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Why I’m not convinced by LAB’S double digit poll leads – politicalbetting.com

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  • DougSealDougSeal Posts: 11,059
    Afternoon. No Saturday visits from Russia this week?
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797
    Sandpit said:

    Westie said:

    Scotland: what's going on with the ferry company Caledonian MacBrayne? Just as the tourist season is taking off, they're not selling any tickets for three days. Absolutely no ticket sales, whether online or in person or over the phone, for sailing on any of their 20+ routes. Are they about to go into administration or something? Have they been told to nail their tills shut? Never heard anything like this before with such a large public transport monopoly.

    They're bringing a new booking system online, including e-tickets. They were meant to be doing it a few weeks ago but, understandably, postponed it due to the ongoing clusterfuck with ferry repairs:

    https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/homenews/23446389.six-calmac-ferries-need-repairs-easter-disruption/

    I do have some sympathy for the "take it down for a few days" approach to system migration. It reduces the chance of a TSB/Sabadell situation.
    Only in the public sector, would a booking system be offline for three days for a system upgrade.

    I’ve worked on IT projects like this. The downtime is at most a few hours overnight, as the future bookings are moved across and websites etc. set to point to the new servers.

    A lot of planning and testing goes into the migration process, with the aim to minimise the downtime.
    But they planning and testing costs a lot of time money and effort.

    And after all what could go wrong so it’s no surprise a bunch of people may have taken short cuts.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    DougSeal said:

    Afternoon. No Saturday visits from Russia this week?

    You missed the 20 minutes of fun at 10am.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,772

    DavidL said:

    Chris said:

    GIN1138 said:

    Jonathan said:

    GIN1138 said:

    Jonathan said:

    Radicals: Thatcher, Blair, Brown
    Conservatives: May, Cameron, Major
    Populists: Johnson, Truss
    Managers: Sunak, Callaghan

    Hard to say what various LoO might be or might have become once in office. Corbyn liked to think of himself as radical, but was very conservative albeit from an old skool left wing perspective.

    Hmm... For a "populist" Truss was remarkably unpopular... 😂
    You can be a crap populist. Boris ended up pretty unpopular.
    He ended up unpopular but for most of his political career he was popular. I can't think of one moment where Truss has been popular... She just always came across as being as nutty as a fruitcake lol...
    Truss was prepared to be unpopular; she said so many times - presumably her idea was that when her policies resulted in economic growth, she would become popular enough to win a GE on her record. That was always wildly ambitious, and perhaps to even attempt it was nutty, though I find it faintly heroic. I'm not sure why it's making you 'lol' so much though, given that she's been replaced by someone who isn't trying to make the economy grow at all (the opposite seems to be the case, unless he's just plain thick as shit), and frankly doesn't seem to be trying to make a decent fist of the General Election either.
    I'm sorry - I can't help being curious, because you seem to be pretty much the only person on earth who can't see what an unmitigated disaster Liz Truss was.

    Please relieve my curiosity and tell me whether it's a sexual thing or what?
    Liz, despite being loony, got one big thing right.
    Britain needs to grow.

    This sounds incredibly obvious, but it seems that it’s a truth that evades almost all of the governing party and likely most of the Opposition.
    I agree. UK economic policy since 2010 has been all about repairing our tax base from the consequences of the GFC and the wall of money that financial services used to throw at the public coffers.13 years on and we have still not managed it, mainly because we have been thrown off course by Covid and Ukraine. If we are to have the public services we collectively believe we deserve we need more profitable businesses in this country generating tax. And yet our political classes rarely even discuss the issue. For them, our current businesses are no more than geese waiting to be plucked.
    You missed Brexit, which I contend is one of the things that threw the UK off course, and which also created a weird omertà in which the suppression of economic truth became standard practice.
    I only mentioned the economically significant stuff.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812
    edited May 2023
    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    Chris said:

    GIN1138 said:

    Jonathan said:

    GIN1138 said:

    Jonathan said:

    Radicals: Thatcher, Blair, Brown
    Conservatives: May, Cameron, Major
    Populists: Johnson, Truss
    Managers: Sunak, Callaghan

    Hard to say what various LoO might be or might have become once in office. Corbyn liked to think of himself as radical, but was very conservative albeit from an old skool left wing perspective.

    Hmm... For a "populist" Truss was remarkably unpopular... 😂
    You can be a crap populist. Boris ended up pretty unpopular.
    He ended up unpopular but for most of his political career he was popular. I can't think of one moment where Truss has been popular... She just always came across as being as nutty as a fruitcake lol...
    Truss was prepared to be unpopular; she said so many times - presumably her idea was that when her policies resulted in economic growth, she would become popular enough to win a GE on her record. That was always wildly ambitious, and perhaps to even attempt it was nutty, though I find it faintly heroic. I'm not sure why it's making you 'lol' so much though, given that she's been replaced by someone who isn't trying to make the economy grow at all (the opposite seems to be the case, unless he's just plain thick as shit), and frankly doesn't seem to be trying to make a decent fist of the General Election either.
    I'm sorry - I can't help being curious, because you seem to be pretty much the only person on earth who can't see what an unmitigated disaster Liz Truss was.

    Please relieve my curiosity and tell me whether it's a sexual thing or what?
    Liz, despite being loony, got one big thing right.
    Britain needs to grow.

    This sounds incredibly obvious, but it seems that it’s a truth that evades almost all of the governing party and likely most of the Opposition.
    I agree. UK economic policy since 2010 has been all about repairing our tax base from the consequences of the GFC and the wall of money that financial services used to throw at the public coffers.13 years on and we have still not managed it, mainly because we have been thrown off course by Covid and Ukraine. If we are to have the public services we collectively believe we deserve we need more profitable businesses in this country generating tax. And yet our political classes rarely even discuss the issue. For them, our current businesses are no more than geese waiting to be plucked.
    You missed Brexit, which I contend is one of the things that threw the UK off course, and which also created a weird omertà in which the suppression of economic truth became standard practice.
    I only mentioned the economically significant stuff.
    But no serious commentator agrees with you.
    So, sadly, you’re part of the problem.
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 55,019

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    Conservative just means you're cautious and a bit suspicious of change, and only want to do so if you have to, and then to do so gradually. If it ain't broke dont fix it.

    Of course, that in itself is reason enough why plenty of people don't like them.

    The other point of view is that many people don't like change and taking this approach to Government allows for stability, consistency, broad peace, preservation of tradition/ what works, predictability and thus extra space economic growth, and stops silly ideas and radical dogma that's poorly thought through from being put into practice.

    Which is why Brexit has pissed off so many natural Conservatives. Totally silly idea with radical dogma and poorly thought through.

    The Conservatives won't recover until they repent of Brexitism.
    I knew someone would respond (in seconds) with Brexit.

    That conflicted across the principle because many Conservatives thought it was riskier to stay because of the radical change that they felt would inevitably come, which was also against their values. If you believe in conserving national sovereignty and independence, and not steadily creeping towards a federal Europe, you won't have had a problem with this.

    Too many seem to miss this and focus just on the economic disruption, more often than not because they themselves aren't Conservatives.

    The only unConservative bit, in my view, was in the response to the vote itself, which became too dogmatic.
    Well, Brexit and its economic consequences is why the Red Wall thinks this government has failed, and why the Blue Wall hates it too.

    Brexit is the political monkeys paw. You get what you wish for and regret it very quickly.
    Not quickly enough, though.

    But yes, at some point the Conservatives stopped being conservative. Incremental change, think in generations, work out why the fence was put up before you tear it down, that sort of thing. It's not just about Brexit, for all that is totemic. (After all, a conservative approach to being Eurosceptic would have been to take Dave's deal and set it in concrete. It probably would have stuck.)

    And then there's Starmer's speech today (there's a link here; https://twitter.com/SpaJw/status/1657353519165321216). Large chunks of it read like the sort of thing that a One Nation Tory of previous generations- Iain Macleod, say, could have said. But it's really hard to see who is standing up for this sort of thing in the current setup.
    What was the "conservative" option to disengage with the EU given it had taken a "conservative" attitude to steadily ratcheting up integration over several decades to arrive at such a decidedly objectionable position to so many Conservatives?
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 14,772

    Seems like Russian air defence is working effectively, they just took down a plane and 2 helicopters.

    Seems to be two planes and two helicopters. Naturally some Russians believe that this is a sign that F-16s are already in Ukraine. I'm sure Dura will explain why this couldn't be done with F-16s.

    https://twitter.com/UAWeapons/status/1657368124788809728

    "🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker
    @UAWeapons
    One of the worst days ever for the Russian Air Force: Today, at least 4 aircraft- an Su-34 strike jet, an Su-35 fighter and two Mi-8 helicopters, were shot down by anti-air missiles over Bryansk Oblast within Russia.

    So far it is unclear what kind of missiles were used."
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 55,019

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    Chris said:

    GIN1138 said:

    Jonathan said:

    GIN1138 said:

    Jonathan said:

    Radicals: Thatcher, Blair, Brown
    Conservatives: May, Cameron, Major
    Populists: Johnson, Truss
    Managers: Sunak, Callaghan

    Hard to say what various LoO might be or might have become once in office. Corbyn liked to think of himself as radical, but was very conservative albeit from an old skool left wing perspective.

    Hmm... For a "populist" Truss was remarkably unpopular... 😂
    You can be a crap populist. Boris ended up pretty unpopular.
    He ended up unpopular but for most of his political career he was popular. I can't think of one moment where Truss has been popular... She just always came across as being as nutty as a fruitcake lol...
    Truss was prepared to be unpopular; she said so many times - presumably her idea was that when her policies resulted in economic growth, she would become popular enough to win a GE on her record. That was always wildly ambitious, and perhaps to even attempt it was nutty, though I find it faintly heroic. I'm not sure why it's making you 'lol' so much though, given that she's been replaced by someone who isn't trying to make the economy grow at all (the opposite seems to be the case, unless he's just plain thick as shit), and frankly doesn't seem to be trying to make a decent fist of the General Election either.
    I'm sorry - I can't help being curious, because you seem to be pretty much the only person on earth who can't see what an unmitigated disaster Liz Truss was.

    Please relieve my curiosity and tell me whether it's a sexual thing or what?
    Liz, despite being loony, got one big thing right.
    Britain needs to grow.

    This sounds incredibly obvious, but it seems that it’s a truth that evades almost all of the governing party and likely most of the Opposition.
    I agree. UK economic policy since 2010 has been all about repairing our tax base from the consequences of the GFC and the wall of money that financial services used to throw at the public coffers.13 years on and we have still not managed it, mainly because we have been thrown off course by Covid and Ukraine. If we are to have the public services we collectively believe we deserve we need more profitable businesses in this country generating tax. And yet our political classes rarely even discuss the issue. For them, our current businesses are no more than geese waiting to be plucked.
    You missed Brexit, which I contend is one of the things that threw the UK off course, and which also created a weird omertà in which the suppression of economic truth became standard practice.
    I only mentioned the economically significant stuff.
    But no serious commentator agrees with you.
    So, sadly, you’re part of the problem.
    You're sensible on almost any subject, even when I don't agree with you.

    Except Brexit.

    You need to recognise your problem on that for you to become a serious commentator.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,851
    edited May 2023
    TimS said:

    Carnyx said:

    kinabalu said:

    pigeon said:

    viewcode said:

    I suppose one way to deal with the red Tory patter is to lean right into it.


    Perhaps we owe @bigjohnowls an apology... :(
    Yep, it looks very much like Labour are going to go into the next election on a platform - if you ignore their rhetoric and a few eye-catching but token policy flourishes in areas like green energy - of managing the existing state of affairs less incompetently than the Tories. They're going to go our of their way to change as little as possible.
    Your march Left is heartening to see. I can't reassure you totally, since I don't know for sure, but my sense is Starmer is all about derisking the GE as far as he possibly can, and that once in power (assuming he does win) he'll prove a bit more radical than you think. So don't write him off comrade.
    That's exactly what I keep warning of on here: he's saying what he needs to say to get in.

    Others say it's the usual Tory scare tactics relating to a Labour leader in opposition.

    But, look at what his own side say - like your good self - and the evidence at how he behaved to his own base once he won the Labour leadership election.

    You don't know what you'll get with SKS.
    Cheer up, flag shagging may become a protected characteristic.


    Oh? What number on the gender list is that, then?
    I’m starting to worry Keir may have been going on “a journey”. It happens to some people who started off as proper lefties. They go on a journey and then they keep going. All this true conservatives stuff: is he just doing the equivalent of big a hoodie and husky driving, or does he increasingly mean it?

    Us centrists by contrast start in the centre and stay there.
    You miss the point of it all. The idea is to build up interest in him to such a level that the whole country is asking themselves the same question:

    "Is this the real Keir Starmer or is he just pretending to be like this to win the election?"

    The curiosity will eventually become unbearable and there'll be only way to satisfy it. Vote Labour - so they do win - and find out.

    It's rather fiendish.
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 55,019
    DougSeal said:

    Afternoon. No Saturday visits from Russia this week?

    We had him earlier


  • ChrisChris Posts: 11,009

    Chris said:

    Carnyx said:

    Chris said:

    Chris said:

    Chris said:

    GIN1138 said:

    Jonathan said:

    GIN1138 said:

    Jonathan said:

    Radicals: Thatcher, Blair, Brown
    Conservatives: May, Cameron, Major
    Populists: Johnson, Truss
    Managers: Sunak, Callaghan

    Hard to say what various LoO might be or might have become once in office. Corbyn liked to think of himself as radical, but was very conservative albeit from an old skool left wing perspective.

    Hmm... For a "populist" Truss was remarkably unpopular... 😂
    You can be a crap populist. Boris ended up pretty unpopular.
    He ended up unpopular but for most of his political career he was popular. I can't think of one moment where Truss has been popular... She just always came across as being as nutty as a fruitcake lol...
    Truss was prepared to be unpopular; she said so many times - presumably her idea was that when her policies resulted in economic growth, she would become popular enough to win a GE on her record. That was always wildly ambitious, and perhaps to even attempt it was nutty, though I find it faintly heroic. I'm not sure why it's making you 'lol' so much though, given that she's been replaced by someone who isn't trying to make the economy grow at all (the opposite seems to be the case, unless he's just plain thick as shit), and frankly doesn't seem to be trying to make a decent fist of the General Election either.
    I'm sorry - I can't help being curious, because you seem to be pretty much the only person on earth who can't see what an unmitigated disaster Liz Truss was.

    Please relieve my curiosity and tell me whether it's a sexual thing or what?
    Liz, despite being loony, got one big thing right.
    Britain needs to grow.

    This sounds incredibly obvious, but it seems that it’s a truth that evades almost all of the governing party and likely most of the Opposition.
    Right. That would be why economic growth is the unquestioned mantra of every elected politician in this country.
    It really isn’t.
    It is so.
    Green Party is a sufficient counterexample, in at least one important sense of 'economic growth' - which they do question, at least in its nature.

    Edit: and add the Scottish Green Party, too. That's two parties.
    If the Greens hadn't condemned "austerity", perhaps you might have a point.

    But really the Greens are so peripheral, aren't they? If that's the best argument you can come up with in support of this certifiably insance idea that "almost all of the governing party and likely most of the Opposition" were not in support of growth, that tells us something.

    There’s no evidence that most politicians are pro-growth, and much evidence to the contrary.
    Sorry to be harsh, but I really think this is the silliest thing I've heard for ages.

    If only there were some politicians willing to talk sense about the possibility of growth continuing exponentially for ever. But there aren't any. They all subscribe to the loony view.
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 25,047

    Conservative just means you're cautious and a bit suspicious of change, and only want to do so if you have to, and then to do so gradually. If it ain't broke dont fix it.

    Of course, that in itself is reason enough why plenty of people don't like them.

    The other point of view is that many people don't like change and taking this approach to Government allows for stability, consistency, broad peace, preservation of tradition/ what works, predictability and thus extra space economic growth, and stops silly ideas and radical dogma that's poorly thought through from being put into practice.

    The Tories haven't been very conservative since Thatcher. The Cult of Thatcher is very radical, and we can see the current government is always raging against what it identifies as "the blob" that is standing in the way of its attempts to institute year zero style reforms.
    You're confusing expressions of frustration by MPs and commentators with actual policy. When did we last see policies from the Tories that were in any way radical? What we've actually had is New Labour in aspic - we may have complaints about 'the Blob', but the march of the blob has continued apace. What actual 'anti-Blob' reforms can you point to?
    The proposal to withdraw from the ECHR - which was written by British judges, and you'd expect to be something championed by conservatives - is the most obvious anti-conservative policy (though it does and is resurrected so often that I'm not sure if it's currently still policy).

    The recent policing reforms, which dilute the ancient liberties of the English people, is, again, also obvious.

    There are loads of these sorts of things.
    Again 'proposal'. No actual changes.

    As for the policing reforms, I haven't looked at them, but I should imagine that they're massively statist, transferring power away from the individual and toward the state. I'd agree that is anti-conservative, but it certainly isn't radical, and I don't think it lines up with your critique (as I understand it) that Conservative Governments are radical wreckers disguised as conservatives.

    Recent politics is fairly easy to explain, and very little of it is the result of ideological radicalism - certainly not that of Tories anyway. You have a big push toward state, superstate/global institutions, and corporate power, pushed strongly by (unsurprisingly) state, global, and corporate actors, and politicians with something to gain from the former - often under green or social justice banners, but sometimes with very un-green and unjust outcomes. On the other side of the scale, you have:
    1. Agreement to implement Brexit. Which is why we've seen that done reluctantly, inefficiently, badly, and with a focus on the uglier externalities. The fact that haven't managed to achieve the lifting of VAT on domestic fuel tells you everything you need to know.
    2. The freedom-loving instincts of Boris, and the wish of Boris for a magnificent political legacy
    3. Pressure from Tory MPs, particularly good MPs like John Redwood, and/or red-wall MPs with something to lose
    4. The blunderbuss radical, economically sound, but ultimately politically naive actions of the Truss Government
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,772
    Carnyx said:

    Chris said:

    Chris said:

    Chris said:

    GIN1138 said:

    Jonathan said:

    GIN1138 said:

    Jonathan said:

    Radicals: Thatcher, Blair, Brown
    Conservatives: May, Cameron, Major
    Populists: Johnson, Truss
    Managers: Sunak, Callaghan

    Hard to say what various LoO might be or might have become once in office. Corbyn liked to think of himself as radical, but was very conservative albeit from an old skool left wing perspective.

