I've just had an absolutely lovely run. It was not too hot this morning, and mist was rising from the grass after the overnight rain. Scores of rabbits were gambolling about, and a deer nonchalantly looked up as I jogged past.
In these summer mornings, it is worth getting up early and going into the local countryside - or even a local park - just before and/or after dawn, to see nature at its freshest. One of life's free joys.
We've not had any rabbits around here for over a year now as a virus took them all out. But it is a rare walk in the woods (my knees are not really up for running these days) where I don't see a deer, mainly roe but the odd red.
Ditto here. Saw a young roe fawn in the long grass of a meadow within sight of houses the other day.
Their numbers are seriously up, they must be causing significant losses to farmers.
The Scottish government has stopped the use of a chemical for controlling bracken and, indirectly ticks. The son of friends of ours lost 2 years of his life to Lymes disease, having to defer his University place. It is a deeply pernicious disease and he is still not fully over it.
Quite righ about deer; I do my best by buying and eating local venison, woke as it is.
Ticks aren't particularly specific to bracken, though - they're quite happy to use long grass, heather, and so on as we know ourselves (even though we never wear shorts on country walks, tuck in our socks, etc). The worst problem is the small instars (immature ones) which are difficult to spot. We have a couple of cheap plastic tick extractors stashed in our rucksacks.
Mrs Flatlander had Lyme a few years ago despite us always taking precautions. She had trouble persuading the local GP to give her the correct (3 week) dosage of antibiotics but we got there in the end and she's been OK.
I've had 3 ticks so far this year - and that's just walking round innocuous local nature reserves in the Flatlands - wearing long trousers and gaiters - and not just western Scotland where they've always been a pain.
Admittedly we tend to go off path through vegetation when surveying, but something has changed.
I don't think it is climate but is likely to be a big increase in deer population.
Could be climate - fewer hard winters killing off fewer tick instars and deer hosts. But just to add a turd to the punchbowl mix -
I might be tempting fate here, but in all the thousands of miles I have walked and run in this country, I have never once had a tick. Once, the people I was walking with had ticks all over their legs; I was the only person without one.
I guess ticks are rather discerning...
(Or could it be the fact my legs are fairly hairy?)
Obama is getting pilloried by Ukrainians for suggesting that a Ukrainian national identity separate from Russia only emerged after the annexation of Crimea, which didn't require an armed invasion because of all the Russian speakers.
That analysis perhaps has its root in defensiveness about his own failure adequately to respond to the annexation.
And evidently a degree of historical ignorance.
On some level he seemed to regard Russia as a kind of ally, and thought the idea of seriously confronting Putin was just a fringe obsession for Cold War dinosaurs.
Age is not of itself a bar, especially in the US where the work hard ethos is part of the American dream and I think @MikeSmithson is misreading the cultural differences.
In the US hard work is part of the American Dream. If you're fit and able you work on, and on. As I've posted before, there have been several nonagenarian elected Senators, and there are currently two serving senators who are over 89 years old. The oldest serving senator was Strom Thurmond who crossed the 100 mark whilst still in office. This is something unthinkable in the UK and alien to our culture where 'retirement' is the dream, as opposed to working hard and making your way until the end. For a fictional portrayal of this point, see Brian Cox's character in Succession.
Strom Thurmond was an extraordinary politician. He switched from Democrat to Republican. He conducted the longest ever single filibuster by a lone senator at 24 hours and 18 minutes in length. He was also a staunch opponent of civil rights legislation.
And guess who delivered the eulogy at both Strom Thurmond's funeral and burial plot? Yep ... one Joe Biden.
So I wouldn't bank any of your money on Joe standing down. If he remains sufficiently agile mentally and physically then he will erm ... run.
That may be true for a few super rich and elite politician Americans, the average American certainly wants to retire by mid 60s
That's a slightly different point. "I want to retire before I'm old" is not incompatible with "I rdespect and will vote for people willing to carry on indefinitely".
I think we overdo the ageism a bit in British politics. Speaking personally I'd be delighted to have another term and immodestly think I'd be better than some, but it's really unlikely to happen at age 73 so I'm not even trying. (Being CLP chair and on the Borough exec is a compromise.)
Anecdotally, when I was one of Corbyn's constituents and had half an hour with him talking about diverse topics, I said I wouldn't be a bad hard-working loyalist if he wanted to stick me in the Lords. He looked suitably nonplussed and we hastily moved on.
As an MP, I was well aware that there were plenty of subjects about which I knew nothing... An opinion/recommendation from respected experts in the Lords would have been useful.
I said I wouldn't be a bad hard-working loyalist if he wanted to stick me in the Lords
Anyone else see a contradiction here?
No, absolutely none.
Some years back, I was reading through some old debates in Parliament and the Lords.
One struck me - it was a discussion, in the Lords, about the introduction of the famous Lee-Enfield No.4 rifle. The one carried by British soldiers in both world wars.
The depth of debate was fascinating - as usual on such things, there was a group who wanted the most accurate rifle possible be a group who wanted reliability. But both groups acknowledge their biases. They discussed possible flaws in their own thinking, suggested ways to test if the rifle actually met their concerns. There were a number of shooting experts and former soldiers in the debate of course.
The whole thing was a group of obviously intelligent people trying to buy the best all round option - both for the public purse, but also for the Army.
One comment stood out. Something like “I thank the Noble Lord for his response to my comment. I hadn’t considered X. It is a very good point and in consequence I withdraw my comment.”
