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This from Today’s FT should really worry Rishi – politicalbetting.com
This from Today’s FT should really worry Rishi – politicalbetting.com
We are so used to the Tories being the party that attracts big private donations that makes this political development stand out. It is a huge win for Starmer not just for the campaign cash that his party is getting but for the source and the reasons.
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Their job is complicated by the fact that Sunak has been better at mending fences than his predecessors.
Looking more sensible over the EU than the party which took us out, without saying very much at all, ought not to be difficult.
https://twitter.com/SamRamani2/status/1665463029977186312
https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1665524084082343936
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2023/jun/05/russia-ukraine-war-live-moscow-claims-to-have-repelled-major-attack-in-donetsk-belgorod-energy-facility-on-fire
...The Ukrainian defence ministry and military did not immediately respond to written requests for comment regarding the claimed attack.
Ukrainian defence minister Oleksii Reznikov did however publish a cryptic message on Twitter on Sunday, quoting Depeche Mode’s track Enjoy the Silence...
I suspect we're unlikely to hear much if substance about the counteroffensive fir several days. News from the Ukrainian side is going to be delayed until it's no longer tactically relevant.
Defeat looks inevitable. Decimation likely, a total rout still possible.
Still, it's good for Labour and it's another indication. A close source inside Westminster circles tells me that everyone is cosying up to Starmer's Labour. This happened in the run up to 1997.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/06/04/demand-35-year-mortgages-first-time-buyers-rates/
https://inews.co.uk/inews-lifestyle/money/property-and-mortgages/mortgage-rates-soar-lends-hike-interest-monthly-repayments-tripling-2382162
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/06/04/city-london-regulation-reforms-xavier-rolet-lse-chief
Boris infamously declared 'f*ck business', something unthinkable under New Labour
Some of the right-wingers on here don't like me stating and re-stating this but as we've had to put up with years of tory clusterf*ck it's your turn to drink the hemlock.
So are labour going to lower taxes and regulation in the City, as that is the criticism in this article and is vey much part of the Telegraph agenda ?
For the record, I am not particularly enthused about Labour but I think getting across the 325 threshold will be the start of a better Britain, for now. It will take a long time. There are some massive and fundamental fissures that will take years to fix. It's not just the staggeringly high budget deficit but issues like housing and changes to work patterns, with serious issues around climate change and our need for renewable energies.
When, as I believe, Labour win a handsome majority I will be happy for perhaps a day. Then the reality will set in.
To be specific, the one absolutely obvious route to greater prosperity, for lower taxes eventually, is for Labour to take Britain back into an economic union with our near-neighbours on the European continent.
I think this is due to expectations management; if the public think there's going to be a landslide, then they're less likely to either vote, or tactically vote. If they think it's going to be close, then they're more likely to turn out to vote out this government.
why do I think there'll be a landslide? Because short of a black swan event, I cannot see how this government can turn around the public's perception of them. And whilst I don't think Starmer is compelling, or even good, he's fresh.
My usual rule of a PM and/or government getting tired aften ten years also comes into play.
Beyond that, it depends, I think on voter turnout. If the voters actively turnout to get the Tories out, then that's your landslide. If it is a vote strike by Tory voters, then not.
All of which means that Starmer will be the next PM. Hence the donors switching to Labour. It's not the ideology they love, but they want to be backing the winners.
It will be the same with Murdoch. He backs winners. He will come out for SKS.
@Miklosvar posted that: 'I am seeing on the same page both GE 2017 type result and "bloodbath". Which is it?'
This missed the point that in calculating the starting position for the 2024 election, we should mentally be using June 2017 not December 2019. The swing to Labour needed, for example, comes from the hung parliament, not from Boris' Get Brexit Done election. I am proposing that for punters, we need to consider the December 2019 as a one-off and not use it as the starting position for what will happen next time.
@Casino_Royale dismissed my reasoning because it was 'ruled by emotion' and that I attack the person, which is rather ironic ...
More importantly, CR bases his counter on the notion of a 'Centre-right bloc vote'. I find this a curiously old-fashioned view of political intention in this country, and lacking any obvious basis in fact. There is no such 'bloc' vote. But what I think we can observe is when a caucus moves on mass as a reaction to something. So, for example, if home owners feel threatened by one party's policies. Jeremy Corbyn 'did' succeed in scaring off middle Britain (CR's centre-right bloc vote) and in the past we have seen similar REACTIVE movements. There is simply no evidence that Keir Starmer has generated that kind of reaction on the centre-right, despite the best intentions of the Mail and Express to scare people otherwise.
