Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. Sign in or register to get started.

LAB increasing its lead in the “Red Wall” – politicalbetting.com

12346

Comments

  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,385

    Good to see Tom Watson's getting a little attention.

    Starmer's a teensy weensy (*) hypocritical in going on about Johnson's list, when Starmer put Watson's name forward after it had initially been rejected by the committee.

    (*) Actually, a lot.

    I'm sure Keir Starmer must now resign, after all, he's clearly as bad if not worse than Boris Johnson
    That wasn't what I'm saying.

    But as you only have that sh*t response, I take it that you were perfectly happy with Watson getting a peerage?
    What we all need to know is:

    Did Watson eat a curry?

    If so, he must go. And go now.
    Wouldn't that only apply if he paid cash for it?
  • OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 15,779
    AlistairM said:

    Ed Conway
    @EdConwaySky
    ·
    2h
    It’s not totally implausible that the squeeze for those with mortgages could actually be WORSE than in the 1990s.

    https://twitter.com/EdConwaySky/status/1668987423643119623

    What did people expect would happen? People have had years of almost zero interest and they thought this would last forever and could borrow vast sums, in some cases on interest-only mortgages. The interest rates we had were way below historical norms and there would always be a moment when interest rates would rise.

    The rate rises are going to punish the reckless and ill-advised. Unfortunately, there are vast numbers of these. The housing market has a big correction coming its way. Good news at least for those who have not yet been able to get on the housing ladder.
    Interest only mortgages are nuts.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 28,368

    Foxy said:

    Good to see Tom Watson's getting a little attention.

    Starmer's a teensy weensy (*) hypocritical in going on about Johnson's list, when Starmer put Watson's name forward after it had initially been rejected by the committee.

    (*) Actually, a lot.

    I'm sure Keir Starmer must now resign, after all, he's clearly as bad if not worse than Boris Johnson
    One word: jalfrezi

    Do your own research
    It's a bhuna to people who want to have a go at him.
    Several PBers certainly seem to get a bhuna whenever curries are mentioned
    Jessops saw the photograph of Keith with a beer. The camera never lies donchaknow.

    ....

    Good to see Tom Watson's getting a little attention.

    Starmer's a teensy weensy (*) hypocritical in going on about Johnson's list, when Starmer put Watson's name forward after it had initially been rejected by the committee.

    (*) Actually, a lot.

    I have some very solid anecdotal evidence from the time (1980s) to suggest Carl Beech was not entirely wrong. Beech took allegations that were already in the public domain and embellished them as his own experience which was patently untrue.

    The evidence I have is about someone now dead so I can comfortably share my story, but I won't. One of Beech's greatest disservices from being exposed as a 24 carat bullshitter was that those who probably still had questions to answer (even if they were now dead) have been given a clean bill of health.

    Watson, by taking Beech's bait was very unwise, not just for his harassment of the innocent but for his inadvertent exoneration of the guilty.

    Jessops believes the Watson parry was a magnificent win for Sunak today so who am I to rain on his parade?
    Your last line rather makes the rest of your rant a bit sus.

    I've not said it was a magnificent 'win' for Sunak. I've not mentioned anything like that. All I said was that Starmer was being hypocritical with his criticism.

    My story about McAlpine: back in 1997, I got an invite into parliament. Whilst there, the guy who invited me mentioned the rumours about McAlpine (because I was interested in engineering). The allegations about McAlpine were in the 'public domain'; that does not make them true. He had to live with rumours and tittle-tattle behind his back - until people were stupid enough to actually put it down in writing.
    My anecdotes do not relate to McAlpine.

    The sources of the stories I have been told about one of Beech's "victims" also passed on details of Janner, which turned out to be incontrovertibly true.
    Sounds like the ex-coppers who will tell you that Stephen Lawrence was a big time gangster.
    It's nothing like Stephen Lawrence, but you are right one source was old bill.

    ....

    Good to see Tom Watson's getting a little attention.

    Starmer's a teensy weensy (*) hypocritical in going on about Johnson's list, when Starmer put Watson's name forward after it had initially been rejected by the committee.

    (*) Actually, a lot.

    I have some very solid anecdotal evidence from the time (1980s) to suggest Carl Beech was not entirely wrong. Beech took allegations that were already in the public domain and embellished them as his own experience which was patently untrue.

    The evidence I have is about someone now dead so I can comfortably share my story, but I won't. One of Beech's greatest disservices from being exposed as a 24 carat bullshitter was that those who probably still had questions to answer (even if they were now dead) have been given a clean bill of health.

    Watson, by taking Beech's bait was very unwise, not just for his harassment of the innocent but for his inadvertent exoneration of the guilty.

    Jessops believes the Watson parry was a magnificent win for Sunak today so who am I to rain on his parade?
    Your last line rather makes the rest of your rant a bit sus.

    I've not said it was a magnificent 'win' for Sunak. I've not mentioned anything like that. All I said was that Starmer was being hypocritical with his criticism.

    My story about McAlpine: back in 1997, I got an invite into parliament. Whilst there, the guy who invited me mentioned the rumours about McAlpine (because I was interested in engineering). The allegations about McAlpine were in the 'public domain'; that does not make them true. He had to live with rumours and tittle-tattle behind his back - until people were stupid enough to actually put it down in writing.
    My anecdotes do not relate to McAlpine.

    The sources of the stories I have been told about one of Beech's "victims" also passed on details of Janner, which turned out to be incontrovertibly true.
    Despite lots of allegations, never stood trial, never found guilty, so I don’t think think incontrovertibly true can be accurate.
    You may believe it so.
    I am quite comfortable with my view of Janner.
  • bigjohnowlsbigjohnowls Posts: 22,660
    Carol Vorderman has calculated SKS Labour correctly

    Carol Vorderman
    @carolvorders
    Believe me Wes Streeting (Shadow Health Secretary who's received nearly £200,000 payments from private healthcare companies!!!),
    @UKLabour
    made a terrible mistake last night. You seem very happy to have taken away some of our freedoms. Are you just Tories in a different colour?
  • viewcodeviewcode Posts: 22,075

    ....

    Good to see Tom Watson's getting a little attention.

    Starmer's a teensy weensy (*) hypocritical in going on about Johnson's list, when Starmer put Watson's name forward after it had initially been rejected by the committee.

    (*) Actually, a lot.

    I have some very solid anecdotal evidence from the time (1980s) to suggest Carl Beech was not entirely wrong. Beech took allegations that were already in the public domain and embellished them as his own experience which was patently untrue.

    The evidence I have is about someone now dead so I can comfortably share my story, but I won't. One of Beech's greatest disservices from being exposed as a 24 carat bullshitter was that those who probably still had questions to answer (even if they were now dead) have been given a clean bill of health.

    Watson, by taking Beech's bait was very unwise, not just for his harassment of the innocent but for his inadvertent exoneration of the guilty.

    Jessops believes the Watson parry was a magnificent win for Sunak today so who am I to rain on his parade?
    Your last line rather makes the rest of your rant a bit sus.

    I've not said it was a magnificent 'win' for Sunak. I've not mentioned anything like that. All I said was that Starmer was being hypocritical with his criticism.

    My story about McAlpine: back in 1997, I got an invite into parliament. Whilst there, the guy who invited me mentioned the rumours about McAlpine (because I was interested in engineering). The allegations about McAlpine were in the 'public domain'; that does not make them true. He had to live with rumours and tittle-tattle behind his back - until people were stupid enough to actually put it down in writing.
    My anecdotes do not relate to McAlpine.

    The sources of the stories I have been told about one of Beech's "victims" also passed on details of Janner, which turned out to be incontrovertibly true.
    I'm sure you'll understand that "a bloke I know told me" is not sufficient proof.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,153
    eek said:

    ..

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    Sam Freedman had posted a good article, based on a detailed investigation, on what’s wrong with the NHS.

    In large part, we just don’t bother investing in capital infrastructure (beds, CT machines, computer systems). We are strikingly out of sync with global norms.

    It’s the British economic problem writ large.

    https://twitter.com/samfr/status/1668883001231458304?s=46&t=L9g_woCIqbo1MTuBFCK0xg

    Nah bollocks. Or rather, maybe.

    But rather, it's such a large institution with no proper management or accountability that many of its employees don't really care about the level of service that is dispensed to its "customers". If they lose a few patients here and there unless they have been unplugging the life support machine to do the hoovering they know that no one will really know or care.

    Apart from the family, obvs, but they, together with the patients, are the least important part of the NHS as far as the NHS is concerned.
    OK. Did you read the article?
    Of course not. I relied on you to precis it for me. We can't go around reading all the articles posted on PB. That is why we have posters posting posts.
    Fair.

    Low levels of capital investment was one of three issues cited. The others were loss of experienced staff and replacement with inexperienced ones, probably exacerbated by Brexit; and poor and under-resourced management, confounded by pisspoor target-setting by central government.

    When you add the above to the massive backlog created by Covid, you get the current collapse.
    The NHS's issues are the same as most public sector body's issues - a perverse incentive flow. Money comes from the Government. More money comes when the service is seen to be in need, even more comes when it is in crisis. If the money came instead from the end users, who were able to choose which treatment providers to patronise, medical treatment would be more like food shopping, and the better for it. The same goes for schools.
    If you want to see perverse incentives, check out the US health system.
    Indeed, but again there, the incentive flow is f-d up, because most US policies are designed for someone to make a vast profit.
    The US health system is effectively a massive tax on the US economy. It likely flatters US GDP figures (in total and per capita), and takes money away from US consumers who would be even RICHER than European counterparts.
    I don't know enough about it to really comment, but I can well believe you. The USA system is usually held up as the bogeyman to those against the 'privatisation' of the NHS. But that's really a false choice. What the NHS needs is the empowerment of the health consumer. Health budget allotment should follow the user and be paid upon their successful departure from the system, alive and well. That would completely remove the need to battle all the dragons - waste, lack of attentiveness, lack of appropriate facilities - all of it.
    Giving end users choice can be an effective way to allocate resources, but you need people to make some sort of informed choice. Healthcare is very, very technical. Most people do not have the requisite knowledge to make many of the choices. We should listen to service users more, both at an individual level and in terms of planning, but I am sceptical of these claims that if only we had individual health budgets, everything would suddenly work.

    I think things are a good deal simpler than we give them credit for. Bad hospitals kill lots of people, for a start. Yes, there are nuances, but in a consumer-led system, you would have something like TripAdvisor for hospitals.
    They tried that years ago - from memory the heart specialist who came out worst from the survey was the one who took the riskiest patients that no one else would touch.

    Hence if you looked at the overall picture his results were terrible but if you just looked at the profile of his typical patient he was 50% better than everyone else on the list.

    Strangely enough those lists stopped being published soon after they started.
    That is the fundamental problem with these kinds of lists: those who take on the easiest jobs get the best "grades".
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,385
    The more pertinent question about Watson - and the one that reveals he was only in it for partisan advantage - is why was he very selective about the politicians he named?

    Answer - because naming the Labour interviewee might have been politically embarrassing.
  • bigjohnowlsbigjohnowls Posts: 22,660

    Wes Streeting MP
    @wesstreeting
    ·
    22h
    An unelected House of Lords can’t block an elected House of Commons.

    Carol Vorderman
    @carolvorders
    Believe me Wes Streeting (Shadow Health Secretary who's received nearly £200,000 payments from private healthcare companies!!!),
    @UKLabour
    made a terrible mistake last night. You seem very happy to have taken away some of our freedoms. Are you just Tories in a different colour?

    I am Carol Vorderman and I claim my prize!!
  • ohnotnowohnotnow Posts: 3,785
    Leon said:

    What is remarkable about American beer is that they used to have pretty much the worst beer in the rich world. Now they the best, or some of the best

    All changed in about 30-40 years. I remember Sam Adams coming out in about 1985. An ancient German recipe (from Cincinnati!) reimagined in Boston

    That’s probably when their beer revolution began

    I think they're in a bit of danger of spoiling their brand (here in the UK at least). So many sugary, overly strong (like 15%) brews being shipped out. "Triple muffin caramel hazelnut and maple syrup - 14.5%!" and just tastes like a diabetic coma.
  • OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 15,779

    eek said:

    AlistairM said:

    Ed Conway
    @EdConwaySky
    ·
    2h
    It’s not totally implausible that the squeeze for those with mortgages could actually be WORSE than in the 1990s.

    https://twitter.com/EdConwaySky/status/1668987423643119623

    What did people expect would happen? People have had years of almost zero interest and they thought this would last forever and could borrow vast sums, in some cases on interest-only mortgages. The interest rates we had were way below historical norms and there would always be a moment when interest rates would rise.

    The rate rises are going to punish the reckless and ill-advised. Unfortunately, there are vast numbers of these. The housing market has a big correction coming its way. Good news at least for those who have not yet been able to get on the housing ladder.
    The thing with a mortgage is that when you remortgage you should be remortgaging on a smaller capital amount than whatever you first borrowed - so a higher mortgage rate on a smaller amount isn't as bad as it could have been and should have always been expected at some point.

    A capital-repayment mortgage typically has almost always cost less than renting the same property, so anyone who hasn't been repaying capital when interest-rates were effectively non-existent and inevitably going to rise has made a very foolish decision - but even still will be in a comparable position to someone who has been renting anyway so not the end of the world despite their foolishness.
    Problem is unless you start over paying rapidly your don’t significantly reduce the total capital owed in the first few years.

    Your best bet would to be take the pain now and start over paying your mortgage as if the interest was 4% not 1.5%… those extra repayments will make the next mortgage (feel like) 4% rather than 6% because so much extra will have been paid off.

    Also with mortgage rates so high many people won’t be able to borrow so much going forward so expect prices to slowly drop.
    If you have a combination of forced sellers and an absence of buyers then prices can potentially fall quickly rather than slowly.

    People who took out long-term fixed rate loans when interest rates were low will be fine even if they go into negative equity on paper, but for the rest it will be very painful.
    One thing to bear in mind: interest rates are up because inflation is up. High inflation means house prices fall a lot in real terms even when prices don't fall much in nominal terms. As housing is a real asset, it is real prices that matter. As long as inflation (and wage inflation) stays high I am a bit sceptical about big nominal price declines for housing, personally. Some falls and a period of stagnant nominal prices, yes. Greater affordability as wages catch up.
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 23,485

    Foxy said:

    Good to see Tom Watson's getting a little attention.