People who can publicly admit they are mistaken in a discussion…
This is all well and good, but to achieve that level of debate you don't need membership for life, political appointees, arcane rituals, and so on. The idea that expertise can only be made available to the Commons in this manner is unspoken because it's so obviously false. And in matters of expertise, given the pace at which some subject matters move, especially around some sciences and technologies, the idea of keeping some fossil on the books whose practical experience in the subject hasn't been updated since the 1980s is clearly not the right way to get up to date expert advice. On top of all that, why would you need experts kept on the books for years on end when no legislation is incoming related to that?
The whole system is ossified, anachronistic, inefficient, inherently conservative, and if I might say so, not how any of us would design it if we were setting up a constitution from scratch.
If it was properly conservative it would still be a Lords mainly made up of hereditary peers
I don't think anybody really takes your idea of "properly conservative" seriously
Because there are few real Tories now, even on here many Conservatives are really just centre right liberals or Brexit supporters
A real Tory is surely someone who was on the side of the King and Church in the political struggles of the Exclusion Crisis of the 1670s and of the Stuarts against the Hanoverians. Are you still siding with that bunch of losers?
Or are you defining real Tories as people who agree with you all the time?
Surely a Real Tory would have been On Message for the raising of the Kings Standard on 22nd August 1642 - not some johnny-come-lately from the the 1670s?
Age is not of itself a bar, especially in the US where the work hard ethos is part of the American dream and I think @MikeSmithson is misreading the cultural differences.
In the US hard work is part of the American Dream. If you're fit and able you work on, and on. As I've posted before, there have been several nonagenarian elected Senators, and there are currently two serving senators who are over 89 years old. The oldest serving senator was Strom Thurmond who crossed the 100 mark whilst still in office. This is something unthinkable in the UK and alien to our culture where 'retirement' is the dream, as opposed to working hard and making your way until the end. For a fictional portrayal of this point, see Brian Cox's character in Succession.
Strom Thurmond was an extraordinary politician. He switched from Democrat to Republican. He conducted the longest ever single filibuster by a lone senator at 24 hours and 18 minutes in length. He was also a staunch opponent of civil rights legislation.
And guess who delivered the eulogy at both Strom Thurmond's funeral and burial plot? Yep ... one Joe Biden.
So I wouldn't bank any of your money on Joe standing down. If he remains sufficiently agile mentally and physically then he will erm ... run.
That may be true for a few super rich and elite politician Americans, the average American certainly wants to retire by mid 60s
That's a slightly different point. "I want to retire before I'm old" is not incompatible with "I rdespect and will vote for people willing to carry on indefinitely".
I think we overdo the ageism a bit in British politics. Speaking personally I'd be delighted to have another term and immodestly think I'd be better than some, but it's really unlikely to happen at age 73 so I'm not even trying. (Being CLP chair and on the Borough exec is a compromise.)
Anecdotally, when I was one of Corbyn's constituents and had half an hour with him talking about diverse topics, I said I wouldn't be a bad hard-working loyalist if he wanted to stick me in the Lords. He looked suitably nonplussed and we hastily moved on.
As an MP, I was well aware that there were plenty of subjects about which I knew nothing... An opinion/recommendation from respected experts in the Lords would have been useful.
I said I wouldn't be a bad hard-working loyalist if he wanted to stick me in the Lords
Anyone else see a contradiction here?
No, absolutely none.
Some years back, I was reading through some old debates in Parliament and the Lords.
One struck me - it was a discussion, in the Lords, about the introduction of the famous Lee-Enfield No.4 rifle. The one carried by British soldiers in both world wars.
The depth of debate was fascinating - as usual on such things, there was a group who wanted the most accurate rifle possible be a group who wanted reliability. But both groups acknowledge their biases. They discussed possible flaws in their own thinking, suggested ways to test if the rifle actually met their concerns. There were a number of shooting experts and former soldiers in the debate of course.
The whole thing was a group of obviously intelligent people trying to buy the best all round option - both for the public purse, but also for the Army.
One comment stood out. Something like “I thank the Noble Lord for his response to my comment. I hadn’t considered X. It is a very good point and in consequence I withdraw my comment.”
People who can publicly admit they are mistaken in a discussion…
This is all well and good, but to achieve that level of debate you don't need membership for life, political appointees, arcane rituals, and so on. The idea that expertise can only be made available to the Commons in this manner is unspoken because it's so obviously false. And in matters of expertise, given the pace at which some subject matters move, especially around some sciences and technologies, the idea of keeping some fossil on the books whose practical experience in the subject hasn't been updated since the 1980s is clearly not the right way to get up to date expert advice. On top of all that, why would you need experts kept on the books for years on end when no legislation is incoming related to that?
The whole system is ossified, anachronistic, inefficient, inherently conservative, and if I might say so, not how any of us would design it if we were setting up a constitution from scratch.
If it was properly conservative it would still be a Lords mainly made up of hereditary peers
I don't think anybody really takes your idea of "properly conservative" seriously
Because there are few real Tories now, even on here many Conservatives are really just centre right liberals or Brexit supporters
A real Tory is surely someone who was on the side of the King and Church in the political struggles of the Exclusion Crisis of the 1670s and of the Stuarts against the Hanoverians. Are you still siding with that bunch of losers?
Or are you defining real Tories as people who agree with you all the time?
As a Remainer here’s a list of things I want Labour to bring in if it can get agreement with the EU .
Youth/student mobility scheme. 6 month stays in the EU not the current 90 in a 180 days . Return to Erasmus . Relax rules on the creative industries . Vetinerary agreement to help farming and fisheries .
