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).
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.
Badenoch, Barclay, Tugendhat and Mordaunt will be the main contenders for next Tory leader if Sunak loses the next general election
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.
Would you be shocked if a cover up happened in the police? Probably not, or you shouldn't be. So why be shocked when the Post Office acted badly when it was not only doing the policing but also the prosecuting and thought itself the original victim. Hardly surprising the public interest and that of the defendants were ignored given that set up.
"if the Conservative party machine hadn’t spent a lot of time and energy this week trying to re-oxygenate the Gray story, then much more attention would be being paid to a story that really does show the Labour leader behaving shiftily"
"it is an income tax targeted squarely at Labour’s liberal base and at affluent thirtysomethings who are otherwise not getting a whole lot back from the state... there is a real risk, I think, that Labour is not doing enough to accelerate the movement of liberal and graduate voters to the Labour tent"
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.
Badenoch, Barclay, Tugendhat and Mordaunt will be the main contenders for next Tory leader if Sunak loses the next general election
But will those on the left of the party stand any chance, do you think?
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.
It just isn't true that the UK's just "somewhat" higher on the RSF list of larger countries than on this abbreviated list/ The ONLY countries with a pop of 30 mn or over rated higher than us are Germany, France, Canada and South Africa. See: https://rsf.org/en/index
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.
Badenoch, Barclay, Tugendhat and Mordaunt will be the main contenders for next Tory leader if Sunak loses the next general election
But will those on the left of the party stand any chance, do you think?
Depends who they are against. I think Badenoch can get to the last 3 but not the final 2 with MPs
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.
It just isn't true that the UK's just "somewhat" higher on the RSF list of larger countries than on this abbreviated list/ The ONLY countries with a pop of 30 mn or over rated higher than us are Germany, France, Canada and South Africa. See: https://rsf.org/en/index
If you disqualify large sections of the list, then of course we move up in the ranking. I’m unclear what insight this gives us.
On topic - very good article, and I find it unbelievable that Simon Case still has a job.
He is congentitally incapable of speaking truth unto power, and by all accounts as unpleasant to those not in a position to further his career as he is obsequious to those who are. A real jellyfish of a man - spineless AND with a nasty sting.
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.
Badenoch, Barclay, Tugendhat and Mordaunt will be the main contenders for next Tory leader if Sunak loses the next general election
But will those on the left of the party stand any chance, do you think?
Depends who they are against. I think Badenoch can get to the last 3 but not the final 2 with MPs
So are you implying it will end up with Barclay vs. a wet in the final 2?
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.
I agree to a point - I prefer with a little ice for reasons given above - but you should always drink the whisky before the ice melts.
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.
It just isn't true that the UK's just "somewhat" higher on the RSF list of larger countries than on this abbreviated list/ The ONLY countries with a pop of 30 mn or over rated higher than us are Germany, France, Canada and South Africa. See: https://rsf.org/en/index
Presumably there are fewer countries below as well?
Looks like we are in the top 15% of all countries. Imagine very similar percentile for large countries too. Of course numerically we move up the list if you exclude lots of the ones above us.....
Anyway the difference between 24th or 26th is meaningless. We are in the relatively good, but could be doing better category.
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.
I was a student at Sheffield Uni at the start of my 1st year when that gig was on! Star Trek Society made extensive use of Octagon Centre rooms in my time. I also made *ahem* other uses of the place at times.
The National Party – Greeks, the result of a Golden Dawn schism, has been banned from standing in the country’s forthcoming national election, on grounds of criminality by its leader AIUI.
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.
So what you're saying is that something which looks like it is all about the personal, the individual - the Monarch - is actually about the institution - the Monarchy? I think this is also one of the key dividing lines between a dictatorship and a democracy.
I think that the, now fashionable to deride, series, "The Crown", made this point well in its earlier period, and makes it well with its name - the point is the Crown, and not the head who wears it. Many of the early episodes are about this tension between the individual and the institutional.
I understand the series creator is a Republican, but it has always seemed to make the case for a constitutional monarchy rather well. I'd personally still choose a Republic, but I think I would want to avoid a directly-elected President. I quite like the idea of someone doing the job out of a sense of public duty, rather than for personal aggrandisement. We have too many people, supposedly in public service, who are there for reasons of personal advancement. The individual running an institution has become more important than the institution itself.
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.
I agree to a point - I prefer with a little ice for reasons given above - but you should always drink the whisky before the ice melts.
Cask strength (in general) is designed to be diluted before drinking.
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.
Badenoch, Barclay, Tugendhat and Mordaunt will be the main contenders for next Tory leader if Sunak loses the next general election
But will those on the left of the party stand any chance, do you think?
Depends who they are against. I think Badenoch can get to the last 3 but not the final 2 with MPs
I think it's impossible to say who will become the Conservative leader after the next election.
It will very much depend on how big the defeat is and which MP's are left in the parliamentary party.
My guess is that the instinct in the Party will be to move on from the 2010-2024 era which would favour someone like Kemi but on the other hand if the Con defeat is very narrow and Labour don't have a majority there will be an expectation of another election within the following 12 months which might just see Rishi staying on as LOTO for a bit.
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.
Badenoch, Barclay, Tugendhat and Mordaunt will be the main contenders for next Tory leader if Sunak loses the next general election
But will those on the left of the party stand any chance, do you think?