    Starmer's a teensy weensy (*) hypocritical in going on about Johnson's list, when Starmer put Watson's name forward after it had initially been rejected by the committee.

    (*) Actually, a lot.

    I'm sure Keir Starmer must now resign, after all, he's clearly as bad if not worse than Boris Johnson
    One word: jalfrezi

    Do your own research
    It's a bhuna to people who want to have a go at him.
    Several PBers certainly seem to get a bhuna whenever curries are mentioned
    Jessops saw the photograph of Keith with a beer. The camera never lies donchaknow.

    ....

    Good to see Tom Watson's getting a little attention.

    Starmer's a teensy weensy (*) hypocritical in going on about Johnson's list, when Starmer put Watson's name forward after it had initially been rejected by the committee.

    (*) Actually, a lot.

    I have some very solid anecdotal evidence from the time (1980s) to suggest Carl Beech was not entirely wrong. Beech took allegations that were already in the public domain and embellished them as his own experience which was patently untrue.

    The evidence I have is about someone now dead so I can comfortably share my story, but I won't. One of Beech's greatest disservices from being exposed as a 24 carat bullshitter was that those who probably still had questions to answer (even if they were now dead) have been given a clean bill of health.

    Watson, by taking Beech's bait was very unwise, not just for his harassment of the innocent but for his inadvertent exoneration of the guilty.

    Jessops believes the Watson parry was a magnificent win for Sunak today so who am I to rain on his parade?
    Your last line rather makes the rest of your rant a bit sus.

    I've not said it was a magnificent 'win' for Sunak. I've not mentioned anything like that. All I said was that Starmer was being hypocritical with his criticism.

    My story about McAlpine: back in 1997, I got an invite into parliament. Whilst there, the guy who invited me mentioned the rumours about McAlpine (because I was interested in engineering). The allegations about McAlpine were in the 'public domain'; that does not make them true. He had to live with rumours and tittle-tattle behind his back - until people were stupid enough to actually put it down in writing.
    My anecdotes do not relate to McAlpine.

    The sources of the stories I have been told about one of Beech's "victims" also passed on details of Janner, which turned out to be incontrovertibly true.
    Sounds like the ex-coppers who will tell you that Stephen Lawrence was a big time gangster.
    It's nothing like Stephen Lawrence, but you are right one source was old bill.

    ....

    Good to see Tom Watson's getting a little attention.

    Starmer's a teensy weensy (*) hypocritical in going on about Johnson's list, when Starmer put Watson's name forward after it had initially been rejected by the committee.

    (*) Actually, a lot.

    I have some very solid anecdotal evidence from the time (1980s) to suggest Carl Beech was not entirely wrong. Beech took allegations that were already in the public domain and embellished them as his own experience which was patently untrue.

    The evidence I have is about someone now dead so I can comfortably share my story, but I won't. One of Beech's greatest disservices from being exposed as a 24 carat bullshitter was that those who probably still had questions to answer (even if they were now dead) have been given a clean bill of health.

    Watson, by taking Beech's bait was very unwise, not just for his harassment of the innocent but for his inadvertent exoneration of the guilty.

    Jessops believes the Watson parry was a magnificent win for Sunak today so who am I to rain on his parade?
    Your last line rather makes the rest of your rant a bit sus.

    I've not said it was a magnificent 'win' for Sunak. I've not mentioned anything like that. All I said was that Starmer was being hypocritical with his criticism.

    My story about McAlpine: back in 1997, I got an invite into parliament. Whilst there, the guy who invited me mentioned the rumours about McAlpine (because I was interested in engineering). The allegations about McAlpine were in the 'public domain'; that does not make them true. He had to live with rumours and tittle-tattle behind his back - until people were stupid enough to actually put it down in writing.
    My anecdotes do not relate to McAlpine.

    The sources of the stories I have been told about one of Beech's "victims" also passed on details of Janner, which turned out to be incontrovertibly true.
    Despite lots of allegations, never stood trial, never found guilty, so I don’t think think incontrovertibly true can be accurate.
    You may believe it so.
    I am quite comfortable with my view of Janner.
    With his rampant curry-bothering and energetic toy soldiering, it’s amazing Jessops still has time to run 578 marathons
    a day.
  • bigjohnowlsbigjohnowls Posts: 22,660
    https://twitter.com/gabbsthenewt/status/1669064066109677570/photo/1

    My new Party disagrees and has a policy of a fully public NHS
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 37,351

    algarkirk said:

    Leon said:

    Carnyx said:

    .

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Leon said:

    If the first three people to actually catch the newly pathogenic novel bat coronavirus were the three scientists working on pathologising a novel bat coronavirus in the special "pathogenic novel bat coronavirus lab" then, I submit, the evidence that it came from a fucking pangolin stew in a random market begins to look a tiny bit thin

    “‘Oh, my God, there’s been an outbreak of chocolaty goodness near Hershey, Pa. What do you think happened?’ “Like, ‘Oh I don’t know, maybe a steam shovel mated with a cocoa bean?’ Or it’s the f…ing chocolate factory! Maybe that’s it?” - Jon Stewart.
    I have tasted what Hershey make. It cannot be described as “chocolaty goodness”. Certainly not “goodness”. I’m not that convinced about “chocolaty”.
    Very true, but he was talking to a mostly American audience, whose experience of ‘chocolate’ most likely emanates from that factory in Pennsylvania.
    It is a sad country in many ways (and a wonderful one in others).
    Life with shit chocolate and shit cheese. Unbearable.
    Beer not too bad, mind. Had some very nice ones when over there a couple of times. But not enough to make me move.
    Actually, I’d say American beer - in variety and innovation and ubiquity - is now the best in the world

    You can walk into even the tiniest 7/11 in some backwoods non place and find a really decent selection of ice cold bottled craft beers, often excellent, sometimes superb

    I had one just yesterday on my hike in Shenandoah



    From Colorado
    As you are now in highlands of Virginia (I think) and as theology is currently hot PB topic, here is link to a great song greatly performed on the movie "Oh Brother Where Art Thou"

    \\\https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHamgwlQ1yo

    Made famous by the late, great Dr. Ralph Stanley, from the mountains of southwest VA.; the movie version by the "Soggy Mountain Boy" is a true tribute to Stanley and his band, the Clinch Mountain Boys".

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

    Who was perhaps the most prominent member of the Primitive Bapist Universalist Church, a very small fundamentalist denomination notable for belief that there is no Hell for anyone after death, because Christ attoined for ALL, and "it's hell enough on earth.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primitive_Baptist_Universalist
    The views of the PBUC are quite common in modern times in mainstream traditions, though often without their theological flavour. It's always seemed sensible to me. If it were true that JC has died for the sins of all, ie to put them away in the eyes of God, then if it works, all are saved. FWIW St Paul taught it pretty clearly (though sometimes he didn't). Quite warm on earth today.
    Concur.

    Interestingly, my own first exposure to the notion that hell is here on earth, that we torment our selves and each other here and now, more than plenty. That's what "Hell" is NOT in afterlife.

    Was my uncle who told me this, a devout Catholic who eventually became a monk. A papist No-Heller?!?

    Betya he and Dr. Ralph are currently having some interesting theological discussions and jam sessions.
    One of the best portrayals of hell that I ever read was CS Lewis' The Great Divorce.

    Hell is not full of devils shoving red hot pokers up peoples' arses. It's a seedy run-down place, a bit like Luton 15 years ago, filled with people who won't let go of grievances, hate, bitterness, anger and despair. Anybody can escape from this hell, and some do, but most actually choose not to.

    Another great portrayal of hell, IMHO, is The Sopranos. David Chase is an atheist, yet, if I did know that, I'd think he was quite a devout Christian (and it's a testimony to the way that Christian ideas pervade Western thought, even on the part of people who are not Christians). These are people who are nominally religious, but yet, determinedly refuse every opportunity to turn away from the darkness. They ruin their own lives, even more than they ruin other peoples'.
  • stodgestodge Posts: 13,874
    Evening all :)

    A couple of random thoughts - I just wonder if the Greens might fancy Selby & Ainsty. They took the former Harrogate Council Ward of Ouseburn in 2022 from the Conservatives and ran the Tories close in Spofforth. Labour has its seats in Selby itself while Tadcaster is dominated by Independents. Just a thought.

    Back to polling (about which I continue to know nothing), I'm interested to see YouGov, which we are told has the correct weighting in its subsamples, also has the persistently lowest Conservative vote shares. It shows 17% Don't Knows overall rising to 23% among the 2019 Conservative vote.

    The England sub sample breaks 43-28-11 which would be a 14% swing from Conservative to Labour (Greens on 9%, Reform on 7%) so the Lab-LD-Green share at a solid 63%.

    Savanta's UNS swing is 14.5% so all in the same ball park.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 28,368
    ...
    viewcode said:

    ....

    Good to see Tom Watson's getting a little attention.

    Starmer's a teensy weensy (*) hypocritical in going on about Johnson's list, when Starmer put Watson's name forward after it had initially been rejected by the committee.

    (*) Actually, a lot.

    I have some very solid anecdotal evidence from the time (1980s) to suggest Carl Beech was not entirely wrong. Beech took allegations that were already in the public domain and embellished them as his own experience which was patently untrue.

    The evidence I have is about someone now dead so I can comfortably share my story, but I won't. One of Beech's greatest disservices from being exposed as a 24 carat bullshitter was that those who probably still had questions to answer (even if they were now dead) have been given a clean bill of health.

    Watson, by taking Beech's bait was very unwise, not just for his harassment of the innocent but for his inadvertent exoneration of the guilty.

    Jessops believes the Watson parry was a magnificent win for Sunak today so who am I to rain on his parade?
    Your last line rather makes the rest of your rant a bit sus.

    I've not said it was a magnificent 'win' for Sunak. I've not mentioned anything like that. All I said was that Starmer was being hypocritical with his criticism.

    My story about McAlpine: back in 1997, I got an invite into parliament. Whilst there, the guy who invited me mentioned the rumours about McAlpine (because I was interested in engineering). The allegations about McAlpine were in the 'public domain'; that does not make them true. He had to live with rumours and tittle-tattle behind his back - until people were stupid enough to actually put it down in writing.
    My anecdotes do not relate to McAlpine.

    The sources of the stories I have been told about one of Beech's "victims" also passed on details of Janner, which turned out to be incontrovertibly true.
    I'm sure you'll understand that "a bloke I know told me" is not sufficient proof.
    I haven't mentioned the "victim's" name, I am merely pointing out that although Beech was a bullshitter those eager to apportion "innocence" to ALL his "victims" might be making a false extrapolation.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 48,647

    Foxy said:

    Good to see Tom Watson's getting a little attention.

    Starmer's a teensy weensy (*) hypocritical in going on about Johnson's list, when Starmer put Watson's name forward after it had initially been rejected by the committee.

    (*) Actually, a lot.

    I'm sure Keir Starmer must now resign, after all, he's clearly as bad if not worse than Boris Johnson
    One word: jalfrezi

    Do your own research
    It's a bhuna to people who want to have a go at him.
    Several PBers certainly seem to get a bhuna whenever curries are mentioned
    Some just want to popadum pun in the comments.
  • viewcodeviewcode Posts: 22,075
    rcs1000 said:

    eek said:

    ..

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    Sam Freedman had posted a good article, based on a detailed investigation, on what’s wrong with the NHS.

    In large part, we just don’t bother investing in capital infrastructure (beds, CT machines, computer systems). We are strikingly out of sync with global norms.

    It’s the British economic problem writ large.

    https://twitter.com/samfr/status/1668883001231458304?s=46&t=L9g_woCIqbo1MTuBFCK0xg

    Nah bollocks. Or rather, maybe.

    But rather, it's such a large institution with no proper management or accountability that many of its employees don't really care about the level of service that is dispensed to its "customers". If they lose a few patients here and there unless they have been unplugging the life support machine to do the hoovering they know that no one will really know or care.

    Apart from the family, obvs, but they, together with the patients, are the least important part of the NHS as far as the NHS is concerned.
    OK. Did you read the article?
    Of course not. I relied on you to precis it for me. We can't go around reading all the articles posted on PB. That is why we have posters posting posts.
    Fair.

    Low levels of capital investment was one of three issues cited. The others were loss of experienced staff and replacement with inexperienced ones, probably exacerbated by Brexit; and poor and under-resourced management, confounded by pisspoor target-setting by central government.

    When you add the above to the massive backlog created by Covid, you get the current collapse.
    The NHS's issues are the same as most public sector body's issues - a perverse incentive flow. Money comes from the Government. More money comes when the service is seen to be in need, even more comes when it is in crisis. If the money came instead from the end users, who were able to choose which treatment providers to patronise, medical treatment would be more like food shopping, and the better for it. The same goes for schools.
    If you want to see perverse incentives, check out the US health system.
    Indeed, but again there, the incentive flow is f-d up, because most US policies are designed for someone to make a vast profit.
    The US health system is effectively a massive tax on the US economy. It likely flatters US GDP figures (in total and per capita), and takes money away from US consumers who would be even RICHER than European counterparts.
    I don't know enough about it to really comment, but I can well believe you. The USA system is usually held up as the bogeyman to those against the 'privatisation' of the NHS. But that's really a false choice. What the NHS needs is the empowerment of the health consumer. Health budget allotment should follow the user and be paid upon their successful departure from the system, alive and well. That would completely remove the need to battle all the dragons - waste, lack of attentiveness, lack of appropriate facilities - all of it.
    Giving end users choice can be an effective way to allocate resources, but you need people to make some sort of informed choice. Healthcare is very, very technical. Most people do not have the requisite knowledge to make many of the choices. We should listen to service users more, both at an individual level and in terms of planning, but I am sceptical of these claims that if only we had individual health budgets, everything would suddenly work.

    I think things are a good deal simpler than we give them credit for. Bad hospitals kill lots of people, for a start. Yes, there are nuances, but in a consumer-led system, you would have something like TripAdvisor for hospitals.
    They tried that years ago - from memory the heart specialist who came out worst from the survey was the one who took the riskiest patients that no one else would touch.