    Hmm... For a "populist" Truss was remarkably unpopular... 😂
    You can be a crap populist. Boris ended up pretty unpopular.
    He ended up unpopular but for most of his political career he was popular. I can't think of one moment where Truss has been popular... She just always came across as being as nutty as a fruitcake lol...
    Truss was prepared to be unpopular; she said so many times - presumably her idea was that when her policies resulted in economic growth, she would become popular enough to win a GE on her record. That was always wildly ambitious, and perhaps to even attempt it was nutty, though I find it faintly heroic. I'm not sure why it's making you 'lol' so much though, given that she's been replaced by someone who isn't trying to make the economy grow at all (the opposite seems to be the case, unless he's just plain thick as shit), and frankly doesn't seem to be trying to make a decent fist of the General Election either.
    I'm sorry - I can't help being curious, because you seem to be pretty much the only person on earth who can't see what an unmitigated disaster Liz Truss was.

    Please relieve my curiosity and tell me whether it's a sexual thing or what?
    Liz, despite being loony, got one big thing right.
    Britain needs to grow.

    This sounds incredibly obvious, but it seems that it’s a truth that evades almost all of the governing party and likely most of the Opposition.
    Right. That would be why economic growth is the unquestioned mantra of every elected politician in this country.
    It really isn’t.
    It is so.
    Green Party is a sufficient counterexample, in at least one important sense of 'economic growth' - which they do question, at least in its nature.

    Edit: and add the Scottish Green Party, too. That's two parties.
    Do the Scottish Greens actually care about anything other than gender?
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    eek said:

    Sandpit said:

    Westie said:

    Scotland: what's going on with the ferry company Caledonian MacBrayne? Just as the tourist season is taking off, they're not selling any tickets for three days. Absolutely no ticket sales, whether online or in person or over the phone, for sailing on any of their 20+ routes. Are they about to go into administration or something? Have they been told to nail their tills shut? Never heard anything like this before with such a large public transport monopoly.

    They're bringing a new booking system online, including e-tickets. They were meant to be doing it a few weeks ago but, understandably, postponed it due to the ongoing clusterfuck with ferry repairs:

    https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/homenews/23446389.six-calmac-ferries-need-repairs-easter-disruption/

    I do have some sympathy for the "take it down for a few days" approach to system migration. It reduces the chance of a TSB/Sabadell situation.
    Only in the public sector, would a booking system be offline for three days for a system upgrade.

    I’ve worked on IT projects like this. The downtime is at most a few hours overnight, as the future bookings are moved across and websites etc. set to point to the new servers.

    A lot of planning and testing goes into the migration process, with the aim to minimise the downtime.
    But they planning and testing costs a lot of time money and effort.

    And after all what could go wrong so it’s no surprise a bunch of people may have taken short cuts.
    Of course it does, I used to get charged out at about £800 a day ;)

    Anyone in the private sector, or experiencing competition, knows that if you’re not available, customers will book with your competitors. Only a public-sector monopoly, would take the attitude of just making a lazy weekend of a booking system migration. You do these things overnight, and in one night.
  • TimSTimS Posts: 9,168
    kinabalu said:

    TimS said:

    Carnyx said:

    kinabalu said:

    pigeon said:

    viewcode said:

    I suppose one way to deal with the red Tory patter is to lean right into it.


    Perhaps we owe @bigjohnowls an apology... :(
    Yep, it looks very much like Labour are going to go into the next election on a platform - if you ignore their rhetoric and a few eye-catching but token policy flourishes in areas like green energy - of managing the existing state of affairs less incompetently than the Tories. They're going to go our of their way to change as little as possible.
    Your march Left is heartening to see. I can't reassure you totally, since I don't know for sure, but my sense is Starmer is all about derisking the GE as far as he possibly can, and that once in power (assuming he does win) he'll prove a bit more radical than you think. So don't write him off comrade.
    That's exactly what I keep warning of on here: he's saying what he needs to say to get in.

    Others say it's the usual Tory scare tactics relating to a Labour leader in opposition.

    But, look at what his own side say - like your good self - and the evidence at how he behaved to his own base once he won the Labour leadership election.

    You don't know what you'll get with SKS.
    Cheer up, flag shagging may become a protected characteristic.


    Oh? What number on the gender list is that, then?
    I’m starting to worry Keir may have been going on “a journey”. It happens to some people who started off as proper lefties. They go on a journey and then they keep going. All this true conservatives stuff: is he just doing the equivalent of big a hoodie and husky driving, or does he increasingly mean it?

    Us centrists by contrast start in the centre and stay there.
    You miss the point of it all. The idea is to build up interest in him to such a level that the whole country is asking themselves the same question:

    "Is this the real Keir Starmer or is he just pretending to be like this to win the election?"

    The curiosity will eventually become unbearable and there'll be only way to satisfy it. Vote Labour - so they do win - and find out.

    It's rather fiendish.
    Genius indeed. How to satiate the curiosity.

    I hope someday the same dynamic will work with PR. It sort of did in 2016 with Brexit: “let’s see, it’s worth a go”.
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 55,019
    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    pigeon said:

    viewcode said:

    I suppose one way to deal with the red Tory patter is to lean right into it.


    Perhaps we owe @bigjohnowls an apology... :(
    Yep, it looks very much like Labour are going to go into the next election on a platform - if you ignore their rhetoric and a few eye-catching but token policy flourishes in areas like green energy - of managing the existing state of affairs less incompetently than the Tories. They're going to go our of their way to change as little as possible.
    Your march Left is heartening to see. I can't reassure you totally, since I don't know for sure, but my sense is Starmer is all about derisking the GE as far as he possibly can, and that once in power (assuming he does win) he'll prove a bit more radical than you think. So don't write him off comrade.
    That's exactly what I keep warning of on here: he's saying what he needs to say to get in.

    Others say it's the usual Tory scare tactics relating to a Labour leader in opposition.

    But, look at what his own side say - like your good self - and the evidence at how he behaved to his own base once he won the Labour leadership election.

    You don't know what you'll get with SKS.
    Cheer up, flag shagging may become a protected characteristic.


    There's no 'patronising contempt' from me, it's just that I don't like to see the Union Jack all over the place. It lowers the tone.
    It "lowers the tone".

    Jesus. It's the flag of your f-ing country.

    The only possible explanation for this is intellectual snobbery: you think you're above having any form of group social identity (save that of your education and values) and look down contemptuously on those that do.
  • ChrisChris Posts: 11,009
    Carnyx said:

    Chris said:

    Carnyx said:

    Chris said:

    Chris said:

    Chris said:

    GIN1138 said:

    Jonathan said:

    GIN1138 said:

    Jonathan said:

    Radicals: Thatcher, Blair, Brown
    Conservatives: May, Cameron, Major
    Populists: Johnson, Truss
    Managers: Sunak, Callaghan

    Hard to say what various LoO might be or might have become once in office. Corbyn liked to think of himself as radical, but was very conservative albeit from an old skool left wing perspective.

    Hmm... For a "populist" Truss was remarkably unpopular... 😂
    You can be a crap populist. Boris ended up pretty unpopular.
    He ended up unpopular but for most of his political career he was popular. I can't think of one moment where Truss has been popular... She just always came across as being as nutty as a fruitcake lol...
    Truss was prepared to be unpopular; she said so many times - presumably her idea was that when her policies resulted in economic growth, she would become popular enough to win a GE on her record. That was always wildly ambitious, and perhaps to even attempt it was nutty, though I find it faintly heroic. I'm not sure why it's making you 'lol' so much though, given that she's been replaced by someone who isn't trying to make the economy grow at all (the opposite seems to be the case, unless he's just plain thick as shit), and frankly doesn't seem to be trying to make a decent fist of the General Election either.
    I'm sorry - I can't help being curious, because you seem to be pretty much the only person on earth who can't see what an unmitigated disaster Liz Truss was.

    Please relieve my curiosity and tell me whether it's a sexual thing or what?
    Liz, despite being loony, got one big thing right.
    Britain needs to grow.

    This sounds incredibly obvious, but it seems that it’s a truth that evades almost all of the governing party and likely most of the Opposition.
    Right. That would be why economic growth is the unquestioned mantra of every elected politician in this country.
    It really isn’t.
    It is so.
    Green Party is a sufficient counterexample, in at least one important sense of 'economic growth' - which they do question, at least in its nature.

    Edit: and add the Scottish Green Party, too. That's two parties.
    If the Greens hadn't condemned "austerity", perhaps you might have a point.

    But really the Greens are so peripheral, aren't they? If that's the best argument you can come up with in support of this certifiably insance idea that "almost all of the governing party and likely most of the Opposition" were not in support of growth, that tells us something.

    You said "every elected politician in this country."
    Absolutely. Do I need to spell it out in purple capital letters for you why I include the Greens in that? Or try to translate it into monosyllables for you? Or do you want to have another go at reading simple English?
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    edited May 2023

    Seems like Russian air defence is working effectively, they just took down a plane and 2 helicopters.

    Seems to be two planes and two helicopters. Naturally some Russians believe that this is a sign that F-16s are already in Ukraine. I'm sure Dura will explain why this couldn't be done with F-16s.

    https://twitter.com/UAWeapons/status/1657368124788809728

    "🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker
    @UAWeapons
    One of the worst days ever for the Russian Air Force: Today, at least 4 aircraft- an Su-34 strike jet, an Su-35 fighter and two Mi-8 helicopters, were shot down by anti-air missiles over Bryansk Oblast within Russia.

    So far it is unclear what kind of missiles were used."
    Russian missiles. It looks like either their air defences misfired, else there’s a rogue agent or enemy special forces behind their own lines, well inside Russia.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,772
    Sammy Allardiche once again weaves his magic at Leeds. His teams are hard to beat.
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 55,019

    kinabalu said:

    pigeon said:

    viewcode said:

    I suppose one way to deal with the red Tory patter is to lean right into it.


    Perhaps we owe @bigjohnowls an apology... :(
    Yep, it looks very much like Labour are going to go into the next election on a platform - if you ignore their rhetoric and a few eye-catching but token policy flourishes in areas like green energy - of managing the existing state of affairs less incompetently than the Tories. They're going to go our of their way to change as little as possible.
    Your march Left is heartening to see. I can't reassure you totally, since I don't know for sure, but my sense is Starmer is all about derisking the GE as far as he possibly can, and that once in power (assuming he does win) he'll prove a bit more radical than you think. So don't write him off comrade.
    That's exactly what I keep warning of on here: he's saying what he needs to say to get in.

    Others say it's the usual Tory scare tactics relating to a Labour leader in opposition.

    But, look at what his own side say - like your good self - and the evidence at how he behaved to his own base once he won the Labour leadership election.

    You don't know what you'll get with SKS.
    Cheer up, flag shagging may become a protected characteristic.


    I presume this view of yours on flag shagging extends to the St. Andrews cross?
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,772

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    Chris said:

    GIN1138 said:

    Jonathan said:

    GIN1138 said:

    Jonathan said:

    Radicals: Thatcher, Blair, Brown
    Conservatives: May, Cameron, Major
    Populists: Johnson, Truss
    Managers: Sunak, Callaghan

    Hard to say what various LoO might be or might have become once in office. Corbyn liked to think of himself as radical, but was very conservative albeit from an old skool left wing perspective.

    Hmm... For a "populist" Truss was remarkably unpopular... 😂
    You can be a crap populist. Boris ended up pretty unpopular.
    He ended up unpopular but for most of his political career he was popular. I can't think of one moment where Truss has been popular... She just always came across as being as nutty as a fruitcake lol...
    Truss was prepared to be unpopular; she said so many times - presumably her idea was that when her policies resulted in economic growth, she would become popular enough to win a GE on her record. That was always wildly ambitious, and perhaps to even attempt it was nutty, though I find it faintly heroic. I'm not sure why it's making you 'lol' so much though, given that she's been replaced by someone who isn't trying to make the economy grow at all (the opposite seems to be the case, unless he's just plain thick as shit), and frankly doesn't seem to be trying to make a decent fist of the General Election either.
    I'm sorry - I can't help being curious, because you seem to be pretty much the only person on earth who can't see what an unmitigated disaster Liz Truss was.

    Please relieve my curiosity and tell me whether it's a sexual thing or what?
    Liz, despite being loony, got one big thing right.
    Britain needs to grow.

    This sounds incredibly obvious, but it seems that it’s a truth that evades almost all of the governing party and likely most of the Opposition.
    I agree. UK economic policy since 2010 has been all about repairing our tax base from the consequences of the GFC and the wall of money that financial services used to throw at the public coffers.13 years on and we have still not managed it, mainly because we have been thrown off course by Covid and Ukraine. If we are to have the public services we collectively believe we deserve we need more profitable businesses in this country generating tax. And yet our political classes rarely even discuss the issue. For them, our current businesses are no more than geese waiting to be plucked.
    You missed Brexit, which I contend is one of the things that threw the UK off course, and which also created a weird omertà in which the suppression of economic truth became standard practice.
    I only mentioned the economically significant stuff.
    But no serious commentator agrees with you.
    So, sadly, you’re part of the problem.
    I'll try to cope.
  • TimSTimS Posts: 9,168

    DougSeal said:

    Afternoon. No Saturday visits from Russia this week?

    We had him earlier


    I wonder what happened to DJ41. The only properly intelligent Russian troll. (I could never make up my mind if he was actually Russian or just a very eloquent Tankie of the Kim Philby ilk.)
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    pigeon said:

    viewcode said:

    I suppose one way to deal with the red Tory patter is to lean right into it.


    Perhaps we owe @bigjohnowls an apology... :(
    Yep, it looks very much like Labour are going to go into the next election on a platform - if you ignore their rhetoric and a few eye-catching but token policy flourishes in areas like green energy - of managing the existing state of affairs less incompetently than the Tories. They're going to go our of their way to change as little as possible.
    Your march Left is heartening to see. I can't reassure you totally, since I don't know for sure, but my sense is Starmer is all about derisking the GE as far as he possibly can, and that once in power (assuming he does win) he'll prove a bit more radical than you think. So don't write him off comrade.
    That's exactly what I keep warning of on here: he's saying what he needs to say to get in.

    Others say it's the usual Tory scare tactics relating to a Labour leader in opposition.

    But, look at what his own side say - like your good self - and the evidence at how he behaved to his own base once he won the Labour leadership election.

    You don't know what you'll get with SKS.
    Cheer up, flag shagging may become a protected characteristic.


    There's no 'patronising contempt' from me, it's just that I don't like to see the Union Jack all over the place. It lowers the tone.
    It "lowers the tone".

    Jesus. It's the flag of your f-ing country.

    The only possible explanation for this is intellectual snobbery: you think you're above having any form of group social identity (save that of your education and values) and look down contemptuously on those that do.
    Is the UK the only country, where so much of the population dislikes the flying of its own national flag?

    Every other country I visit, people are proud of their national identity and symbols.
  • TimSTimS Posts: 9,168
    Sandpit said:

    Seems like Russian air defence is working effectively, they just took down a plane and 2 helicopters.

    Seems to be two planes and two helicopters. Naturally some Russians believe that this is a sign that F-16s are already in Ukraine. I'm sure Dura will explain why this couldn't be done with F-16s.

    https://twitter.com/UAWeapons/status/1657368124788809728

    "🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker
    @UAWeapons
    One of the worst days ever for the Russian Air Force: Today, at least 4 aircraft- an Su-34 strike jet, an Su-35 fighter and two Mi-8 helicopters, were shot down by anti-air missiles over Bryansk Oblast within Russia.

    So far it is unclear what kind of missiles were used."
    Russian missiles. It looks like either their air defences misfired, else there’s a rogue agent or enemy special forces behind their own lines.
    Please let it be the latter.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812
    edited May 2023

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    Chris said:

    GIN1138 said:

    Jonathan said:

    GIN1138 said:

    Jonathan said:

    Radicals: Thatcher, Blair, Brown
    Conservatives: May, Cameron, Major
    Populists: Johnson, Truss
    Managers: Sunak, Callaghan

    Hard to say what various LoO might be or might have become once in office. Corbyn liked to think of himself as radical, but was very conservative albeit from an old skool left wing perspective.

    Hmm... For a "populist" Truss was remarkably unpopular... 😂
    You can be a crap populist. Boris ended up pretty unpopular.
    He ended up unpopular but for most of his political career he was popular. I can't think of one moment where Truss has been popular... She just always came across as being as nutty as a fruitcake lol...
    Truss was prepared to be unpopular; she said so many times - presumably her idea was that when her policies resulted in economic growth, she would become popular enough to win a GE on her record. That was always wildly ambitious, and perhaps to even attempt it was nutty, though I find it faintly heroic. I'm not sure why it's making you 'lol' so much though, given that she's been replaced by someone who isn't trying to make the economy grow at all (the opposite seems to be the case, unless he's just plain thick as shit), and frankly doesn't seem to be trying to make a decent fist of the General Election either.
    I'm sorry - I can't help being curious, because you seem to be pretty much the only person on earth who can't see what an unmitigated disaster Liz Truss was.

    Please relieve my curiosity and tell me whether it's a sexual thing or what?
    Liz, despite being loony, got one big thing right.
    Britain needs to grow.

    This sounds incredibly obvious, but it seems that it’s a truth that evades almost all of the governing party and likely most of the Opposition.
    I agree. UK economic policy since 2010 has been all about repairing our tax base from the consequences of the GFC and the wall of money that financial services used to throw at the public coffers.13 years on and we have still not managed it, mainly because we have been thrown off course by Covid and Ukraine. If we are to have the public services we collectively believe we deserve we need more profitable businesses in this country generating tax. And yet our political classes rarely even discuss the issue. For them, our current businesses are no more than geese waiting to be plucked.
    You missed Brexit, which I contend is one of the things that threw the UK off course, and which also created a weird omertà in which the suppression of economic truth became standard practice.
    I only mentioned the economically significant stuff.
    But no serious commentator agrees with you.
    So, sadly, you’re part of the problem.
    You're sensible on almost any subject, even when I don't agree with you.