Depends who they are against. I think Badenoch can get to the last 3 but not the final 2 with MPs
I think it's impossible to say who will become the Conservative leader after the next election.
It will very much depend on how big the defeat is and which MP's are left in the parliamentary party.
My guess is that the instinct in the Party will be to move on from the 2010-2024 era which would favour someone like Kemi but on the other hand if the Con defeat is very narrow and Labour don't have a majority there will be an expectation of another election within the following 12 months which might just see Rishi staying on as LOTO for a bit.
Yes it depends on how heavy the defeat is and who remains in the HoC - a Labour minority government might call for some continuity in Tory leadership. If it's a wipeout then Sunak is gone, if not.....
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 🇰🇵
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.
That was one of the few occasions when I had sympathy for him. It's quite obvious that pasties are frequently served above ambient temperature. Whether it was workable was a different matter.
Having spent years knocking him on this site, some of the reaction today does feel a little OTT. Taxing orange juice is neither here nor there for me but I'm surprised he would favour a ban on tobacco. I would have thought he'd be one of those Tories who'd lean towards liberalisation. Plenty of things are unhealthy. Banning a substance because smoking a quarter of a million of them might lead to an early grave is pretty authoritarian, leaving aside the potential for organised criminals to make a killing.
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.
I was a student at Sheffield Uni at the start of my 1st year when that gig was on! Star Trek Society made extensive use of Octagon Centre rooms in my time. I also made *ahem* other uses of the place at times.
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.
Badenoch, Barclay, Tugendhat and Mordaunt will be the main contenders for next Tory leader if Sunak loses the next general election
But will those on the left of the party stand any chance, do you think?
Depends who they are against. I think Badenoch can get to the last 3 but not the final 2 with MPs
So are you implying it will end up with Barclay vs. a wet in the final 2?
Barclay v Tugendhat would be my current projection. With Barclay winning to replace Sunak as Tory leader and become Leader of the Opposition. Unless Boris holds Uxbridge of course by some miracle
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.
I think the main reason not to topple Saddam in 1991 was that doing so would have broken apart the incredibly wide coalition that existed to push Iraq out of Kuwait.
I think the lack of wide support for toppling Saddam among neighbouring countries would have made dealing with the aftermath of doing so difficult for whoever was in charge of the process.
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.
Would you be shocked if a cover up happened in the police? Probably not, or you shouldn't be. So why be shocked when the Post Office acted badly when it was not only doing the policing but also the prosecuting and thought itself the original victim. Hardly surprising the public interest and that of the defendants were ignored given that set up.
The persecution was vicious and went on way beyond the point at which it was obvious the victims were innocent. I really wouldn't expect this from an outfit like the Post Office. Also I'd expect 'the system' more generally to have offered more by way of resolving the matter. We're talking ordinary people running sub post offices here. No, I am shocked. Kafkaesque nightmares - the real thing rather than the turn of phrase - aren't the norm here as far I'm concerned. When I read about this I went "Oh jesus how can that be?" not "ah, the little people getting screwed over again, same old same old".
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.
I think the main reason not to topple Saddam in 1991 was that doing so would have broken apart the incredibly wide coalition that existed to push Iraq out of Kuwait.
I think the lack of wide support for toppling Saddam among neighbouring countries would have made dealing with the aftermath of doing so difficult for whoever was in charge of the process.
I agree. I think they were wrong - at least with hindsight - but I understand the reasons for it. But as I say I wonder how different the outcome might have been if Bush Senior and Major had pushed ahead regardless?
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.
Would you be shocked if a cover up happened in the police? Probably not, or you shouldn't be. So why be shocked when the Post Office acted badly when it was not only doing the policing but also the prosecuting and thought itself the original victim. Hardly surprising the public interest and that of the defendants were ignored given that set up.
The persecution was vicious and went on way beyond the point at which it was obvious the victims were innocent. I really wouldn't expect this from an outfit like the Post Office. Also I'd expect 'the system' more generally to have offered more by way of resolving the matter. We're talking ordinary people running sub post offices here. No, I am shocked. Kafkaesque nightmares - the real thing rather than the turn of phrase - aren't the norm here as far I'm concerned. When I read about this I went "Oh jesus how can that be?" not "ah, the little people getting screwed over again, same old same old".
Police officers (mostly) start off as ordinary people too. It is the organisation, power and culture that corrupts and it happens repeatedly the world over. Why continue to be shocked? We should all expect these things happen unless we are ever vigilant and build strong checks and balances into our power structures.
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.
So what you're saying is that something which looks like it is all about the personal, the individual - the Monarch - is actually about the institution - the Monarchy? I think this is also one of the key dividing lines between a dictatorship and a democracy.
I think that the, now fashionable to deride, series, "The Crown", made this point well in its earlier period, and makes it well with its name - the point is the Crown, and not the head who wears it. Many of the early episodes are about this tension between the individual and the institutional.
I understand the series creator is a Republican, but it has always seemed to make the case for a constitutional monarchy rather well. I'd personally still choose a Republic, but I think I would want to avoid a directly-elected President. I quite like the idea of someone doing the job out of a sense of public duty, rather than for personal aggrandisement. We have too many people, supposedly in public service, who are there for reasons of personal advancement. The individual running an institution has become more important than the institution itself.
Yes, that's essentially it and Churchill said the same: they don't want you; they want "it".
