industry is absorbing the new restrictions then the extra tax burden is not being transferred to the consumer so the economic deterent effect does not work.
This guy was a tosser when he was Chancellor and apparently remains so.
George was great! When he was Chancellor the biggest furore was over VAT on sausage rolls. It's only when the libertarians took over that, for example, wiping out the entire British pension fund became just one of those things. George presided over a golden age of tranquillity, benevolence and peace.
Hahahahaha. The man for whom the term Omni-shambles was dragged from fiction into fact.
And it was dear old Gordon Brown who set out to - and to a large extent succeeded in - destroying the British Pension Fund.
I write about Case in 2023 and PB debates a war in 2003.
Next I am going to try and write a header which stimulates a discussion about the Italian invasion of Abyssinia in the 1890's.
Bye ....
Sorry, Cycle, that was quite a bit me to blame. Your header is excellent - Case is way short of the calibre you'd expect of somebody holding his position. Standards in SW1 have fallen badly in recent years and I blame Boris Johnson for much of it. The fish rots etc.
The period since 2016 has truly been a low, dishonest decade.
1997 to 2007.....
Whatabout it ?
An equally appalling period in our lifetime millions died as a result of Blair cosying up to George Bush jnr
That's a nonsense though. Iraq would have happened without the UK. Bush & Co were set on it.
Maybe, but it didnt mean our government had go along with it and to lie in order to go along with it,
There's no 'maybe' about it. The US were doing Iraq anyway so the statement that "millions died as a result of Blair cosying up to George Bush jnr" is inaccurate and therefore merited a correction.
As to the whole thing being a shitshow that shouldn't have happened and that in any case we should have stayed out of - well yes obviously. Is there anybody at all these days who thinks any different?
The war part and deposing Saddam Hussein worked fine. What caused the shitshow was the utter failure to plan in advance for what happened after the initial aim was achieved.
This seems oddly familiar, somehow.
How do 'subsequent shitshows' now rank between Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya ?
British forces have flown 8,000 combat missions over Iraq and Syria since 2015 without any noticeable results so Iraq must easily be the gold standard of shit shows.
The RAF are now just continuing with it to make closing Akrotiri problematic. Sucks for the Iraqis but we face difficult choices in a turbulent world.
Afghanistan ended unfortunately but it was surely a success in its own terms. It deprived Al Qaeda of a base from which to launch Jihad against the West, eventually leading to the tracking down and assassination of Bin Laden in Pakistan. By the time the Taliban were back in they had evolved into simpler fundamentalists with seemingly only domestic aims and no intention of housing foreign terror cells.
It didn't succeed in nation building but that wasn't really the original war aim (unlike Iraq).
Libya was probably the most ham-fisted of the lot, but it's difficult to know what an alternative course of action would have been short of letting Gaddafi run riot.
Allowing Gadaffi to conduct a massacre was indeed, the only alternative. And, Gadaffi may not even have won.
Saddam ought to have been removed, back in 1991, before Iraq was ground down by sanctions.
As John Major has pointed out we would have lost the support of the Arab world for a generation in doing so as they did not want regime change and their support was conditional on that. And what would we have ended up with instead?
Had Saddam been toppled in 1991, Iraqi civilians would have been spared a ton of pain from sanctions.
Its an intersting bit of speculation as to whether or not regime change in 1991 under Bush Senior and Major with their collection of advisors and cabinets might have been more considered and successful than the debacle of 2003. Might there have been a more coherent post Saddam plan that would have prevented the collapse of the country seen after Gulf War II?
I am pretty sure they could not have done any worse and suspect they might have paid more attention to what came afterwards than Bush Junior and Blair.
On 'world press freedom day', the world press freedom index. 🔴 #RSFIndex RSF unveils the 2023 World Press Freedom Index:
1: Norway 🇳🇴 2: Ireland 🇮🇪 3: Denmark 🇩🇰 24: France 🇫🇷 26: United Kingdom 🇬🇧 45: United States 🇺🇸 68: Japan 🇯🇵 92: Brazil 🇧🇷 161: India 🇮🇳 136: Algeria 🇩🇿 179: China 🇨🇳 180: North Korea 🇰🇵
I write about Case in 2023 and PB debates a war in 2003.