    Except Brexit.

    You need to recognise your problem on that for you to become a serious commentator.
    I’m not a professional economist, nor an academic. I don’t work in the investment industry, and I’m not a trade expert.

    I do follow and listen to a lot of the above though, and nobody but nobody thinks Brexit has done anything but impair British growth.

    There may be a political argument for Brexit, and it’s almost possible to imagine a very long term economic argument, but in the short to medium term that we live in, it’s been damaging and continues to be damaging.

    That you still refuse to accept this means you refuse to deal with reality, and this in turn impoverishes your ability to understand what policy choices are now available or desirable.
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 25,047
    edited May 2023
    Carnyx said:

    ...

    Chris said:

    algarkirk said:

    Chris said:

    Conservative just means you're cautious and a bit suspicious of change, and only want to do so if you have to, and then to do so gradually. If it ain't broke dont fix it.

    I don't think that in practice it really means that at all. I think it means laissez faire. In the current climate that means things are going to change beyond all recognition in the next decade or two. If politicians are adopting that policy thoughtlessly, then it's not at all like Conservatism has been historically. In fact it's almost the antithesis of Conservatism. It's abolishing the past in favour of whatever random future is most beneficial to short-sighted big business. If the Tory right think that's Conservatism they're even more stupid than I thought - though admittedly the depths of their stupidity are almost unfathomable.
    Conservatism both in people and theory terms contains a multitude of contradictions. In a sense the EU has illustrated this perfectly. There is the Conservative business case - pro EU, Majorite, pragmatic, money making; then there is the socially Conservative case - sovereign, nation, constitution, small scale, hierarchical, the 'little platoons' of Edmund Burke.

    (The left and centre left are just as split. But this is less seen because they have not been in power.)

    I'm sure Conservatism does contain a multitude of contradictions.

    But in relation to the technological issues that are now paramount, the ideal of keeping everything as much as possible the same is becoming completely incompatible with the ideal of letting big business do whatever is most profitable.

    It would be (a bit) reassuring if the advocates of "Conservatism" here showed a glimmering of awareness of that dichotomy, and (a bit more) reassuring if any of them - on reflection - realised that "laissez faire" is not at all a good idea in present circumstances.
    You are correct that 'laissez fare' economics has its limits - but it always has. Adam Smith himself warned of the power of corporations, and stressed the need for Governments to break up monopolies etc.

    However, your prescription of what is needed from Government is wrong. Huge corporations actually like high taxes and regulation. They are barriers to entry for smaller companies, so they eliminate competition for the big boys. A positive Government would reduce the barriers to entry for smaller players - for example, raise the VAT threshold for smaller companies, whilst opposing anti-competitive activity in big corporations. What our Government and many like them do is the opposite.
    Didn't a Thatcherite cabinet minister carefully delete the bit about not letting businessmen run riot when he edited Wealth of a Nation?
    Wealth of Nations - unless he also edited the title.
  • pingping Posts: 3,724
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812
    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    Chris said:

    GIN1138 said:

    Jonathan said:

    GIN1138 said:

    Jonathan said:

    Radicals: Thatcher, Blair, Brown
    Conservatives: May, Cameron, Major
    Populists: Johnson, Truss
    Managers: Sunak, Callaghan

    Hard to say what various LoO might be or might have become once in office. Corbyn liked to think of himself as radical, but was very conservative albeit from an old skool left wing perspective.

    Hmm... For a "populist" Truss was remarkably unpopular... 😂
    You can be a crap populist. Boris ended up pretty unpopular.
    He ended up unpopular but for most of his political career he was popular. I can't think of one moment where Truss has been popular... She just always came across as being as nutty as a fruitcake lol...
    Truss was prepared to be unpopular; she said so many times - presumably her idea was that when her policies resulted in economic growth, she would become popular enough to win a GE on her record. That was always wildly ambitious, and perhaps to even attempt it was nutty, though I find it faintly heroic. I'm not sure why it's making you 'lol' so much though, given that she's been replaced by someone who isn't trying to make the economy grow at all (the opposite seems to be the case, unless he's just plain thick as shit), and frankly doesn't seem to be trying to make a decent fist of the General Election either.
    I'm sorry - I can't help being curious, because you seem to be pretty much the only person on earth who can't see what an unmitigated disaster Liz Truss was.

    Please relieve my curiosity and tell me whether it's a sexual thing or what?
    Liz, despite being loony, got one big thing right.
    Britain needs to grow.

    This sounds incredibly obvious, but it seems that it’s a truth that evades almost all of the governing party and likely most of the Opposition.
    I agree. UK economic policy since 2010 has been all about repairing our tax base from the consequences of the GFC and the wall of money that financial services used to throw at the public coffers.13 years on and we have still not managed it, mainly because we have been thrown off course by Covid and Ukraine. If we are to have the public services we collectively believe we deserve we need more profitable businesses in this country generating tax. And yet our political classes rarely even discuss the issue. For them, our current businesses are no more than geese waiting to be plucked.
    You missed Brexit, which I contend is one of the things that threw the UK off course, and which also created a weird omertà in which the suppression of economic truth became standard practice.
    I only mentioned the economically significant stuff.
    But no serious commentator agrees with you.
    So, sadly, you’re part of the problem.
    I'll try to cope.
    Cope, and it’s addictive compound, copium, is a terrible thing.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    edited May 2023
    TimS said:

    Sandpit said:

    Seems like Russian air defence is working effectively, they just took down a plane and 2 helicopters.

    Seems to be two planes and two helicopters. Naturally some Russians believe that this is a sign that F-16s are already in Ukraine. I'm sure Dura will explain why this couldn't be done with F-16s.

    https://twitter.com/UAWeapons/status/1657368124788809728

    "🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker
    @UAWeapons
    One of the worst days ever for the Russian Air Force: Today, at least 4 aircraft- an Su-34 strike jet, an Su-35 fighter and two Mi-8 helicopters, were shot down by anti-air missiles over Bryansk Oblast within Russia.

    So far it is unclear what kind of missiles were used."
    Russian missiles. It looks like either their air defences misfired, else there’s a rogue agent or enemy special forces behind their own lines.
    Please let it be the latter.
    Russian media reporting that the pilots all died. They were already suffering from a lack of experience among aircrews.
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 14,089

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    Conservative just means you're cautious and a bit suspicious of change, and only want to do so if you have to, and then to do so gradually. If it ain't broke dont fix it.

    Of course, that in itself is reason enough why plenty of people don't like them.

    The other point of view is that many people don't like change and taking this approach to Government allows for stability, consistency, broad peace, preservation of tradition/ what works, predictability and thus extra space economic growth, and stops silly ideas and radical dogma that's poorly thought through from being put into practice.

    Which is why Brexit has pissed off so many natural Conservatives. Totally silly idea with radical dogma and poorly thought through.

    The Conservatives won't recover until they repent of Brexitism.
    I knew someone would respond (in seconds) with Brexit.

    That conflicted across the principle because many Conservatives thought it was riskier to stay because of the radical change that they felt would inevitably come, which was also against their values. If you believe in conserving national sovereignty and independence, and not steadily creeping towards a federal Europe, you won't have had a problem with this.

    Too many seem to miss this and focus just on the economic disruption, more often than not because they themselves aren't Conservatives.

    The only unConservative bit, in my view, was in the response to the vote itself, which became too dogmatic.
    Well, Brexit and its economic consequences is why the Red Wall thinks this government has failed, and why the Blue Wall hates it too.

    Brexit is the political monkeys paw. You get what you wish for and regret it very quickly.
    Not quickly enough, though.

    But yes, at some point the Conservatives stopped being conservative. Incremental change, think in generations, work out why the fence was put up before you tear it down, that sort of thing. It's not just about Brexit, for all that is totemic. (After all, a conservative approach to being Eurosceptic would have been to take Dave's deal and set it in concrete. It probably would have stuck.)

    And then there's Starmer's speech today (there's a link here; https://twitter.com/SpaJw/status/1657353519165321216). Large chunks of it read like the sort of thing that a One Nation Tory of previous generations- Iain Macleod, say, could have said. But it's really hard to see who is standing up for this sort of thing in the current setup.
    What was the "conservative" option to disengage with the EU given it had taken a "conservative" attitude to steadily ratcheting up integration over several decades to arrive at such a decidedly objectionable position to so many Conservatives?
    Here you go (but I'm sure you know all this already):

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Act_2011

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015–2016_United_Kingdom_renegotiation_of_European_Union_membership

    You can argue that they weren't enough, but I don't think it's realistic to claim that they were nothing.

    And then we come back to the question- what is the conservative thing to do? See how the incremental changes go, or blow everything up with little indication of what would happen next?
  • DialupDialup Posts: 561
    https://twitter.com/globalaffairs/status/1657219168863756288

    In response to legal process and to ensure Twitter remains available to the people of Turkey, we have taken action to restrict access to some content in Turkey today.

    Elon Musk, defender of free speech. Not.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,772
    Dialup said:

    DavidL said:

    Dialup said:

    Thatcher was the least "conservative" Tory there has ever been. She was the opposite of conservative.

    And thank god for that.
    I am happy to debate the pros and cons of Thatcher but my point is that the Tories have not been "conservative" in government for many, many years.

    Johnson's 2019 manifesto was basically Labour's 2017 manifesto with populist elements. What is conservative about that?
    There are absolutely many pros and cons from the Thatcher era and the balance is not straightforward. But the fact that this country needed a serious shake up and reset by 1979 is pretty much indisputable.
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 12,415
    Tres said:

    GIN1138 said:

    Jonathan said:

    Radicals: Thatcher, Blair, Brown
    Conservatives: May, Cameron, Major
    Populists: Johnson, Truss
    Managers: Sunak, Callaghan

    Hard to say what various LoO might be or might have become once in office. Corbyn liked to think of himself as radical, but was very conservative albeit from an old skool left wing perspective.

    Hmm... For a "populist" Truss was remarkably unpopular... 😂
    There’s an argument you can’t really assess her after only a few weeks, and she wasn’t given a chance.

    She would have enthused the Tory base and voters with her proper Toryism. She stood up to leaky Sue and sacked her.

    There’s an argument Truss wasn’t doing any harm.
    an argument refuted by real world events. Remember she was wandering around doped-up on gods know what for the last few weeks of her time in charge.
    “an argument refuted by real world events”

    You have a bent and ignorant view of what actually happened. On PB we like to stick to true history of politics and economics, which is why it’s a blessing I post here. The mini budget did not create a problem needing an intervention in the market. The intervention didn’t cost anything anyway, but that’s not the point - the mini budget didn’t cause a problem.

    fact it was not not only Tory haters who wanted to present Truss as bungling, many Tory MPs who preferred Sunak were happy to join in with the enemy! the economic arguments Labour and Tory used to attack Truss mini budget was bullshit. And blue on blue with these LIES left the Tory polling where it is today, it was Sunak and supporters who created the poll drop trashing the Tory brand.

    The mini budget was politically unpopular, but was replaced by Sunak doing nothing to create growth. Just finger hope for the best growth in years up to the General Election, and that could really be letting the Tory Party down in coming election.

    £65 billion is notional amount Bank of England willing to commit to buy UK government bonds (gilts) to stabilise market in the wake of mini-Budget. what actually happened, rise in gilt yields was exacerbated by the increased use of liability-driven investment (LDI) strategies by some pension funds, triggered spiral of margin calls and forced gilt sales driving up yields further.

    the mini-Budget CANNOT be blamed for the sustained increase in mortgage interest rates when mortgage rates (and mortgage spreads) also surged in many other countries including US. It all started when Sunak was chancellor.

    UK regulators should have been on top of pension issue, this weakness already in the market, The mini budget did not create the problem, it flushed out a problem already there. That’s why Labour and Sunak’s attack was actually lies and bulls hit, This problem NOT CREATED by the mini budget, was older, the interplay of leverage, liquidity risk and interconnectedness under weak regulatory regimes is more Sunak’s fault considering his longer time as chancellor of our country than Kwarteng or Truss, who merely flushed out Sunak’s crap supervision of the economy.

    Those of us on PB who are not here to spin, but maintain true history, don’t have to repeat lies and tropes do we?

    Why is this important to political betting? Because lying about what happened, what problem actually was, how created (where was risk management, where was supervision under Sunak and BOE) does not learn lessons. So let’s see what increase in interest rates may have on some other pockets of vulnerabilities in the UK financial sector - because ironically for Sunak, any second now other problems in the NBFI sector, affecting financial stability and the fight against inflation, can rip up his and his governments credibility.

    And that truly would be hoisted on own petard.
  • TimSTimS Posts: 9,168
    A propos of nothing I’m on a little car trip from my French house and ticking off the villages. Just bought a few bottles from the eccentric Chateau in Savigny-Les-Beaune where there’s a huge outdoor collection of warplanes covering several hectares.

    In the course of about 45 mins I’ll be passing Aloxe Corton, Monthelie, Pommard, Volnay, Meursault and Puligny Montrachet. Before carrying on down via Rully, Mercurey, Givry and Montagny. It’s like a viticultural Hollywood walk of fame.
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 25,047

    Foxy said:

    Conservative just means you're cautious and a bit suspicious of change, and only want to do so if you have to, and then to do so gradually. If it ain't broke dont fix it.

    Of course, that in itself is reason enough why plenty of people don't like them.

    The other point of view is that many people don't like change and taking this approach to Government allows for stability, consistency, broad peace, preservation of tradition/ what works, predictability and thus extra space economic growth, and stops silly ideas and radical dogma that's poorly thought through from being put into practice.

    Which is why Brexit has pissed off so many natural Conservatives. Totally silly idea with radical dogma and poorly thought through.

    The Conservatives won't recover until they repent of Brexitism.
    I knew someone would respond (in seconds) with Brexit.

    That conflicted across the principle because many Conservatives thought it was riskier to stay because of the radical change that they felt would inevitably come, which was also against their values. If you believe in conserving national sovereignty and independence, and not steadily creeping towards a federal Europe, you won't have had a problem with this.

    Too many seem to miss this and focus just on the economic disruption, more often than not because they themselves aren't Conservatives.

    The only unConservative bit, in my view, was in the response to the vote itself, which became too dogmatic.
    When I go to Tesco later I'll see if they'll accept sovereignty to pay my bills.....
    The money saved in EU fees (which we have now stopped paying) is only too real, and under the current circumstances that's a huge economic boon. Unfortunately, the current Government seems intent on finding ways to piss away that saving.
    ... it's the way you tell em ....
    What is it that you're disputing, I don't understand. That there is an EU membership fee, that we've stopped paying it, that not paying it (in a time of massive public debt) is a boon, or that the current Government is pissing away money? I'm all ears.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    Dialup said:

    https://twitter.com/globalaffairs/status/1657219168863756288

    In response to legal process and to ensure Twitter remains available to the people of Turkey, we have taken action to restrict access to some content in Turkey today.

    Elon Musk, defender of free speech. Not.

    Given the choice of either respecting Turkish law, or being banned in Turkey, what’s he supposed to do?
  • TresTres Posts: 2,163
    Sandpit said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    pigeon said:

    viewcode said:

    I suppose one way to deal with the red Tory patter is to lean right into it.


    Perhaps we owe @bigjohnowls an apology... :(
    Yep, it looks very much like Labour are going to go into the next election on a platform - if you ignore their rhetoric and a few eye-catching but token policy flourishes in areas like green energy - of managing the existing state of affairs less incompetently than the Tories. They're going to go our of their way to change as little as possible.
    Your march Left is heartening to see. I can't reassure you totally, since I don't know for sure, but my sense is Starmer is all about derisking the GE as far as he possibly can, and that once in power (assuming he does win) he'll prove a bit more radical than you think. So don't write him off comrade.
    That's exactly what I keep warning of on here: he's saying what he needs to say to get in.

    Others say it's the usual Tory scare tactics relating to a Labour leader in opposition.

    But, look at what his own side say - like your good self - and the evidence at how he behaved to his own base once he won the Labour leadership election.

    You don't know what you'll get with SKS.
    Cheer up, flag shagging may become a protected characteristic.


    There's no 'patronising contempt' from me, it's just that I don't like to see the Union Jack all over the place. It lowers the tone.
    It "lowers the tone".

    Jesus. It's the flag of your f-ing country.

    The only possible explanation for this is intellectual snobbery: you think you're above having any form of group social identity (save that of your education and values) and look down contemptuously on those that do.
    Is the UK the only country, where so much of the population dislikes the flying of its own national flag?

    Every other country I visit, people are proud of their national identity and symbols.
    The Dutch prefer to drape everything in Orange rather than wave their flag which is too easily mistaken for that of France.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,851

    Foxy said:

    Conservative just means you're cautious and a bit suspicious of change, and only want to do so if you have to, and then to do so gradually. If it ain't broke dont fix it.

    Of course, that in itself is reason enough why plenty of people don't like them.

    The other point of view is that many people don't like change and taking this approach to Government allows for stability, consistency, broad peace, preservation of tradition/ what works, predictability and thus extra space economic growth, and stops silly ideas and radical dogma that's poorly thought through from being put into practice.

    Which is why Brexit has pissed off so many natural Conservatives. Totally silly idea with radical dogma and poorly thought through.

    The Conservatives won't recover until they repent of Brexitism.
    I knew someone would respond (in seconds) with Brexit.

    That conflicted across the principle because many Conservatives thought it was riskier to stay because of the radical change that they felt would inevitably come, which was also against their values. If you believe in conserving national sovereignty and independence, and not steadily creeping towards a federal Europe, you won't have had a problem with this.

    Too many seem to miss this and focus just on the economic disruption, more often than not because they themselves aren't Conservatives.