    Hence if you looked at the overall picture his results were terrible but if you just looked at the profile of his typical patient he was 50% better than everyone else on the list.

    Strangely enough those lists stopped being published soon after they started.
    That is the fundamental problem with these kinds of lists: those who take on the easiest jobs get the best "grades".
    "Person X gets better surgical results than person y" is syntactic information.
    "Person X gets better results because he is a better surgeon" is semantic information, as is "Person X gets better results because he treats easier cases".
    Getting from syntactic to semantic is bloody difficult.
    Thank you for coming to my Ted talk.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 42,580

    ...

    viewcode said:

    ....

    Good to see Tom Watson's getting a little attention.

    Starmer's a teensy weensy (*) hypocritical in going on about Johnson's list, when Starmer put Watson's name forward after it had initially been rejected by the committee.

    (*) Actually, a lot.

    I have some very solid anecdotal evidence from the time (1980s) to suggest Carl Beech was not entirely wrong. Beech took allegations that were already in the public domain and embellished them as his own experience which was patently untrue.

    The evidence I have is about someone now dead so I can comfortably share my story, but I won't. One of Beech's greatest disservices from being exposed as a 24 carat bullshitter was that those who probably still had questions to answer (even if they were now dead) have been given a clean bill of health.

    Watson, by taking Beech's bait was very unwise, not just for his harassment of the innocent but for his inadvertent exoneration of the guilty.

    Jessops believes the Watson parry was a magnificent win for Sunak today so who am I to rain on his parade?
    Your last line rather makes the rest of your rant a bit sus.

    I've not said it was a magnificent 'win' for Sunak. I've not mentioned anything like that. All I said was that Starmer was being hypocritical with his criticism.

    My story about McAlpine: back in 1997, I got an invite into parliament. Whilst there, the guy who invited me mentioned the rumours about McAlpine (because I was interested in engineering). The allegations about McAlpine were in the 'public domain'; that does not make them true. He had to live with rumours and tittle-tattle behind his back - until people were stupid enough to actually put it down in writing.
    My anecdotes do not relate to McAlpine.

    The sources of the stories I have been told about one of Beech's "victims" also passed on details of Janner, which turned out to be incontrovertibly true.
    I'm sure you'll understand that "a bloke I know told me" is not sufficient proof.
    I haven't mentioned the "victim's" name, I am merely pointing out that although Beech was a bullshitter those eager to apportion "innocence" to ALL his "victims" might be making a false extrapolation.
    Innocent until proven guilty.

    Or, as it seems some on here think: Innocent until proven Tory... ;)
  • eek said:

    AlistairM said:

    Ed Conway
    @EdConwaySky
    ·
    2h
    It’s not totally implausible that the squeeze for those with mortgages could actually be WORSE than in the 1990s.

    https://twitter.com/EdConwaySky/status/1668987423643119623

    What did people expect would happen? People have had years of almost zero interest and they thought this would last forever and could borrow vast sums, in some cases on interest-only mortgages. The interest rates we had were way below historical norms and there would always be a moment when interest rates would rise.

    The rate rises are going to punish the reckless and ill-advised. Unfortunately, there are vast numbers of these. The housing market has a big correction coming its way. Good news at least for those who have not yet been able to get on the housing ladder.
    The thing with a mortgage is that when you remortgage you should be remortgaging on a smaller capital amount than whatever you first borrowed - so a higher mortgage rate on a smaller amount isn't as bad as it could have been and should have always been expected at some point.

    A capital-repayment mortgage typically has almost always cost less than renting the same property, so anyone who hasn't been repaying capital when interest-rates were effectively non-existent and inevitably going to rise has made a very foolish decision - but even still will be in a comparable position to someone who has been renting anyway so not the end of the world despite their foolishness.
    Problem is unless you start over paying rapidly your don’t significantly reduce the total capital owed in the first few years.

    Your best bet would to be take the pain now and start over paying your mortgage as if the interest was 4% not 1.5%… those extra repayments will make the next mortgage (feel like) 4% rather than 6% because so much extra will have been paid off.

    Also with mortgage rates so high many people won’t be able to borrow so much going forward so expect prices to slowly drop.
    If you have a combination of forced sellers and an absence of buyers then prices can potentially fall quickly rather than slowly.

    People who took out long-term fixed rate loans when interest rates were low will be fine even if they go into negative equity on paper, but for the rest it will be very painful.
    Negative equity is overblown as a problem.

    Even mortgage holders on a variable rate mortgage who end up in negative equity, so long as they don't intend to move, are still only in a comparable position to a renter anyway. Just keep paying the mortgage until you come out the other side.

    The people who stand to lose out the most are people who have leveraged themselves to "invest", taken out an interest-only loan and then expected their tenants to pay their mortgage for them and have pocketed and spent the profits until now. They might be forced to sell at a loss now.

    For the last group, my actual size violin (🎻) for Nadine Dorries is humongous compared to the violin for them.
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 17,218

    eek said:

    AlistairM said:

    Ed Conway
    @EdConwaySky
    ·
    2h
    It’s not totally implausible that the squeeze for those with mortgages could actually be WORSE than in the 1990s.

    https://twitter.com/EdConwaySky/status/1668987423643119623

    What did people expect would happen? People have had years of almost zero interest and they thought this would last forever and could borrow vast sums, in some cases on interest-only mortgages. The interest rates we had were way below historical norms and there would always be a moment when interest rates would rise.

    The rate rises are going to punish the reckless and ill-advised. Unfortunately, there are vast numbers of these. The housing market has a big correction coming its way. Good news at least for those who have not yet been able to get on the housing ladder.
    The thing with a mortgage is that when you remortgage you should be remortgaging on a smaller capital amount than whatever you first borrowed - so a higher mortgage rate on a smaller amount isn't as bad as it could have been and should have always been expected at some point.

    A capital-repayment mortgage typically has almost always cost less than renting the same property, so anyone who hasn't been repaying capital when interest-rates were effectively non-existent and inevitably going to rise has made a very foolish decision - but even still will be in a comparable position to someone who has been renting anyway so not the end of the world despite their foolishness.
    Problem is unless you start over paying rapidly your don’t significantly reduce the total capital owed in the first few years.

    Your best bet would to be take the pain now and start over paying your mortgage as if the interest was 4% not 1.5%… those extra repayments will make the next mortgage (feel like) 4% rather than 6% because so much extra will have been paid off.

    Also with mortgage rates so high many people won’t be able to borrow so much going forward so expect prices to slowly drop.
    If you have a combination of forced sellers and an absence of buyers then prices can potentially fall quickly rather than slowly.

    People who took out long-term fixed rate loans when interest rates were low will be fine even if they go into negative equity on paper, but for the rest it will be very painful.
    The point of increasing interest rates is to give the economy a bit of a cold shower, but some people have got drysuits and others haven't. The necessary (?) pain is going to be borne by only a segment of the population. Both the people who own houses outright, and those who got longish fixes before all this kicked off should be OK, but everyone else... oh momma.

    #TwoNations
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,385
    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    Good to see Tom Watson's getting a little attention.

    Starmer's a teensy weensy (*) hypocritical in going on about Johnson's list, when Starmer put Watson's name forward after it had initially been rejected by the committee.

    (*) Actually, a lot.

    I'm sure Keir Starmer must now resign, after all, he's clearly as bad if not worse than Boris Johnson
    One word: jalfrezi

    Do your own research
    It's a bhuna to people who want to have a go at him.
    Several PBers certainly seem to get a bhuna whenever curries are mentioned
    Some just want to popadum pun in the comments.
    Naan of us would be silly enough to do that.
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 51,625

    eek said:

    AlistairM said:

    Ed Conway
    @EdConwaySky
    ·
    2h
    It’s not totally implausible that the squeeze for those with mortgages could actually be WORSE than in the 1990s.

    https://twitter.com/EdConwaySky/status/1668987423643119623

    What did people expect would happen? People have had years of almost zero interest and they thought this would last forever and could borrow vast sums, in some cases on interest-only mortgages. The interest rates we had were way below historical norms and there would always be a moment when interest rates would rise.

    The rate rises are going to punish the reckless and ill-advised. Unfortunately, there are vast numbers of these. The housing market has a big correction coming its way. Good news at least for those who have not yet been able to get on the housing ladder.
    The thing with a mortgage is that when you remortgage you should be remortgaging on a smaller capital amount than whatever you first borrowed - so a higher mortgage rate on a smaller amount isn't as bad as it could have been and should have always been expected at some point.

    A capital-repayment mortgage typically has almost always cost less than renting the same property, so anyone who hasn't been repaying capital when interest-rates were effectively non-existent and inevitably going to rise has made a very foolish decision - but even still will be in a comparable position to someone who has been renting anyway so not the end of the world despite their foolishness.
    Problem is unless you start over paying rapidly your don’t significantly reduce the total capital owed in the first few years.

    Your best bet would to be take the pain now and start over paying your mortgage as if the interest was 4% not 1.5%… those extra repayments will make the next mortgage (feel like) 4% rather than 6% because so much extra will have been paid off.

    Also with mortgage rates so high many people won’t be able to borrow so much going forward so expect prices to slowly drop.
    If you have a combination of forced sellers and an absence of buyers then prices can potentially fall quickly rather than slowly.

    People who took out long-term fixed rate loans when interest rates were low will be fine even if they go into negative equity on paper, but for the rest it will be very painful.
    One thing to bear in mind: interest rates are up because inflation is up. High inflation means house prices fall a lot in real terms even when prices don't fall much in nominal terms. As housing is a real asset, it is real prices that matter. As long as inflation (and wage inflation) stays high I am a bit sceptical about big nominal price declines for housing, personally. Some falls and a period of stagnant nominal prices, yes. Greater affordability as wages catch up.
    It depends just how distressed the mortgage market becomes.

    If you think of the rental value like a bond yield, we could see yields going up significantly as prices fall, even as few people are willing or able to buy.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 28,368

    Carol Vorderman has calculated SKS Labour correctly

    Carol Vorderman
    @carolvorders
    Believe me Wes Streeting (Shadow Health Secretary who's received nearly £200,000 payments from private healthcare companies!!!),
    @UKLabour
    made a terrible mistake last night. You seem very happy to have taken away some of our freedoms. Are you just Tories in a different colour?

    The HoL abstention was a shameful move by the Labour Party. Not as shameful as Braverman's stunt which Jenny Jones busted, but shameful nonetheless.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 28,368

    ...

    viewcode said:

    ....

    Good to see Tom Watson's getting a little attention.

    Starmer's a teensy weensy (*) hypocritical in going on about Johnson's list, when Starmer put Watson's name forward after it had initially been rejected by the committee.

    (*) Actually, a lot.

    I have some very solid anecdotal evidence from the time (1980s) to suggest Carl Beech was not entirely wrong. Beech took allegations that were already in the public domain and embellished them as his own experience which was patently untrue.

    The evidence I have is about someone now dead so I can comfortably share my story, but I won't. One of Beech's greatest disservices from being exposed as a 24 carat bullshitter was that those who probably still had questions to answer (even if they were now dead) have been given a clean bill of health.

    Watson, by taking Beech's bait was very unwise, not just for his harassment of the innocent but for his inadvertent exoneration of the guilty.

    Jessops believes the Watson parry was a magnificent win for Sunak today so who am I to rain on his parade?
    Your last line rather makes the rest of your rant a bit sus.

    I've not said it was a magnificent 'win' for Sunak. I've not mentioned anything like that. All I said was that Starmer was being hypocritical with his criticism.

    My story about McAlpine: back in 1997, I got an invite into parliament. Whilst there, the guy who invited me mentioned the rumours about McAlpine (because I was interested in engineering). The allegations about McAlpine were in the 'public domain'; that does not make them true. He had to live with rumours and tittle-tattle behind his back - until people were stupid enough to actually put it down in writing.
    My anecdotes do not relate to McAlpine.

    The sources of the stories I have been told about one of Beech's "victims" also passed on details of Janner, which turned out to be incontrovertibly true.
    I'm sure you'll understand that "a bloke I know told me" is not sufficient proof.
    I haven't mentioned the "victim's" name, I am merely pointing out that although Beech was a bullshitter those eager to apportion "innocence" to ALL his "victims" might be making a false extrapolation.
    Innocent until proven guilty.

    Or, as it seems some on here think: Innocent until proven Tory... ;)
    I have accepted Janner was a vile animal. When did he ever cross the floor to the Tories?
  • glwglw Posts: 9,906
    AlistairM said:

    Ed Conway
    @EdConwaySky
    ·
    2h
    It’s not totally implausible that the squeeze for those with mortgages could actually be WORSE than in the 1990s.

    https://twitter.com/EdConwaySky/status/1668987423643119623

    What did people expect would happen? People have had years of almost zero interest and they thought this would last forever and could borrow vast sums, in some cases on interest-only mortgages. The interest rates we had were way below historical norms and there would always be a moment when interest rates would rise.

    The rate rises are going to punish the reckless and ill-advised. Unfortunately, there are vast numbers of these. The housing market has a big correction coming its way. Good news at least for those who have not yet been able to get on the housing ladder.
    It's fairly obvious that despite the supposedly stricter lending conditions far too many people have been absolute idiots and managed to borrow to the hilt with the expectation that the historically all-time lowest ever interest rates were now the norm. They are screwed.

    Nobody ever seems to learn lessons like this.
  • MightyAlexMightyAlex Posts: 1,660

    eek said:

    AlistairM said:

    Ed Conway
    @EdConwaySky
    ·
    2h
    It’s not totally implausible that the squeeze for those with mortgages could actually be WORSE than in the 1990s.

    https://twitter.com/EdConwaySky/status/1668987423643119623

    What did people expect would happen? People have had years of almost zero interest and they thought this would last forever and could borrow vast sums, in some cases on interest-only mortgages. The interest rates we had were way below historical norms and there would always be a moment when interest rates would rise.

    The rate rises are going to punish the reckless and ill-advised. Unfortunately, there are vast numbers of these. The housing market has a big correction coming its way. Good news at least for those who have not yet been able to get on the housing ladder.
    The thing with a mortgage is that when you remortgage you should be remortgaging on a smaller capital amount than whatever you first borrowed - so a higher mortgage rate on a smaller amount isn't as bad as it could have been and should have always been expected at some point.