There are others but I really don’t see why any of the above should be controversial.
It seems Sunak has already indicated he is working with UVDL on most of those
The problem with Erasmus was the insane contribution they wanted for the UK to remain a member and losing any say in how the money was spent. The offer was what I call, in business, a "Fuck You Very Much" offer - one designed to tell the person you are dealing with, the answer is no.
Joining EEA/EFTA (the Norway option) thus retaining Brexit and doing most of what most people now want looks a bit of a no-brainer. Very interesting that the possibility is being ignored on all sides. Is Labour keeping it for after the election?
At the moment rejoin the EU still has less than 50% support, but rejoin the EU or rejoin the single market has nearly 60% support amongst all voters (though 70% of Remainers would rejoin the full EU).
However, amongst Leavers the median position is to stay out of the EU and single market still (hence either would be political suicide in the redwall and Leave voting Tory marginals Starmer must win to become PM). Leavers do want a closer trade and security relationship with the EU though which is Labour's current position.
If he wins back the marginals he needs to become PM then Labour can start to consider rejoining the single market if it wins a second term. If Labour won a third term some in the party might even then push to rejoin the full EU
Noted. The swing opinion - the middling one of stay out of SM but get closer - is precisely the one which the Brexit deal would have achieved if it could. And it's the one involving a great deal of hand waving. No-one can tell you what it looks like. Except that it looked like a unicorn then and it does now.
Good morning
Sunak needs to spring a huge surprise early next year and announce he will take us back into the singe market
Now that would be a game changer
Yes, it means free movement and RefUK would probably replace the Tories as the main opposition while Starmer Labour would sweep every seat in the Redwall
Why don't you just join RefUK as you act as a de facto supporter
You seem to have this quaint idea RefUK with approx 5% support are going to become some dynamic force in UK politics
As far as the red wall is concerned it is lost anyway
The vast majority of current Conservative voters do not want to rejoin the single market and nor do they want to restore free movement from the EEA, so would switch en masse to RefUK if Sunak proposed that. Farage would of course return to lead RefUK instantly if Sunak did that.
So the Tories would face Canada 1993 style obliteration, losing the Redwall and Leave marginals to Starmer Labour, losing their traditional Leave seats to Farage and RefUK and losing Remain seats still anyway to the LDs who would push to go further and rejoin the EU while the Tories split the Leave vote with Farage
I've just had an absolutely lovely run. It was not too hot this morning, and mist was rising from the grass after the overnight rain. Scores of rabbits were gambolling about, and a deer nonchalantly looked up as I jogged past.
In these summer mornings, it is worth getting up early and going into the local countryside - or even a local park - just before and/or after dawn, to see nature at its freshest. One of life's free joys.
We've not had any rabbits around here for over a year now as a virus took them all out. But it is a rare walk in the woods (my knees are not really up for running these days) where I don't see a deer, mainly roe but the odd red.
Ditto here. Saw a young roe fawn in the long grass of a meadow within sight of houses the other day.
Their numbers are seriously up, they must be causing significant losses to farmers.
The Scottish government has stopped the use of a chemical for controlling bracken and, indirectly ticks. The son of friends of ours lost 2 years of his life to Lymes disease, having to defer his University place. It is a deeply pernicious disease and he is still not fully over it.
Quite righ about deer; I do my best by buying and eating local venison, woke as it is.
Ticks aren't particularly specific to bracken, though - they're quite happy to use long grass, heather, and so on as we know ourselves (even though we never wear shorts on country walks, tuck in our socks, etc). The worst problem is the small instars (immature ones) which are difficult to spot. We have a couple of cheap plastic tick extractors stashed in our rucksacks.
The idea that farmers/landowners want to control bracken and thereby ticks out of concern for walkers on their land is most entertaining. Tbf it seems to be SCons pushing this particular line. How many of them are farmers and/or landowners I couldn’t say.
The control of deer is also politically interesting - though ISTR it's species based. Lots of Red Deer = Good in Toryland, becauyse of hunting estates (and fuck the vegetation). It's usually the (real) ecologists who want a lower, and more realistic, population density - the problem being that deer move between landowners' parcels.
The red deer in the Kent downs (where officially, and on the internet, they don't exist) have become a real menace to crops and particularly vineyards. They're beautiful things, proper monarchs of the glen, but huge and destructive.
Though I did get a nice red deer haunch from the local gamekeeper who shot a couple in the fields above our vines a few months back.
Age is not of itself a bar, especially in the US where the work hard ethos is part of the American dream and I think @MikeSmithson is misreading the cultural differences.
In the US hard work is part of the American Dream. If you're fit and able you work on, and on. As I've posted before, there have been several nonagenarian elected Senators, and there are currently two serving senators who are over 89 years old. The oldest serving senator was Strom Thurmond who crossed the 100 mark whilst still in office. This is something unthinkable in the UK and alien to our culture where 'retirement' is the dream, as opposed to working hard and making your way until the end. For a fictional portrayal of this point, see Brian Cox's character in Succession.
Strom Thurmond was an extraordinary politician. He switched from Democrat to Republican. He conducted the longest ever single filibuster by a lone senator at 24 hours and 18 minutes in length. He was also a staunch opponent of civil rights legislation.
And guess who delivered the eulogy at both Strom Thurmond's funeral and burial plot? Yep ... one Joe Biden.
So I wouldn't bank any of your money on Joe standing down. If he remains sufficiently agile mentally and physically then he will erm ... run.