    The only unConservative bit, in my view, was in the response to the vote itself, which became too dogmatic.
    When I go to Tesco later I'll see if they'll accept sovereignty to pay my bills.....
    The money saved in EU fees (which we have now stopped paying) is only too real, and under the current circumstances that's a huge economic boon. Unfortunately, the current Government seems intent on finding ways to piss away that saving.
    ... it's the way you tell em ....
    What is it that you're disputing, I don't understand. That there is an EU membership fee, that we've stopped paying it, that not paying it (in a time of massive public debt) is a boon, or that the current Government is pissing away money? I'm all ears.
    The hit to revenues from Brexit is greater than the saving on the fee - I think this is the point.
  • DialupDialup Posts: 561
    Sandpit said:

    Dialup said:

    https://twitter.com/globalaffairs/status/1657219168863756288

    In response to legal process and to ensure Twitter remains available to the people of Turkey, we have taken action to restrict access to some content in Turkey today.

    Elon Musk, defender of free speech. Not.

    Given the choice of either respecting Turkish law, or being banned in Turkey, what’s he supposed to do?
    He was the man who said he would defend free speech at all costs, even if it made Twitter lose money.

    I am sure if Jack was CEO, you'd not be okay with this.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,069
    edited May 2023

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    Chris said:

    GIN1138 said:

    Jonathan said:

    GIN1138 said:

    Jonathan said:

    Radicals: Thatcher, Blair, Brown
    Conservatives: May, Cameron, Major
    Populists: Johnson, Truss
    Managers: Sunak, Callaghan

    Hard to say what various LoO might be or might have become once in office. Corbyn liked to think of himself as radical, but was very conservative albeit from an old skool left wing perspective.

    Hmm... For a "populist" Truss was remarkably unpopular... 😂
    You can be a crap populist. Boris ended up pretty unpopular.
    He ended up unpopular but for most of his political career he was popular. I can't think of one moment where Truss has been popular... She just always came across as being as nutty as a fruitcake lol...
    Truss was prepared to be unpopular; she said so many times - presumably her idea was that when her policies resulted in economic growth, she would become popular enough to win a GE on her record. That was always wildly ambitious, and perhaps to even attempt it was nutty, though I find it faintly heroic. I'm not sure why it's making you 'lol' so much though, given that she's been replaced by someone who isn't trying to make the economy grow at all (the opposite seems to be the case, unless he's just plain thick as shit), and frankly doesn't seem to be trying to make a decent fist of the General Election either.
    I'm sorry - I can't help being curious, because you seem to be pretty much the only person on earth who can't see what an unmitigated disaster Liz Truss was.

    Please relieve my curiosity and tell me whether it's a sexual thing or what?
    Liz, despite being loony, got one big thing right.
    Britain needs to grow.

    This sounds incredibly obvious, but it seems that it’s a truth that evades almost all of the governing party and likely most of the Opposition.
    I agree. UK economic policy since 2010 has been all about repairing our tax base from the consequences of the GFC and the wall of money that financial services used to throw at the public coffers.13 years on and we have still not managed it, mainly because we have been thrown off course by Covid and Ukraine. If we are to have the public services we collectively believe we deserve we need more profitable businesses in this country generating tax. And yet our political classes rarely even discuss the issue. For them, our current businesses are no more than geese waiting to be plucked.
    You missed Brexit, which I contend is one of the things that threw the UK off course, and which also created a weird omertà in which the suppression of economic truth became standard practice.
    I only mentioned the economically significant stuff.
    But no serious commentator agrees with you.
    So, sadly, you’re part of the problem.
    You're sensible on almost any subject, even when I don't agree with you.

    Except Brexit.

    You need to recognise your problem on that for you to become a serious commentator.
    I’m not a professional economist, nor an academic. I don’t work in the investment industry, and I’m not a trade expert.

    I do follow and listen to a lot of the above though, and nobody but nobody thinks Brexit has done anything but impair British growth.

    There may be a political argument for Brexit, and it’s almost possible to imagine a very long term economic argument, but in the short to medium term that we live in, it’s been damaging and continues to be damaging.

    That you still refuse to accept this means you refuse to deal with reality, and this in turn impoverishes your ability to understand what policy choices are now available or desirable.
    That denial of reality is why the Tories continue to make poor decisions. The have to keep up the pretense and double down on failure.
  • TresTres Posts: 2,163

    Tres said:

    GIN1138 said:

    Jonathan said:

    Radicals: Thatcher, Blair, Brown
    Conservatives: May, Cameron, Major
    Populists: Johnson, Truss
    Managers: Sunak, Callaghan

    Hard to say what various LoO might be or might have become once in office. Corbyn liked to think of himself as radical, but was very conservative albeit from an old skool left wing perspective.

    Hmm... For a "populist" Truss was remarkably unpopular... 😂
    There’s an argument you can’t really assess her after only a few weeks, and she wasn’t given a chance.

    She would have enthused the Tory base and voters with her proper Toryism. She stood up to leaky Sue and sacked her.

    There’s an argument Truss wasn’t doing any harm.
    an argument refuted by real world events. Remember she was wandering around doped-up on gods know what for the last few weeks of her time in charge.
    “an argument refuted by real world events”

    You have a bent and ignorant view of what actually happened. On PB we like to stick to true history of politics and economics, which is why it’s a blessing I post here. The mini budget did not create a problem needing an intervention in the market. The intervention didn’t cost anything anyway, but that’s not the point - the mini budget didn’t cause a problem.

    fact it was not not only Tory haters who wanted to present Truss as bungling, many Tory MPs who preferred Sunak were happy to join in with the enemy! the economic arguments Labour and Tory used to attack Truss mini budget was bullshit. And blue on blue with these LIES left the Tory polling where it is today, it was Sunak and supporters who created the poll drop trashing the Tory brand.

    The mini budget was politically unpopular, but was replaced by Sunak doing nothing to create growth. Just finger hope for the best growth in years up to the General Election, and that could really be letting the Tory Party down in coming election.

    £65 billion is notional amount Bank of England willing to commit to buy UK government bonds (gilts) to stabilise market in the wake of mini-Budget. what actually happened, rise in gilt yields was exacerbated by the increased use of liability-driven investment (LDI) strategies by some pension funds, triggered spiral of margin calls and forced gilt sales driving up yields further.

    the mini-Budget CANNOT be blamed for the sustained increase in mortgage interest rates when mortgage rates (and mortgage spreads) also surged in many other countries including US. It all started when Sunak was chancellor.

    UK regulators should have been on top of pension issue, this weakness already in the market, The mini budget did not create the problem, it flushed out a problem already there. That’s why Labour and Sunak’s attack was actually lies and bulls hit, This problem NOT CREATED by the mini budget, was older, the interplay of leverage, liquidity risk and interconnectedness under weak regulatory regimes is more Sunak’s fault considering his longer time as chancellor of our country than Kwarteng or Truss, who merely flushed out Sunak’s crap supervision of the economy.

    Those of us on PB who are not here to spin, but maintain true history, don’t have to repeat lies and tropes do we?

    Why is this important to political betting? Because lying about what happened, what problem actually was, how created (where was risk management, where was supervision under Sunak and BOE) does not learn lessons. So let’s see what increase in interest rates may have on some other pockets of vulnerabilities in the UK financial sector - because ironically for Sunak, any second now other problems in the NBFI sector, affecting financial stability and the fight against inflation, can rip up his and his governments credibility.

    And that truly would be hoisted on own petard.
    8 paragraphs to defend the indefensible. Why do you bother? Sterling was plunging within minutes of the mini budget being announced.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812
    Foxy said:

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    Chris said:

    GIN1138 said:

    Jonathan said:

    GIN1138 said:

    Jonathan said:

    Radicals: Thatcher, Blair, Brown
    Conservatives: May, Cameron, Major
    Populists: Johnson, Truss
    Managers: Sunak, Callaghan

    Hard to say what various LoO might be or might have become once in office. Corbyn liked to think of himself as radical, but was very conservative albeit from an old skool left wing perspective.

    Hmm... For a "populist" Truss was remarkably unpopular... 😂
    You can be a crap populist. Boris ended up pretty unpopular.
    He ended up unpopular but for most of his political career he was popular. I can't think of one moment where Truss has been popular... She just always came across as being as nutty as a fruitcake lol...
    Truss was prepared to be unpopular; she said so many times - presumably her idea was that when her policies resulted in economic growth, she would become popular enough to win a GE on her record. That was always wildly ambitious, and perhaps to even attempt it was nutty, though I find it faintly heroic. I'm not sure why it's making you 'lol' so much though, given that she's been replaced by someone who isn't trying to make the economy grow at all (the opposite seems to be the case, unless he's just plain thick as shit), and frankly doesn't seem to be trying to make a decent fist of the General Election either.
    I'm sorry - I can't help being curious, because you seem to be pretty much the only person on earth who can't see what an unmitigated disaster Liz Truss was.

    Please relieve my curiosity and tell me whether it's a sexual thing or what?
    Liz, despite being loony, got one big thing right.
    Britain needs to grow.

    This sounds incredibly obvious, but it seems that it’s a truth that evades almost all of the governing party and likely most of the Opposition.
    I agree. UK economic policy since 2010 has been all about repairing our tax base from the consequences of the GFC and the wall of money that financial services used to throw at the public coffers.13 years on and we have still not managed it, mainly because we have been thrown off course by Covid and Ukraine. If we are to have the public services we collectively believe we deserve we need more profitable businesses in this country generating tax. And yet our political classes rarely even discuss the issue. For them, our current businesses are no more than geese waiting to be plucked.
    You missed Brexit, which I contend is one of the things that threw the UK off course, and which also created a weird omertà in which the suppression of economic truth became standard practice.
    I only mentioned the economically significant stuff.
    But no serious commentator agrees with you.
    So, sadly, you’re part of the problem.
    You're sensible on almost any subject, even when I don't agree with you.

    Except Brexit.

    You need to recognise your problem on that for you to become a serious commentator.
    I’m not a professional economist, nor an academic. I don’t work in the investment industry, and I’m not a trade expert.

    I do follow and listen to a lot of the above though, and nobody but nobody thinks Brexit has done anything but impair British growth.

    There may be a political argument for Brexit, and it’s almost possible to imagine a very long term economic argument, but in the short to medium term that we live in, it’s been damaging and continues to be damaging.

    That you still refuse to accept this means you refuse to deal with reality, and this in turn impoverishes your ability to understand what policy choices are now available or desirable.
    That denial of reality is why the Tories continue to make poor decisions. The have to keep up the pretense and double down on failure.
    That’s exactly the point.

    You can’t run an economy when you are delusional about some basic facts. For a start, you suppress investment because investors lose trust in you.
  • rkrkrkrkrkrk Posts: 7,881
    The noteworthy thing about Starmer's speech is that it's actually being reported... so little of what he says gets on the news. Whatever clause IV on steroids means is anyone's guess frankly, my sense is that he'll be happy if the general public start to see him as being like Blair.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812
    TimS said:

    A propos of nothing I’m on a little car trip from my French house and ticking off the villages. Just bought a few bottles from the eccentric Chateau in Savigny-Les-Beaune where there’s a huge outdoor collection of warplanes covering several hectares.

    In the course of about 45 mins I’ll be passing Aloxe Corton, Monthelie, Pommard, Volnay, Meursault and Puligny Montrachet. Before carrying on down via Rully, Mercurey, Givry and Montagny. It’s like a viticultural Hollywood walk of fame.

    Very envious.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    Dialup said:

    Sandpit said:

    Dialup said:

    https://twitter.com/globalaffairs/status/1657219168863756288

    In response to legal process and to ensure Twitter remains available to the people of Turkey, we have taken action to restrict access to some content in Turkey today.

    Elon Musk, defender of free speech. Not.

    Given the choice of either respecting Turkish law, or being banned in Turkey, what’s he supposed to do?
    He was the man who said he would defend free speech at all costs, even if it made Twitter lose money.

    I am sure if Jack was CEO, you'd not be okay with this.
    They still have to comply with the law, in countries where they operate.

    In the USA, freedom of speech is in the Constitution. Almost every other country has laws about speech, which companies operating there have to respect or be officially sanctioned. The UK government has had Tweets deleted, and forced the company to hand over details about Twitter posters.
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 55,019
    Sandpit said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    pigeon said:

    viewcode said:

    I suppose one way to deal with the red Tory patter is to lean right into it.


    Perhaps we owe @bigjohnowls an apology... :(
    Yep, it looks very much like Labour are going to go into the next election on a platform - if you ignore their rhetoric and a few eye-catching but token policy flourishes in areas like green energy - of managing the existing state of affairs less incompetently than the Tories. They're going to go our of their way to change as little as possible.
    Your march Left is heartening to see. I can't reassure you totally, since I don't know for sure, but my sense is Starmer is all about derisking the GE as far as he possibly can, and that once in power (assuming he does win) he'll prove a bit more radical than you think. So don't write him off comrade.
    That's exactly what I keep warning of on here: he's saying what he needs to say to get in.

    Others say it's the usual Tory scare tactics relating to a Labour leader in opposition.

    But, look at what his own side say - like your good self - and the evidence at how he behaved to his own base once he won the Labour leadership election.

    You don't know what you'll get with SKS.
    Cheer up, flag shagging may become a protected characteristic.


    There's no 'patronising contempt' from me, it's just that I don't like to see the Union Jack all over the place. It lowers the tone.
    It "lowers the tone".

    Jesus. It's the flag of your f-ing country.

    The only possible explanation for this is intellectual snobbery: you think you're above having any form of group social identity (save that of your education and values) and look down contemptuously on those that do.
    Is the UK the only country, where so much of the population dislikes the flying of its own national flag?

    Every other country I visit, people are proud of their national identity and symbols.
    Possibly. As George Orwell said anti-Englishness is a very English thing.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812
    Tres said:

    Tres said:

    GIN1138 said:

    Jonathan said:

    Radicals: Thatcher, Blair, Brown
    Conservatives: May, Cameron, Major
    Populists: Johnson, Truss
    Managers: Sunak, Callaghan

    Hard to say what various LoO might be or might have become once in office. Corbyn liked to think of himself as radical, but was very conservative albeit from an old skool left wing perspective.

    Hmm... For a "populist" Truss was remarkably unpopular... 😂
    There’s an argument you can’t really assess her after only a few weeks, and she wasn’t given a chance.

    She would have enthused the Tory base and voters with her proper Toryism. She stood up to leaky Sue and sacked her.

    There’s an argument Truss wasn’t doing any harm.
    an argument refuted by real world events. Remember she was wandering around doped-up on gods know what for the last few weeks of her time in charge.
    “an argument refuted by real world events”

    You have a bent and ignorant view of what actually happened. On PB we like to stick to true history of politics and economics, which is why it’s a blessing I post here. The mini budget did not create a problem needing an intervention in the market. The intervention didn’t cost anything anyway, but that’s not the point - the mini budget didn’t cause a problem.

    fact it was not not only Tory haters who wanted to present Truss as bungling, many Tory MPs who preferred Sunak were happy to join in with the enemy! the economic arguments Labour and Tory used to attack Truss mini budget was bullshit. And blue on blue with these LIES left the Tory polling where it is today, it was Sunak and supporters who created the poll drop trashing the Tory brand.

    The mini budget was politically unpopular, but was replaced by Sunak doing nothing to create growth. Just finger hope for the best growth in years up to the General Election, and that could really be letting the Tory Party down in coming election.

    £65 billion is notional amount Bank of England willing to commit to buy UK government bonds (gilts) to stabilise market in the wake of mini-Budget. what actually happened, rise in gilt yields was exacerbated by the increased use of liability-driven investment (LDI) strategies by some pension funds, triggered spiral of margin calls and forced gilt sales driving up yields further.

    the mini-Budget CANNOT be blamed for the sustained increase in mortgage interest rates when mortgage rates (and mortgage spreads) also surged in many other countries including US. It all started when Sunak was chancellor.

    UK regulators should have been on top of pension issue, this weakness already in the market, The mini budget did not create the problem, it flushed out a problem already there. That’s why Labour and Sunak’s attack was actually lies and bulls hit, This problem NOT CREATED by the mini budget, was older, the interplay of leverage, liquidity risk and interconnectedness under weak regulatory regimes is more Sunak’s fault considering his longer time as chancellor of our country than Kwarteng or Truss, who merely flushed out Sunak’s crap supervision of the economy.

    Those of us on PB who are not here to spin, but maintain true history, don’t have to repeat lies and tropes do we?

    Why is this important to political betting? Because lying about what happened, what problem actually was, how created (where was risk management, where was supervision under Sunak and BOE) does not learn lessons. So let’s see what increase in interest rates may have on some other pockets of vulnerabilities in the UK financial sector - because ironically for Sunak, any second now other problems in the NBFI sector, affecting financial stability and the fight against inflation, can rip up his and his governments credibility.

    And that truly would be hoisted on own petard.
    8 paragraphs to defend the indefensible. Why do you bother? Sterling was plunging within minutes of the mini budget being announced.
    The budget was so dumb we saw through it immediately on PB. It was a WTF moment.
  • FeersumEnjineeyaFeersumEnjineeya Posts: 3,867
    Sandpit said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    pigeon said:

    viewcode said:

    I suppose one way to deal with the red Tory patter is to lean right into it.


    Perhaps we owe @bigjohnowls an apology... :(
    Yep, it looks very much like Labour are going to go into the next election on a platform - if you ignore their rhetoric and a few eye-catching but token policy flourishes in areas like green energy - of managing the existing state of affairs less incompetently than the Tories. They're going to go our of their way to change as little as possible.
    Your march Left is heartening to see. I can't reassure you totally, since I don't know for sure, but my sense is Starmer is all about derisking the GE as far as he possibly can, and that once in power (assuming he does win) he'll prove a bit more radical than you think. So don't write him off comrade.
    That's exactly what I keep warning of on here: he's saying what he needs to say to get in.

    Others say it's the usual Tory scare tactics relating to a Labour leader in opposition.

    But, look at what his own side say - like your good self - and the evidence at how he behaved to his own base once he won the Labour leadership election.

    You don't know what you'll get with SKS.
    Cheer up, flag shagging may become a protected characteristic.


    There's no 'patronising contempt' from me, it's just that I don't like to see the Union Jack all over the place. It lowers the tone.
    It "lowers the tone".

    Jesus. It's the flag of your f-ing country.

    The only possible explanation for this is intellectual snobbery: you think you're above having any form of group social identity (save that of your education and values) and look down contemptuously on those that do.
    Is the UK the only country, where so much of the population dislikes the flying of its own national flag?