    A capital-repayment mortgage typically has almost always cost less than renting the same property, so anyone who hasn't been repaying capital when interest-rates were effectively non-existent and inevitably going to rise has made a very foolish decision - but even still will be in a comparable position to someone who has been renting anyway so not the end of the world despite their foolishness.
    Problem is unless you start over paying rapidly your don’t significantly reduce the total capital owed in the first few years.

    Your best bet would to be take the pain now and start over paying your mortgage as if the interest was 4% not 1.5%… those extra repayments will make the next mortgage (feel like) 4% rather than 6% because so much extra will have been paid off.

    Also with mortgage rates so high many people won’t be able to borrow so much going forward so expect prices to slowly drop.
    If you have a combination of forced sellers and an absence of buyers then prices can potentially fall quickly rather than slowly.

    People who took out long-term fixed rate loans when interest rates were low will be fine even if they go into negative equity on paper, but for the rest it will be very painful.
    The point of increasing interest rates is to give the economy a bit of a cold shower, but some people have got drysuits and others haven't. The necessary (?) pain is going to be borne by only a segment of the population. Both the people who own houses outright, and those who got longish fixes before all this kicked off should be OK, but everyone else... oh momma.

    #TwoNations
    I was reading that with todays debt of nearly 100% of GDP high interest rates may not reduce inflation as the cost to service the debt increases and that money is still going to debt holders who are within our economic structure.

    Maybe taxation is the only way out.
  • mwadamsmwadams Posts: 3,593
    glw said:

    AlistairM said:

    Ed Conway
    @EdConwaySky
    ·
    2h
    It’s not totally implausible that the squeeze for those with mortgages could actually be WORSE than in the 1990s.

    https://twitter.com/EdConwaySky/status/1668987423643119623

    What did people expect would happen? People have had years of almost zero interest and they thought this would last forever and could borrow vast sums, in some cases on interest-only mortgages. The interest rates we had were way below historical norms and there would always be a moment when interest rates would rise.

    The rate rises are going to punish the reckless and ill-advised. Unfortunately, there are vast numbers of these. The housing market has a big correction coming its way. Good news at least for those who have not yet been able to get on the housing ladder.
    It's fairly obvious that despite the supposedly stricter lending conditions far too many people have been absolute idiots and managed to borrow to the hilt with the expectation that the historically all-time lowest ever interest rates were now the norm. They are screwed.

    Nobody ever seems to learn lessons like this.
    And despite lenders being required to do affordability calculations, those are based on the same false assumptions.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 48,647

    ...

    viewcode said:

    ....

    Good to see Tom Watson's getting a little attention.

    Starmer's a teensy weensy (*) hypocritical in going on about Johnson's list, when Starmer put Watson's name forward after it had initially been rejected by the committee.

    (*) Actually, a lot.

    I have some very solid anecdotal evidence from the time (1980s) to suggest Carl Beech was not entirely wrong. Beech took allegations that were already in the public domain and embellished them as his own experience which was patently untrue.

    The evidence I have is about someone now dead so I can comfortably share my story, but I won't. One of Beech's greatest disservices from being exposed as a 24 carat bullshitter was that those who probably still had questions to answer (even if they were now dead) have been given a clean bill of health.

    Watson, by taking Beech's bait was very unwise, not just for his harassment of the innocent but for his inadvertent exoneration of the guilty.

    Jessops believes the Watson parry was a magnificent win for Sunak today so who am I to rain on his parade?
    Your last line rather makes the rest of your rant a bit sus.

    I've not said it was a magnificent 'win' for Sunak. I've not mentioned anything like that. All I said was that Starmer was being hypocritical with his criticism.

    My story about McAlpine: back in 1997, I got an invite into parliament. Whilst there, the guy who invited me mentioned the rumours about McAlpine (because I was interested in engineering). The allegations about McAlpine were in the 'public domain'; that does not make them true. He had to live with rumours and tittle-tattle behind his back - until people were stupid enough to actually put it down in writing.
    My anecdotes do not relate to McAlpine.

    The sources of the stories I have been told about one of Beech's "victims" also passed on details of Janner, which turned out to be incontrovertibly true.
    I'm sure you'll understand that "a bloke I know told me" is not sufficient proof.
    I haven't mentioned the "victim's" name, I am merely pointing out that although Beech was a bullshitter those eager to apportion "innocence" to ALL his "victims" might be making a false extrapolation.
    Innocent until proven guilty.

    Or, as it seems some on here think: Innocent until proven Tory... ;)
    I have accepted Janner was a vile animal. When did he ever cross the floor to the Tories?
    Anyone taking the purist view that Janner wasn't a paedo presumably doesn't think Jimmy Savile or Cyril Smith were either. None were convicted.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 42,580

    ...

    viewcode said:

    ....

    Good to see Tom Watson's getting a little attention.

    Starmer's a teensy weensy (*) hypocritical in going on about Johnson's list, when Starmer put Watson's name forward after it had initially been rejected by the committee.

    (*) Actually, a lot.

    I have some very solid anecdotal evidence from the time (1980s) to suggest Carl Beech was not entirely wrong. Beech took allegations that were already in the public domain and embellished them as his own experience which was patently untrue.

    The evidence I have is about someone now dead so I can comfortably share my story, but I won't. One of Beech's greatest disservices from being exposed as a 24 carat bullshitter was that those who probably still had questions to answer (even if they were now dead) have been given a clean bill of health.

    Watson, by taking Beech's bait was very unwise, not just for his harassment of the innocent but for his inadvertent exoneration of the guilty.

    Jessops believes the Watson parry was a magnificent win for Sunak today so who am I to rain on his parade?
    Your last line rather makes the rest of your rant a bit sus.

    I've not said it was a magnificent 'win' for Sunak. I've not mentioned anything like that. All I said was that Starmer was being hypocritical with his criticism.

    My story about McAlpine: back in 1997, I got an invite into parliament. Whilst there, the guy who invited me mentioned the rumours about McAlpine (because I was interested in engineering). The allegations about McAlpine were in the 'public domain'; that does not make them true. He had to live with rumours and tittle-tattle behind his back - until people were stupid enough to actually put it down in writing.
    My anecdotes do not relate to McAlpine.

    The sources of the stories I have been told about one of Beech's "victims" also passed on details of Janner, which turned out to be incontrovertibly true.
    I'm sure you'll understand that "a bloke I know told me" is not sufficient proof.
    I haven't mentioned the "victim's" name, I am merely pointing out that although Beech was a bullshitter those eager to apportion "innocence" to ALL his "victims" might be making a false extrapolation.
    Innocent until proven guilty.

    Or, as it seems some on here think: Innocent until proven Tory... ;)
    I have accepted Janner was a vile animal. When did he ever cross the floor to the Tories?
    So who are these other 'guilty' people you refer to above? You said: "Watson, by taking Beech's bait was very unwise, not just for his harassment of the innocent but for his inadvertent exoneration of the guilty."

    Watson was not 'unwise'; he was a nasty piece of work.
  • glwglw Posts: 9,906

    Negative equity is overblown as a problem.

    Even mortgage holders on a variable rate mortgage who end up in negative equity, so long as they don't intend to move, are still only in a comparable position to a renter anyway. Just keep paying the mortgage until you come out the other side.

    The people who stand to lose out the most are people who have leveraged themselves to "invest", taken out an interest-only loan and then expected their tenants to pay their mortgage for them and have pocketed and spent the profits until now. They might be forced to sell at a loss now.

    For the last group, my actual size violin (🎻) for Nadine Dorries is humongous compared to the violin for them.

    When the rates started heading up I heard one "property investor" on the radio say he might be forced to sell some of his dozen or so properties. How the hell you can call yourself an "investor" and not consider that interest rates were unlikely to remain low forever is beyond me. Sympathy? None.

  • Northern_AlNorthern_Al Posts: 8,377


    Wes Streeting MP
    @wesstreeting
    ·
    22h
    An unelected House of Lords can’t block an elected House of Commons.

    Carol Vorderman
    @carolvorders
    Believe me Wes Streeting (Shadow Health Secretary who's received nearly £200,000 payments from private healthcare companies!!!),
    @UKLabour
    made a terrible mistake last night. You seem very happy to have taken away some of our freedoms. Are you just Tories in a different colour?

    I am Carol Vorderman and I claim my prize!!

    I suspect Carol Voderman needs to be a bit careful. Unless she provides evidence that Streeting has received nearly £200,000 from private healthcare companies, she may well be receiving a letter from his lawyers.
  • glw said:

    AlistairM said:

    Ed Conway
    @EdConwaySky
    ·
    2h
    It’s not totally implausible that the squeeze for those with mortgages could actually be WORSE than in the 1990s.

    https://twitter.com/EdConwaySky/status/1668987423643119623

    What did people expect would happen? People have had years of almost zero interest and they thought this would last forever and could borrow vast sums, in some cases on interest-only mortgages. The interest rates we had were way below historical norms and there would always be a moment when interest rates would rise.

    The rate rises are going to punish the reckless and ill-advised. Unfortunately, there are vast numbers of these. The housing market has a big correction coming its way. Good news at least for those who have not yet been able to get on the housing ladder.
    It's fairly obvious that despite the supposedly stricter lending conditions far too many people have been absolute idiots and managed to borrow to the hilt with the expectation that the historically all-time lowest ever interest rates were now the norm. They are screwed.

    Nobody ever seems to learn lessons like this.
    Lots of homeowners will be shortly paying more, but not paying a significantly different amount to if they were renting anyway. People need houses and if they weren't paying a mortgage they'd be paying rent anyway, so there's not that much difference in reality.

    So they're not that 'screwed' unless they're really stuffed up or have bought somewhere they couldn't even afford to rent - the problem is that the noisiest in the media tend to be those who are losing out or those who have certain expectations and think those expectations not being met are them being screwed.

    Buy to let landlords who've leveraged themselves to the max may be screwed, but that's a correction very, very long overdue.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 32,553

    Carol Vorderman has calculated SKS Labour correctly

    Carol Vorderman
    @carolvorders
    Believe me Wes Streeting (Shadow Health Secretary who's received nearly £200,000 payments from private healthcare companies!!!),
    @UKLabour
    made a terrible mistake last night. You seem very happy to have taken away some of our freedoms. Are you just Tories in a different colour?

    The HoL abstention was a shameful move by the Labour Party. Not as shameful as Braverman's stunt which Jenny Jones busted, but shameful nonetheless.
    There must be a reason why Labour acted in the way it did last night.
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 51,821
    ydoethur said:

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    Good to see Tom Watson's getting a little attention.

    Starmer's a teensy weensy (*) hypocritical in going on about Johnson's list, when Starmer put Watson's name forward after it had initially been rejected by the committee.

    (*) Actually, a lot.

    I'm sure Keir Starmer must now resign, after all, he's clearly as bad if not worse than Boris Johnson
    One word: jalfrezi

    Do your own research
    It's a bhuna to people who want to have a go at him.
    Several PBers certainly seem to get a bhuna whenever curries are mentioned
    Some just want to popadum pun in the comments.
    Naan of us would be silly enough to do that.
    Not a single good paneer on PB tonight :).
  • CatManCatMan Posts: 3,058

    ...

    viewcode said:

    ....

    Good to see Tom Watson's getting a little attention.

    Starmer's a teensy weensy (*) hypocritical in going on about Johnson's list, when Starmer put Watson's name forward after it had initially been rejected by the committee.

    (*) Actually, a lot.

    I have some very solid anecdotal evidence from the time (1980s) to suggest Carl Beech was not entirely wrong. Beech took allegations that were already in the public domain and embellished them as his own experience which was patently untrue.

    The evidence I have is about someone now dead so I can comfortably share my story, but I won't. One of Beech's greatest disservices from being exposed as a 24 carat bullshitter was that those who probably still had questions to answer (even if they were now dead) have been given a clean bill of health.

    Watson, by taking Beech's bait was very unwise, not just for his harassment of the innocent but for his inadvertent exoneration of the guilty.

    Jessops believes the Watson parry was a magnificent win for Sunak today so who am I to rain on his parade?
    Your last line rather makes the rest of your rant a bit sus.

    I've not said it was a magnificent 'win' for Sunak. I've not mentioned anything like that. All I said was that Starmer was being hypocritical with his criticism.

    My story about McAlpine: back in 1997, I got an invite into parliament. Whilst there, the guy who invited me mentioned the rumours about McAlpine (because I was interested in engineering). The allegations about McAlpine were in the 'public domain'; that does not make them true. He had to live with rumours and tittle-tattle behind his back - until people were stupid enough to actually put it down in writing.
    My anecdotes do not relate to McAlpine.

    The sources of the stories I have been told about one of Beech's "victims" also passed on details of Janner, which turned out to be incontrovertibly true.
    I'm sure you'll understand that "a bloke I know told me" is not sufficient proof.
    I haven't mentioned the "victim's" name, I am merely pointing out that although Beech was a bullshitter those eager to apportion "innocence" to ALL his "victims" might be making a false extrapolation.
    Well the list of people he accused who are now dead include

    Lord Brittan
    Edward Heath
    Lord Bramall (Former Chief of the Defence Staff)
    Maurice Oldfield (Former Director of the Secret Intelligence Service)
    Michael Hanley (Former Director-General of MI5)

    Any of them?
  • Northern_AlNorthern_Al Posts: 8,377
    glw said:

    AlistairM said:

    Ed Conway
    @EdConwaySky
    ·
    2h
    It’s not totally implausible that the squeeze for those with mortgages could actually be WORSE than in the 1990s.

    https://twitter.com/EdConwaySky/status/1668987423643119623

    What did people expect would happen? People have had years of almost zero interest and they thought this would last forever and could borrow vast sums, in some cases on interest-only mortgages. The interest rates we had were way below historical norms and there would always be a moment when interest rates would rise.