No Christmas Market in Lincoln after a Labour council decision it emerges at PMQs. The PM rightly appalled!
PMQs is always useful as a reminder of which seats are Conservative marginals.
Lincoln is a seat which the Conservatives won back in 2010, but where unusually they haven't since kicked on to establish a double digit majority. No boundary changes since 2010. Is anyone aware of what might explain the relatively poor Conservative performance?
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.
I don't think it would. Bush needed the support
That is just plain wrong, I'm afraid. Eg Bush offered Blair a way out. Told him, "Look, don't join us if it'll kill you politically". It's 100% undeniable that come hell or high water the US were invading Iraq and toppling Saddam. Our participation was a 'nice to have'.
No Christmas Market in Lincoln after a Labour council decision it emerges at PMQs. The PM rightly appalled!
PMQs is always useful as a reminder of which seats are Conservative marginals.
Lincoln is a seat which the Conservatives won back in 2010, but where unusually they haven't since kicked on to establish a double digit majority. No boundary changes since 2010. Is anyone aware of what might explain the relatively poor Conservative performance?
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.
So are we looking at a circa 20 Tory majority again? That is my evidence-free gut feeling too.
No Christmas Market in Lincoln after a Labour council decision it emerges at PMQs. The PM rightly appalled!
What were the reasons for not allowing it?
To spend the money on attracting visitors all year round rather than a few weeks in December every year.
Lincoln now has direct train services to King’s Cross and they want to use that.
Surely the Christmas market combined with a direct train service would a good way to pull people into visiting Lincoln?
The issue with the Christmas market was it was getting impossible to manage and was actually causing major issues for the businesses in Lincoln. Unlike Christmas markets in other cities - Nottingham, Birmingham etc - which last for several weeks, it was only over one extended weekend. Cramming a vast number of people - far more that could actually be safely accommodated - into a small area around Steep Hill for 3 days each year was no longer a practical or safe solution. Indeed the local shopkeepers now make more money out of the Steampunk festival in August than they were making out of the Christmas Market.
The idea - supported by the majority of businesses and locals - is now to have a longer period of Christmas events and other events spread throughout the year.
No Christmas Market in Lincoln after a Labour council decision it emerges at PMQs. The PM rightly appalled!
PMQs is always useful as a reminder of which seats are Conservative marginals.
Lincoln is a seat which the Conservatives won back in 2010, but where unusually they haven't since kicked on to establish a double digit majority. No boundary changes since 2010. Is anyone aware of what might explain the relatively poor Conservative performance?
Worth noting that Lincoln has, I think, got rather more studenty (and, I think, young-adulty) this century. The rightward shift typical of small towns and cities remote from the big urban centres has probably been balanced out by this.
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.
Badenoch, Barclay, Tugendhat and Mordaunt will be the main contenders for next Tory leader if Sunak loses the next general election
But will those on the left of the party stand any chance, do you think?
Depends who they are against. I think Badenoch can get to the last 3 but not the final 2 with MPs
So are you implying it will end up with Barclay vs. a wet in the final 2?
Barclay v Tugendhat would be my current projection. With Barclay winning to replace Sunak as Tory leader and become Leader of the Opposition. Unless Boris holds Uxbridge of course by some miracle
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.
And played out in public for over a decade. The largest scale miscarriage of justice in living memory, almost completely ignored by successive governments.
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.
I think the main reason not to topple Saddam in 1991 was that doing so would have broken apart the incredibly wide coalition that existed to push Iraq out of Kuwait.
I think the lack of wide support for toppling Saddam among neighbouring countries would have made dealing with the aftermath of doing so difficult for whoever was in charge of the process.
I agree. I think they were wrong - at least with hindsight - but I understand the reasons for it. But as I say I wonder how different the outcome might have been if Bush Senior and Major had pushed ahead regardless?
It's so hard to tell. How did Japan and South Korea end up as democracies and Iraq and Afghanistan did not?
Even if you look at the difference between the post-Cold War experiences of Poland and Hungary on the one side and the Baltic States on the other, I find it hard to explain them.
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.
I don't think it would. Bush needed the support
That is just plain wrong, I'm afraid. Eg Bush offered Blair a way out. Told him, "Look, don't join us if it'll kill you politically". It's 100% undeniable that come hell or high water the US were invading Iraq and toppling Saddam. Our participation was a 'nice to have'.
It reinforced the UK as the US' closest ally, especially for Republican Presidents however. Useful post Brexit (Australia is also a close US ally but has a smaller military and economy than we do so less useful to the White House)
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.
So are we looking at a circa 20 Tory majority again? That is my evidence-free gut feeling too.
I think it's possible that both LAB and CON end up sub 300...
First, thanks to Cyclefree for doing this kind of oversight. (In the US the job of oversight is -- theoretically -- done by Congress and other legislatures, but it isn't done as often, or as well, as it should be. And when it is done well, those who do it seldom get credit from our news media.)
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.
Would you be shocked if a cover up happened in the police? Probably not, or you shouldn't be. So why be shocked when the Post Office acted badly when it was not only doing the policing but also the prosecuting and thought itself the original victim. Hardly surprising the public interest and that of the defendants were ignored given that set up.
Well, that's it. It's over. Labour is well and truly fucked now. Up and down the country, the meme will take hold: Labour will ban your Christmas Market just like they did in Lincoln.