    Every other country I visit, people are proud of their national identity and symbols.
    In Germany, at least, attitudes to the national flag seemed to me to be pretty much the same as here: fine for government buildings and sporting events; a bit suspect otherwise.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812
    Starmer’s speech is good.
    No great surprises, but tone perfect.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    Tres said:

    Sandpit said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    pigeon said:

    viewcode said:

    I suppose one way to deal with the red Tory patter is to lean right into it.


    Perhaps we owe @bigjohnowls an apology... :(
    Yep, it looks very much like Labour are going to go into the next election on a platform - if you ignore their rhetoric and a few eye-catching but token policy flourishes in areas like green energy - of managing the existing state of affairs less incompetently than the Tories. They're going to go our of their way to change as little as possible.
    Your march Left is heartening to see. I can't reassure you totally, since I don't know for sure, but my sense is Starmer is all about derisking the GE as far as he possibly can, and that once in power (assuming he does win) he'll prove a bit more radical than you think. So don't write him off comrade.
    That's exactly what I keep warning of on here: he's saying what he needs to say to get in.

    Others say it's the usual Tory scare tactics relating to a Labour leader in opposition.

    But, look at what his own side say - like your good self - and the evidence at how he behaved to his own base once he won the Labour leadership election.

    You don't know what you'll get with SKS.
    Cheer up, flag shagging may become a protected characteristic.


    There's no 'patronising contempt' from me, it's just that I don't like to see the Union Jack all over the place. It lowers the tone.
    It "lowers the tone".

    Jesus. It's the flag of your f-ing country.

    The only possible explanation for this is intellectual snobbery: you think you're above having any form of group social identity (save that of your education and values) and look down contemptuously on those that do.
    Is the UK the only country, where so much of the population dislikes the flying of its own national flag?

    Every other country I visit, people are proud of their national identity and symbols.
    The Dutch prefer to drape everything in Orange rather than wave their flag which is too easily mistaken for that of France.
    As someone who’s been to a load of F1 races, that’s definitely true. The Dutch fans all wear orange.
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 55,019
    Foxy said:

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    Chris said:

    GIN1138 said:

    Jonathan said:

    GIN1138 said:

    Jonathan said:

    Radicals: Thatcher, Blair, Brown
    Conservatives: May, Cameron, Major
    Populists: Johnson, Truss
    Managers: Sunak, Callaghan

    Hard to say what various LoO might be or might have become once in office. Corbyn liked to think of himself as radical, but was very conservative albeit from an old skool left wing perspective.

    Hmm... For a "populist" Truss was remarkably unpopular... 😂
    You can be a crap populist. Boris ended up pretty unpopular.
    He ended up unpopular but for most of his political career he was popular. I can't think of one moment where Truss has been popular... She just always came across as being as nutty as a fruitcake lol...
    Truss was prepared to be unpopular; she said so many times - presumably her idea was that when her policies resulted in economic growth, she would become popular enough to win a GE on her record. That was always wildly ambitious, and perhaps to even attempt it was nutty, though I find it faintly heroic. I'm not sure why it's making you 'lol' so much though, given that she's been replaced by someone who isn't trying to make the economy grow at all (the opposite seems to be the case, unless he's just plain thick as shit), and frankly doesn't seem to be trying to make a decent fist of the General Election either.
    I'm sorry - I can't help being curious, because you seem to be pretty much the only person on earth who can't see what an unmitigated disaster Liz Truss was.

    Please relieve my curiosity and tell me whether it's a sexual thing or what?
    Liz, despite being loony, got one big thing right.
    Britain needs to grow.

    This sounds incredibly obvious, but it seems that it’s a truth that evades almost all of the governing party and likely most of the Opposition.
    I agree. UK economic policy since 2010 has been all about repairing our tax base from the consequences of the GFC and the wall of money that financial services used to throw at the public coffers.13 years on and we have still not managed it, mainly because we have been thrown off course by Covid and Ukraine. If we are to have the public services we collectively believe we deserve we need more profitable businesses in this country generating tax. And yet our political classes rarely even discuss the issue. For them, our current businesses are no more than geese waiting to be plucked.
    You missed Brexit, which I contend is one of the things that threw the UK off course, and which also created a weird omertà in which the suppression of economic truth became standard practice.
    I only mentioned the economically significant stuff.
    But no serious commentator agrees with you.
    So, sadly, you’re part of the problem.
    You're sensible on almost any subject, even when I don't agree with you.

    Except Brexit.

    You need to recognise your problem on that for you to become a serious commentator.
    I’m not a professional economist, nor an academic. I don’t work in the investment industry, and I’m not a trade expert.

    I do follow and listen to a lot of the above though, and nobody but nobody thinks Brexit has done anything but impair British growth.

    There may be a political argument for Brexit, and it’s almost possible to imagine a very long term economic argument, but in the short to medium term that we live in, it’s been damaging and continues to be damaging.

    That you still refuse to accept this means you refuse to deal with reality, and this in turn impoverishes your ability to understand what policy choices are now available or desirable.
    That denial of reality is why the Tories continue to make poor decisions. The have to keep up the pretense and double down on failure.
    No, it's not a "denial of reality" but, unlike you, we don't think the only option on the table in the real world is full fat membership of the EU.

    If you even look closely at France and Germany, or Sweden for that matter, you'll see they all have deep-seated problems, poor demographics, and pretty anemic growth, despite being members.

    It's the narcissism of small differences.
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 39,749

    kinabalu said:

    pigeon said:

    viewcode said:

    I suppose one way to deal with the red Tory patter is to lean right into it.


    Perhaps we owe @bigjohnowls an apology... :(
    Yep, it looks very much like Labour are going to go into the next election on a platform - if you ignore their rhetoric and a few eye-catching but token policy flourishes in areas like green energy - of managing the existing state of affairs less incompetently than the Tories. They're going to go our of their way to change as little as possible.
    Your march Left is heartening to see. I can't reassure you totally, since I don't know for sure, but my sense is Starmer is all about derisking the GE as far as he possibly can, and that once in power (assuming he does win) he'll prove a bit more radical than you think. So don't write him off comrade.
    That's exactly what I keep warning of on here: he's saying what he needs to say to get in.

    Others say it's the usual Tory scare tactics relating to a Labour leader in opposition.

    But, look at what his own side say - like your good self - and the evidence at how he behaved to his own base once he won the Labour leadership election.

    You don't know what you'll get with SKS.
    Cheer up, flag shagging may become a protected characteristic.


    I presume this view of yours on flag shagging extends to the St. Andrews cross?
    I'm copacetic with disrespecting the Saltire & any other flag, but in any case I'd imagine there's a few on here not strangers to patronising contempt for those who fly the Scottish flag. In fact I recall a few screeches about the tendency of the Scottish government towards profligate flag flying.
  • noneoftheabovenoneoftheabove Posts: 20,454
    Dialup said:

    Sandpit said:

    Dialup said:

    https://twitter.com/globalaffairs/status/1657219168863756288

    In response to legal process and to ensure Twitter remains available to the people of Turkey, we have taken action to restrict access to some content in Turkey today.

    Elon Musk, defender of free speech. Not.

    Given the choice of either respecting Turkish law, or being banned in Turkey, what’s he supposed to do?
    He was the man who said he would defend free speech at all costs, even if it made Twitter lose money.

    I am sure if Jack was CEO, you'd not be okay with this.
    Feck! Drink!
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 55,019

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    Conservative just means you're cautious and a bit suspicious of change, and only want to do so if you have to, and then to do so gradually. If it ain't broke dont fix it.

    Of course, that in itself is reason enough why plenty of people don't like them.

    The other point of view is that many people don't like change and taking this approach to Government allows for stability, consistency, broad peace, preservation of tradition/ what works, predictability and thus extra space economic growth, and stops silly ideas and radical dogma that's poorly thought through from being put into practice.

    Which is why Brexit has pissed off so many natural Conservatives. Totally silly idea with radical dogma and poorly thought through.

    The Conservatives won't recover until they repent of Brexitism.
    I knew someone would respond (in seconds) with Brexit.

    That conflicted across the principle because many Conservatives thought it was riskier to stay because of the radical change that they felt would inevitably come, which was also against their values. If you believe in conserving national sovereignty and independence, and not steadily creeping towards a federal Europe, you won't have had a problem with this.

    Too many seem to miss this and focus just on the economic disruption, more often than not because they themselves aren't Conservatives.

    The only unConservative bit, in my view, was in the response to the vote itself, which became too dogmatic.
    Well, Brexit and its economic consequences is why the Red Wall thinks this government has failed, and why the Blue Wall hates it too.

    Brexit is the political monkeys paw. You get what you wish for and regret it very quickly.
    Not quickly enough, though.

    But yes, at some point the Conservatives stopped being conservative. Incremental change, think in generations, work out why the fence was put up before you tear it down, that sort of thing. It's not just about Brexit, for all that is totemic. (After all, a conservative approach to being Eurosceptic would have been to take Dave's deal and set it in concrete. It probably would have stuck.)

    And then there's Starmer's speech today (there's a link here; https://twitter.com/SpaJw/status/1657353519165321216). Large chunks of it read like the sort of thing that a One Nation Tory of previous generations- Iain Macleod, say, could have said. But it's really hard to see who is standing up for this sort of thing in the current setup.
    What was the "conservative" option to disengage with the EU given it had taken a "conservative" attitude to steadily ratcheting up integration over several decades to arrive at such a decidedly objectionable position to so many Conservatives?
    Here you go (but I'm sure you know all this already):

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Act_2011

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015–2016_United_Kingdom_renegotiation_of_European_Union_membership

    You can argue that they weren't enough, but I don't think it's realistic to claim that they were nothing.

    And then we come back to the question- what is the conservative thing to do? See how the incremental changes go, or blow everything up with little indication of what would happen next?
    Renegotiate the Lisbon Treaty.
  • rkrkrkrkrkrk Posts: 7,881

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    Conservative just means you're cautious and a bit suspicious of change, and only want to do so if you have to, and then to do so gradually. If it ain't broke dont fix it.

    Of course, that in itself is reason enough why plenty of people don't like them.

    The other point of view is that many people don't like change and taking this approach to Government allows for stability, consistency, broad peace, preservation of tradition/ what works, predictability and thus extra space economic growth, and stops silly ideas and radical dogma that's poorly thought through from being put into practice.

    Which is why Brexit has pissed off so many natural Conservatives. Totally silly idea with radical dogma and poorly thought through.

    The Conservatives won't recover until they repent of Brexitism.
    I knew someone would respond (in seconds) with Brexit.

    That conflicted across the principle because many Conservatives thought it was riskier to stay because of the radical change that they felt would inevitably come, which was also against their values. If you believe in conserving national sovereignty and independence, and not steadily creeping towards a federal Europe, you won't have had a problem with this.

    Too many seem to miss this and focus just on the economic disruption, more often than not because they themselves aren't Conservatives.

    The only unConservative bit, in my view, was in the response to the vote itself, which became too dogmatic.
    Well, Brexit and its economic consequences is why the Red Wall thinks this government has failed, and why the Blue Wall hates it too.

    Brexit is the political monkeys paw. You get what you wish for and regret it very quickly.
    Not quickly enough, though.

    But yes, at some point the Conservatives stopped being conservative. Incremental change, think in generations, work out why the fence was put up before you tear it down, that sort of thing. It's not just about Brexit, for all that is totemic. (After all, a conservative approach to being Eurosceptic would have been to take Dave's deal and set it in concrete. It probably would have stuck.)

    And then there's Starmer's speech today (there's a link here; https://twitter.com/SpaJw/status/1657353519165321216). Large chunks of it read like the sort of thing that a One Nation Tory of previous generations- Iain Macleod, say, could have said. But it's really hard to see who is standing up for this sort of thing in the current setup.
    What was the "conservative" option to disengage with the EU given it had taken a "conservative" attitude to steadily ratcheting up integration over several decades to arrive at such a decidedly objectionable position to so many Conservatives?
    Here you go (but I'm sure you know all this already):

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Act_2011

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015–2016_United_Kingdom_renegotiation_of_European_Union_membership

    You can argue that they weren't enough, but I don't think it's realistic to claim that they were nothing.

    And then we come back to the question- what is the conservative thing to do? See how the incremental changes go, or blow everything up with little indication of what would happen next?
    Conservative brexit probably would mean leave but stay close... tinker with more dealignment over time.
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 55,019

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    Chris said:

    GIN1138 said:

    Jonathan said:

    GIN1138 said:

    Jonathan said:

    Radicals: Thatcher, Blair, Brown
    Conservatives: May, Cameron, Major
    Populists: Johnson, Truss
    Managers: Sunak, Callaghan

    Hard to say what various LoO might be or might have become once in office. Corbyn liked to think of himself as radical, but was very conservative albeit from an old skool left wing perspective.

    Hmm... For a "populist" Truss was remarkably unpopular... 😂
    You can be a crap populist. Boris ended up pretty unpopular.
    He ended up unpopular but for most of his political career he was popular. I can't think of one moment where Truss has been popular... She just always came across as being as nutty as a fruitcake lol...
    Truss was prepared to be unpopular; she said so many times - presumably her idea was that when her policies resulted in economic growth, she would become popular enough to win a GE on her record. That was always wildly ambitious, and perhaps to even attempt it was nutty, though I find it faintly heroic. I'm not sure why it's making you 'lol' so much though, given that she's been replaced by someone who isn't trying to make the economy grow at all (the opposite seems to be the case, unless he's just plain thick as shit), and frankly doesn't seem to be trying to make a decent fist of the General Election either.
    I'm sorry - I can't help being curious, because you seem to be pretty much the only person on earth who can't see what an unmitigated disaster Liz Truss was.

    Please relieve my curiosity and tell me whether it's a sexual thing or what?
    Liz, despite being loony, got one big thing right.
    Britain needs to grow.

    This sounds incredibly obvious, but it seems that it’s a truth that evades almost all of the governing party and likely most of the Opposition.
    I agree. UK economic policy since 2010 has been all about repairing our tax base from the consequences of the GFC and the wall of money that financial services used to throw at the public coffers.13 years on and we have still not managed it, mainly because we have been thrown off course by Covid and Ukraine. If we are to have the public services we collectively believe we deserve we need more profitable businesses in this country generating tax. And yet our political classes rarely even discuss the issue. For them, our current businesses are no more than geese waiting to be plucked.
    You missed Brexit, which I contend is one of the things that threw the UK off course, and which also created a weird omertà in which the suppression of economic truth became standard practice.
    I only mentioned the economically significant stuff.
    But no serious commentator agrees with you.
    So, sadly, you’re part of the problem.
    You're sensible on almost any subject, even when I don't agree with you.

    Except Brexit.

    You need to recognise your problem on that for you to become a serious commentator.
    I’m not a professional economist, nor an academic. I don’t work in the investment industry, and I’m not a trade expert.

    I do follow and listen to a lot of the above though, and nobody but nobody thinks Brexit has done anything but impair British growth.

    There may be a political argument for Brexit, and it’s almost possible to imagine a very long term economic argument, but in the short to medium term that we live in, it’s been damaging and continues to be damaging.

    That you still refuse to accept this means you refuse to deal with reality, and this in turn impoverishes your ability to understand what policy choices are now available or desirable.
    I don't refuse to accept anything. I've said all along it raises trading barriers with respect to the continent and, personally, I'd like them a bit lower and a closer more constructive relationship. I made that choice for political reasons and considered the costs acceptable and still do.

    Where I disagree with you is that this means we're finished and damns us for eternity.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,851

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    pigeon said:

    viewcode said:

    I suppose one way to deal with the red Tory patter is to lean right into it.


    Perhaps we owe @bigjohnowls an apology... :(
    Yep, it looks very much like Labour are going to go into the next election on a platform - if you ignore their rhetoric and a few eye-catching but token policy flourishes in areas like green energy - of managing the existing state of affairs less incompetently than the Tories. They're going to go our of their way to change as little as possible.
    Your march Left is heartening to see. I can't reassure you totally, since I don't know for sure, but my sense is Starmer is all about derisking the GE as far as he possibly can, and that once in power (assuming he does win) he'll prove a bit more radical than you think. So don't write him off comrade.
    That's exactly what I keep warning of on here: he's saying what he needs to say to get in.

    Others say it's the usual Tory scare tactics relating to a Labour leader in opposition.

    But, look at what his own side say - like your good self - and the evidence at how he behaved to his own base once he won the Labour leadership election.

    You don't know what you'll get with SKS.
    Cheer up, flag shagging may become a protected characteristic.


    There's no 'patronising contempt' from me, it's just that I don't like to see the Union Jack all over the place. It lowers the tone.
    It "lowers the tone".

    Jesus. It's the flag of your f-ing country.

    The only possible explanation for this is intellectual snobbery: you think you're above having any form of group social identity (save that of your education and values) and look down contemptuously on those that do.
    It really isn't that. There's a place for our national flag. Big international sports events, for example, flagship (pun not meant) government buildings. But I don't want to see it as a common feature of life, always behind politicians when they speak, on hats and tee shirts and umbrellas, in municipal premises, in shops, people flying it in their houses and gardens, flags flags flags all over the place. That gives me the willies. I find it tacky at best and at worst rather sinister.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    edited May 2023
    rkrkrk said:

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    Conservative just means you're cautious and a bit suspicious of change, and only want to do so if you have to, and then to do so gradually. If it ain't broke dont fix it.

    Of course, that in itself is reason enough why plenty of people don't like them.

    The other point of view is that many people don't like change and taking this approach to Government allows for stability, consistency, broad peace, preservation of tradition/ what works, predictability and thus extra space economic growth, and stops silly ideas and radical dogma that's poorly thought through from being put into practice.

    Which is why Brexit has pissed off so many natural Conservatives. Totally silly idea with radical dogma and poorly thought through.

    The Conservatives won't recover until they repent of Brexitism.
    I knew someone would respond (in seconds) with Brexit.

    That conflicted across the principle because many Conservatives thought it was riskier to stay because of the radical change that they felt would inevitably come, which was also against their values. If you believe in conserving national sovereignty and independence, and not steadily creeping towards a federal Europe, you won't have had a problem with this.