    The rate rises are going to punish the reckless and ill-advised. Unfortunately, there are vast numbers of these. The housing market has a big correction coming its way. Good news at least for those who have not yet been able to get on the housing ladder.
    It's fairly obvious that despite the supposedly stricter lending conditions far too many people have been absolute idiots and managed to borrow to the hilt with the expectation that the historically all-time lowest ever interest rates were now the norm. They are screwed.

    Nobody ever seems to learn lessons like this.
    Including the mortgage lenders, who should know better than the borrowers.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 21,298
    What did Labour hope to achieve by refusing to block the undemocratic over-extension of a statutory instrument for more draconian anti-protest laws?

    Wes Streeting noting that the House of Lords is unelected doesn’t help, either.

    Not a good day for Labour.
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 51,625
    Farooq said:

    Why do you all think it's funny to reheat these tired old curry puns? We've heard all of them before, and you make yourselves sound half as clever as you are.

    Stop it, for fuck's saag.

    Of all the topics to pun about, curry is the wurst.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 17,405


    Wes Streeting MP
    @wesstreeting
    ·
    22h
    An unelected House of Lords can’t block an elected House of Commons.

    Carol Vorderman
    @carolvorders
    Believe me Wes Streeting (Shadow Health Secretary who's received nearly £200,000 payments from private healthcare companies!!!),
    @UKLabour
    made a terrible mistake last night. You seem very happy to have taken away some of our freedoms. Are you just Tories in a different colour?

    I am Carol Vorderman and I claim my prize!!

    I suspect Carol Voderman needs to be a bit careful. Unless she provides evidence that Streeting has received nearly £200,000 from private healthcare companies, she may well be receiving a letter from his lawyers.
    Presumably in the public domain (he would have to declare it, I guess?)
  • glwglw Posts: 9,906
    Farooq said:

    Income from wealth is too high and income from wages too low. You can't blame people for trying to get on the carousel.

    Well, I guess you can if you want to, but FOMO is a driver and nobody wants to feel mugged off by working hard and getting nowhere.

    I have some sympathy with that, but if anyone in that position thinks that things can't get worse they'll find out if they take out a mortgage that they can barely afford to service. Lenders are meant to prevent this sort of thing, but we always seem to end up bending or weakening the rules until things go pop again.
  • MiklosvarMiklosvar Posts: 1,855

    ...

    viewcode said:

    ....

    Good to see Tom Watson's getting a little attention.

    Starmer's a teensy weensy (*) hypocritical in going on about Johnson's list, when Starmer put Watson's name forward after it had initially been rejected by the committee.

    (*) Actually, a lot.

    I have some very solid anecdotal evidence from the time (1980s) to suggest Carl Beech was not entirely wrong. Beech took allegations that were already in the public domain and embellished them as his own experience which was patently untrue.

    The evidence I have is about someone now dead so I can comfortably share my story, but I won't. One of Beech's greatest disservices from being exposed as a 24 carat bullshitter was that those who probably still had questions to answer (even if they were now dead) have been given a clean bill of health.

    Watson, by taking Beech's bait was very unwise, not just for his harassment of the innocent but for his inadvertent exoneration of the guilty.

    Jessops believes the Watson parry was a magnificent win for Sunak today so who am I to rain on his parade?
    Your last line rather makes the rest of your rant a bit sus.

    I've not said it was a magnificent 'win' for Sunak. I've not mentioned anything like that. All I said was that Starmer was being hypocritical with his criticism.

    My story about McAlpine: back in 1997, I got an invite into parliament. Whilst there, the guy who invited me mentioned the rumours about McAlpine (because I was interested in engineering). The allegations about McAlpine were in the 'public domain'; that does not make them true. He had to live with rumours and tittle-tattle behind his back - until people were stupid enough to actually put it down in writing.
    My anecdotes do not relate to McAlpine.

    The sources of the stories I have been told about one of Beech's "victims" also passed on details of Janner, which turned out to be incontrovertibly true.
    I'm sure you'll understand that "a bloke I know told me" is not sufficient proof.
    I haven't mentioned the "victim's" name, I am merely pointing out that although Beech was a bullshitter those eager to apportion "innocence" to ALL his "victims" might be making a false extrapolation.
    Innocent until proven guilty.

    Or, as it seems some on here think: Innocent until proven Tory... ;)
    But that's just a misstatement of a rule of criminal law, not a general rule of logic. As someone else has pointed out, Savile was never convicted of anything, so that is him off the hook. And indeed in the year after his death suggestions that he was what he was, were met with exactly this sort of response about unproven backbiting now he is not here to defend himself etc.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 21,298
    I don’t know much about Janner, but the story on Wikipedia is not terribly exculpatory.

    But in turn, that gets me wondering whether Tom Harris is the evil person Josias Jessop makes him out to be.

    A lot of people - in the police, in media, and in politics - weee hoodwinked by Carl Beech, who took care to interweave his malicious fantasies with actual truths.
  • CatManCatMan Posts: 3,058

    What did Labour hope to achieve by refusing to block the undemocratic over-extension of a statutory instrument for more draconian anti-protest laws?

    Wes Streeting noting that the House of Lords is unelected doesn’t help, either.

    Not a good day for Labour.

    Starmer claims they want to get rid of the HoL. Something to do with that?
  • glw said:

    Negative equity is overblown as a problem.

    Even mortgage holders on a variable rate mortgage who end up in negative equity, so long as they don't intend to move, are still only in a comparable position to a renter anyway. Just keep paying the mortgage until you come out the other side.

    The people who stand to lose out the most are people who have leveraged themselves to "invest", taken out an interest-only loan and then expected their tenants to pay their mortgage for them and have pocketed and spent the profits until now. They might be forced to sell at a loss now.

    For the last group, my actual size violin (🎻) for Nadine Dorries is humongous compared to the violin for them.

    When the rates started heading up I heard one "property investor" on the radio say he might be forced to sell some of his dozen or so properties. How the hell you can call yourself an "investor" and not consider that interest rates were unlikely to remain low forever is beyond me. Sympathy? None.

    It amazes me that anyone lacks the self-awareness to stop themselves from speaking and seeking sympathy in that sort of situation.

    Karma would be having to sell your dozen buy to let properties, still being in debt, having to sell your own residential property on top - then having to start to pay a landlord yourself suddenly in order to rent rather than expecting others to pay your mortgage for you.

    I doubt that many people are going to end up in that situation though, many will just have to sell some of their properties and consider themselves hard done by. 🤦‍♂️
  • Northern_AlNorthern_Al Posts: 8,377
    Andy_JS said:

    Carol Vorderman has calculated SKS Labour correctly

    Carol Vorderman
    @carolvorders
    Believe me Wes Streeting (Shadow Health Secretary who's received nearly £200,000 payments from private healthcare companies!!!),
    @UKLabour
    made a terrible mistake last night. You seem very happy to have taken away some of our freedoms. Are you just Tories in a different colour?

    The HoL abstention was a shameful move by the Labour Party. Not as shameful as Braverman's stunt which Jenny Jones busted, but shameful nonetheless.
    There must be a reason why Labour acted in the way it did last night.
    Yes, there is. Labour opposed the amendment to the protest regulations in the Commons. They lost. On a point of principle, they decided that they should not use the Lords to block a change agreed by the Commons. One may disagree, but it's simply not true to claim that Labour agreed with the change, which many are suggesting is the case.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 122,921
    edited June 2023

    What did Labour hope to achieve by refusing to block the undemocratic over-extension of a statutory instrument for more draconian anti-protest laws?

    Wes Streeting noting that the House of Lords is unelected doesn’t help, either.

    Not a good day for Labour.

    Not infuriating white van man in key marginals in Kent, Essex and the Midlands and Redwall by not allowing the police to remove Just Stop Oil protestors from public highways
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 51,821

    Farooq said:

    Why do you all think it's funny to reheat these tired old curry puns? We've heard all of them before, and you make yourselves sound half as clever as you are.

    Stop it, for fuck's saag.

    Of all the topics to pun about, curry is the wurst.
    Con cheater!
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 21,298
    CatMan said:

    What did Labour hope to achieve by refusing to block the undemocratic over-extension of a statutory instrument for more draconian anti-protest laws?

    Wes Streeting noting that the House of Lords is unelected doesn’t help, either.

    Not a good day for Labour.

    Starmer claims they want to get rid of the HoL. Something to do with that?
    I don’t think that’s it.
    But it almost smells like it.

    The British executive is an elected dictatorship, and a refusal to exercise the HoL just makes it more dictatorial.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 28,368

    ...

    viewcode said:

    ....

    Good to see Tom Watson's getting a little attention.

    Starmer's a teensy weensy (*) hypocritical in going on about Johnson's list, when Starmer put Watson's name forward after it had initially been rejected by the committee.

    (*) Actually, a lot.

    I have some very solid anecdotal evidence from the time (1980s) to suggest Carl Beech was not entirely wrong. Beech took allegations that were already in the public domain and embellished them as his own experience which was patently untrue.

    The evidence I have is about someone now dead so I can comfortably share my story, but I won't. One of Beech's greatest disservices from being exposed as a 24 carat bullshitter was that those who probably still had questions to answer (even if they were now dead) have been given a clean bill of health.

    Watson, by taking Beech's bait was very unwise, not just for his harassment of the innocent but for his inadvertent exoneration of the guilty.

    Jessops believes the Watson parry was a magnificent win for Sunak today so who am I to rain on his parade?
    Your last line rather makes the rest of your rant a bit sus.

    I've not said it was a magnificent 'win' for Sunak. I've not mentioned anything like that. All I said was that Starmer was being hypocritical with his criticism.

    My story about McAlpine: back in 1997, I got an invite into parliament. Whilst there, the guy who invited me mentioned the rumours about McAlpine (because I was interested in engineering). The allegations about McAlpine were in the 'public domain'; that does not make them true. He had to live with rumours and tittle-tattle behind his back - until people were stupid enough to actually put it down in writing.
    My anecdotes do not relate to McAlpine.

    The sources of the stories I have been told about one of Beech's "victims" also passed on details of Janner, which turned out to be incontrovertibly true.
    I'm sure you'll understand that "a bloke I know told me" is not sufficient proof.
    I haven't mentioned the "victim's" name, I am merely pointing out that although Beech was a bullshitter those eager to apportion "innocence" to ALL his "victims" might be making a false extrapolation.
    Innocent until proven guilty.

    Or, as it seems some on here think: Innocent until proven Tory... ;)
    I have accepted Janner was a vile animal. When did he ever cross the floor to the Tories?
    So who are these other 'guilty' people you refer to above? You said: "Watson, by taking Beech's bait was very unwise, not just for his harassment of the innocent but for his inadvertent exoneration of the guilty."

    Watson was not 'unwise'; he was a nasty piece of work.
    I am not defending Watson.

    However being cleared of assaulting Beech is not an automatic declaration of innocence for any other accusations made against individuals.
  • glwglw Posts: 9,906

    glw said:

    AlistairM said:

    Ed Conway
    @EdConwaySky
    ·
    2h
    It’s not totally implausible that the squeeze for those with mortgages could actually be WORSE than in the 1990s.

    https://twitter.com/EdConwaySky/status/1668987423643119623

    What did people expect would happen? People have had years of almost zero interest and they thought this would last forever and could borrow vast sums, in some cases on interest-only mortgages. The interest rates we had were way below historical norms and there would always be a moment when interest rates would rise.

    The rate rises are going to punish the reckless and ill-advised. Unfortunately, there are vast numbers of these. The housing market has a big correction coming its way. Good news at least for those who have not yet been able to get on the housing ladder.
    It's fairly obvious that despite the supposedly stricter lending conditions far too many people have been absolute idiots and managed to borrow to the hilt with the expectation that the historically all-time lowest ever interest rates were now the norm. They are screwed.

    Nobody ever seems to learn lessons like this.
    Including the mortgage lenders, who should know better than the borrowers.
    I consider the whole lot of them to be spivs.
  • geoffwgeoffw Posts: 8,717

    I don’t know much about Janner, but the story on Wikipedia is not terribly exculpatory.

    But in turn, that gets me wondering whether Tom Harris is the evil person Josias Jessop makes him out to be.

    A lot of people - in the police, in media, and in politics - weee hoodwinked by Carl Beech, who took care to interweave his malicious fantasies with actual truths.

    Watson not Harris

  • HYUFD said:

    What did Labour hope to achieve by refusing to block the undemocratic over-extension of a statutory instrument for more draconian anti-protest laws?

    Wes Streeting noting that the House of Lords is unelected doesn’t help, either.

    Not a good day for Labour.

    Not infuriating white van man in key marginals in Kent, Essex and the Midlands and Redwall by not allowing the police to remove Just Stop Oil protestors from public highways
    Starmer could be playing the long game and wanting the Just Stop Oil style of protestors dealt with already before he ends up in Downing Street and they become his problem.
  • RogerRoger Posts: 19,908
    stodge said:

    Evening all :)

    A couple of random thoughts - I just wonder if the Greens might fancy Selby & Ainsty. They took the former Harrogate Council Ward of Ouseburn in 2022 from the Conservatives and ran the Tories close in Spofforth. Labour has its seats in Selby itself while Tadcaster is dominated by Independents. Just a thought.

    Back to polling (about which I continue to know nothing), I'm interested to see YouGov, which we are told has the correct weighting in its subsamples, also has the persistently lowest Conservative vote shares. It shows 17% Don't Knows overall rising to 23% among the 2019 Conservative vote.

    The England sub sample breaks 43-28-11 which would be a 14% swing from Conservative to Labour (Greens on 9%, Reform on 7%) so the Lab-LD-Green share at a solid 63%.

    Savanta's UNS swing is 14.5% so all in the same ball park.

    Talking of random thoughts. Watching Boris Johnson having a go at fellow Brexiteer Bernard Jenkin and demanding his resignation reminds us what shits in a sack look like and how sad it is they've been allowed to take the country into this self destructive rabbit hole.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 42,580

    ...

    viewcode said:

    ....

    Good to see Tom Watson's getting a little attention.

    Starmer's a teensy weensy (*) hypocritical in going on about Johnson's list, when Starmer put Watson's name forward after it had initially been rejected by the committee.

    (*) Actually, a lot.

    I have some very solid anecdotal evidence from the time (1980s) to suggest Carl Beech was not entirely wrong. Beech took allegations that were already in the public domain and embellished them as his own experience which was patently untrue.