On topic: "It is as if all his skills have been devoted to climbing the greasy pole and holding on rather than in actually doing the job he’s been employed to do, competently and effectively."
This is a fundamental issue in the Civil Service. By no means all, but many senior civil servants are simply those best at navigating the Kafkaesque promotion processes, which - by design - do not take actual performance or results into account. Many swan from post to post every six months, unaccountable for the trail of destruction they leave behind them.
Case is probably an exemplar of this, though there's more to it given he discretionary nature of the appointment of CabSecs. I've posted ad nauseam what a useless shite he is, but suffice to say he is not nor has ever been the right man.
The issue with the Christmas market was it was getting impossible to manage and was actually causing major issues for the businesses in Lincoln. Unlike Christmas markets in other cities - Nottingham, Birmingham etc - which last for several weeks, it was only over one extended weekend.
Maybe just the pandemic effect playing out, but we may have passed "peak Christmas Market"
Birmingham is not as big as it has been previously. Winchester is a shadow of its former self.
The issue with the Christmas market was it was getting impossible to manage and was actually causing major issues for the businesses in Lincoln. Unlike Christmas markets in other cities - Nottingham, Birmingham etc - which last for several weeks, it was only over one extended weekend.
Maybe just the pandemic effect playing out, but we may have passed "peak Christmas Market"
Birmingham is not as big as it has been previously. Winchester is a shadow of its former self.
Post-Brexit we need to purge our nation of such Teutonic merriment.
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.
Badenoch, Barclay, Tugendhat and Mordaunt will be the main contenders for next Tory leader if Sunak loses the next general election
But will those on the left of the party stand any chance, do you think?
Depends who they are against. I think Badenoch can get to the last 3 but not the final 2 with MPs
So are you implying it will end up with Barclay vs. a wet in the final 2?
Barclay v Tugendhat would be my current projection. With Barclay winning to replace Sunak as Tory leader and become Leader of the Opposition. Unless Boris holds Uxbridge of course by some miracle
Do you think Boris might move to Mid Beds, Henley or some other seat before the election?
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.
And played out in public for over a decade. The largest scale miscarriage of justice in living memory, almost completely ignored by successive governments.
And tbf by 'us'. The broader us, I mean, not PB. Why wasn't there more outrage? Was it too prosaic an issue being about IT systems and lacking a 'culture war' angle or any sex or violence? I don't know but I think perhaps we should question ourselves.
No Christmas Market in Lincoln after a Labour council decision it emerges at PMQs. The PM rightly appalled!
What were the reasons for not allowing it?
To spend the money on attracting visitors all year round rather than a few weeks in December every year.
Lincoln now has direct train services to King’s Cross and they want to use that to attract visitors all year round.
In fairness, Lincoln is a bit of a forgotten gem of a city, and the surrounds are nice as well.
You would have thought a Christmas market would at least cover its costs though.
I understand that Christmas Markets in general are struggling. There are a lot of European stallholders attend these events and for some reason it has become more difficult for them to attend.
There were substantially fewer stalls in Manchester over the last 2 years.
There was some talk that Christmas Markets in Northern Ireland were doing very well.
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.
Badenoch, Barclay, Tugendhat and Mordaunt will be the main contenders for next Tory leader if Sunak loses the next general election
But will those on the left of the party stand any chance, do you think?
Depends who they are against. I think Badenoch can get to the last 3 but not the final 2 with MPs
So are you implying it will end up with Barclay vs. a wet in the final 2?
Barclay v Tugendhat would be my current projection. With Barclay winning to replace Sunak as Tory leader and become Leader of the Opposition. Unless Boris holds Uxbridge of course by some miracle
Do you think Boris might move to Mid Beds, Henley or some other seat before the election?
He has been readopted for Uxbridge so a bit late now. Henley is not rock solid either with the LDs targeting it.
Mid Beds might be a better bet but it will have selected its new candidate by the autumn so he needs to get on with it
Just seen Sunak vs Starmer at PMQs and what an embarrassment Sunak is as Prime Minister. King of the NIMBYs banging on about giving "local control" to stop housing, when we have a housing crisis.
If I hadn't already decided I won't vote Tory tomorrow, that would be a clincher.
Cheshire and Amersham was a disappointment for seeing the Lib Dems win based on a disreputable NIMBY campaign, but the Tories have gone wholeheartedly to the dark side.
I'm never voting for them again, until they become the party of aspiration again - which I can't ever see happening under Sunak.
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.
Badenoch, Barclay, Tugendhat and Mordaunt will be the main contenders for next Tory leader if Sunak loses the next general election
But will those on the left of the party stand any chance, do you think?
Depends who they are against. I think Badenoch can get to the last 3 but not the final 2 with MPs
So are you implying it will end up with Barclay vs. a wet in the final 2?
Barclay v Tugendhat would be my current projection. With Barclay winning to replace Sunak as Tory leader and become Leader of the Opposition. Unless Boris holds Uxbridge of course by some miracle
Do you think Boris might move to Mid Beds, Henley or some other seat before the election?
He could contest one as Alexander Johnson and another as Boris Johnson, just in case one of the seats doesn't work out.
On 'world press freedom day', the world press freedom index. 🔴 #RSFIndex RSF unveils the 2023 World Press Freedom Index:
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The issue with the Christmas market was it was getting impossible to manage and was actually causing major issues for the businesses in Lincoln. Unlike Christmas markets in other cities - Nottingham, Birmingham etc - which last for several weeks, it was only over one extended weekend.