    Too many seem to miss this and focus just on the economic disruption, more often than not because they themselves aren't Conservatives.

    The only unConservative bit, in my view, was in the response to the vote itself, which became too dogmatic.
    Well, Brexit and its economic consequences is why the Red Wall thinks this government has failed, and why the Blue Wall hates it too.

    Brexit is the political monkeys paw. You get what you wish for and regret it very quickly.
    Not quickly enough, though.

    But yes, at some point the Conservatives stopped being conservative. Incremental change, think in generations, work out why the fence was put up before you tear it down, that sort of thing. It's not just about Brexit, for all that is totemic. (After all, a conservative approach to being Eurosceptic would have been to take Dave's deal and set it in concrete. It probably would have stuck.)

    And then there's Starmer's speech today (there's a link here; https://twitter.com/SpaJw/status/1657353519165321216). Large chunks of it read like the sort of thing that a One Nation Tory of previous generations- Iain Macleod, say, could have said. But it's really hard to see who is standing up for this sort of thing in the current setup.
    What was the "conservative" option to disengage with the EU given it had taken a "conservative" attitude to steadily ratcheting up integration over several decades to arrive at such a decidedly objectionable position to so many Conservatives?
    Here you go (but I'm sure you know all this already):

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Act_2011

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015–2016_United_Kingdom_renegotiation_of_European_Union_membership

    You can argue that they weren't enough, but I don't think it's realistic to claim that they were nothing.

    And then we come back to the question- what is the conservative thing to do? See how the incremental changes go, or blow everything up with little indication of what would happen next?
    Conservative brexit probably would mean leave but stay close... tinker with more dealignment over time.
    That would have been great if it were possible. The problem was that the EU structures simply couldn’t accommodate it. There were number of key points, such as single market and customs union membership, that were either in or out.

    An ‘outer ring’ of EU membership would have probably won a three-way referendum, but the big sticking point would have been FoM of people.
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 55,019
    TimS said:

    DougSeal said:

    Afternoon. No Saturday visits from Russia this week?

    We had him earlier


    I wonder what happened to DJ41. The only properly intelligent Russian troll. (I could never make up my mind if he was actually Russian or just a very eloquent Tankie of the Kim Philby ilk.)
    He was their very best. A truly exceptional talent.

    We all mourn his loss.
  • DialupDialup Posts: 561
    I love this country and its flag.

    I propose we put it on all the trains when they are brought back into public ownership here rather than being run by the French.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    Conservative just means you're cautious and a bit suspicious of change, and only want to do so if you have to, and then to do so gradually. If it ain't broke dont fix it.

    Of course, that in itself is reason enough why plenty of people don't like them.

    The other point of view is that many people don't like change and taking this approach to Government allows for stability, consistency, broad peace, preservation of tradition/ what works, predictability and thus extra space economic growth, and stops silly ideas and radical dogma that's poorly thought through from being put into practice.

    Which is why Brexit has pissed off so many natural Conservatives. Totally silly idea with radical dogma and poorly thought through.

    The Conservatives won't recover until they repent of Brexitism.
    I knew someone would respond (in seconds) with Brexit.

    That conflicted across the principle because many Conservatives thought it was riskier to stay because of the radical change that they felt would inevitably come, which was also against their values. If you believe in conserving national sovereignty and independence, and not steadily creeping towards a federal Europe, you won't have had a problem with this.

    Too many seem to miss this and focus just on the economic disruption, more often than not because they themselves aren't Conservatives.

    The only unConservative bit, in my view, was in the response to the vote itself, which became too dogmatic.
    Well, Brexit and its economic consequences is why the Red Wall thinks this government has failed, and why the Blue Wall hates it too.

    Brexit is the political monkeys paw. You get what you wish for and regret it very quickly.
    Not quickly enough, though.

    But yes, at some point the Conservatives stopped being conservative. Incremental change, think in generations, work out why the fence was put up before you tear it down, that sort of thing. It's not just about Brexit, for all that is totemic. (After all, a conservative approach to being Eurosceptic would have been to take Dave's deal and set it in concrete. It probably would have stuck.)

    And then there's Starmer's speech today (there's a link here; https://twitter.com/SpaJw/status/1657353519165321216). Large chunks of it read like the sort of thing that a One Nation Tory of previous generations- Iain Macleod, say, could have said. But it's really hard to see who is standing up for this sort of thing in the current setup.
    What was the "conservative" option to disengage with the EU given it had taken a "conservative" attitude to steadily ratcheting up integration over several decades to arrive at such a decidedly objectionable position to so many Conservatives?
    Here you go (but I'm sure you know all this already):

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Act_2011

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015–2016_United_Kingdom_renegotiation_of_European_Union_membership

    You can argue that they weren't enough, but I don't think it's realistic to claim that they were nothing.

    And then we come back to the question- what is the conservative thing to do? See how the incremental changes go, or blow everything up with little indication of what would happen next?
    Renegotiate the Lisbon Treaty.
    A referendum on Lisbon would have solved so many problems, and possibly left the UK in a very different position to where it is now.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812
    edited May 2023

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    Chris said:

    GIN1138 said:

    Jonathan said:

    GIN1138 said:

    Jonathan said:

    Radicals: Thatcher, Blair, Brown
    Conservatives: May, Cameron, Major
    Populists: Johnson, Truss
    Managers: Sunak, Callaghan

    Hard to say what various LoO might be or might have become once in office. Corbyn liked to think of himself as radical, but was very conservative albeit from an old skool left wing perspective.

    Hmm... For a "populist" Truss was remarkably unpopular... 😂
    You can be a crap populist. Boris ended up pretty unpopular.
    He ended up unpopular but for most of his political career he was popular. I can't think of one moment where Truss has been popular... She just always came across as being as nutty as a fruitcake lol...
    Truss was prepared to be unpopular; she said so many times - presumably her idea was that when her policies resulted in economic growth, she would become popular enough to win a GE on her record. That was always wildly ambitious, and perhaps to even attempt it was nutty, though I find it faintly heroic. I'm not sure why it's making you 'lol' so much though, given that she's been replaced by someone who isn't trying to make the economy grow at all (the opposite seems to be the case, unless he's just plain thick as shit), and frankly doesn't seem to be trying to make a decent fist of the General Election either.
    I'm sorry - I can't help being curious, because you seem to be pretty much the only person on earth who can't see what an unmitigated disaster Liz Truss was.

    Please relieve my curiosity and tell me whether it's a sexual thing or what?
    Liz, despite being loony, got one big thing right.
    Britain needs to grow.

    This sounds incredibly obvious, but it seems that it’s a truth that evades almost all of the governing party and likely most of the Opposition.
    I agree. UK economic policy since 2010 has been all about repairing our tax base from the consequences of the GFC and the wall of money that financial services used to throw at the public coffers.13 years on and we have still not managed it, mainly because we have been thrown off course by Covid and Ukraine. If we are to have the public services we collectively believe we deserve we need more profitable businesses in this country generating tax. And yet our political classes rarely even discuss the issue. For them, our current businesses are no more than geese waiting to be plucked.
    You missed Brexit, which I contend is one of the things that threw the UK off course, and which also created a weird omertà in which the suppression of economic truth became standard practice.
    I only mentioned the economically significant stuff.
    But no serious commentator agrees with you.
    So, sadly, you’re part of the problem.
    You're sensible on almost any subject, even when I don't agree with you.

    Except Brexit.

    You need to recognise your problem on that for you to become a serious commentator.
    I’m not a professional economist, nor an academic. I don’t work in the investment industry, and I’m not a trade expert.

    I do follow and listen to a lot of the above though, and nobody but nobody thinks Brexit has done anything but impair British growth.

    There may be a political argument for Brexit, and it’s almost possible to imagine a very long term economic argument, but in the short to medium term that we live in, it’s been damaging and continues to be damaging.

    That you still refuse to accept this means you refuse to deal with reality, and this in turn impoverishes your ability to understand what policy choices are now available or desirable.
    I don't refuse to accept anything. I've said all along it raises trading barriers with respect to the continent and, personally, I'd like them a bit lower and a closer more constructive relationship. I made that choice for political reasons and considered the costs acceptable and still do.

    Where I disagree with you is that this means we're finished and damns us for eternity.
    I don’t think the UK is “finished” nor “damned for eternity”, though, that’s your projection.

    I suspect things will start to recover a little in 2024, ie with a new government. Even independent of policy change, the mood of a new government will be more reassuring.

    Longer term, I am pessimistic about British growth because I struggle to see a party - or even a faction of a party - with an ability to promote ideas to change the overall narrative.
  • viewcodeviewcode Posts: 18,232

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    Conservative just means you're cautious and a bit suspicious of change, and only want to do so if you have to, and then to do so gradually. If it ain't broke dont fix it.

    Of course, that in itself is reason enough why plenty of people don't like them.

    The other point of view is that many people don't like change and taking this approach to Government allows for stability, consistency, broad peace, preservation of tradition/ what works, predictability and thus extra space economic growth, and stops silly ideas and radical dogma that's poorly thought through from being put into practice.

    Which is why Brexit has pissed off so many natural Conservatives. Totally silly idea with radical dogma and poorly thought through.

    The Conservatives won't recover until they repent of Brexitism.
    I knew someone would respond (in seconds) with Brexit.

    That conflicted across the principle because many Conservatives thought it was riskier to stay because of the radical change that they felt would inevitably come, which was also against their values. If you believe in conserving national sovereignty and independence, and not steadily creeping towards a federal Europe, you won't have had a problem with this.

    Too many seem to miss this and focus just on the economic disruption, more often than not because they themselves aren't Conservatives.

    The only unConservative bit, in my view, was in the response to the vote itself, which became too dogmatic.
    Well, Brexit and its economic consequences is why the Red Wall thinks this government has failed, and why the Blue Wall hates it too.

    Brexit is the political monkeys paw. You get what you wish for and regret it very quickly.
    Not quickly enough, though.

    But yes, at some point the Conservatives stopped being conservative. Incremental change, think in generations, work out why the fence was put up before you tear it down, that sort of thing. It's not just about Brexit, for all that is totemic. (After all, a conservative approach to being Eurosceptic would have been to take Dave's deal and set it in concrete. It probably would have stuck.)

    And then there's Starmer's speech today (there's a link here; https://twitter.com/SpaJw/status/1657353519165321216). Large chunks of it read like the sort of thing that a One Nation Tory of previous generations- Iain Macleod, say, could have said. But it's really hard to see who is standing up for this sort of thing in the current setup.
    What was the "conservative" option to disengage with the EU given it had taken a "conservative" attitude to steadily ratcheting up integration over several decades to arrive at such a decidedly objectionable position to so many Conservatives?
    The rather bleak answer is that (IIRC) when Jean-Claude Juncker offered to David Cameron that the UK be moved to a newly-made up outer rim position, giving the UK much if not all of what it wanted, Cameron said no. Cameron thought he could keep UK at the heart of Europe. And seven years later here we are... :(
  • FrankBoothFrankBooth Posts: 9,005
    edited May 2023
    I notice no-one has yet has pointed the finger at Just Stop Oil or A N other climate group for the Nordstream pipeline bombing.

    How To Blow Up A Pipeline

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Blow_Up_a_Pipeline#:~:text=How to Blow Up a Pipeline: Learning to Fight in,"climate fatalism" outside it.

    Now a major motion picture.
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 48,922
    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    pigeon said:

    viewcode said:

    I suppose one way to deal with the red Tory patter is to lean right into it.


    Perhaps we owe @bigjohnowls an apology... :(
    Yep, it looks very much like Labour are going to go into the next election on a platform - if you ignore their rhetoric and a few eye-catching but token policy flourishes in areas like green energy - of managing the existing state of affairs less incompetently than the Tories. They're going to go our of their way to change as little as possible.
    Your march Left is heartening to see. I can't reassure you totally, since I don't know for sure, but my sense is Starmer is all about derisking the GE as far as he possibly can, and that once in power (assuming he does win) he'll prove a bit more radical than you think. So don't write him off comrade.
    That's exactly what I keep warning of on here: he's saying what he needs to say to get in.

    Others say it's the usual Tory scare tactics relating to a Labour leader in opposition.

    But, look at what his own side say - like your good self - and the evidence at how he behaved to his own base once he won the Labour leadership election.

    You don't know what you'll get with SKS.
    Cheer up, flag shagging may become a protected characteristic.


    There's no 'patronising contempt' from me, it's just that I don't like to see the Union Jack all over the place. It lowers the tone.
    It "lowers the tone".

    Jesus. It's the flag of your f-ing country.

    The only possible explanation for this is intellectual snobbery: you think you're above having any form of group social identity (save that of your education and values) and look down contemptuously on those that do.
    It really isn't that. There's a place for our national flag. Big international sports events, for example, flagship (pun not meant) government buildings. But I don't want to see it as a common feature of life, always behind politicians when they speak, on hats and tee shirts and umbrellas, in municipal premises, in shops, people flying it in their houses and gardens, flags flags flags all over the place. That gives me the willies. I find it tacky at best and at worst rather sinister.
    How about thongs and g-strings?
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 14,089

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    pigeon said:

    viewcode said:

    I suppose one way to deal with the red Tory patter is to lean right into it.


    Perhaps we owe @bigjohnowls an apology... :(
    Yep, it looks very much like Labour are going to go into the next election on a platform - if you ignore their rhetoric and a few eye-catching but token policy flourishes in areas like green energy - of managing the existing state of affairs less incompetently than the Tories. They're going to go our of their way to change as little as possible.
    Your march Left is heartening to see. I can't reassure you totally, since I don't know for sure, but my sense is Starmer is all about derisking the GE as far as he possibly can, and that once in power (assuming he does win) he'll prove a bit more radical than you think. So don't write him off comrade.
    That's exactly what I keep warning of on here: he's saying what he needs to say to get in.

    Others say it's the usual Tory scare tactics relating to a Labour leader in opposition.

    But, look at what his own side say - like your good self - and the evidence at how he behaved to his own base once he won the Labour leadership election.

    You don't know what you'll get with SKS.
    Cheer up, flag shagging may become a protected characteristic.


    There's no 'patronising contempt' from me, it's just that I don't like to see the Union Jack all over the place. It lowers the tone.
    It "lowers the tone".

    Jesus. It's the flag of your f-ing country.

    The only possible explanation for this is intellectual snobbery: you think you're above having any form of group social identity (save that of your education and values) and look down contemptuously on those that do.
    It really isn't that. There's a place for our national flag. Big international sports events, for example, flagship (pun not meant) government buildings. But I don't want to see it as a common feature of life, always behind politicians when they speak, on hats and tee shirts and umbrellas, in municipal premises, in shops, people flying it in their houses and gardens, flags flags flags all over the place. That gives me the willies. I find it tacky at best and at worst rather sinister.
    Absolutely. Nationalism, like religion, is fine in moderation: it is often a force for good and provides people with a sense of belonging, shared values and comfort. But it can also be a force for terrible evil when it gets out of hand.
    Yes, and it was nice having them all over the place last weekend, but it's not something to do every day.

    On the other hand, flags do bring colour to a public space, and that's not to be sniffed at. On the continent, I think it helps that the national flag isn't the only one being flown- there's the province, the town, even (whisper it) the Council of Europe. But that idea of multiple, overlapping loyalties is something that Britain seems to struggle with.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,069
    viewcode said:

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    Conservative just means you're cautious and a bit suspicious of change, and only want to do so if you have to, and then to do so gradually. If it ain't broke dont fix it.

    Of course, that in itself is reason enough why plenty of people don't like them.

    The other point of view is that many people don't like change and taking this approach to Government allows for stability, consistency, broad peace, preservation of tradition/ what works, predictability and thus extra space economic growth, and stops silly ideas and radical dogma that's poorly thought through from being put into practice.

    Which is why Brexit has pissed off so many natural Conservatives. Totally silly idea with radical dogma and poorly thought through.

    The Conservatives won't recover until they repent of Brexitism.
    I knew someone would respond (in seconds) with Brexit.

    That conflicted across the principle because many Conservatives thought it was riskier to stay because of the radical change that they felt would inevitably come, which was also against their values. If you believe in conserving national sovereignty and independence, and not steadily creeping towards a federal Europe, you won't have had a problem with this.

    Too many seem to miss this and focus just on the economic disruption, more often than not because they themselves aren't Conservatives.

    The only unConservative bit, in my view, was in the response to the vote itself, which became too dogmatic.
    Well, Brexit and its economic consequences is why the Red Wall thinks this government has failed, and why the Blue Wall hates it too.

    Brexit is the political monkeys paw. You get what you wish for and regret it very quickly.
    Not quickly enough, though.

    But yes, at some point the Conservatives stopped being conservative. Incremental change, think in generations, work out why the fence was put up before you tear it down, that sort of thing. It's not just about Brexit, for all that is totemic. (After all, a conservative approach to being Eurosceptic would have been to take Dave's deal and set it in concrete. It probably would have stuck.)

    And then there's Starmer's speech today (there's a link here; https://twitter.com/SpaJw/status/1657353519165321216). Large chunks of it read like the sort of thing that a One Nation Tory of previous generations- Iain Macleod, say, could have said. But it's really hard to see who is standing up for this sort of thing in the current setup.
    What was the "conservative" option to disengage with the EU given it had taken a "conservative" attitude to steadily ratcheting up integration over several decades to arrive at such a decidedly objectionable position to so many Conservatives?
    The rather bleak answer is that (IIRC) when Jean-Claude Juncker offered to David Cameron that the UK be moved to a newly-made up outer rim position, giving the UK much if not all of what it wanted, Cameron said no. Cameron thought he could keep UK at the heart of Europe. And seven years later here we are... :(
    So here we are again. Brexit is the fault of everyone apart from the Brexiteers.
  • viewcodeviewcode Posts: 18,232
    Sandpit said:

    Dialup said:

    https://twitter.com/globalaffairs/status/1657219168863756288

    In response to legal process and to ensure Twitter remains available to the people of Turkey, we have taken action to restrict access to some content in Turkey today.

    Elon Musk, defender of free speech. Not.