    The evidence I have is about someone now dead so I can comfortably share my story, but I won't. One of Beech's greatest disservices from being exposed as a 24 carat bullshitter was that those who probably still had questions to answer (even if they were now dead) have been given a clean bill of health.

    Watson, by taking Beech's bait was very unwise, not just for his harassment of the innocent but for his inadvertent exoneration of the guilty.

    Jessops believes the Watson parry was a magnificent win for Sunak today so who am I to rain on his parade?
    Your last line rather makes the rest of your rant a bit sus.

    I've not said it was a magnificent 'win' for Sunak. I've not mentioned anything like that. All I said was that Starmer was being hypocritical with his criticism.

    My story about McAlpine: back in 1997, I got an invite into parliament. Whilst there, the guy who invited me mentioned the rumours about McAlpine (because I was interested in engineering). The allegations about McAlpine were in the 'public domain'; that does not make them true. He had to live with rumours and tittle-tattle behind his back - until people were stupid enough to actually put it down in writing.
    My anecdotes do not relate to McAlpine.

    The sources of the stories I have been told about one of Beech's "victims" also passed on details of Janner, which turned out to be incontrovertibly true.
    I'm sure you'll understand that "a bloke I know told me" is not sufficient proof.
    I haven't mentioned the "victim's" name, I am merely pointing out that although Beech was a bullshitter those eager to apportion "innocence" to ALL his "victims" might be making a false extrapolation.
    Innocent until proven guilty.

    Or, as it seems some on here think: Innocent until proven Tory... ;)
    I have accepted Janner was a vile animal. When did he ever cross the floor to the Tories?
    So who are these other 'guilty' people you refer to above? You said: "Watson, by taking Beech's bait was very unwise, not just for his harassment of the innocent but for his inadvertent exoneration of the guilty."

    Watson was not 'unwise'; he was a nasty piece of work.
    I am not defending Watson.

    However being cleared of assaulting Beech is not an automatic declaration of innocence for any other accusations made against individuals.
    No. But neither are those accusations automatically true, and the individuals are not automatically guilty. And perhaps they don't deserve a load of rumours and tittle-tattle spreading about them - even if they are no longer with us.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 122,921
    edited June 2023
    'Tonight, we’ve invited 200 CEOs to Downing Street.

    And to show them just how committed we are, No 10 has transformed its iconic black door with binary code for “LTW” - short for #LondonTechWeek🚀

    The UK’s door is open to any innovator wanting to grow in the U'
    https://twitter.com/RishiSunak/status/1669002920434577408?s=20
  • CookieCookie Posts: 13,793
    On another subject, a French mayor has become a hate figure after giving permission to knock down part of the Carnac megaliths in order to build a Mr. Bricolage.
    A British equivalent would be knocking down part of the Avebury stone circles to build a B&Q.
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/06/14/mayor-death-threats-french-stonehenge-brittany-carnac/
  • CatMan said:

    What did Labour hope to achieve by refusing to block the undemocratic over-extension of a statutory instrument for more draconian anti-protest laws?

    Wes Streeting noting that the House of Lords is unelected doesn’t help, either.

    Not a good day for Labour.

    Starmer claims they want to get rid of the HoL. Something to do with that?
    I don’t think that’s it.
    But it almost smells like it.

    The British executive is an elected dictatorship, and a refusal to exercise the HoL just makes it more dictatorial.
    If the British executive is such an elected dictatorship then how did Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss fall from grace and leave Downing Street?

    It wasn't because they were beaten by the electorate (unlike David Cameron), or the House of Lords.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 28,368
    Andy_JS said:

    Carol Vorderman has calculated SKS Labour correctly

    Carol Vorderman
    @carolvorders
    Believe me Wes Streeting (Shadow Health Secretary who's received nearly £200,000 payments from private healthcare companies!!!),
    @UKLabour
    made a terrible mistake last night. You seem very happy to have taken away some of our freedoms. Are you just Tories in a different colour?

    The HoL abstention was a shameful move by the Labour Party. Not as shameful as Braverman's stunt which Jenny Jones busted, but shameful nonetheless.
    There must be a reason why Labour acted in the way it did last night.
    Politics.

    To avoid the accusations that they were soft on ER and they only voted against the Government because they are linked to Dale Vince. They should have weathered the Tory storm. A dereliction of duty!
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 21,298
    edited June 2023
    The people sneering at mortgage holders are living in a( fantasy land.

    It’s kind of despicable to gloat at the pain suffered by 25% of the population.

    Nobody but nobody expected rates at 5/6%.
    As it happens I think they will spike and then hopefully decrease.

    The Fed has held rates constant this month and we are starting to see whispers of *deflation* in US and Europe.
  • CookieCookie Posts: 13,793
    Cookie said:

    On another subject, a French mayor has become a hate figure after giving permission to knock down part of the Carnac megaliths in order to build a Mr. Bricolage.
    A British equivalent would be knocking down part of the Avebury stone circles to build a B&Q.
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/06/14/mayor-death-threats-french-stonehenge-brittany-carnac/

    Seemingly he also chaired the committee pushing for its status as a Unesco World Heritage site.
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 28,423
    ydoethur said:

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    Good to see Tom Watson's getting a little attention.

    Starmer's a teensy weensy (*) hypocritical in going on about Johnson's list, when Starmer put Watson's name forward after it had initially been rejected by the committee.

    (*) Actually, a lot.

    I'm sure Keir Starmer must now resign, after all, he's clearly as bad if not worse than Boris Johnson
    One word: jalfrezi

    Do your own research
    It's a bhuna to people who want to have a go at him.
    Several PBers certainly seem to get a bhuna whenever curries are mentioned
    Some just want to popadum pun in the comments.
    Naan of us would be silly enough to do that.
    I dunno, there's some real spice cowboys here.
  • Northern_AlNorthern_Al Posts: 8,377
    Farooq said:


    Wes Streeting MP
    @wesstreeting
    ·
    22h
    An unelected House of Lords can’t block an elected House of Commons.

    Carol Vorderman
    @carolvorders
    Believe me Wes Streeting (Shadow Health Secretary who's received nearly £200,000 payments from private healthcare companies!!!),
    @UKLabour
    made a terrible mistake last night. You seem very happy to have taken away some of our freedoms. Are you just Tories in a different colour?

    I am Carol Vorderman and I claim my prize!!

    I suspect Carol Voderman needs to be a bit careful. Unless she provides evidence that Streeting has received nearly £200,000 from private healthcare companies, she may well be receiving a letter from his lawyers.
    After a quick google, it's reported here: https://www.thenational.scot/news/uk-news/23568478.much-labour-tory-mps-get-private-health-firms/

    So the claim has probably gone past a lawyer somewhere. £193k or so, according to that.
    Maybe, but I'm not sure EveryDoctor is a reliable source. It's not showing up on the Register of MPs interests, so either it's not true, or Streeting could be in big trouble.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 28,368
    CatMan said:

    ...

    viewcode said:

    ....

    Good to see Tom Watson's getting a little attention.

    Starmer's a teensy weensy (*) hypocritical in going on about Johnson's list, when Starmer put Watson's name forward after it had initially been rejected by the committee.

    (*) Actually, a lot.

    I have some very solid anecdotal evidence from the time (1980s) to suggest Carl Beech was not entirely wrong. Beech took allegations that were already in the public domain and embellished them as his own experience which was patently untrue.

    The evidence I have is about someone now dead so I can comfortably share my story, but I won't. One of Beech's greatest disservices from being exposed as a 24 carat bullshitter was that those who probably still had questions to answer (even if they were now dead) have been given a clean bill of health.

    Watson, by taking Beech's bait was very unwise, not just for his harassment of the innocent but for his inadvertent exoneration of the guilty.

    Jessops believes the Watson parry was a magnificent win for Sunak today so who am I to rain on his parade?
    Your last line rather makes the rest of your rant a bit sus.

    I've not said it was a magnificent 'win' for Sunak. I've not mentioned anything like that. All I said was that Starmer was being hypocritical with his criticism.

    My story about McAlpine: back in 1997, I got an invite into parliament. Whilst there, the guy who invited me mentioned the rumours about McAlpine (because I was interested in engineering). The allegations about McAlpine were in the 'public domain'; that does not make them true. He had to live with rumours and tittle-tattle behind his back - until people were stupid enough to actually put it down in writing.
    My anecdotes do not relate to McAlpine.

    The sources of the stories I have been told about one of Beech's "victims" also passed on details of Janner, which turned out to be incontrovertibly true.
    I'm sure you'll understand that "a bloke I know told me" is not sufficient proof.
    I haven't mentioned the "victim's" name, I am merely pointing out that although Beech was a bullshitter those eager to apportion "innocence" to ALL his "victims" might be making a false extrapolation.
    Well the list of people he accused who are now dead include

    Lord Brittan
    Edward Heath
    Lord Bramall (Former Chief of the Defence Staff)
    Maurice Oldfield (Former Director of the Secret Intelligence Service)
    Michael Hanley (Former Director-General of MI5)

    Any of them?
    Yes
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 122,921
    edited June 2023

    HYUFD said:

    What did Labour hope to achieve by refusing to block the undemocratic over-extension of a statutory instrument for more draconian anti-protest laws?

    Wes Streeting noting that the House of Lords is unelected doesn’t help, either.

    Not a good day for Labour.

    Not infuriating white van man in key marginals in Kent, Essex and the Midlands and Redwall by not allowing the police to remove Just Stop Oil protestors from public highways
    Starmer could be playing the long game and wanting the Just Stop Oil style of protestors dealt with already before he ends up in Downing Street and they become his problem.
    Like Blair he also knows he cannot afford to alienate lower middle class and skilled working class workers who decide most Conservative v Labour marginal seats and generally hate the Just Stop Oil protests and disruption of the roads.

    Like Blair however he also knows he can afford to alienate upper middle class 'progressives' who love Just Stop Oil as they have nowhere else to go under FPTP, mostly live in safe Labour seats in inner cities and university towns and certainly would never vote Conservative (even if a few went LD or Green)
  • The people sneering at mortgage holders are living in a( fantasy land.

    It’s kind of despicable to gloat at the pain suffered by 25% of the population.

    Nobody but nobody expected rates at 5/6%.
    As it happens I think they will spike and then hopefully decrease.

    The Fed has held rates constant this month and we are starting to see whispers of *deflation* in US and Europe.

    I don't think anyone is sneering at mortgage holders as a whole.

    What a number of people have said is that those who maxed out their credit on an interest-only mortgage deal was remarkably foolish.

    For those who've been repaying capital on their mortgage the increase in their mortgage may be unpleasant but shouldn't be earth-shattering. The capital when they remortgage should be smaller than when they borrowed, and the capital-portion of the mortgage won't need to increase so an increase in rates from say 1.5% to 6% even if it happens won't actually result in a 4-fold increase in your mortgage payment.

    The world of pain belongs to those who were on interest-only mortgages. That was so far beyond a stupid thing to do at the historically low rates.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 28,368

    ...

    viewcode said:

    ....

    Good to see Tom Watson's getting a little attention.

    Starmer's a teensy weensy (*) hypocritical in going on about Johnson's list, when Starmer put Watson's name forward after it had initially been rejected by the committee.

    (*) Actually, a lot.

    I have some very solid anecdotal evidence from the time (1980s) to suggest Carl Beech was not entirely wrong. Beech took allegations that were already in the public domain and embellished them as his own experience which was patently untrue.

    The evidence I have is about someone now dead so I can comfortably share my story, but I won't. One of Beech's greatest disservices from being exposed as a 24 carat bullshitter was that those who probably still had questions to answer (even if they were now dead) have been given a clean bill of health.

    Watson, by taking Beech's bait was very unwise, not just for his harassment of the innocent but for his inadvertent exoneration of the guilty.

    Jessops believes the Watson parry was a magnificent win for Sunak today so who am I to rain on his parade?
    Your last line rather makes the rest of your rant a bit sus.

    I've not said it was a magnificent 'win' for Sunak. I've not mentioned anything like that. All I said was that Starmer was being hypocritical with his criticism.

    My story about McAlpine: back in 1997, I got an invite into parliament. Whilst there, the guy who invited me mentioned the rumours about McAlpine (because I was interested in engineering). The allegations about McAlpine were in the 'public domain'; that does not make them true. He had to live with rumours and tittle-tattle behind his back - until people were stupid enough to actually put it down in writing.
    My anecdotes do not relate to McAlpine.

    The sources of the stories I have been told about one of Beech's "victims" also passed on details of Janner, which turned out to be incontrovertibly true.
    I'm sure you'll understand that "a bloke I know told me" is not sufficient proof.
    I haven't mentioned the "victim's" name, I am merely pointing out that although Beech was a bullshitter those eager to apportion "innocence" to ALL his "victims" might be making a false extrapolation.
    Innocent until proven guilty.

    Or, as it seems some on here think: Innocent until proven Tory... ;)
    I have accepted Janner was a vile animal. When did he ever cross the floor to the Tories?
    So who are these other 'guilty' people you refer to above? You said: "Watson, by taking Beech's bait was very unwise, not just for his harassment of the innocent but for his inadvertent exoneration of the guilty."

    Watson was not 'unwise'; he was a nasty piece of work.
    I am not defending Watson.

    However being cleared of assaulting Beech is not an automatic declaration of innocence for any other accusations made against individuals.
    No. But neither are those accusations automatically true, and the individuals are not automatically guilty. And perhaps they don't deserve a load of rumours and tittle-tattle spreading about them - even if they are no longer with us.
    That's not your interpretation of Sir Keith Donkey holding a beer during a by election campaign.
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 28,423

    The people sneering at mortgage holders are living in a( fantasy land.

    It’s kind of despicable to gloat at the pain suffered by 25% of the population.

    Nobody but nobody expected rates at 5/6%.
    As it happens I think they will spike and then hopefully decrease.

    The Fed has held rates constant this month and we are starting to see whispers of *deflation* in US and Europe.