Maybe just the pandemic effect playing out, but we may have passed "peak Christmas Market"
Birmingham is not as big as it has been previously. Winchester is a shadow of its former self.
Manchester's Christmas Market is still bafflingly enormous, though I agree it may have passed peak enormity.
It was pretty good, once. But like all pretty good things, it attracted people, which in turn attracted more stallholders. It still suits some people "relative x would like that - buy it!" but those of us who are less confident in our present buying abilities and who therefore feel the need to consider everything before committing ourselves face an exhausting day-long slog. ("Can I be sure that that attractive Venetian glass necklace will be the nicest one on the market? There are at least four more stall to look at in this section alone.") And I don't see the attraction in outdoor drinking in December. I wish these places well but they're not for me.
The issue with the Christmas market was it was getting impossible to manage and was actually causing major issues for the businesses in Lincoln. Unlike Christmas markets in other cities - Nottingham, Birmingham etc - which last for several weeks, it was only over one extended weekend.
Maybe just the pandemic effect playing out, but we may have passed "peak Christmas Market"
Birmingham is not as big as it has been previously. Winchester is a shadow of its former self.
Possibly but there were massive issues with Lincoln even before the pandemic. It is in narrow streets and, as I said, only runs for 3 days. They have to have a one way system and you basically have to keep moving or you cause a massive traffic jam. THere were other ways it could have been resolved but they all had a lot of issues with them and I think the solution of momving to more events throughout the year is very wise.
Just seen Sunak vs Starmer at PMQs and what an embarrassment Sunak is as Prime Minister. King of the NIMBYs banging on about giving "local control" to stop housing, when we have a housing crisis.
If I hadn't already decided I won't vote Tory tomorrow, that would be a clincher.
Cheshire and Amersham was a disappointment for seeing the Lib Dems win based on a disreputable NIMBY campaign, but the Tories have gone wholeheartedly to the dark side.
I'm never voting for them again, until they become the party of aspiration again - which I can't ever see happening under Sunak.
I didn't hear or see it, but I am assuming I will learn shortly Sir Softie got another drubbing.
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.
Would you be shocked if a cover up happened in the police? Probably not, or you shouldn't be. So why be shocked when the Post Office acted badly when it was not only doing the policing but also the prosecuting and thought itself the original victim. Hardly surprising the public interest and that of the defendants were ignored given that set up.
The persecution was vicious and went on way beyond the point at which it was obvious the victims were innocent. I really wouldn't expect this from an outfit like the Post Office. Also I'd expect 'the system' more generally to have offered more by way of resolving the matter. We're talking ordinary people running sub post offices here. No, I am shocked. Kafkaesque nightmares - the real thing rather than the turn of phrase - aren't the norm here as far I'm concerned. When I read about this I went "Oh jesus how can that be?" not "ah, the little people getting screwed over again, same old same old".
Police officers (mostly) start off as ordinary people too. It is the organisation, power and culture that corrupts and it happens repeatedly the world over. Why continue to be shocked? We should all expect these things happen unless we are ever vigilant and build strong checks and balances into our power structures.
Doing the latter has an essential precursor - that when something this bad happens we are shocked. The shock is the fuel for change. Losing it drains the tank and we stay right where we are.
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.
I think looking back, the Blair era expansion of university places has a lot to answer for, and is possibly a large part of the current malaise affecting the country today.
Imagine if only 10% of the population went to university today, rather than almost 50%. This would mean around 2.25 million additional people in the workforce rather than education, and importantly this wouldn't cost any more in government services, pressure on housing etc. In addition if you shrunk the university sector by 80% that releases around another 180k people to do something more productive.
Over the last 25 years, successive governments have turned to immigration to solve labour shortages - but each time is only a temporary fix, as the immigrants themselves need houses, doctors, supermarkets, pensions, and ultimately expect the standards of living as the rest of us.
The only lasting fix involves increasing the productivity of the existing population until we can afford our desired standard of living. Turning three to five years in the prime of the lives of 40% of the population from being a massive cost all round to a net contribution seems to me to be an easy win.
(all this is based on the dirty open secret in all this - namely that an average university education teaches very little that anyone actually needs to do a graduate job, but is merely a very expensive form of credentialism).
Just seen Sunak vs Starmer at PMQs and what an embarrassment Sunak is as Prime Minister. King of the NIMBYs banging on about giving "local control" to stop housing, when we have a housing crisis.
If I hadn't already decided I won't vote Tory tomorrow, that would be a clincher.
Cheshire and Amersham was a disappointment for seeing the Lib Dems win based on a disreputable NIMBY campaign, but the Tories have gone wholeheartedly to the dark side.
I'm never voting for them again, until they become the party of aspiration again - which I can't ever see happening under Sunak.
I didn't hear or see it, but I am assuming I will learn shortly Sir Softie got another drubbing.
Sir Keir asked about the failed housing targets and that there's not enough construction and Sunak jumped on the NIMBY brigade saying he was giving 'local people' a say in housing and accusing Starmer of wanting to 'concrete over the green belt'.
Local people should have no more say in housing than they get a say in whether you can change your job or anything else. You should determine what you do with your own land, not curtain twitchers.