    Given the choice of either respecting Turkish law, or being banned in Turkey, what’s he supposed to do?
    Beam Twitter in directly via his Starlink satellites and tell the Turkish government to foxtrot alpha.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,069

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    pigeon said:

    viewcode said:

    I suppose one way to deal with the red Tory patter is to lean right into it.


    Perhaps we owe @bigjohnowls an apology... :(
    Yep, it looks very much like Labour are going to go into the next election on a platform - if you ignore their rhetoric and a few eye-catching but token policy flourishes in areas like green energy - of managing the existing state of affairs less incompetently than the Tories. They're going to go our of their way to change as little as possible.
    Your march Left is heartening to see. I can't reassure you totally, since I don't know for sure, but my sense is Starmer is all about derisking the GE as far as he possibly can, and that once in power (assuming he does win) he'll prove a bit more radical than you think. So don't write him off comrade.
    That's exactly what I keep warning of on here: he's saying what he needs to say to get in.

    Others say it's the usual Tory scare tactics relating to a Labour leader in opposition.

    But, look at what his own side say - like your good self - and the evidence at how he behaved to his own base once he won the Labour leadership election.

    You don't know what you'll get with SKS.
    Cheer up, flag shagging may become a protected characteristic.


    There's no 'patronising contempt' from me, it's just that I don't like to see the Union Jack all over the place. It lowers the tone.
    It "lowers the tone".

    Jesus. It's the flag of your f-ing country.

    The only possible explanation for this is intellectual snobbery: you think you're above having any form of group social identity (save that of your education and values) and look down contemptuously on those that do.
    It really isn't that. There's a place for our national flag. Big international sports events, for example, flagship (pun not meant) government buildings. But I don't want to see it as a common feature of life, always behind politicians when they speak, on hats and tee shirts and umbrellas, in municipal premises, in shops, people flying it in their houses and gardens, flags flags flags all over the place. That gives me the willies. I find it tacky at best and at worst rather sinister.
    How about thongs and g-strings?
    I think those too thin to be suitable. Y fronts or other big pants show the Union Jack in all its glory.
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 14,089
    Foxy said:

    viewcode said:

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    Conservative just means you're cautious and a bit suspicious of change, and only want to do so if you have to, and then to do so gradually. If it ain't broke dont fix it.

    Of course, that in itself is reason enough why plenty of people don't like them.

    The other point of view is that many people don't like change and taking this approach to Government allows for stability, consistency, broad peace, preservation of tradition/ what works, predictability and thus extra space economic growth, and stops silly ideas and radical dogma that's poorly thought through from being put into practice.

    Which is why Brexit has pissed off so many natural Conservatives. Totally silly idea with radical dogma and poorly thought through.

    The Conservatives won't recover until they repent of Brexitism.
    I knew someone would respond (in seconds) with Brexit.

    That conflicted across the principle because many Conservatives thought it was riskier to stay because of the radical change that they felt would inevitably come, which was also against their values. If you believe in conserving national sovereignty and independence, and not steadily creeping towards a federal Europe, you won't have had a problem with this.

    Too many seem to miss this and focus just on the economic disruption, more often than not because they themselves aren't Conservatives.

    The only unConservative bit, in my view, was in the response to the vote itself, which became too dogmatic.
    Well, Brexit and its economic consequences is why the Red Wall thinks this government has failed, and why the Blue Wall hates it too.

    Brexit is the political monkeys paw. You get what you wish for and regret it very quickly.
    Not quickly enough, though.

    But yes, at some point the Conservatives stopped being conservative. Incremental change, think in generations, work out why the fence was put up before you tear it down, that sort of thing. It's not just about Brexit, for all that is totemic. (After all, a conservative approach to being Eurosceptic would have been to take Dave's deal and set it in concrete. It probably would have stuck.)

    And then there's Starmer's speech today (there's a link here; https://twitter.com/SpaJw/status/1657353519165321216). Large chunks of it read like the sort of thing that a One Nation Tory of previous generations- Iain Macleod, say, could have said. But it's really hard to see who is standing up for this sort of thing in the current setup.
    What was the "conservative" option to disengage with the EU given it had taken a "conservative" attitude to steadily ratcheting up integration over several decades to arrive at such a decidedly objectionable position to so many Conservatives?
    The rather bleak answer is that (IIRC) when Jean-Claude Juncker offered to David Cameron that the UK be moved to a newly-made up outer rim position, giving the UK much if not all of what it wanted, Cameron said no. Cameron thought he could keep UK at the heart of Europe. And seven years later here we are... :(
    So here we are again. Brexit is the fault of everyone apart from the Brexiteers.
    Which is revealing in itself. It's not common for people to pass the credit for great sucesses to others.
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 48,922
    Foxy said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    pigeon said:

    viewcode said:

    I suppose one way to deal with the red Tory patter is to lean right into it.


    Perhaps we owe @bigjohnowls an apology... :(
    Yep, it looks very much like Labour are going to go into the next election on a platform - if you ignore their rhetoric and a few eye-catching but token policy flourishes in areas like green energy - of managing the existing state of affairs less incompetently than the Tories. They're going to go our of their way to change as little as possible.
    Your march Left is heartening to see. I can't reassure you totally, since I don't know for sure, but my sense is Starmer is all about derisking the GE as far as he possibly can, and that once in power (assuming he does win) he'll prove a bit more radical than you think. So don't write him off comrade.
    That's exactly what I keep warning of on here: he's saying what he needs to say to get in.

    Others say it's the usual Tory scare tactics relating to a Labour leader in opposition.

    But, look at what his own side say - like your good self - and the evidence at how he behaved to his own base once he won the Labour leadership election.

    You don't know what you'll get with SKS.
    Cheer up, flag shagging may become a protected characteristic.


    There's no 'patronising contempt' from me, it's just that I don't like to see the Union Jack all over the place. It lowers the tone.
    It "lowers the tone".

    Jesus. It's the flag of your f-ing country.

    The only possible explanation for this is intellectual snobbery: you think you're above having any form of group social identity (save that of your education and values) and look down contemptuously on those that do.
    It really isn't that. There's a place for our national flag. Big international sports events, for example, flagship (pun not meant) government buildings. But I don't want to see it as a common feature of life, always behind politicians when they speak, on hats and tee shirts and umbrellas, in municipal premises, in shops, people flying it in their houses and gardens, flags flags flags all over the place. That gives me the willies. I find it tacky at best and at worst rather sinister.
    How about thongs and g-strings?
    I think those too thin to be suitable. Y fronts or other big pants show the Union Jack in all its glory.
    Perhaps...

    image
  • FrankBoothFrankBooth Posts: 9,005
    DavidL said:

    Sammy Allardiche once again weaves his magic at Leeds. His teams are hard to beat.

    Isn't this the problem with English football? The most successful coaches are bereft of imagination, style and flair.

    Why might this be? My own personal view is something deeper rooted in English culture. People with such qualities wouldn't dream of managing others but insist on treading their own path.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,851

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    pigeon said:

    viewcode said:

    I suppose one way to deal with the red Tory patter is to lean right into it.


    Perhaps we owe @bigjohnowls an apology... :(
    Yep, it looks very much like Labour are going to go into the next election on a platform - if you ignore their rhetoric and a few eye-catching but token policy flourishes in areas like green energy - of managing the existing state of affairs less incompetently than the Tories. They're going to go our of their way to change as little as possible.
    Your march Left is heartening to see. I can't reassure you totally, since I don't know for sure, but my sense is Starmer is all about derisking the GE as far as he possibly can, and that once in power (assuming he does win) he'll prove a bit more radical than you think. So don't write him off comrade.
    That's exactly what I keep warning of on here: he's saying what he needs to say to get in.

    Others say it's the usual Tory scare tactics relating to a Labour leader in opposition.

    But, look at what his own side say - like your good self - and the evidence at how he behaved to his own base once he won the Labour leadership election.

    You don't know what you'll get with SKS.
    Cheer up, flag shagging may become a protected characteristic.


    There's no 'patronising contempt' from me, it's just that I don't like to see the Union Jack all over the place. It lowers the tone.
    It "lowers the tone".

    Jesus. It's the flag of your f-ing country.

    The only possible explanation for this is intellectual snobbery: you think you're above having any form of group social identity (save that of your education and values) and look down contemptuously on those that do.
    It really isn't that. There's a place for our national flag. Big international sports events, for example, flagship (pun not meant) government buildings. But I don't want to see it as a common feature of life, always behind politicians when they speak, on hats and tee shirts and umbrellas, in municipal premises, in shops, people flying it in their houses and gardens, flags flags flags all over the place. That gives me the willies. I find it tacky at best and at worst rather sinister.
    How about thongs and g-strings?
    Not so bad because they are not in your face. Not usually anyway.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,842
    Just had a spitfire fly past my house.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    viewcode said:

    Sandpit said:

    Dialup said:

    https://twitter.com/globalaffairs/status/1657219168863756288

    In response to legal process and to ensure Twitter remains available to the people of Turkey, we have taken action to restrict access to some content in Turkey today.

    Elon Musk, defender of free speech. Not.

    Given the choice of either respecting Turkish law, or being banned in Turkey, what’s he supposed to do?
    Beam Twitter in directly via his Starlink satellites and tell the Turkish government to foxtrot alpha.
    Starlink has the same problem, in that it needs to downlink to local internet providers, who have their own government censorship issues.
  • TimSTimS Posts: 9,168

    TimS said:

    A propos of nothing I’m on a little car trip from my French house and ticking off the villages. Just bought a few bottles from the eccentric Chateau in Savigny-Les-Beaune where there’s a huge outdoor collection of warplanes covering several hectares.

    In the course of about 45 mins I’ll be passing Aloxe Corton, Monthelie, Pommard, Volnay, Meursault and Puligny Montrachet. Before carrying on down via Rully, Mercurey, Givry and Montagny. It’s like a viticultural Hollywood walk of fame.

    Very envious.
    Most famous agricultural field in the world:


  • noneoftheabovenoneoftheabove Posts: 20,454

    DavidL said:

    Sammy Allardiche once again weaves his magic at Leeds. His teams are hard to beat.

    Isn't this the problem with English football? The most successful coaches are bereft of imagination, style and flair.

    Why might this be? My own personal view is something deeper rooted in English culture. People with such qualities wouldn't dream of managing others but insist on treading their own path.
    English football has the best league in the world and one of the top 4 international teams in the world. Sure it has problems but plenty of very good coaches now at all levels, in a way that there was not twenty years ago.

    Why? We embraced immigration of people and new ideas, after decades of battling it and restricting the number of foreigners.
  • carnforthcarnforth Posts: 3,056
    edited May 2023
    TimS said:

    TimS said:

    A propos of nothing I’m on a little car trip from my French house and ticking off the villages. Just bought a few bottles from the eccentric Chateau in Savigny-Les-Beaune where there’s a huge outdoor collection of warplanes covering several hectares.

    In the course of about 45 mins I’ll be passing Aloxe Corton, Monthelie, Pommard, Volnay, Meursault and Puligny Montrachet. Before carrying on down via Rully, Mercurey, Givry and Montagny. It’s like a viticultural Hollywood walk of fame.

    Very envious.
    Most famous agricultural field in the world:


    DRC? A mere £9000 a bottle:

    https://www.bbr.com/products-20078119562-2007-montrachet-grand-cru-domaine-de-la-romanee-conti-burgundy
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,851

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    pigeon said:

    viewcode said:

    I suppose one way to deal with the red Tory patter is to lean right into it.


    Perhaps we owe @bigjohnowls an apology... :(
    Yep, it looks very much like Labour are going to go into the next election on a platform - if you ignore their rhetoric and a few eye-catching but token policy flourishes in areas like green energy - of managing the existing state of affairs less incompetently than the Tories. They're going to go our of their way to change as little as possible.
    Your march Left is heartening to see. I can't reassure you totally, since I don't know for sure, but my sense is Starmer is all about derisking the GE as far as he possibly can, and that once in power (assuming he does win) he'll prove a bit more radical than you think. So don't write him off comrade.
    That's exactly what I keep warning of on here: he's saying what he needs to say to get in.

    Others say it's the usual Tory scare tactics relating to a Labour leader in opposition.

    But, look at what his own side say - like your good self - and the evidence at how he behaved to his own base once he won the Labour leadership election.

    You don't know what you'll get with SKS.
    Cheer up, flag shagging may become a protected characteristic.


    There's no 'patronising contempt' from me, it's just that I don't like to see the Union Jack all over the place. It lowers the tone.
    It "lowers the tone".

    Jesus. It's the flag of your f-ing country.

    The only possible explanation for this is intellectual snobbery: you think you're above having any form of group social identity (save that of your education and values) and look down contemptuously on those that do.
    It really isn't that. There's a place for our national flag. Big international sports events, for example, flagship (pun not meant) government buildings. But I don't want to see it as a common feature of life, always behind politicians when they speak, on hats and tee shirts and umbrellas, in municipal premises, in shops, people flying it in their houses and gardens, flags flags flags all over the place. That gives me the willies. I find it tacky at best and at worst rather sinister.
    Absolutely. Nationalism, like religion, is fine in moderation: it is often a force for good and provides people with a sense of belonging, shared values and comfort. But it can also be a force for terrible evil when it gets out of hand.
    Yes, and it was nice having them all over the place last weekend, but it's not something to do every day.

    On the other hand, flags do bring colour to a public space, and that's not to be sniffed at. On the continent, I think it helps that the national flag isn't the only one being flown- there's the province, the town, even (whisper it) the Council of Europe. But that idea of multiple, overlapping loyalties is something that Britain seems to struggle with.
    Yes flags themselves and in general are nice to look at. Eg at Glastonbury. It's specifically having THE flag everywhere that I'm talking about. And this goes for any country, btw, not just the UK. I'd feel the same if I lived in France and couldn't get away from the tricolore.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812
    edited May 2023

    DavidL said:

    Sammy Allardiche once again weaves his magic at Leeds. His teams are hard to beat.

    Isn't this the problem with English football? The most successful coaches are bereft of imagination, style and flair.

    Why might this be? My own personal view is something deeper rooted in English culture. People with such qualities wouldn't dream of managing others but insist on treading their own path.
    English football has the best league in the world and one of the top 4 international teams in the world. Sure it has problems but plenty of very good coaches now at all levels, in a way that there was not twenty years ago.

    Why? We embraced immigration of people and new ideas, after decades of battling it and restricting the number of foreigners.
    I wonder if there’s a general lesson there.
  • viewcodeviewcode Posts: 18,232
    Sandpit said:

    viewcode said:

    Sandpit said:

    Dialup said:

    https://twitter.com/globalaffairs/status/1657219168863756288

    In response to legal process and to ensure Twitter remains available to the people of Turkey, we have taken action to restrict access to some content in Turkey today.

    Elon Musk, defender of free speech. Not.

    Given the choice of either respecting Turkish law, or being banned in Turkey, what’s he supposed to do?
    Beam Twitter in directly via his Starlink satellites and tell the Turkish government to foxtrot alpha.
    Starlink has the same problem, in that it needs to downlink to local internet providers, who have their own government censorship issues.
    IIRC, weren't there small aerials you could buy to pick up satellite internet links directly without an intermediary?

    He should really go proper Bond villain (if he hasn't already). If he gave out such aerials free to the consumer then he would have the stranglehold on all tweets, and eventually all phone-based communication. Didn't satellite telly do something like that in the 90's with dishes/set-top boxes?
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    viewcode said:

    Sandpit said:

    viewcode said:

    Sandpit said:

    Dialup said:

    https://twitter.com/globalaffairs/status/1657219168863756288

    In response to legal process and to ensure Twitter remains available to the people of Turkey, we have taken action to restrict access to some content in Turkey today.

    Elon Musk, defender of free speech. Not.

    Given the choice of either respecting Turkish law, or being banned in Turkey, what’s he supposed to do?
    Beam Twitter in directly via his Starlink satellites and tell the Turkish government to foxtrot alpha.
    Starlink has the same problem, in that it needs to downlink to local internet providers, who have their own government censorship issues.
    IIRC, weren't there small aerials you could buy to pick up satellite internet links directly without an intermediary?

    He should really go proper Bond villain (if he hasn't already). If he gave out such aerials free to the consumer then he would have the stranglehold on all tweets, and eventually all phone-based communication. Didn't satellite telly do something like that in the 90's with dishes/set-top boxes?
    The problem is that Starlink isn’t his main business, and he doesn’t want countries to ban imports of Tesla cars off the back of problems with Twitter.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,149
    Chris said:

    Carnyx said:

    Chris said:

    Carnyx said:

    Chris said:

    Chris said:

    Chris said:

    GIN1138 said:

    Jonathan said:

    GIN1138 said:

    Jonathan said:

    Radicals: Thatcher, Blair, Brown
    Conservatives: May, Cameron, Major
    Populists: Johnson, Truss
    Managers: Sunak, Callaghan

    Hard to say what various LoO might be or might have become once in office. Corbyn liked to think of himself as radical, but was very conservative albeit from an old skool left wing perspective.

    Hmm... For a "populist" Truss was remarkably unpopular... 😂
    You can be a crap populist. Boris ended up pretty unpopular.
    He ended up unpopular but for most of his political career he was popular. I can't think of one moment where Truss has been popular... She just always came across as being as nutty as a fruitcake lol...
    Truss was prepared to be unpopular; she said so many times - presumably her idea was that when her policies resulted in economic growth, she would become popular enough to win a GE on her record. That was always wildly ambitious, and perhaps to even attempt it was nutty, though I find it faintly heroic. I'm not sure why it's making you 'lol' so much though, given that she's been replaced by someone who isn't trying to make the economy grow at all (the opposite seems to be the case, unless he's just plain thick as shit), and frankly doesn't seem to be trying to make a decent fist of the General Election either.
    I'm sorry - I can't help being curious, because you seem to be pretty much the only person on earth who can't see what an unmitigated disaster Liz Truss was.

    Please relieve my curiosity and tell me whether it's a sexual thing or what?
    Liz, despite being loony, got one big thing right.
    Britain needs to grow.

    This sounds incredibly obvious, but it seems that it’s a truth that evades almost all of the governing party and likely most of the Opposition.
    Right. That would be why economic growth is the unquestioned mantra of every elected politician in this country.
    It really isn’t.
    It is so.
    Green Party is a sufficient counterexample, in at least one important sense of 'economic growth' - which they do question, at least in its nature.