    I am unconvinced that the BOE is following an anti-inflation strategy. It really seems that causing a recession is the main motivating factor, hence when inflation levels off, they may still raise rates to 'really see it off' and when inflation rises, they will raise rates to deal with the inflation.
  • TimSTimS Posts: 12,986
    Cookie said:

    On another subject, a French mayor has become a hate figure after giving permission to knock down part of the Carnac megaliths in order to build a Mr. Bricolage.
    A British equivalent would be knocking down part of the Avebury stone circles to build a B&Q.
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/06/14/mayor-death-threats-french-stonehenge-brittany-carnac/

    More like Wickes. B&Q would be like building a Leroy Merlin, which I could almost understand.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 42,580
    Miklosvar said:

    ...

    viewcode said:

    ....

    Good to see Tom Watson's getting a little attention.

    Starmer's a teensy weensy (*) hypocritical in going on about Johnson's list, when Starmer put Watson's name forward after it had initially been rejected by the committee.

    (*) Actually, a lot.

    I have some very solid anecdotal evidence from the time (1980s) to suggest Carl Beech was not entirely wrong. Beech took allegations that were already in the public domain and embellished them as his own experience which was patently untrue.

    The evidence I have is about someone now dead so I can comfortably share my story, but I won't. One of Beech's greatest disservices from being exposed as a 24 carat bullshitter was that those who probably still had questions to answer (even if they were now dead) have been given a clean bill of health.

    Watson, by taking Beech's bait was very unwise, not just for his harassment of the innocent but for his inadvertent exoneration of the guilty.

    Jessops believes the Watson parry was a magnificent win for Sunak today so who am I to rain on his parade?
    Your last line rather makes the rest of your rant a bit sus.

    I've not said it was a magnificent 'win' for Sunak. I've not mentioned anything like that. All I said was that Starmer was being hypocritical with his criticism.

    My story about McAlpine: back in 1997, I got an invite into parliament. Whilst there, the guy who invited me mentioned the rumours about McAlpine (because I was interested in engineering). The allegations about McAlpine were in the 'public domain'; that does not make them true. He had to live with rumours and tittle-tattle behind his back - until people were stupid enough to actually put it down in writing.
    My anecdotes do not relate to McAlpine.

    The sources of the stories I have been told about one of Beech's "victims" also passed on details of Janner, which turned out to be incontrovertibly true.
    I'm sure you'll understand that "a bloke I know told me" is not sufficient proof.
    I haven't mentioned the "victim's" name, I am merely pointing out that although Beech was a bullshitter those eager to apportion "innocence" to ALL his "victims" might be making a false extrapolation.
    Innocent until proven guilty.

    Or, as it seems some on here think: Innocent until proven Tory... ;)
    But that's just a misstatement of a rule of criminal law, not a general rule of logic. As someone else has pointed out, Savile was never convicted of anything, so that is him off the hook. And indeed in the year after his death suggestions that he was what he was, were met with exactly this sort of response about unproven backbiting now he is not here to defend himself etc.
    Savile was never convicted of anything, but there was a large inquiry after he died that produced a lot of evidence of wrongdoing. That's a very different situation to the one we're talking about here.

    Cyril Smith was also investigated as part of an inquiry:
    https://www.iicsa.org.uk/reports-recommendations/publications/investigation/cambridge-house-knowl-view-rochdale/part-introduction/cyril-smith.html

    Because of this, I'm fairly happy to call both of those paedophiles.
  • TimSTimS Posts: 12,986
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    What did Labour hope to achieve by refusing to block the undemocratic over-extension of a statutory instrument for more draconian anti-protest laws?

    Wes Streeting noting that the House of Lords is unelected doesn’t help, either.

    Not a good day for Labour.

    Not infuriating white van man in key marginals in Kent, Essex and the Midlands and Redwall by not allowing the police to remove Just Stop Oil protestors from public highways
    Starmer could be playing the long game and wanting the Just Stop Oil style of protestors dealt with already before he ends up in Downing Street and they become his problem.
    Like Blair he also knows he cannot afford to alienate lower middle class and skilled working class workers who decide most Conservative v Labour marginal seats and generally hate the Just Stop Oil protests and disruption of the roads.

    Like Blair however he also knows he can afford to alienate upper middle class 'progressives' who love Just Stop Oil as they have nowhere else to go under FPTP, mostly live in safe Labour seats in inner cities and university towns and certainly would never vote Conservative (even if a few went LD or Green)
    Ladies and Gentlemen, FPTP.
  • The people sneering at mortgage holders are living in a( fantasy land.

    It’s kind of despicable to gloat at the pain suffered by 25% of the population.

    Nobody but nobody expected rates at 5/6%.
    As it happens I think they will spike and then hopefully decrease.

    The Fed has held rates constant this month and we are starting to see whispers of *deflation* in US and Europe.

    I am unconvinced that the BOE is following an anti-inflation strategy. It really seems that causing a recession is the main motivating factor, hence when inflation levels off, they may still raise rates to 'really see it off' and when inflation rises, they will raise rates to deal with the inflation.
    You really do believe the most bizarre conspiracy theories, I'm wondering where on earth you pulled this one from?

    The Bank has been incredibly timid in raising interest rates. It hasn't kept pace with the Fed, which hurts Sterling and means we import even more inflation from abroad.

    What possible reason would the Bank have to want to cause a recession as its aim?
  • RogerRoger Posts: 19,908

    https://twitter.com/gabbsthenewt/status/1669064066109677570/photo/1

    My new Party disagrees and has a policy of a fully public NHS

    Is that Margaret Hodge quote genuine? For a Labour politician to say that would be surprising. For a Jewish politician to say it would be shocking
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 42,580

    ...

    viewcode said:

    ....

    Good to see Tom Watson's getting a little attention.

    Starmer's a teensy weensy (*) hypocritical in going on about Johnson's list, when Starmer put Watson's name forward after it had initially been rejected by the committee.

    (*) Actually, a lot.

    I have some very solid anecdotal evidence from the time (1980s) to suggest Carl Beech was not entirely wrong. Beech took allegations that were already in the public domain and embellished them as his own experience which was patently untrue.

    The evidence I have is about someone now dead so I can comfortably share my story, but I won't. One of Beech's greatest disservices from being exposed as a 24 carat bullshitter was that those who probably still had questions to answer (even if they were now dead) have been given a clean bill of health.

    Watson, by taking Beech's bait was very unwise, not just for his harassment of the innocent but for his inadvertent exoneration of the guilty.

    Jessops believes the Watson parry was a magnificent win for Sunak today so who am I to rain on his parade?
    Your last line rather makes the rest of your rant a bit sus.

    I've not said it was a magnificent 'win' for Sunak. I've not mentioned anything like that. All I said was that Starmer was being hypocritical with his criticism.

    My story about McAlpine: back in 1997, I got an invite into parliament. Whilst there, the guy who invited me mentioned the rumours about McAlpine (because I was interested in engineering). The allegations about McAlpine were in the 'public domain'; that does not make them true. He had to live with rumours and tittle-tattle behind his back - until people were stupid enough to actually put it down in writing.
    My anecdotes do not relate to McAlpine.

    The sources of the stories I have been told about one of Beech's "victims" also passed on details of Janner, which turned out to be incontrovertibly true.
    I'm sure you'll understand that "a bloke I know told me" is not sufficient proof.
    I haven't mentioned the "victim's" name, I am merely pointing out that although Beech was a bullshitter those eager to apportion "innocence" to ALL his "victims" might be making a false extrapolation.
    Innocent until proven guilty.

    Or, as it seems some on here think: Innocent until proven Tory... ;)
    I have accepted Janner was a vile animal. When did he ever cross the floor to the Tories?
    So who are these other 'guilty' people you refer to above? You said: "Watson, by taking Beech's bait was very unwise, not just for his harassment of the innocent but for his inadvertent exoneration of the guilty."

    Watson was not 'unwise'; he was a nasty piece of work.
    I am not defending Watson.

    However being cleared of assaulting Beech is not an automatic declaration of innocence for any other accusations made against individuals.
    No. But neither are those accusations automatically true, and the individuals are not automatically guilty. And perhaps they don't deserve a load of rumours and tittle-tattle spreading about them - even if they are no longer with us.
    That's not your interpretation of Sir Keith Donkey holding a beer during a by election campaign.
    What do you think my 'interpretation' of that was?
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 17,405

    I don’t know much about Janner, but the story on Wikipedia is not terribly exculpatory.

    But in turn, that gets me wondering whether Tom Harris is the evil person Josias Jessop makes him out to be.

    A lot of people - in the police, in media, and in politics - weee hoodwinked by Carl Beech, who took care to interweave his malicious fantasies with actual truths.

    It’s clear Beech was able to fool some people, at a time when skepticism had to some extent fallen out of favour. But basic checks were not done until far too late.
    Watson quite blatantly went after opposition figures with his claims. He was using it for political advantage, and when it was shown to be a fabrication failed to apologise, or if he did, it was the kind of grudging sorry, not sorry type.
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 28,423
    By the way, are we now calling for Rishi and Hunt to resign? They have after all 'crashed the economy' worse than the mini-budget now.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 42,580
    Cookie said:

    On another subject, a French mayor has become a hate figure after giving permission to knock down part of the Carnac megaliths in order to build a Mr. Bricolage.
    A British equivalent would be knocking down part of the Avebury stone circles to build a B&Q.
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/06/14/mayor-death-threats-french-stonehenge-brittany-carnac/

    Incidentally, the other day on Twitter I came across a story where an old map showed a standing stone were one no longer exists. The farmer removed it as recently as a few decades ago. The current farmer of the land thinks he has found it in a hedge, and wants to put it back into position.
  • glwglw Posts: 9,906

    The people sneering at mortgage holders are living in a( fantasy land.

    It’s kind of despicable to gloat at the pain suffered by 25% of the population.

    Nobody but nobody expected rates at 5/6%.
    As it happens I think they will spike and then hopefully decrease.

    The Fed has held rates constant this month and we are starting to see whispers of *deflation* in US and Europe.

    Base rates were 5% 15 years ago, so well within the sort of window of time someone should consider when taking out a mortgage, and if not them the lender should think about it. Nor is 5% high historically.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 21,298

    By the way, are we now calling for Rishi and Hunt to resign? They have after all 'crashed the economy' worse than the mini-budget now.

    It’s OK, apparently, if you crash in slow motion.
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 23,485
    edited June 2023

    The people sneering at mortgage holders are living in a( fantasy land.

    It’s kind of despicable to gloat at the pain suffered by 25% of the population.

    Nobody but nobody expected rates at 5/6%.
    As it happens I think they will spike and then hopefully decrease.

    The Fed has held rates constant this month and we are starting to see whispers of *deflation* in US and Europe.

    Indeed.

    It’s an unedifying spectacle.

    Sadly fairly common on PB.
  • eekeek Posts: 28,370

    The people sneering at mortgage holders are living in a( fantasy land.

    It’s kind of despicable to gloat at the pain suffered by 25% of the population.

    Nobody but nobody expected rates at 5/6%.
    As it happens I think they will spike and then hopefully decrease.

    The Fed has held rates constant this month and we are starting to see whispers of *deflation* in US and Europe.

    I am unconvinced that the BOE is following an anti-inflation strategy. It really seems that causing a recession is the main motivating factor, hence when inflation levels off, they may still raise rates to 'really see it off' and when inflation rises, they will raise rates to deal with the inflation.
    They are following an anti-inflationary policy - problem is that we usually have interest rates higher than the US and the 2 meetings where they did less than the market expected has come back to bite them (as I suspected it would).

    We will probably end up with interest rates 0;5% higher than they would have been.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 48,647

    Miklosvar said:

    ...

    viewcode said:

    ....

    Good to see Tom Watson's getting a little attention.

    Starmer's a teensy weensy (*) hypocritical in going on about Johnson's list, when Starmer put Watson's name forward after it had initially been rejected by the committee.

    (*) Actually, a lot.

    I have some very solid anecdotal evidence from the time (1980s) to suggest Carl Beech was not entirely wrong. Beech took allegations that were already in the public domain and embellished them as his own experience which was patently untrue.

    The evidence I have is about someone now dead so I can comfortably share my story, but I won't. One of Beech's greatest disservices from being exposed as a 24 carat bullshitter was that those who probably still had questions to answer (even if they were now dead) have been given a clean bill of health.

    Watson, by taking Beech's bait was very unwise, not just for his harassment of the innocent but for his inadvertent exoneration of the guilty.

    Jessops believes the Watson parry was a magnificent win for Sunak today so who am I to rain on his parade?
    Your last line rather makes the rest of your rant a bit sus.

    I've not said it was a magnificent 'win' for Sunak. I've not mentioned anything like that. All I said was that Starmer was being hypocritical with his criticism.

    My story about McAlpine: back in 1997, I got an invite into parliament. Whilst there, the guy who invited me mentioned the rumours about McAlpine (because I was interested in engineering). The allegations about McAlpine were in the 'public domain'; that does not make them true. He had to live with rumours and tittle-tattle behind his back - until people were stupid enough to actually put it down in writing.
    My anecdotes do not relate to McAlpine.

    The sources of the stories I have been told about one of Beech's "victims" also passed on details of Janner, which turned out to be incontrovertibly true.
    I'm sure you'll understand that "a bloke I know told me" is not sufficient proof.
    I haven't mentioned the "victim's" name, I am merely pointing out that although Beech was a bullshitter those eager to apportion "innocence" to ALL his "victims" might be making a false extrapolation.
    Innocent until proven guilty.

    Or, as it seems some on here think: Innocent until proven Tory... ;)
    But that's just a misstatement of a rule of criminal law, not a general rule of logic. As someone else has pointed out, Savile was never convicted of anything, so that is him off the hook. And indeed in the year after his death suggestions that he was what he was, were met with exactly this sort of response about unproven backbiting now he is not here to defend himself etc.
    Savile was never convicted of anything, but there was a large inquiry after he died that produced a lot of evidence of wrongdoing. That's a very different situation to the one we're talking about here.