And while my liberalism on construction may go further than most, if the Tories were running a system with enough construction even with controls it wouldn't be so bad, but they're categorically not and Sunak is deliberately making the system worse to pander to NIMBY voters.
Pure scum and disreputable. Makes me ashamed to have voted Conservative at the last election.
Anyway, far too much from me. But for the road ... yep BAN SMOKING. Or at the very least make it almost impossible for young people to start. This is an activity and a drug with not a single redeeming feature. Not one. I speak from a place at the very dark heart of the matter.
Just seen Sunak vs Starmer at PMQs and what an embarrassment Sunak is as Prime Minister. King of the NIMBYs banging on about giving "local control" to stop housing, when we have a housing crisis.
If I hadn't already decided I won't vote Tory tomorrow, that would be a clincher.
Cheshire and Amersham was a disappointment for seeing the Lib Dems win based on a disreputable NIMBY campaign, but the Tories have gone wholeheartedly to the dark side.
I'm never voting for them again, until they become the party of aspiration again - which I can't ever see happening under Sunak.
It will happen, but it's going to be a long slog. The Conservatives are prisoners of their electorate, who are now overwhelmingly retired homeowners who see no reason for any more development, thank you. I don't see how the Conservatives move to a different coalition without a purgative spell in opposition.
Give him his due, Starmer is at least making "getting it" noises, though the devil will be in the details.
Just seen Sunak vs Starmer at PMQs and what an embarrassment Sunak is as Prime Minister. King of the NIMBYs banging on about giving "local control" to stop housing, when we have a housing crisis.
If I hadn't already decided I won't vote Tory tomorrow, that would be a clincher.
Cheshire and Amersham was a disappointment for seeing the Lib Dems win based on a disreputable NIMBY campaign, but the Tories have gone wholeheartedly to the dark side.
I'm never voting for them again, until they become the party of aspiration again - which I can't ever see happening under Sunak.
The issue with the Christmas market was it was getting impossible to manage and was actually causing major issues for the businesses in Lincoln. Unlike Christmas markets in other cities - Nottingham, Birmingham etc - which last for several weeks, it was only over one extended weekend.
Maybe just the pandemic effect playing out, but we may have passed "peak Christmas Market"
Birmingham is not as big as it has been previously. Winchester is a shadow of its former self.
My local one was much better this year, despite being slightly smaller - in 2021 it was nearly all takeaway/street food but last year there were quite a lot of stalls selling things that could actually be given as Christmas presents.
No Christmas Market in Lincoln after a Labour council decision it emerges at PMQs. The PM rightly appalled!
What were the reasons for not allowing it?
To spend the money on attracting visitors all year round rather than a few weeks in December every year.
Lincoln now has direct train services to King’s Cross and they want to use that to attract visitors all year round.
In fairness, Lincoln is a bit of a forgotten gem of a city, and the surrounds are nice as well.
You would have thought a Christmas market would at least cover its costs though.
I understand that Christmas Markets in general are struggling. There are a lot of European stallholders attend these events and for some reason it has become more difficult for them to attend.
There were substantially fewer stalls in Manchester over the last 2 years.
There was some talk that Christmas Markets in Northern Ireland were doing very well.
Many Christmas markets did very well this year including those hosting European traders. The one example of a German market being cancelled was down to poor organisation at the UK end not any difficulty in the traders getting here. That was right from the mouth of the main organsiation organising things at the German end.
The issue with the Christmas market was it was getting impossible to manage and was actually causing major issues for the businesses in Lincoln. Unlike Christmas markets in other cities - Nottingham, Birmingham etc - which last for several weeks, it was only over one extended weekend.
Maybe just the pandemic effect playing out, but we may have passed "peak Christmas Market"
Birmingham is not as big as it has been previously. Winchester is a shadow of its former self.
Post-Brexit we need to purge our nation of such Teutonic merriment.
I think CoL may play a part too. Bath's Christmas market is full of gloriously overpriced tat that people don't need. We tend to go for an hour or two, buy very little aside of some cheese and just enjoy the night out and atmosphere.
Just seen Sunak vs Starmer at PMQs and what an embarrassment Sunak is as Prime Minister. King of the NIMBYs banging on about giving "local control" to stop housing, when we have a housing crisis.
If I hadn't already decided I won't vote Tory tomorrow, that would be a clincher.
Cheshire and Amersham was a disappointment for seeing the Lib Dems win based on a disreputable NIMBY campaign, but the Tories have gone wholeheartedly to the dark side.
I'm never voting for them again, until they become the party of aspiration again - which I can't ever see happening under Sunak.
Lots of talk about housing over the last few days. I gave an example of a 100 home development near where I grew up, which offers small houses for large prices on a flood plain. The main bone of contention for the locals on that development and all the other similar ones before it are simple - space.
One road in and out, with no ability to build a new road or widen it. No investment in new schools or shops or facilities. All of the new developments just become a burden, an ever growing traffic jam of people forced to travel to get to anything as there's nothing locally.
It is stuff like that which drives locals up the wall. Building houses is something we all agree with, but it can't be what the developers want where they want it and screw everyone else.
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.
The malignity and incompetence is not that shocking if you look at some other scandals in the past. You can see something similar in the Aberfan case. What is shocking is the failure to put matters right and why that is happening. I have some thoughts on why that is - for which you will have to wait for my next article.
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.