That may be true for a few super rich and elite politician Americans, the average American certainly wants to retire by mid 60s
That's a slightly different point. "I want to retire before I'm old" is not incompatible with "I rdespect and will vote for people willing to carry on indefinitely".
I think we overdo the ageism a bit in British politics. Speaking personally I'd be delighted to have another term and immodestly think I'd be better than some, but it's really unlikely to happen at age 73 so I'm not even trying. (Being CLP chair and on the Borough exec is a compromise.)
Anecdotally, when I was one of Corbyn's constituents and had half an hour with him talking about diverse topics, I said I wouldn't be a bad hard-working loyalist if he wanted to stick me in the Lords. He looked suitably nonplussed and we hastily moved on.
As an MP, I was well aware that there were plenty of subjects about which I knew nothing... An opinion/recommendation from respected experts in the Lords would have been useful.
I said I wouldn't be a bad hard-working loyalist if he wanted to stick me in the Lords
Anyone else see a contradiction here?
No, absolutely none.
Some years back, I was reading through some old debates in Parliament and the Lords.
One struck me - it was a discussion, in the Lords, about the introduction of the famous Lee-Enfield No.4 rifle. The one carried by British soldiers in both world wars.
The depth of debate was fascinating - as usual on such things, there was a group who wanted the most accurate rifle possible be a group who wanted reliability. But both groups acknowledge their biases. They discussed possible flaws in their own thinking, suggested ways to test if the rifle actually met their concerns. There were a number of shooting experts and former soldiers in the debate of course.
The whole thing was a group of obviously intelligent people trying to buy the best all round option - both for the public purse, but also for the Army.
One comment stood out. Something like “I thank the Noble Lord for his response to my comment. I hadn’t considered X. It is a very good point and in consequence I withdraw my comment.”
People who can publicly admit they are mistaken in a discussion…
This is all well and good, but to achieve that level of debate you don't need membership for life, political appointees, arcane rituals, and so on. The idea that expertise can only be made available to the Commons in this manner is unspoken because it's so obviously false. And in matters of expertise, given the pace at which some subject matters move, especially around some sciences and technologies, the idea of keeping some fossil on the books whose practical experience in the subject hasn't been updated since the 1980s is clearly not the right way to get up to date expert advice. On top of all that, why would you need experts kept on the books for years on end when no legislation is incoming related to that?
The whole system is ossified, anachronistic, inefficient, inherently conservative, and if I might say so, not how any of us would design it if we were setting up a constitution from scratch.
If it was properly conservative it would still be a Lords mainly made up of hereditary peers
I don't think anybody really takes your idea of "properly conservative" seriously
Because there are few real Tories now, even on here many Conservatives are really just centre right liberals or Brexit supporters
A real Tory is surely someone who was on the side of the King and Church in the political struggles of the Exclusion Crisis of the 1670s and of the Stuarts against the Hanoverians. Are you still siding with that bunch of losers?
Or are you defining real Tories as people who agree with you all the time?
Surely a Real Tory would have been On Message for the raising of the Kings Standard on 22nd August 1642 - not some johnny-come-lately from the the 1670s?
A Real Tory™ isn't obsessed with modern concerns from the 1640s, the rot set limiting the power of the monarchy via the Magna Carta in 1215.
Age is not of itself a bar, especially in the US where the work hard ethos is part of the American dream and I think @MikeSmithson is misreading the cultural differences.
In the US hard work is part of the American Dream. If you're fit and able you work on, and on. As I've posted before, there have been several nonagenarian elected Senators, and there are currently two serving senators who are over 89 years old. The oldest serving senator was Strom Thurmond who crossed the 100 mark whilst still in office. This is something unthinkable in the UK and alien to our culture where 'retirement' is the dream, as opposed to working hard and making your way until the end. For a fictional portrayal of this point, see Brian Cox's character in Succession.
Strom Thurmond was an extraordinary politician. He switched from Democrat to Republican. He conducted the longest ever single filibuster by a lone senator at 24 hours and 18 minutes in length. He was also a staunch opponent of civil rights legislation.
And guess who delivered the eulogy at both Strom Thurmond's funeral and burial plot? Yep ... one Joe Biden.
So I wouldn't bank any of your money on Joe standing down. If he remains sufficiently agile mentally and physically then he will erm ... run.
That may be true for a few super rich and elite politician Americans, the average American certainly wants to retire by mid 60s
That's a slightly different point. "I want to retire before I'm old" is not incompatible with "I rdespect and will vote for people willing to carry on indefinitely".
I think we overdo the ageism a bit in British politics. Speaking personally I'd be delighted to have another term and immodestly think I'd be better than some, but it's really unlikely to happen at age 73 so I'm not even trying. (Being CLP chair and on the Borough exec is a compromise.)
Anecdotally, when I was one of Corbyn's constituents and had half an hour with him talking about diverse topics, I said I wouldn't be a bad hard-working loyalist if he wanted to stick me in the Lords. He looked suitably nonplussed and we hastily moved on.
As an MP, I was well aware that there were plenty of subjects about which I knew nothing... An opinion/recommendation from respected experts in the Lords would have been useful.
I said I wouldn't be a bad hard-working loyalist if he wanted to stick me in the Lords
Anyone else see a contradiction here?
No, absolutely none.
Some years back, I was reading through some old debates in Parliament and the Lords.
One struck me - it was a discussion, in the Lords, about the introduction of the famous Lee-Enfield No.4 rifle. The one carried by British soldiers in both world wars.