The centre-right are not scared by Labour, so there is no bloc. It is diffuse and ready to vote against the current Conservative Party. Indeed, if there is any reactive bloc it is precisely that: a hostility against the current governing party that I have not detected since the mid 1990's.
*Very briefly: Dec 19 was a one-off. Essentially it had one raison d'etre: to 'Get Brexit Done,' coming on the back of a deadlocked parliament that irritated everyone, myself included. Boris galvanised that vote against an unelectable Trotskyite anti-Semite. The last proper General Election was 08 June 2017, which resulted in a hung parliament.
Dambisa Moyo made a great speech in the HoL about it. We have an overegulated and soon to,be overtaxed regime.
You cannot blame businesses taking their listings elsewhere.
Decimation would of course lead to loss of a mere 33 seats, but I think we all know what Cicero meant.
Everything is worry to Sunak. A few quid to pay off Labour's debts doesn't sound too alarming in the scale if things.
I. Any case who is the money from and what do they want for it?
Other than that, I don't know.
When, if, Labour come into Government you will find me being critical of them when I feel it's required. I'm not a Labour stooge and remain rather unenthused about them. But I think this country badly needs to be rid of the current Conservative Gov't who are tired, and worse.
And for the record to CR, all of my most successful punts have come when placing bets on causes I would not personally support. Head, not heart, when betting! That's why I'm arguing that the starting point for 2024 is really the hung parliament of 2017, the more so because the 2019 Brexit election has proved to be such a disappointing cause.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-65764041
'to kill a large number of something, or to reduce something severely'
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/decimate
and pedant:
'a person who is too interested in formal rules and small details that are not important'
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/pedant
hmmm. 'pedant' doesn't seem quite right here, but maybe it will have to do.
I saw today this r/AskHistorians Reddit thread saying that Cambridge’s position here is standard, accepted history: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1405ht8/do_you_agree_with_the_recent_statement_from/
A self harming commitment to preventing new development in the North Sea.
A commitment to ever more extravagant "windfall taxes" making our tax regime both arbitrary and unpredictable, discouraging new investment.
A commitment to abolishing Non Dom status on the basis that it may (or may not) produce more tax.
A series of spending commitments supposedly funded by the above including some interesting ideas on training.
It is not an economic policy that is likely to lead to success. Even the windfall taxes are one offs which seem to be funding ongoing programs. I worry about the competence of the incoming government. It looks no improvement on this one, possibly even a step back.
Perhaps instead of blocs and Middle England, we should consider core vote. Which is an onion, of course. The ultimate core vote for the Conservative Party is around 25%, with a softer layer taking it to 30%.
The real issue about leads etc for Labour is that the other parties have their core votes as well. Getting 45% is difficult. More is beyond that.
So it will come down to vote strikes/turnout/tactical voting
It can also be fun! Holopoint and Beat Saber are both great games.
Quite willing to look at that literally in certain cases.
Get those right, and the economic sums come out a lot easier.
If anything, the problem for the Conservatives will be a lack of crosses.
It's pretty clear that he doesn't like Starmer, and would have to pull of a heck of a U turn to back him. And the Sun/Talk Radio are much more explicitly right wing than they used to be. As are what is left of their audience.
But Rupe does hate backing losers.
29 years later, and our phones may well have the same sort of graphics power. Yet VR still hasn't taken off as much as they promised.
VR may have some uses (architecture and interior design, for example) but I really doubt that people really want to be wearing headset and earphones for very long.
Alternatively, did anyone want 3D televisions?
I think there will be a Lab majority, barring any black swans, and not least because I anticipate a better result in Scotland, but it’s very hard to say where it falls between 1 and 100.
I wear glasses the entire day.
I first remember trying out a VR headset in the nineties; there was a place in Nottingham that offered a twenty minute go on a (fairly shonky) sword’n’sorcery type game. The immersion was extraordinary, but I definitely had more fun playing Street Fighter 2 on the arcade machine in the queue.
Twenty years later I was invited to a thing at Facebook’s swanky (then new) London HQ for a showcase of their oculus headset and it’s various applications.
This time the free booze and canapés trumped the tech, but the feeling was the same. Maybe less of a gimmick, but for something so immersive, it still felt limited.
I for one think you are probably right on the result, but most people don’t experience the visceral anger in their daily lives because we just go about our daily lives and talk about everything other than politics.