Next I am going to try and write a header which stimulates a discussion about the Italian invasion of Abyssinia in the 1890's.
Bye ....
Sorry, Cycle, that was quite a bit me to blame. Your header is excellent - Case is way short of the calibre you'd expect of somebody holding his position. Standards in SW1 have fallen badly in recent years and I blame Boris Johnson for much of it. The fish rots etc.
In fairness, the thread was published some time in the small hours and remained broadly on topic until at least 9am. That's a long time for a conversation to stick to one subject, here or anywhere else.
HYUFD, I understand that the return of postal votes here is about 50%, normally 80% and the backbone of the local Cons vote. I suspect that this is being repeated over the country even in Tunbridge Wells. Not a good omen.
Et tu, Tunbridge?
Very interesting. The sort of straws in the wind they make a lot of in US elections. Probably reflects overall apathy and low turnout. I think turnout on the day will be low too, especially with the new voter ID rules.
Interesting question whether the Boris phenomenon of ruling everyone up to go and vote against him but also ruling up Tories to vote against the woke mind viruses would do better or worse for the Tories than the Sunak underwhelmingness and relative borefest.
In the 1960s the UK resisted becoming involved in Vietnam (like Canada, but unlike Australia) and we could have avoided Iraq too... but our leaders still believe(d) in the "Special Relationship", for which we get ever diminishing returns as the US looks away from Europe and towards Asia. While the current Brexit mess leaves us even more dependent on a Washington that actually doesn´t care about a second rank declining power, the time is coming where we will need to face some critical home truths about ourselves, our interests and our capabilities.
I did too. It was America at its worst and Blair at his worst. And did he lie to get his way? As near as makes no difference. Deserves all the shit that comes his way for the whole debacle.
However you do get a kind of retro-wise pile-on when it comes to the evil Tony and Iraq. Wildly exaggerated things get said quite freely. Often by people who were not massively opposed at the time. Certainly if they are Tory supporters they probably weren't.
Although of course everybody was passionately opposed at the time now, weren't they? The whole country were writing into the papers and on that march.
One of my exhilarating experiences, along with seeing the Clash at The Rainbow and SAHB at the Apollo.
There’s a good diversion for the day: which is the one concert I would relive if I could… for me it would be either Lynyrd Skynyrd at Leeds Uni (Feb 13 1977) or Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers at Hull College of Further Education ( May 7 1977)
Edit to correct Leeds date
2nd October 2015. I saw David Gilmour at the Royal Albert Hall, and it was brilliant. So wish I had seen the On An Island tour a decade earlier. Didn't get the album, but live it was transformed!
But, that RAH visit in October 2015. Literally days before Steven Wilson was playing the Hand. Cannot. Erase. tour. I hadn't at that point discovered Steven Wilson, which is a pity as I now rate HCE as a top 10 album. It's magnificent. And I missed him by days
If I could redo one live music experience, it would be Therapy?, Sheffield Octagon, 1995-ish (Infernal Love tour). There was one song called for a cellist – but clearly having paid for one, they were going to use him for every song. ’30 seconds’ with a cellist bowing ferociously was a delicious moment. And the audience were more up for it than any gig I have ever been to. Crowdsurfing started long before the band came on (I was the third – carried forward to a joyous chant of ‘you fat bastard!’ – even at 20 I was a big lad) and was enthusiastic and constant through the gig: bouncers dealt with this sympathetically, sending you straight round to have another go.
On 'world press freedom day', the world press freedom index. 🔴 #RSFIndex RSF unveils the 2023 World Press Freedom Index:
1: Norway 🇳🇴 2: Ireland 🇮🇪 3: Denmark 🇩🇰 24: France 🇫🇷 26: United Kingdom 🇬🇧 45: United States 🇺🇸 68: Japan 🇯🇵 92: Brazil 🇧🇷 161: India 🇮🇳 136: Algeria 🇩🇿 179: China 🇨🇳 180: North Korea 🇰🇵
Other notable scores - Russia down 9 at 164, just above Turkey which has fallen 16 places.