    Cyril Smith was also investigated as part of an inquiry:
    https://www.iicsa.org.uk/reports-recommendations/publications/investigation/cambridge-house-knowl-view-rochdale/part-introduction/cyril-smith.html

    Because of this, I'm fairly happy to call both of those paedophiles.
    The enquiry was scathing of how Leics police and social services dismissed the accusations against Janner, but refused to look at the truth or otherwise of the accusations made by more than 20 former children from the care system.

    https://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/news/leicester-news/just-brat-care-janner-abuse-6083130
  • Roger said:

    https://twitter.com/gabbsthenewt/status/1669064066109677570/photo/1

    My new Party disagrees and has a policy of a fully public NHS

    Is that Margaret Hodge quote genuine? For a Labour politician to say that would be surprising. For a Jewish politician to say it would be shocking
    Doesn't look genuine. I put margaret hodge "If you suddenly find your neighbours have changed" into Google and there are virtually zero hits for it on Google, and all of those hits seem to be in the last few days by Corbynistas with no a single original source for any of them.

    Where's the original source? Where's the citation? Where's a legitimate source? Seems like BS to me.
  • By the way, are we now calling for Rishi and Hunt to resign? They have after all 'crashed the economy' worse than the mini-budget now.

    It’s OK, apparently, if you crash in slow motion.
    They're boiling the frog.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 21,298
    edited June 2023
    eek said:

    The people sneering at mortgage holders are living in a( fantasy land.

    It’s kind of despicable to gloat at the pain suffered by 25% of the population.

    Nobody but nobody expected rates at 5/6%.
    As it happens I think they will spike and then hopefully decrease.

    The Fed has held rates constant this month and we are starting to see whispers of *deflation* in US and Europe.

    I am unconvinced that the BOE is following an anti-inflation strategy. It really seems that causing a recession is the main motivating factor, hence when inflation levels off, they may still raise rates to 'really see it off' and when inflation rises, they will raise rates to deal with the inflation.
    They are following an anti-inflationary policy - problem is that we usually have interest rates higher than the US and the 2 meetings where they did less than the market expected has come back to bite them (as I suspected it would).

    We will probably end up with interest rates 0;5% higher than they would have been.
    Andrew Bailey has not been very successful.
    Not surprisingly, as he was chosen in part for his Brexitability.

    Simon Case is a similar…er…case. Not so much Brexit in his instance as biddabilty, albeit chosen by the architects of the Brexit revolution.

    Although much of Britain’s problems are systemic and go back a long time, this acute phase of sickness often leads back to Brexit.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 48,647

    By the way, are we now calling for Rishi and Hunt to resign? They have after all 'crashed the economy' worse than the mini-budget now.

    It’s OK, apparently, if you crash in slow motion.
    Surely it's not a crash if you do it deliberately?

    Just another squeeze on the mortgage paying wage earners of the country, while state pensioners get 10% rises.
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 51,625
    Foxy said:

    By the way, are we now calling for Rishi and Hunt to resign? They have after all 'crashed the economy' worse than the mini-budget now.

    It’s OK, apparently, if you crash in slow motion.
    Surely it's not a crash if you do it deliberately?

    Just another squeeze on the mortgage paying wage earners of the country, while state pensioners get 10% rises.
    Lots of pensioners are leveraged on property. The class politics of it aren’t as simple as you make out, and the people who stand to gain the most are the young.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 21,298

    Foxy said:

    By the way, are we now calling for Rishi and Hunt to resign? They have after all 'crashed the economy' worse than the mini-budget now.

    It’s OK, apparently, if you crash in slow motion.
    Surely it's not a crash if you do it deliberately?

    Just another squeeze on the mortgage paying wage earners of the country, while state pensioners get 10% rises.
    Lots of pensioners are leveraged on property. The class politics of it aren’t as simple as you make out, and the people who stand to gain the most are the young.
    Utterly false.
    If we were building more houses, there might be some truth to this.

    But we ain’t.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,385

    The people sneering at mortgage holders are living in a( fantasy land.

    It’s kind of despicable to gloat at the pain suffered by 25% of the population.

    Nobody but nobody expected rates at 5/6%.
    As it happens I think they will spike and then hopefully decrease.

    The Fed has held rates constant this month and we are starting to see whispers of *deflation* in US and Europe.

    I did. That's why I fixed for five years two years ago.

    Although you may be right they will go down, but I doubt if they will ever go as low as they were then.
  • BartholomewRobertsBartholomewRoberts Posts: 21,971
    edited June 2023

    Foxy said:

    By the way, are we now calling for Rishi and Hunt to resign? They have after all 'crashed the economy' worse than the mini-budget now.

    It’s OK, apparently, if you crash in slow motion.
    Surely it's not a crash if you do it deliberately?

    Just another squeeze on the mortgage paying wage earners of the country, while state pensioners get 10% rises.
    Lots of pensioners are leveraged on property. The class politics of it aren’t as simple as you make out, and the people who stand to gain the most are the young.
    No pensioner should be leveraged on property, apart from those who've taken an equity release which I believe typically won't need repaying via mortgage or interest rates?

    The fact many are, is part of the madness of the housing market that is long overdue a correction.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 48,647
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    What did Labour hope to achieve by refusing to block the undemocratic over-extension of a statutory instrument for more draconian anti-protest laws?

    Wes Streeting noting that the House of Lords is unelected doesn’t help, either.

    Not a good day for Labour.

    Not infuriating white van man in key marginals in Kent, Essex and the Midlands and Redwall by not allowing the police to remove Just Stop Oil protestors from public highways
    Starmer could be playing the long game and wanting the Just Stop Oil style of protestors dealt with already before he ends up in Downing Street and they become his problem.
    Like Blair he also knows he cannot afford to alienate lower middle class and skilled working class workers who decide most Conservative v Labour marginal seats and generally hate the Just Stop Oil protests and disruption of the roads.

    Like Blair however he also knows he can afford to alienate upper middle class 'progressives' who love Just Stop Oil as they have nowhere else to go under FPTP, mostly live in safe Labour seats in inner cities and university towns and certainly would never vote Conservative (even if a few went LD or Green)
    More importantly it establishes precedent for the Commons to ignore the Lords when it wants.

    That could come in very handy for PM Starmer.
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 51,625

    Foxy said:

    By the way, are we now calling for Rishi and Hunt to resign? They have after all 'crashed the economy' worse than the mini-budget now.

    It’s OK, apparently, if you crash in slow motion.
    Surely it's not a crash if you do it deliberately?

    Just another squeeze on the mortgage paying wage earners of the country, while state pensioners get 10% rises.
    Lots of pensioners are leveraged on property. The class politics of it aren’t as simple as you make out, and the people who stand to gain the most are the young.
    Utterly false.
    If we were building more houses, there might be some truth to this.

    But we ain’t.
    That’s absurd. Even if we didn’t build a single new house, the distributional effects would still benefit those with the most future earning potential and the least debt, i.e. the young.
  • Foxy said:

    By the way, are we now calling for Rishi and Hunt to resign? They have after all 'crashed the economy' worse than the mini-budget now.

    It’s OK, apparently, if you crash in slow motion.
    Surely it's not a crash if you do it deliberately?

    Just another squeeze on the mortgage paying wage earners of the country, while state pensioners get 10% rises.
    Lots of pensioners are leveraged on property. The class politics of it aren’t as simple as you make out, and the people who stand to gain the most are the young.
    Utterly false.
    If we were building more houses, there might be some truth to this.

    But we ain’t.
    I wholeheartedly agree we need to build more houses.

    But leveraged buy to let landlords selling up helps fix some of the flaws of the market as it stands.

    If that then makes people less NIMBY as they're no longer fretting about their property portfolio as they no longer have one, all the better.
  • FlatlanderFlatlander Posts: 4,664
    ...

    The people sneering at mortgage holders are living in a( fantasy land.

    It’s kind of despicable to gloat at the pain suffered by 25% of the population.

    Nobody but nobody expected rates at 5/6%.
    As it happens I think they will spike and then hopefully decrease.

    The Fed has held rates constant this month and we are starting to see whispers of *deflation* in US and Europe.

    You might not have expected them in the same way that you might not have expected a pandemic and a war, but it should never ever have been discounted as a possibility.

    Most of us remember 1992.
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 17,218

    CatMan said:

    What did Labour hope to achieve by refusing to block the undemocratic over-extension of a statutory instrument for more draconian anti-protest laws?

    Wes Streeting noting that the House of Lords is unelected doesn’t help, either.

    Not a good day for Labour.

    Starmer claims they want to get rid of the HoL. Something to do with that?
    I don’t think that’s it.
    But it almost smells like it.

    The British executive is an elected dictatorship, and a refusal to exercise the HoL just makes it more dictatorial.
    I dunno if this thread is a justification, let alone a convincing justification...

    https://twitter.com/JohnWest_JAWS/status/1668758880896299008

    From near the bottom of the thread:

    They also manage to put the onus back onto the commons - the bill returns there unamended.

    Tory rebels have said they will not vote for it unamended.

    The pressure now is for them to keep their word or be nailed for their cowardice.


    (And let's remember that Green politicians are still politicians, and it suits them to put Labour in a difficult position as well.)
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 53,817

    eek said:

    The people sneering at mortgage holders are living in a( fantasy land.

    It’s kind of despicable to gloat at the pain suffered by 25% of the population.

    Nobody but nobody expected rates at 5/6%.
    As it happens I think they will spike and then hopefully decrease.

    The Fed has held rates constant this month and we are starting to see whispers of *deflation* in US and Europe.

    I am unconvinced that the BOE is following an anti-inflation strategy. It really seems that causing a recession is the main motivating factor, hence when inflation levels off, they may still raise rates to 'really see it off' and when inflation rises, they will raise rates to deal with the inflation.
    They are following an anti-inflationary policy - problem is that we usually have interest rates higher than the US and the 2 meetings where they did less than the market expected has come back to bite them (as I suspected it would).

    We will probably end up with interest rates 0;5% higher than they would have been.
    Andrew Bailey has not been very successful.
    Not surprisingly, as he was chosen in part for his Brexitability.

    Simon Case is a similar…er…case. Not so much Brexit in his instance as biddabilty, albeit chosen by the architects of the Brexit revolution.

    Although much of Britain’s problems are systemic and go back a long time, this acute phase of sickness often leads back to Brexit.
    Not obsessed.
  • Farooq said:

    By the way, are we now calling for Rishi and Hunt to resign? They have after all 'crashed the economy' worse than the mini-budget now.

    By what measure?

    Back in the autumn, the pound crashed and bond yields went vertical. What's happened today?
    Bond yields now are higher than they were when they 'went vertical'.

    Part of the problem in the autumn was a hysterical overreaction and terrible mismanagement of public relations.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 48,647

    ...

    The people sneering at mortgage holders are living in a( fantasy land.

    It’s kind of despicable to gloat at the pain suffered by 25% of the population.

    Nobody but nobody expected rates at 5/6%.
    As it happens I think they will spike and then hopefully decrease.

    The Fed has held rates constant this month and we are starting to see whispers of *deflation* in US and Europe.

    You might not have expected them in the same way that you might not have expected a pandemic and a war, but it should never ever have been discounted as a possibility.

    Most of us remember 1992.
    I do, but no one under 40 does.
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 12,496
    glw said:

    The people sneering at mortgage holders are living in a( fantasy land.

    It’s kind of despicable to gloat at the pain suffered by 25% of the population.

    Nobody but nobody expected rates at 5/6%.
    As it happens I think they will spike and then hopefully decrease.

    The Fed has held rates constant this month and we are starting to see whispers of *deflation* in US and Europe.

    Base rates were 5% 15 years ago, so well within the sort of window of time someone should consider when taking out a mortgage, and if not them the lender should think about it. Nor is 5% high historically.
    I agree with Gardenwalker. Less well off house buyers are seeking on the whole to buy a home, not a fancy palace. What has happened is that with ultra low interest rates for a long time the market price of unfancy homes shot up, giving average people little choice but to pay loads for an unfancy home, knowing perfectly well that the future was an unknown and that they had to take the chance or go without.

    Now quite few of them, given the randomness of luck, will be in difficulties. On the whole they have not brought it on themselves.

    FWIW I have always thought that the almost 0% interest rate was a terrible idea, sustained too long, allowed a property price boom that helped few and hindered many, and that rates should have started rising slowly and early.

    Finally, apparently the idea is out of fashion with economists, but it has always seemed to me that if you print money in sufficient quantities you will get inflation. 'QE' was the new name for it this time. But it was the old trick in new language. First it raised house prices, now its doing it to everything.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 21,298

    Foxy said:

    By the way, are we now calling for Rishi and Hunt to resign? They have after all 'crashed the economy' worse than the mini-budget now.

    It’s OK, apparently, if you crash in slow motion.
    Surely it's not a crash if you do it deliberately?

    Just another squeeze on the mortgage paying wage earners of the country, while state pensioners get 10% rises.
    Lots of pensioners are leveraged on property. The class politics of it aren’t as simple as you make out, and the people who stand to gain the most are the young.
    Utterly false.
    If we were building more houses, there might be some truth to this.

    But we ain’t.
    I wholeheartedly agree we need to build more houses.

    But leveraged buy to let landlords selling up helps fix some of the flaws of the market as it stands.

    If that then makes people less NIMBY as they're no longer fretting about their property portfolio as they no longer have one, all the better.
    I don’t think movement in BTL makes much difference, to be honest. I’ve no real sympathy with them as a class, but if we’re interested in overall distributional effects I think they are marginal.

    A raise in interest rates right now,

    Hurts mortgage holders (ie “every day families”)
    Hurts renters (ie the “young”)
    Benefits savers (ie pensioners)
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 48,647

    Foxy said:

    By the way, are we now calling for Rishi and Hunt to resign? They have after all 'crashed the economy' worse than the mini-budget now.

    It’s OK, apparently, if you crash in slow motion.
    Surely it's not a crash if you do it deliberately?

    Just another squeeze on the mortgage paying wage earners of the country, while state pensioners get 10% rises.
    Lots of pensioners are leveraged on property. The class politics of it aren’t as simple as you make out, and the people who stand to gain the most are the young.
    Utterly false.
    If we were building more houses, there might be some truth to this.

    But we ain’t.
    That’s absurd. Even if we didn’t build a single new house, the distributional effects would still benefit those with the most future earning potential and the least debt, i.e. the young.
    What makes you think that the young have the least debt? Most debt is mortgage.
This discussion has been closed.