Would you be shocked if a cover up happened in the police? Probably not, or you shouldn't be. So why be shocked when the Post Office acted badly when it was not only doing the policing but also the prosecuting and thought itself the original victim. Hardly surprising the public interest and that of the defendants were ignored given that set up.
The persecution was vicious and went on way beyond the point at which it was obvious the victims were innocent. I really wouldn't expect this from an outfit like the Post Office. Also I'd expect 'the system' more generally to have offered more by way of resolving the matter. We're talking ordinary people running sub post offices here. No, I am shocked. Kafkaesque nightmares - the real thing rather than the turn of phrase - aren't the norm here as far I'm concerned. When I read about this I went "Oh jesus how can that be?" not "ah, the little people getting screwed over again, same old same old".
I'm surprised you are surprised.
The NHS has a long tradition of hounding whistleblowers. In fact, it turns out that the omerta for doctors speaking out against other doctors has an exception. Accusing whistleblowing doctors of being mentally ill.
British Airways, before and after privatisation, conducted a spectacularly illegal campaign against Laker - justified by "We are the national airline, therefore we are allowed to do anything to protect ourselves from a competitor"
Various charities have conducted vendettas against whistleblowers - see the scandals in third world aid.
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 probably seeing Prince at Celtic Park in 1992, or Spiritualized in the Barrowlands in 1998 at the peak of their Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space period.
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.
The malignity and incompetence is not that shocking if you look at some other scandals in the past. You can see something similar in the Aberfan case. What is shocking is the failure to put matters right and why that is happening. I have some thoughts on why that is - for which you will have to wait for my next article.
Yes that's what I meant about 'the system more widely'. At first things might have looked suspicious but the twists of the tale once it became clear otherwise really do beggar belief. I'm flabbergasted and look forward to reading your analysis.
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https://archive.ph/UytaK
"if the Conservative party machine hadn’t spent a lot of time and energy this week trying to re-oxygenate the Gray story, then much more attention would be being paid to a story that really does show the Labour leader behaving shiftily"
"it is an income tax targeted squarely at Labour’s liberal base and at affluent thirtysomethings who are otherwise not getting a whole lot back from the state... there is a real risk, I think, that Labour is not doing enough to accelerate the movement of liberal and graduate voters to the Labour tent"
He is congentitally incapable of speaking truth unto power, and by all accounts as unpleasant to those not in a position to further his career as he is obsequious to those who are. A real jellyfish of a man - spineless AND with a nasty sting.
Looks like we are in the top 15% of all countries. Imagine very similar percentile for large countries too. Of course numerically we move up the list if you exclude lots of the ones above us.....
Anyway the difference between 24th or 26th is meaningless. We are in the relatively good, but could be doing better category.
I was a student at Sheffield Uni at the start of my 1st year when that gig was on! Star Trek Society made extensive use of Octagon Centre rooms in my time. I also made *ahem* other uses of the place at times.
Feels like an eternity ago!
EDIT - Kula Shaker at The Leadmill in 1996. Oh My God. They were unreal
https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/kula-shaker/1996/the-leadmill-sheffield-england-2bd10492.html
I think that the, now fashionable to deride, series, "The Crown", made this point well in its earlier period, and makes it well with its name - the point is the Crown, and not the head who wears it. Many of the early episodes are about this tension between the individual and the institutional.
I understand the series creator is a Republican, but it has always seemed to make the case for a constitutional monarchy rather well. I'd personally still choose a Republic, but I think I would want to avoid a directly-elected President. I quite like the idea of someone doing the job out of a sense of public duty, rather than for personal aggrandisement. We have too many people, supposedly in public service, who are there for reasons of personal advancement. The individual running an institution has become more important than the institution itself.
It will very much depend on how big the defeat is and which MP's are left in the parliamentary party.
My guess is that the instinct in the Party will be to move on from the 2010-2024 era which would favour someone like Kemi but on the other hand if the Con defeat is very narrow and Labour don't have a majority there will be an expectation of another election within the following 12 months which might just see Rishi staying on as LOTO for a bit.
Lincoln now has direct train services to King’s Cross and they want to use that to attract visitors all year round.
Got to ask how on earth does a Christmas market cost money - surely the rent should (as an absolute minimum) cover the council's costs?
Subsequently amended:
https://www.gbnews.com/royal/princess-anne-king-charles-royal-family-slimmed-down
The interview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgb3sxJoZhM
The point Princess Anne makes is that the "slimmed down" monarchy came at a time of 4 additional senior Royals then still in public life....
Having spent years knocking him on this site, some of the reaction today does feel a little OTT. Taxing orange juice is neither here nor there for me but I'm surprised he would favour a ban on tobacco. I would have thought he'd be one of those Tories who'd lean towards liberalisation. Plenty of things are unhealthy. Banning a substance because smoking a quarter of a million of them might lead to an early grave is pretty authoritarian, leaving aside the potential for organised criminals to make a killing.
Befair has just given me a free £2 bet. Better than being hit in the face by a wet fish, as Boris Johnson's dad might say.
https://www.lincolnshirelive.co.uk/news/lincoln-news/lincoln-christmas-market-scrapped-after-8170138?int_source=amp_continue_reading&int_medium=amp&int_campaign=continue_reading_button#amp-readmore-target
https://thelincolnite.co.uk/2023/03/first-hints-on-events-to-replace-lincoln-christmas-market/
I think the lack of wide support for toppling Saddam among neighbouring countries would have made dealing with the aftermath of doing so difficult for whoever was in charge of the process.