Also Greece is pretty shit.
Where do we come in the list of countries with more than 15 million people?
Somewhat higher, and I think we do pretty well considering we’ll be getting marked down on oligarchic control of media to some extent. What helps is there is our relatively robust competition law.
Turkey’s performance is always remarkable. It seems like press suppression and the imprisonment of journalists is their long time speciality.
I did in fact post it yesterday. Only second class though, so it might be a few days before it shows up
Seriously though, as Cyclefree said, so many things went wrong here for so long that it's hard to know where to start. The willingness to accept a computer system as infallible and proof of guilt is itself shocking, but the apparent lack of accountability for what went wrong baffles me.
It's such an awful incredible story. Ordinary decent people getting criminalized, their lives ruined and in some cases ended, by the Post Office. How can it possibly have happened? I struggle to get my head around it.
Options
1) Senior, Important People admit a mistake and take responsibility for their actions. Harm to Small People reduced. 2) Senior Important People protect their "reputations". Some Small People die.
2) is obviously better.
Sure, but this one is truly shocking. It's beyond the normal run-of-the-mill malignity and incompetence that you expect to see in the higher echelons of organizations.
Comments
I would also add that I think we are better off having some distance between us and the US, to avoid these kinds of entanglements when they lose the plot, which is one reason why I opposed Brexit. Outside the EU I think it is inevitable we move closer to the US orbit.
Which usually benefits the producers more than the consumers.
That can reasonably be used to make two quite distinct, even opposite, arguments about the nature of those two parties, but that is still not necessarily a comfortable place to be.
The only reason I knew that degree apprenticeships existed is because for a while 10 or so years ago I sat alongside the apprenticeship manager for BAe.
Which is why in the street I live in 3 19-21 year olds are all on degree apprenticeships - probably a higher percentage than anywhere else in the country.
And that tells me 2 things - 1 given a choice a lot of students would prefer an apprenticeship to Uni
2) most people don't know they exist because the odds of all 3 people getting them if everyone knew and applied for them is zilch.
As an aside when twin A moves department next month her pay goes up to £3x,000 a year.
Add on a 27% pension contribution and a paid for degree (with time off for study) and a civil service degree apprenticeship is the best possible option for an 18-21 year old. Mind you it's hard work when the time you need to spend on your degree is factored in.
For a lot of employers a year's work from a school-leaver is going to only be worth having to the extent that it's an extended interview and opportunity to start training somebody who's going to join you after they graduate -- and with a three year delay that's a rather delayed payoff.
It seemed pretty extreme, so I looked at the town’s wiki page. It tells me that the elevation is 0 - 912 feet
That’s a lot of slope for one little town..
Whether it was right or wrong to go to war, the management of the war was terrible.
Whether Brexit was right or wrong, the management of Brexit has been terrible.
It didn't succeed in nation building but that wasn't really the original war aim (unlike Iraq).
Libya was probably the most ham-fisted of the lot, but it's difficult to know what an alternative course of action would have been short of letting Gaddafi run riot.
The repercussions across the region were malign, and while it's impossible to know what might have transpired had it not happened, it's quite conceivable that the international order would be less fractured than it now is.
Certainly conducting a war of aggression on what turned out to be an entirely false prospectus set a very bad precedent indeed, which is not forgotten by considerably more malign actors.
I was happy to be proved wrong on that.
Was the world made a better place? Again, the answer is arguable.
Worth noting in favour of the warmongers that one positive result was cutting off a major source of funding for Palestinian suicide bombers.
Saddam ought to have been removed, back in 1991, before Iraq was ground down by sanctions.
Enjoy the GE 2024 Campaign
🔴 #RSFIndex RSF unveils the 2023 World Press Freedom Index:
1: Norway 🇳🇴
2: Ireland 🇮🇪
3: Denmark 🇩🇰
24: France 🇫🇷
26: United Kingdom 🇬🇧
45: United States 🇺🇸
68: Japan 🇯🇵
92: Brazil 🇧🇷
161: India 🇮🇳
136: Algeria 🇩🇿
179: China 🇨🇳
180: North Korea 🇰🇵
https://twitter.com/RSF_inter/status/1653621067687026694
Other notable scores - Russia down 9 at 164, just above Turkey which has fallen 16 places.