The depth of debate was fascinating - as usual on such things, there was a group who wanted the most accurate rifle possible be a group who wanted reliability. But both groups acknowledge their biases. They discussed possible flaws in their own thinking, suggested ways to test if the rifle actually met their concerns. There were a number of shooting experts and former soldiers in the debate of course.
The whole thing was a group of obviously intelligent people trying to buy the best all round option - both for the public purse, but also for the Army.
One comment stood out. Something like “I thank the Noble Lord for his response to my comment. I hadn’t considered X. It is a very good point and in consequence I withdraw my comment.”
People who can publicly admit they are mistaken in a discussion…
THis book was (still is, I think) going cheap so I bagged it. As so often with the best railway histories it was an absolutely fascinating social history with insight into the NRA (UK), 19th and 20th century, and its shooting meetings in Winbledon Common and out at Bisley and how exactly the sort of debate you cite was bound up with the NRA's activities and the symbiosis between the Army, both professional and reservist, and the wider body politic.
I've just had an absolutely lovely run. It was not too hot this morning, and mist was rising from the grass after the overnight rain. Scores of rabbits were gambolling about, and a deer nonchalantly looked up as I jogged past.
In these summer mornings, it is worth getting up early and going into the local countryside - or even a local park - just before and/or after dawn, to see nature at its freshest. One of life's free joys.
We've not had any rabbits around here for over a year now as a virus took them all out. But it is a rare walk in the woods (my knees are not really up for running these days) where I don't see a deer, mainly roe but the odd red.
Ditto here. Saw a young roe fawn in the long grass of a meadow within sight of houses the other day.
Their numbers are seriously up, they must be causing significant losses to farmers.
The Scottish government has stopped the use of a chemical for controlling bracken and, indirectly ticks. The son of friends of ours lost 2 years of his life to Lymes disease, having to defer his University place. It is a deeply pernicious disease and he is still not fully over it.
Quite righ about deer; I do my best by buying and eating local venison, woke as it is.
Ticks aren't particularly specific to bracken, though - they're quite happy to use long grass, heather, and so on as we know ourselves (even though we never wear shorts on country walks, tuck in our socks, etc). The worst problem is the small instars (immature ones) which are difficult to spot. We have a couple of cheap plastic tick extractors stashed in our rucksacks.
The idea that farmers/landowners want to control bracken and thereby ticks out of concern for walkers on their land is most entertaining. Tbf it seems to be SCons pushing this particular line. How many of them are farmers and/or landowners I couldn’t say.
The control of deer is also politically interesting - though ISTR it's species based. Lots of Red Deer = Good in Toryland, becauyse of hunting estates (and fuck the vegetation). It's usually the (real) ecologists who want a lower, and more realistic, population density - the problem being that deer move between landowners' parcels.
The red deer in the Kent downs (where officially, and on the internet, they don't exist) have become a real menace to crops and particularly vineyards. They're beautiful things, proper monarchs of the glen, but huge and destructive.
Though I did get a nice red deer haunch from the local gamekeeper who shot a couple in the fields above our vines a few months back.
Which reminds me, we need to order some more from the specialist game butcher in the Borders.
I have been reading journalist articles with stories of pain today. It strikes me that many of these people were naive, stupid or both. Examples of people having been on interest-only mortgages for 20 years to pay for home improvements and whatever else they wanted to spend their money on (cars, holidays etc.). Buy-to-let landlords on interest-only mortgages were quite happy to profit from rising house prices at the expense of renters unable to get on the housing ladder. They now seem horrified that their good times are coming to an end.
I forget who on here has been repeatedly mentioning how inflation has been high for years through house prices (may of been @MaxPB ). If it had been included and the BoE had to target that too then we would never have seen such low interest rates for year after year. People would have been more cautious and house prices would have been more affordable.
I expect to see large numbers of people very soon to be unable to afford their mortgages and trying to sell. House prices will fall and then causing negative equity too. The government will get blamed for this but it has been a disaster 20 years in the making along with the BoE recently totally failing in their remit.
I hope that lessons are learned from this and that house prices are included in the rate of inflation that the BoE has to target.
I am ready for a fight. I genuinely hate the people who have been so protected whilst we get fucked.
Put our lives on hold. Fucked.
We should have all refused to lock down, it was a complete waste of time for us. The people protected will be dead soon, we've got years of this shit to come.
I am so, so angry. I have no confidence Labour will sort it out - but the priority is getting Little Rishi and his bunch of fucktards out.
Labour rarely sorts anything out.
But joking aside, the younger generation do have legitimate complaint, though in my experience it is a little simplistic to make demographic divisions. There are plenty of entitled oldies and entitled youngers. There are plenty of whinging oldies and whinging youngsters. There are also those that work bloody hard, don't blame others and become a success in life however that looks, because they seize the day and look for the bright spots rather than the dark.
There are plenty of reasons why we (particularly those in UK) should all be very grateful for the times we live in, despite Brexit, incoming Labour governments, Putin etc. Let us be grateful we were not born in Mariupol.
You make a good point but I was addressing the overwhelming feeling we get from the media and so on who amplify it. I recall the week we spent discussing avocado on toast.
I am not saying all elderly people are bad - but a large minority give the rest a bad name. And for them I am afraid I regret putting my life on hold.
It wasn't just older people that were killed by Covid. Yes they were disproportionately effected. The lockdowns were not designed to save the elderly, they were designed to save our healthcare system. Funnily enough, the one system in Europe that is closest to our mad NHS system had no lockdown at all (Sweden). It will be interesting to reflect on which government got it right.