I do agree with you on the posts attacking you. The attacks were very hypocritical in their content as they are often unnecessarily rude. Squareroot2 for example is often just rude to posters. I never understand why.
Starmer prosecuted and jailed Rupe’s journalists, he’ll never forgive or forget.
Boeing have spent time trying to integrate AR into aeroplane manufacture and servicing, an area where complicated written and diagrammatic instructions have to be followed closely. They reduced the number of ‘follow-ups’ by 90%, even with older technology.
https://innovateenergynow.com/resources/down-to-the-wire-how-boeing-uses-ar-in-assembly
IIRC Mercedes-Benz looked at something similar, as an aid for training their service technicians on new car models.
That’s thousands of devices at most though, not the millions, or tens of millions, that a company such as Apple will be looking to sell.
The current lot are openly corrupt and massively incompetent. Just replacing that with rational policy done properly - even if we disagree with it - would be a step forward.
In any case, I don’t see Labour doing anything like, for example, installing Dale Vince at the top of the BBC, or awarding him government contracts in the hundreds of millions range.
*worth noting that even 2019 had a majority of voters voting for parties wanting a further referendum. It was only FPTP that gave Johnson a majority to "get Brexit done".
Perhaps instead of blocs and Middle England, we should consider core vote. Exactly. Plus tactical voting / tacit agreements between opposition parties.
Russia 'buying back' arms parts exported to Myanmar and India
https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/Ukraine-war/Russia-buying-back-arms-parts-exported-to-Myanmar-and-India
Probably good for Britain, and the sort of thing that couldn't happen to a nicer proprietor
However, what I expect is Murdoch will split his support, the Times will endorse Starmer Labour and the Sun will still back the Tories so he doesn't lose either way
Point of order on the Sun being more right wing than ever - I’d argue the Kelvin McKenzie years further rightwards than today (witness his notorious characterisation of his core readership).
"The Telegraph article is lazy. It misrepresents the state of academic research into early English identity by downplaying recent research, ignores tonnes of evidence and scholarship, and has no real interest in learning. It's shoddy tabloid content that does its readers a disservice, and exists to get a reaction from readers who want to slam researchers for doing their jobs. That gets good engagement, and therefore maintains the value of advertising space. Intellectual honesty, integrity, or curiosity were not factors in its authorship and we should not pretend that it is anything other than cynical. "
Just substitute "...into early English identity..." with virtually anything else, and it's useful for almost anything the Telegraph presents on any scientific area.
Anglo Saxons certainly were an accepted group, from the Saxon coast in Germany and Anglia in southern Denmark
In fairness, there are some organs and writers that balance the need for insight and quality with appeal, but the proliferation of ragebait on social media is more understandable when you see that it is only written to generate clicks.
A statement signed by more than 70 academics in 2020 argued that the furore over the term “Anglo-Saxon” was an American import, with an open letter stating: “The conditions in which the term is encountered, and how it is perceived, are very different in the USA from elsewhere.
“In the UK the period has been carefully presented and discussed in popular and successful documentaries and exhibitions over many years.
“The term ‘Anglo-Saxon’ is historically authentic in the sense that from the 8th century it was used externally to refer to a dominant population in southern Britain. Its earliest uses, therefore, embody exactly the significant issues we can expect any general ethnic or national label to represent.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/06/05/ftse-100-markets-live-news-oil-prices-live/
Which you ignored as it doesn't confirm with your Marxist view of history which ignores all historical fact to suit its agenda.
Did the Angles and Saxons see *themselves* as a distinct ethnic group / groups?
Secondly, one of those standards is giving citations, as are given in that answer. You can go read the original research on this topic.
On Anglo-Saxons:
https://twitter.com/holland_tom/status/1661815607853981716
Also, I can strongly recommend Marc Morris' great book The Anglo-Saxons.
Not an obviously bad idea given the unreasonable effectiveness of Osborne's pledge in seeing off GB's snap election.
"Anglo-Saxon is a term that was rarely used by Anglo-Saxons themselves. It is likely they identified as ængli, Seaxe or, more probably, a local or tribal name such as Mierce, Cantie, Gewisse, Westseaxe, or Norþanhymbre. After the Viking Age, an Anglo-Scandinavian identity developed in the Danelaw."
It seems to me that Anglo-Saxons were a thing as much as Celts or Normans - you could make a case that all three are quite vague groupings. But then, every ethnic grouping turns out to be quite vague and I’ll defined if you look at it.