Also Greece is pretty shit.
It's worrying for our democracy.
You can want things, say things and pass laws as much as you want. But without a degree of capability and competence, it's just words howling at the moon.
However, the current state of the opinion polls, and the betting odds for the next GE, suggest that he must be doing something right. Especially given the dire state of the Labour Party when he took over a mere three years ago.
Objectively, he's achieved a remarkable amount to put Labour back in serious contention for power, and it's lazy thinking to attribute all of that to Tory shortcomings and external shocks. If he's so useless, how's he managed it? I suspect he's being underestimated by most (me included).
1) Senior, Important People admit a mistake and take responsibility for their actions. Harm to Small People reduced.
2) Senior Important People protect their "reputations". Some Small People die.
2) is obviously better.
https://twitter.com/SkySportsPL/status/1653694414324105217
I was wrong, clearly. Although I don't know enough to judge whether Iraq now is better or worse than Iraq now would have been had we done nothing. There was a massive shit show after the war, the war was very very bad for many people (those who died, had friends/family who died, who lost homes, businesses). Is the average Iraqi now better or worse off then under Saddam? I've no idea. The media have lost interest. To an extent, I guess, so have I, not having thought much about Iraq the past five years or so.
Whilst I do want rid of the corrupt Conservative government, I simply cannot, in good faith, vote for Labour. SKS has shifted the party centre-right, dragging it down into a cesspit of lies,racism, bullying and scandal - serving only the privileged few.
Edit to correct Leeds date
The Black Sheep Brewery has announced that it intends to appoint administrators to protect the interests of its creditors after the business was hit by a “perfect storm” caused by the pandemic and rising costs.
It isn't and it won't.
The point of monarchy is to have undisputed accession of an apolitical figure who is above politics, personifies the history and heritage of Britain, protects our constitution and can collectively unify us and represent us on the global stage - it demands an unbroken and traceable lineage behind him/her to provide those roots and that anchor.
But, if the individual monarch at the time can't learn to do that and play by the rules, you jump and skip to the next one. That's how you manage it. Not up upending the lot.
You might object to it 'on principle' but not everyone will think your principle is as important as you think it is and, indeed, will prioritise different things.
And the Conservative recovery meant ditching their leader and flagship policy.
Starmer remains in that maddening grey area where he's clearly doing better than Kinnock or EdM, but not as well as Blair.
Probably all right.
Next I am going to try and write a header which stimulates a discussion about the Italian invasion of Abyssinia in the 1890's.
Bye ....
- Lager: on a hot afternoon
- Coke: as above
- Vodka: when drowning sorrows or having a jovial time with friends from former soviet countries
- various local firewaters and moonshines of the Raki/Rakia variety: when toasting newfound companions on a trip somewhere
- Champagne or ESW (or even Cava/Prosecco): after entering a formal occasion where you don't know anybody and being handed one from a tray
- Espresso: from a coffee stall on a street corner
- Fake whisky or brandy from a decanter on the counter: when acting in a Hollywood movie scene in the office of some hotshot business tyrant
My most abiding take from the whole thing was the revelation that all those hard headed realpolitik guys had just as much potential to be clueless jerks as rest of us, with perhaps an added soupçon of dubious moral reasoning.
One of the problems with a straight graduate tax was EU free movement of people as this meant EU students could come to the UK for their education but not pay back via the graduate tax as they then return to their home country. Post-Brexit, you could do something closer to a graduate tax.
Have you ever considered a reboot?
I dont normally like IPA but their Monty Python range is excellent
What about Tom Scholar as a replacement? There is much to recommend him.
I also like this bit.
"He said arguments that it was unfair to impose extra taxes in times of recession “do not wash”, and the food industry is “more than capable” of absorbing new restrictions."