Lockdown was pretty shit. But if you want to focus on the bright side by contrasting with the darkest, imagine what it must be like for those people in Ukraine at the moment, or even the parents of Russian soldiers. They really have had a lot to complain about.
Around 1,000 people in the UK died from Covid on its own, the rest died "with Covid".
That sounds about right. Or at least as an upper bound. I doubt there's even an official figure for this. It's not as if the state is saying the actual figure is 100,000. They don't want people to draw a distinction between "of" and "with". Probably quite a few people die "with" poor eyesight too.
Few people are aware now, if they ever were, that "Covid" used to mean the illness caused in a few cases by a type of double pneumonia induced by the SARS variant SARSCoV2. ("NCIP" as it was called - "Novel Coronavirus-Induced Pneumonia"). But never mind. Most people were led to say things like they felt a bit Covidy if they had a cold. (F*cking drama-queen malingerers, basically.) Some even showed as SARSCoV2-positive because, after all, the said SARS variant WAS going around, even if it was harmless or almost harmless for a very large majority of those infected. So some with colds were positive, just as some without colds were positive. In most cases it should have been a case of so the f*ck what. Incidentally it's long been the case that many elderly patients catch pneumonia in hospitals. What a shocker.
If someone said they'd had Covid, I always asked them how long they'd had the pneumonia for. Sometimes it's just too much strain to suffer cretins gladly.
There's even more insane bullsh*t in this area than there is in woko-trans. We live in very sick times.
So much medical ignorance in one post is rare to find outside of St Petersburg or Florida.
Tell me one single thing I said that was wrong, and try doing so without using the word "medical" or pretending it is your worldwide experience that causes you to make the geographical references that are so de rigueur among party member types in your little corner of the world.
What do you think the approximately 250,000 people with Covid on their death certificates really died of then? Would they be dead if they hadn't had a covid infection?
If someone dies of pneumonia caused by covid are you claiming they died of pneumonia, not covid?
Age is not of itself a bar, especially in the US where the work hard ethos is part of the American dream and I think @MikeSmithson is misreading the cultural differences.
In the US hard work is part of the American Dream. If you're fit and able you work on, and on. As I've posted before, there have been several nonagenarian elected Senators, and there are currently two serving senators who are over 89 years old. The oldest serving senator was Strom Thurmond who crossed the 100 mark whilst still in office. This is something unthinkable in the UK and alien to our culture where 'retirement' is the dream, as opposed to working hard and making your way until the end. For a fictional portrayal of this point, see Brian Cox's character in Succession.
Strom Thurmond was an extraordinary politician. He switched from Democrat to Republican. He conducted the longest ever single filibuster by a lone senator at 24 hours and 18 minutes in length. He was also a staunch opponent of civil rights legislation.
And guess who delivered the eulogy at both Strom Thurmond's funeral and burial plot? Yep ... one Joe Biden.
So I wouldn't bank any of your money on Joe standing down. If he remains sufficiently agile mentally and physically then he will erm ... run.
That may be true for a few super rich and elite politician Americans, the average American certainly wants to retire by mid 60s
That's a slightly different point. "I want to retire before I'm old" is not incompatible with "I rdespect and will vote for people willing to carry on indefinitely".
I think we overdo the ageism a bit in British politics. Speaking personally I'd be delighted to have another term and immodestly think I'd be better than some, but it's really unlikely to happen at age 73 so I'm not even trying. (Being CLP chair and on the Borough exec is a compromise.)
Anecdotally, when I was one of Corbyn's constituents and had half an hour with him talking about diverse topics, I said I wouldn't be a bad hard-working loyalist if he wanted to stick me in the Lords. He looked suitably nonplussed and we hastily moved on.
As an MP, I was well aware that there were plenty of subjects about which I knew nothing... An opinion/recommendation from respected experts in the Lords would have been useful.
I said I wouldn't be a bad hard-working loyalist if he wanted to stick me in the Lords
Anyone else see a contradiction here?
No, absolutely none.
Some years back, I was reading through some old debates in Parliament and the Lords.
One struck me - it was a discussion, in the Lords, about the introduction of the famous Lee-Enfield No.4 rifle. The one carried by British soldiers in both world wars.
The depth of debate was fascinating - as usual on such things, there was a group who wanted the most accurate rifle possible be a group who wanted reliability. But both groups acknowledge their biases. They discussed possible flaws in their own thinking, suggested ways to test if the rifle actually met their concerns. There were a number of shooting experts and former soldiers in the debate of course.
The whole thing was a group of obviously intelligent people trying to buy the best all round option - both for the public purse, but also for the Army.
One comment stood out. Something like “I thank the Noble Lord for his response to my comment. I hadn’t considered X. It is a very good point and in consequence I withdraw my comment.”
People who can publicly admit they are mistaken in a discussion…
This is all well and good, but to achieve that level of debate you don't need membership for life, political appointees, arcane rituals, and so on. The idea that expertise can only be made available to the Commons in this manner is unspoken because it's so obviously false. And in matters of expertise, given the pace at which some subject matters move, especially around some sciences and technologies, the idea of keeping some fossil on the books whose practical experience in the subject hasn't been updated since the 1980s is clearly not the right way to get up to date expert advice. On top of all that, why would you need experts kept on the books for years on end when no legislation is incoming related to that?
The whole system is ossified, anachronistic, inefficient, inherently conservative, and if I might say so, not how any of us would design it if we were setting up a constitution from scratch.