Edit: Oh, I see I'm recycling Frank's point.
Lincoln is a seat which the Conservatives won back in 2010, but where unusually they haven't since kicked on to establish a double digit majority. No boundary changes since 2010. Is anyone aware of what might explain the relatively poor Conservative performance?
The idea - supported by the majority of businesses and locals - is now to have a longer period of Christmas events and other events spread throughout the year.
You can Bank on Barclay.
In Tom you can Trust.
The largest scale miscarriage of justice in living memory, almost completely ignored by successive governments.
Even if you look at the difference between the post-Cold War experiences of Poland and Hungary on the one side and the Baltic States on the other, I find it hard to explain them.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cyd8m51zpj1o
Up and down the country, the meme will take hold: Labour will ban your Christmas Market just like they did in Lincoln.
This is a fundamental issue in the Civil Service. By no means all, but many senior civil servants are simply those best at navigating the Kafkaesque promotion processes, which - by design - do not take actual performance or results into account. Many swan from post to post every six months, unaccountable for the trail of destruction they leave behind them.
Case is probably an exemplar of this, though there's more to it given he discretionary nature of the appointment of CabSecs. I've posted ad nauseam what a useless shite he is, but suffice to say he is not nor has ever been the right man.
Birmingham is not as big as it has been previously. Winchester is a shadow of its former self.
You would have thought a Christmas market would at least cover its costs though.
There were substantially fewer stalls in Manchester over the last 2 years.
There was some talk that Christmas Markets in Northern Ireland were doing very well.
Mid Beds might be a better bet but it will have selected its new candidate by the autumn so he needs to get on with it
If I hadn't already decided I won't vote Tory tomorrow, that would be a clincher.
Cheshire and Amersham was a disappointment for seeing the Lib Dems win based on a disreputable NIMBY campaign, but the Tories have gone wholeheartedly to the dark side.
I'm never voting for them again, until they become the party of aspiration again - which I can't ever see happening under Sunak.
Oh, this isn't the topic of conversation?
It was pretty good, once. But like all pretty good things, it attracted people, which in turn attracted more stallholders. It still suits some people "relative x would like that - buy it!" but those of us who are less confident in our present buying abilities and who therefore feel the need to consider everything before committing ourselves face an exhausting day-long slog. ("Can I be sure that that attractive Venetian glass necklace will be the nicest one on the market? There are at least four more stall to look at in this section alone.") And I don't see the attraction in outdoor drinking in December. I wish these places well but they're not for me.
It might have to go on the list.
⚡️⚡️The moment of the UAV attack on Putin's residence in the Kremlin
https://twitter.com/front_ukrainian/status/1653734395260411904
https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1653725485640081419?s=20
Imagine if only 10% of the population went to university today, rather than almost 50%. This would mean around 2.25 million additional people in the workforce rather than education, and importantly this wouldn't cost any more in government services, pressure on housing etc. In addition if you shrunk the university sector by 80% that releases around another 180k people to do something more productive.
Over the last 25 years, successive governments have turned to immigration to solve labour shortages - but each time is only a temporary fix, as the immigrants themselves need houses, doctors, supermarkets, pensions, and ultimately expect the standards of living as the rest of us.
The only lasting fix involves increasing the productivity of the existing population until we can afford our desired standard of living. Turning three to five years in the prime of the lives of 40% of the population from being a massive cost all round to a net contribution seems to me to be an easy win.
(all this is based on the dirty open secret in all this - namely that an average university education teaches very little that anyone actually needs to do a graduate job, but is merely a very expensive form of credentialism).
Local people should have no more say in housing than they get a say in whether you can change your job or anything else. You should determine what you do with your own land, not curtain twitchers.
And while my liberalism on construction may go further than most, if the Tories were running a system with enough construction even with controls it wouldn't be so bad, but they're categorically not and Sunak is deliberately making the system worse to pander to NIMBY voters.
Pure scum and disreputable. Makes me ashamed to have voted Conservative at the last election.
This thread has lost it's deposit
This thread has been overshadowed
by a thread claiming that the Coronation will overshadow this week's local electionsGive him his due, Starmer is at least making "getting it" noises, though the devil will be in the details.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/starmers-growth-plan-is-built-on-houses-79jq7mz6r
The Kremlin says the drone was intercepted by electronic warfare and other measures.
Looks like these other measures are "placing a building in its path".
https://twitter.com/michaelh992/status/1653734342626091011?s=20
One road in and out, with no ability to build a new road or widen it. No investment in new schools or shops or facilities. All of the new developments just become a burden, an ever growing traffic jam of people forced to travel to get to anything as there's nothing locally.
It is stuff like that which drives locals up the wall. Building houses is something we all agree with, but it can't be what the developers want where they want it and screw everyone else.
The NHS has a long tradition of hounding whistleblowers. In fact, it turns out that the omerta for doctors speaking out against other doctors has an exception. Accusing whistleblowing doctors of being mentally ill.
British Airways, before and after privatisation, conducted a spectacularly illegal campaign against Laker - justified by "We are the national airline, therefore we are allowed to do anything to protect ourselves from a competitor"
Various charities have conducted vendettas against whistleblowers - see the scandals in third world aid.