    Edit: and add the Scottish Green Party, too. That's two parties.
    If the Greens hadn't condemned "austerity", perhaps you might have a point.

    But really the Greens are so peripheral, aren't they? If that's the best argument you can come up with in support of this certifiably insance idea that "almost all of the governing party and likely most of the Opposition" were not in support of growth, that tells us something.

    You said "every elected politician in this country."
    Absolutely. Do I need to spell it out in purple capital letters for you why I include the Greens in that? Or try to translate it into monosyllables for you? Or do you want to have another go at reading simple English?
    So you were flat wrong. One counterexample is sufficient to demonstrate that. As you carefully edited out.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,258
    edited May 2023
    Talking of travels. Just had my fourth free mojito in Hurghada



  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,084
    It’s amazingly hot and sunny here today. Yet here we were, just last week:


  • FrankBoothFrankBooth Posts: 9,005

    DavidL said:

    Sammy Allardiche once again weaves his magic at Leeds. His teams are hard to beat.

    Isn't this the problem with English football? The most successful coaches are bereft of imagination, style and flair.

    Why might this be? My own personal view is something deeper rooted in English culture. People with such qualities wouldn't dream of managing others but insist on treading their own path.
    English football has the best league in the world and one of the top 4 international teams in the world. Sure it has problems but plenty of very good coaches now at all levels, in a way that there was not twenty years ago.

    Why? We embraced immigration of people and new ideas, after decades of battling it and restricting the number of foreigners.
    Doesn't this just sum up what is wrong?

    The answer to everything is getting foreigners to do it. As for top 4 international side - they haven't won anything for 60 years. No English manager has won the League in 30 years and precious few have had success abroad. However none of this matters as there'll always be foreigners to do things for us.

    Maybe there are now actually good quality English coaches. We'll see, not many have made it to the top yet. The Premier League being the best in the world is due to money. Probably the global interest resulting from language and legacy of empire.
  • viewcodeviewcode Posts: 18,232
    Sandpit said:

    viewcode said:

    Sandpit said:

    viewcode said:

    Sandpit said:

    Dialup said:

    https://twitter.com/globalaffairs/status/1657219168863756288

    In response to legal process and to ensure Twitter remains available to the people of Turkey, we have taken action to restrict access to some content in Turkey today.

    Elon Musk, defender of free speech. Not.

    Given the choice of either respecting Turkish law, or being banned in Turkey, what’s he supposed to do?
    Beam Twitter in directly via his Starlink satellites and tell the Turkish government to foxtrot alpha.
    Starlink has the same problem, in that it needs to downlink to local internet providers, who have their own government censorship issues.
    IIRC, weren't there small aerials you could buy to pick up satellite internet links directly without an intermediary?

    He should really go proper Bond villain (if he hasn't already). If he gave out such aerials free to the consumer then he would have the stranglehold on all tweets, and eventually all phone-based communication. Didn't satellite telly do something like that in the 90's with dishes/set-top boxes?
    The problem is that Starlink isn’t his main business, and he doesn’t want countries to ban imports of Tesla cars off the back of problems with Twitter.
    He has $450 billion and owns Twitter. If Turkey banned Tesla, how long do you think it would take before he could engineer a coup?

    D'y'know, the more I think of it, the more I think that...y'know, he really could do it... :(
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,258
    I am in a kind of particle collider on the Red Sea where dedicated scientists are deliberately engineering a dangerous collision between the two fundamentally opposed universal forces of “endless free alcohol” and “five British journalists on a bender”

  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,408

    Dialup said:

    Thatcher was the least "conservative" Tory there has ever been. She was the opposite of conservative.

    The same person can be a conservative or a radical depending on the circumstances.

    Thatcher's radicalism in the 1980s was partly a response to the UK's problems in the 1970s.

    She would have been much more conservative in the 1990s because, in her opinion, there would no longer have been the problems requiring radical change.
    Being conservative or radical probably simply indicates a general propensity for that course of action. Circumstances will dictate to a large degree.

    If someone is consistently 100% conservative or radical they're just an idiot. Ideology can be very useful, but it's not a catchall for every situation.
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 10,343
    kinabalu said:

    TimS said:

    Carnyx said:

    kinabalu said:

    pigeon said:

    viewcode said:

    I suppose one way to deal with the red Tory patter is to lean right into it.


    Perhaps we owe @bigjohnowls an apology... :(
    Yep, it looks very much like Labour are going to go into the next election on a platform - if you ignore their rhetoric and a few eye-catching but token policy flourishes in areas like green energy - of managing the existing state of affairs less incompetently than the Tories. They're going to go our of their way to change as little as possible.
    Your march Left is heartening to see. I can't reassure you totally, since I don't know for sure, but my sense is Starmer is all about derisking the GE as far as he possibly can, and that once in power (assuming he does win) he'll prove a bit more radical than you think. So don't write him off comrade.
    That's exactly what I keep warning of on here: he's saying what he needs to say to get in.

    Others say it's the usual Tory scare tactics relating to a Labour leader in opposition.

    But, look at what his own side say - like your good self - and the evidence at how he behaved to his own base once he won the Labour leadership election.

    You don't know what you'll get with SKS.
    Cheer up, flag shagging may become a protected characteristic.


    Oh? What number on the gender list is that, then?
    I’m starting to worry Keir may have been going on “a journey”. It happens to some people who started off as proper lefties. They go on a journey and then they keep going. All this true conservatives stuff: is he just doing the equivalent of big a hoodie and husky driving, or does he increasingly mean it?

    Us centrists by contrast start in the centre and stay there.
    You miss the point of it all. The idea is to build up interest in him to such a level that the whole country is asking themselves the same question:

    "Is this the real Keir Starmer or is he just pretending to be like this to win the election?"

    The curiosity will eventually become unbearable and there'll be only way to satisfy it. Vote Labour - so they do win - and find out.

    It's rather fiendish.
    It's even simpler. He needs several million usually Tory voters to vote for him.

    Politics is not for the faint hearted. Sir K needed to be with the Jezza project to be on the front bench, to be on the socialist wing to be elected leader, and needs both trad Labour votes + a few million more to be PM.

    There is nowhere at all for the millions of new votes to come from in decent numbers except from non socialists. They don't exist.

    The question of how he and the team will actually govern if he wins is fascinating. Anyone who thinks it is in Labour's interest to be too clear and unchanging about this isn't paying attention.

    A socialist campaign failed in 2017 when facing a suicidal Tory campaign of abysmal awfulness.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,408
    DavidL said:

    Carnyx said:

    Chris said:

    Chris said:

    Chris said:

    GIN1138 said:

    Jonathan said:

    GIN1138 said:

    Jonathan said:

    Radicals: Thatcher, Blair, Brown
    Conservatives: May, Cameron, Major
    Populists: Johnson, Truss
    Managers: Sunak, Callaghan

    Hard to say what various LoO might be or might have become once in office. Corbyn liked to think of himself as radical, but was very conservative albeit from an old skool left wing perspective.

    Hmm... For a "populist" Truss was remarkably unpopular... 😂
    You can be a crap populist. Boris ended up pretty unpopular.
    He ended up unpopular but for most of his political career he was popular. I can't think of one moment where Truss has been popular... She just always came across as being as nutty as a fruitcake lol...
    Truss was prepared to be unpopular; she said so many times - presumably her idea was that when her policies resulted in economic growth, she would become popular enough to win a GE on her record. That was always wildly ambitious, and perhaps to even attempt it was nutty, though I find it faintly heroic. I'm not sure why it's making you 'lol' so much though, given that she's been replaced by someone who isn't trying to make the economy grow at all (the opposite seems to be the case, unless he's just plain thick as shit), and frankly doesn't seem to be trying to make a decent fist of the General Election either.
    I'm sorry - I can't help being curious, because you seem to be pretty much the only person on earth who can't see what an unmitigated disaster Liz Truss was.

    Please relieve my curiosity and tell me whether it's a sexual thing or what?
    Liz, despite being loony, got one big thing right.
    Britain needs to grow.

    This sounds incredibly obvious, but it seems that it’s a truth that evades almost all of the governing party and likely most of the Opposition.
    Right. That would be why economic growth is the unquestioned mantra of every elected politician in this country.
    It really isn’t.
    It is so.
    Green Party is a sufficient counterexample, in at least one important sense of 'economic growth' - which they do question, at least in its nature.

    Edit: and add the Scottish Green Party, too. That's two parties.
    Do the Scottish Greens actually care about anything other than gender?
    Presumably not since it is that issue, in part, which has led to them criticising the English and Welsh Greens. Who I'm sure are just hard right troglydites or something.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,408
    Leon said:

    I am in a kind of particle collider on the Red Sea where dedicated scientists are deliberately engineering a dangerous collision between the two fundamentally opposed universal forces of “endless free alcohol” and “five British journalists on a bender”

    Those don't sound like opposed forces, indeed their very strong attraction to one another is the problem.
  • CookieCookie Posts: 11,184

    DavidL said:

    Sammy Allardiche once again weaves his magic at Leeds. His teams are hard to beat.

    Isn't this the problem with English football? The most successful coaches are bereft of imagination, style and flair.

    Why might this be? My own personal view is something deeper rooted in English culture. People with such qualities wouldn't dream of managing others but insist on treading their own path.
    English football has the best league in the world and one of the top 4 international teams in the world. Sure it has problems but plenty of very good coaches now at all levels, in a way that there was not twenty years ago.

    Why? We embraced immigration of people and new ideas, after decades of battling it and restricting the number of foreigners.
    Doesn't this just sum up what is wrong?

    The answer to everything is getting foreigners to do it. As for top 4 international side - they haven't won anything for 60 years. No English manager has won the League in 30 years and precious few have had success abroad. However none of this matters as there'll always be foreigners to do things for us.

    Maybe there are now actually good quality English coaches. We'll see, not many have made it to the top yet. The Premier League being the best in the world is due to money. Probably the global interest resulting from language and legacy of empire.
    It's hard to see in what respect Englosh football is 'better' than it was in, say, the late 80s/early 90s. I'd swap the overpriced, sugar-coated confection we have now for the affordable authenticity of those days in a heartbeat. I suspect most would do the same.
  • CookieCookie Posts: 11,184
    Cookie said:

    DavidL said:

    Sammy Allardiche once again weaves his magic at Leeds. His teams are hard to beat.

    Isn't this the problem with English football? The most successful coaches are bereft of imagination, style and flair.

    Why might this be? My own personal view is something deeper rooted in English culture. People with such qualities wouldn't dream of managing others but insist on treading their own path.
    English football has the best league in the world and one of the top 4 international teams in the world. Sure it has problems but plenty of very good coaches now at all levels, in a way that there was not twenty years ago.

    Why? We embraced immigration of people and new ideas, after decades of battling it and restricting the number of foreigners.
    Doesn't this just sum up what is wrong?

    The answer to everything is getting foreigners to do it. As for top 4 international side - they haven't won anything for 60 years. No English manager has won the League in 30 years and precious few have had success abroad. However none of this matters as there'll always be foreigners to do things for us.

    Maybe there are now actually good quality English coaches. We'll see, not many have made it to the top yet. The Premier League being the best in the world is due to money. Probably the global interest resulting from language and legacy of empire.
    It's hard to see in what respect Englosh football is 'better' than it was in, say, the late 80s/early 90s. I'd swap the overpriced, sugar-coated confection we have now for the affordable authenticity of those days in a heartbeat. I suspect most would do the same.
    I post this from time to time - but watch this and tell me whether what he have today or what we had then is better.
    https://youtu.be/WCm3bS6wXvk
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 12,415
    Leon said:

    Talking of travels. Just had my fourth free mojito in Hurghada



    Is that the hand of God?
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,408
    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    pigeon said:

    viewcode said:

    I suppose one way to deal with the red Tory patter is to lean right into it.


    Perhaps we owe @bigjohnowls an apology... :(
    Yep, it looks very much like Labour are going to go into the next election on a platform - if you ignore their rhetoric and a few eye-catching but token policy flourishes in areas like green energy - of managing the existing state of affairs less incompetently than the Tories. They're going to go our of their way to change as little as possible.
    Your march Left is heartening to see. I can't reassure you totally, since I don't know for sure, but my sense is Starmer is all about derisking the GE as far as he possibly can, and that once in power (assuming he does win) he'll prove a bit more radical than you think. So don't write him off comrade.
    That's exactly what I keep warning of on here: he's saying what he needs to say to get in.

    Others say it's the usual Tory scare tactics relating to a Labour leader in opposition.

    But, look at what his own side say - like your good self - and the evidence at how he behaved to his own base once he won the Labour leadership election.

    You don't know what you'll get with SKS.
    Cheer up, flag shagging may become a protected characteristic.


    There's no 'patronising contempt' from me, it's just that I don't like to see the Union Jack all over the place. It lowers the tone.
    It "lowers the tone".

    Jesus. It's the flag of your f-ing country.

    The only possible explanation for this is intellectual snobbery: you think you're above having any form of group social identity (save that of your education and values) and look down contemptuously on those that do.
    It really isn't that. There's a place for our national flag. Big international sports events, for example, flagship (pun not meant) government buildings. But I don't want to see it as a common feature of life, always behind politicians when they speak, on hats and tee shirts and umbrellas, in municipal premises, in shops, people flying it in their houses and gardens, flags flags flags all over the place. That gives me the willies. I find it tacky at best and at worst rather sinister.
    Each to their own. I personally find the idea use of the flag is often sinister to be bizarre, and whilst it can be amusing to note the use of flags next to or behind politicians (and I've had plenty of fun mocking very manufactured political imagery) and the like the 'flag shagging' complaints generally appear to be the more hysterical reaction, you'd think any use of a flag was akin to fascism the way some people react oneline.

    You look at most national leaders or diplomatic events and there's flags all over the place, it is pretty normal imagery, so if people don't personally like it being flown about the place then fine, that's their preference, but from my own position I just don't see it as a big deal.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,408
    edited May 2023
    Cookie said:

    DavidL said:

    Sammy Allardiche once again weaves his magic at Leeds. His teams are hard to beat.

    Isn't this the problem with English football? The most successful coaches are bereft of imagination, style and flair.

    Why might this be? My own personal view is something deeper rooted in English culture. People with such qualities wouldn't dream of managing others but insist on treading their own path.
    English football has the best league in the world and one of the top 4 international teams in the world. Sure it has problems but plenty of very good coaches now at all levels, in a way that there was not twenty years ago.

    Why? We embraced immigration of people and new ideas, after decades of battling it and restricting the number of foreigners.
    Doesn't this just sum up what is wrong?

    The answer to everything is getting foreigners to do it. As for top 4 international side - they haven't won anything for 60 years. No English manager has won the League in 30 years and precious few have had success abroad. However none of this matters as there'll always be foreigners to do things for us.

    Maybe there are now actually good quality English coaches. We'll see, not many have made it to the top yet. The Premier League being the best in the world is due to money. Probably the global interest resulting from language and legacy of empire.
    It's hard to see in what respect Englosh football is 'better' than it was in, say, the late 80s/early 90s. I'd swap the overpriced, sugar-coated confection we have now for the affordable authenticity of those days in a heartbeat. I suspect most would do the same.
    I don't even understand what's being complained about here. I get the affordable part, I presume this is about tickets and food etc costing a lot more, but is 'authenticity' code for something? What makes the game more authentic?
  • noneoftheabovenoneoftheabove Posts: 20,454

    DavidL said:

    Sammy Allardiche once again weaves his magic at Leeds. His teams are hard to beat.

    Isn't this the problem with English football? The most successful coaches are bereft of imagination, style and flair.

    Why might this be? My own personal view is something deeper rooted in English culture. People with such qualities wouldn't dream of managing others but insist on treading their own path.
    English football has the best league in the world and one of the top 4 international teams in the world. Sure it has problems but plenty of very good coaches now at all levels, in a way that there was not twenty years ago.

    Why? We embraced immigration of people and new ideas, after decades of battling it and restricting the number of foreigners.
    Doesn't this just sum up what is wrong?

    The answer to everything is getting foreigners to do it. As for top 4 international side - they haven't won anything for 60 years. No English manager has won the League in 30 years and precious few have had success abroad. However none of this matters as there'll always be foreigners to do things for us.

    Maybe there are now actually good quality English coaches. We'll see, not many have made it to the top yet. The Premier League being the best in the world is due to money. Probably the global interest resulting from language and legacy of empire.
    The coaches exposed to foreign influences are mostly in their twenties, thirties and forties now. England have won World Cup U20, U17 and two UEFA U19s in the last seven years under that generation of coaches.

    A bit weird to blame them for the lack of success of the national team before they were even born.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,408
    Cookie said:

    Cookie said:

    DavidL said:

    Sammy Allardiche once again weaves his magic at Leeds. His teams are hard to beat.

    Isn't this the problem with English football? The most successful coaches are bereft of imagination, style and flair.

    Why might this be? My own personal view is something deeper rooted in English culture. People with such qualities wouldn't dream of managing others but insist on treading their own path.
    English football has the best league in the world and one of the top 4 international teams in the world. Sure it has problems but plenty of very good coaches now at all levels, in a way that there was not twenty years ago.

    Why? We embraced immigration of people and new ideas, after decades of battling it and restricting the number of foreigners.
    Doesn't this just sum up what is wrong?

    The answer to everything is getting foreigners to do it. As for top 4 international side - they haven't won anything for 60 years. No English manager has won the League in 30 years and precious few have had success abroad. However none of this matters as there'll always be foreigners to do things for us.

    Maybe there are now actually good quality English coaches. We'll see, not many have made it to the top yet. The Premier League being the best in the world is due to money. Probably the global interest resulting from language and legacy of empire.
    It's hard to see in what respect Englosh football is 'better' than it was in, say, the late 80s/early 90s. I'd swap the overpriced, sugar-coated confection we have now for the affordable authenticity of those days in a heartbeat. I suspect most would do the same.
    I post this from time to time - but watch this and tell me whether what he have today or what we had then is better.
    https://youtu.be/WCm3bS6wXvk
    It looks like football but not in HD. The game is remarkably unchanged.
This discussion has been closed.