If it was properly conservative it would still be a Lords mainly made up of hereditary peers
I don't think anybody really takes your idea of "properly conservative" seriously
Because there are few real Tories now, even on here many Conservatives are really just centre right liberals or Brexit supporters
A real Tory is surely someone who was on the side of the King and Church in the political struggles of the Exclusion Crisis of the 1670s and of the Stuarts against the Hanoverians. Are you still siding with that bunch of losers?
Or are you defining real Tories as people who agree with you all the time?
The former of course (or would have been) plus a supporter of the peerage and the established Church and the landed gentry.
A Tory is just a component of the current Conservative Party now but its historical elements remain
Age is not of itself a bar, especially in the US where the work hard ethos is part of the American dream and I think @MikeSmithson is misreading the cultural differences.
In the US hard work is part of the American Dream. If you're fit and able you work on, and on. As I've posted before, there have been several nonagenarian elected Senators, and there are currently two serving senators who are over 89 years old. The oldest serving senator was Strom Thurmond who crossed the 100 mark whilst still in office. This is something unthinkable in the UK and alien to our culture where 'retirement' is the dream, as opposed to working hard and making your way until the end. For a fictional portrayal of this point, see Brian Cox's character in Succession.
Strom Thurmond was an extraordinary politician. He switched from Democrat to Republican. He conducted the longest ever single filibuster by a lone senator at 24 hours and 18 minutes in length. He was also a staunch opponent of civil rights legislation.
And guess who delivered the eulogy at both Strom Thurmond's funeral and burial plot? Yep ... one Joe Biden.
So I wouldn't bank any of your money on Joe standing down. If he remains sufficiently agile mentally and physically then he will erm ... run.
That may be true for a few super rich and elite politician Americans, the average American certainly wants to retire by mid 60s
That's a slightly different point. "I want to retire before I'm old" is not incompatible with "I rdespect and will vote for people willing to carry on indefinitely".
I think we overdo the ageism a bit in British politics. Speaking personally I'd be delighted to have another term and immodestly think I'd be better than some, but it's really unlikely to happen at age 73 so I'm not even trying. (Being CLP chair and on the Borough exec is a compromise.)
Anecdotally, when I was one of Corbyn's constituents and had half an hour with him talking about diverse topics, I said I wouldn't be a bad hard-working loyalist if he wanted to stick me in the Lords. He looked suitably nonplussed and we hastily moved on.
As an MP, I was well aware that there were plenty of subjects about which I knew nothing... An opinion/recommendation from respected experts in the Lords would have been useful.
I said I wouldn't be a bad hard-working loyalist if he wanted to stick me in the Lords
Anyone else see a contradiction here?
No, absolutely none.
Some years back, I was reading through some old debates in Parliament and the Lords.
One struck me - it was a discussion, in the Lords, about the introduction of the famous Lee-Enfield No.4 rifle. The one carried by British soldiers in both world wars.
The depth of debate was fascinating - as usual on such things, there was a group who wanted the most accurate rifle possible be a group who wanted reliability. But both groups acknowledge their biases. They discussed possible flaws in their own thinking, suggested ways to test if the rifle actually met their concerns. There were a number of shooting experts and former soldiers in the debate of course.
The whole thing was a group of obviously intelligent people trying to buy the best all round option - both for the public purse, but also for the Army.
One comment stood out. Something like “I thank the Noble Lord for his response to my comment. I hadn’t considered X. It is a very good point and in consequence I withdraw my comment.”
People who can publicly admit they are mistaken in a discussion…
This is all well and good, but to achieve that level of debate you don't need membership for life, political appointees, arcane rituals, and so on. The idea that expertise can only be made available to the Commons in this manner is unspoken because it's so obviously false. And in matters of expertise, given the pace at which some subject matters move, especially around some sciences and technologies, the idea of keeping some fossil on the books whose practical experience in the subject hasn't been updated since the 1980s is clearly not the right way to get up to date expert advice. On top of all that, why would you need experts kept on the books for years on end when no legislation is incoming related to that?
The whole system is ossified, anachronistic, inefficient, inherently conservative, and if I might say so, not how any of us would design it if we were setting up a constitution from scratch.
If it was properly conservative it would still be a Lords mainly made up of hereditary peers
I don't think anybody really takes your idea of "properly conservative" seriously
Because there are few real Tories now, even on here many Conservatives are really just centre right liberals or Brexit supporters
A real Tory is surely someone who was on the side of the King and Church in the political struggles of the Exclusion Crisis of the 1670s and of the Stuarts against the Hanoverians. Are you still siding with that bunch of losers?
Or are you defining real Tories as people who agree with you all the time?
Surely a Real Tory would have been On Message for the raising of the Kings Standard on 22nd August 1642 - not some johnny-come-lately from the the 1670s?
I love historical pedantry. In the 1640s and 1650s, the word Tory was used as a nasty term for dispossessed Irish Catholics or rebels. So applying it to HYUFD would be odd.
It got attached to extreme royalists when it was used as a term of abuse during the political struggles of the 1680s, apparently by Titus Oates, the notorious perjurer.
Joining EEA/EFTA (the Norway option) thus retaining Brexit and doing most of what most people now want looks a bit of a no-brainer. Very interesting that the possibility is being ignored on all sides. Is Labour keeping it for after the election?
At the moment rejoin the EU still has less than 50% support, but rejoin the EU or rejoin the single market has nearly 60% support amongst all voters (though 70% of Remainers would rejoin the full EU).
However, amongst Leavers the median position is to stay out of the EU and single market still (hence either would be political suicide in the redwall and Leave voting Tory marginals Starmer must win to become PM). Leavers do want a closer trade and security relationship with the EU though which is Labour's current position.