Surely if the food industry is absorbing the new restrictions then the extra tax burden is not being transferred to the consumer so the economic deterent effect does not work.
This guy was a tosser when he was Chancellor and apparently remains so.
As you say, this is probably neither 1992/2015 nor 1997. This is 2024. It'll be different again.
I am torn on what I want. Part of me wants the Tories to be thrashed, just for the catharsis that would bring about. But that means a big Labour majority and no prospect of electoral reform. So the other part wants a hung parliament and only the Lib Dems available as C&S or coalition partners.
If it's a narrow Labour win then I think there are 2 directions for the conservatives: 1. they keep Sunak, and stand a good chance of winning again in a few years, 2. Sunak walks and they go a bit bonkers and elect another liability like Truss or ideologue like JRM.
We are obsessed with a society with trivialities rather than substance Sometimes, in foreign policy, there are only two awful choices and you will vociferously criticised for either course you take or, indeed, no decision - which is also a decision.
- What degree of tactical voting has come about or reduced since 2019?
- How well/badly have incumbents done in either defending their record or boosting their personal vote?
- How well/badly has targeting done?
- How has local party strength (both for LDs and whoever they're fighting) increased/diminished in the areas being fought?
- How accurate are/aren't the polls?
- How will/badly Independents do in defending seats they won last time with widespread "sod the lot of you" mindsets?
- How much will Voter ID affect the vote (either for or against)?
The actual opinion polls are within MoE (damn near identical) to how they were last time around, so these variables will, I believe be the key ones.
My best guess right now is that anywhere between -50 and +250 is likely, depending on how those factors play out on the day.
But, that RAH visit in October 2015. Literally days before Steven Wilson was playing the Hand. Cannot. Erase. tour. I hadn't at that point discovered Steven Wilson, which is a pity as I now rate HCE as a top 10 album. It's magnificent. And I missed him by days
Union 29.8%
SPD 18.8%
Greens 16.0%
AfD 15.9%
FDP 7.1%
Left 4.5%
Others 7.9%
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahl_zum_21._Deutschen_Bundestag/Umfragen_und_Prognosen#Dynamische_Sonntagsfrage
There has already been a plot line in several American TV shows about tobacco companies swapping tobacco growing information for MJ growing information with Bad People.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2008/aug/01/popandrock.suicide
I understand that the return of postal votes here is about 50%, normally 80% and the backbone of the local Cons vote. I suspect that this is being repeated over the country even in Tunbridge Wells. Not a good omen.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-65467591
https://twitter.com/wingsscotland/status/1653708892243738625
Their own accounts - which were late - were filed in the last hour or so…..
Matthew Offord of marginal Hendon is the latest to go. That's 36 MPs elected as Conservatives who are now going voluntarily. To put the number in perspective, after the last parliament to last its full term, in 2015 38 Conservatives chose to stand down but most of those announced their intentions only within the final year or so of that parliament. So with probably over a year to go we might reasonably expect to get to 50+ this time. In addition, 5 sitting Conservatives who want to stand won't be allow to stand in their successor constituencies (as Conservatives at least in the case of Bridgen.)
Looking at the list so far, more often than not they are in seats which are not safe, so it seems that the chicken run combined with boundary changes could be a reason for the high number.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_United_Kingdom_general_election#Members_of_Parliament_not_standing_for_re-election
All this could impact a bit on what might otherwise have been a more significant Conservative incumbency boost.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/05/02/half-of-americas-banks-are-already-insolvent-credit-crunch/
And it was dear old Gordon Brown who set out to - and to a large extent succeeded in - destroying the British Pension Fund.
I am pretty sure they could not have done any worse and suspect they might have paid more attention to what came afterwards than Bush Junior and Blair.
Interesting question whether the Boris phenomenon of ruling everyone up to go and vote against him but also ruling up Tories to vote against the woke mind viruses would do better or worse for the Tories than the Sunak underwhelmingness and relative borefest.
I pity those people who work in the oil forecasting business.
Turkey’s performance is always remarkable. It seems like press suppression and the imprisonment of journalists is their long time speciality.
Also sounds like a cross between Tony and Dave.