If he wins back the marginals he needs to become PM then Labour can start to consider rejoining the single market if it wins a second term. If Labour won a third term some in the party might even then push to rejoin the full EU
Noted. The swing opinion - the middling one of stay out of SM but get closer - is precisely the one which the Brexit deal would have achieved if it could. And it's the one involving a great deal of hand waving. No-one can tell you what it looks like. Except that it looked like a unicorn then and it does now.
Good morning
Sunak needs to spring a huge surprise early next year and announce he will take us back into the singe market
Now that would be a game changer
Yes, it means free movement and RefUK would probably replace the Tories as the main opposition while Starmer Labour would sweep every seat in the Redwall
Why don't you just join RefUK as you act as a de facto supporter
You seem to have this quaint idea RefUK with approx 5% support are going to become some dynamic force in UK politics
As far as the red wall is concerned it is lost anyway
The vast majority of current Conservative voters do not want to rejoin the single market and nor do they want to restore free movement from the EEA, so would switch en masse to RefUK if Sunak proposed that. Farage would of course return to lead RefUK instantly if Sunak did that.
So the Tories would face Canada 1993 style obliteration, losing the Redwall and Leave marginals to Starmer Labour, losing their traditional Leave seats to Farage and RefUK and losing Remain seats still anyway to the LDs who would push to go further and rejoin the EU while the Tories split the Leave vote with Farage
'The vast majority of current Conservative voters do not want to rejoin the single market'
You need to back that up with up to date polling of conservative voters (and not members)
And as for the rest of your comments they are so predictable they write themselves
I've just had an absolutely lovely run. It was not too hot this morning, and mist was rising from the grass after the overnight rain. Scores of rabbits were gambolling about, and a deer nonchalantly looked up as I jogged past.
In these summer mornings, it is worth getting up early and going into the local countryside - or even a local park - just before and/or after dawn, to see nature at its freshest. One of life's free joys.
We've not had any rabbits around here for over a year now as a virus took them all out. But it is a rare walk in the woods (my knees are not really up for running these days) where I don't see a deer, mainly roe but the odd red.
Ditto here. Saw a young roe fawn in the long grass of a meadow within sight of houses the other day.
Their numbers are seriously up, they must be causing significant losses to farmers.
The Scottish government has stopped the use of a chemical for controlling bracken and, indirectly ticks. The son of friends of ours lost 2 years of his life to Lymes disease, having to defer his University place. It is a deeply pernicious disease and he is still not fully over it.
Quite righ about deer; I do my best by buying and eating local venison, woke as it is.
Ticks aren't particularly specific to bracken, though - they're quite happy to use long grass, heather, and so on as we know ourselves (even though we never wear shorts on country walks, tuck in our socks, etc). The worst problem is the small instars (immature ones) which are difficult to spot. We have a couple of cheap plastic tick extractors stashed in our rucksacks.
Mrs Flatlander had Lyme a few years ago despite us always taking precautions. She had trouble persuading the local GP to give her the correct (3 week) dosage of antibiotics but we got there in the end and she's been OK.
I've had 3 ticks so far this year - and that's just walking round innocuous local nature reserves in the Flatlands - wearing long trousers and gaiters - and not just western Scotland where they've always been a pain.
Admittedly we tend to go off path through vegetation when surveying, but something has changed.
I don't think it is climate but is likely to be a big increase in deer population.
Could be climate - fewer hard winters killing off fewer tick instars and deer hosts. But just to add a turd to the punchbowl mix -
I might be tempting fate here, but in all the thousands of miles I have walked and run in this country, I have never once had a tick. Once, the people I was walking with had ticks all over their legs; I was the only person without one.
I guess ticks are rather discerning...
(Or could it be the fact my legs are fairly hairy?)
Entirely possible as a matter of principle, as people will vary in their output of whatever chemical attractant they emit that ticks go for. I don't attract them much either.
Either that or we just don't notice them before they fall off.
I have been reading journalist articles with stories of pain today. It strikes me that many of these people were naive, stupid or both. Examples of people having been on interest-only mortgages for 20 years to pay for home improvements and whatever else they wanted to spend their money on (cars, holidays etc.). Buy-to-let landlords on interest-only mortgages were quite happy to profit from rising house prices at the expense of renters unable to get on the housing ladder. They now seem horrified that their good times are coming to an end.
I forget who on here has been repeatedly mentioning how inflation has been high for years through house prices (may of been @MaxPB ). If it had been included and the BoE had to target that too then we would never have seen such low interest rates for year after year. People would have been more cautious and house prices would have been more affordable.
I expect to see large numbers of people very soon to be unable to afford their mortgages and trying to sell. House prices will fall and then causing negative equity too. The government will get blamed for this but it has been a disaster 20 years in the making along with the BoE recently totally failing in their remit.
I hope that lessons are learned from this and that house prices are included in the rate of inflation that the BoE has to target.
I've been harping on about house price inflation for years.
The original reason for putting it outside inflation measures, was that the inflation measures were being used to set interest rates, so there would be an immediate feedback loop - put up interest rates to control inflation, mortgages get more expensive, more inflation.....
The huge hole in that excuse is that we have multiple inflation measures, already.
I have been reading journalist articles with stories of pain today. It strikes me that many of these people were naive, stupid or both. Examples of people having been on interest-only mortgages for 20 years to pay for home improvements and whatever else they wanted to spend their money on (cars, holidays etc.). Buy-to-let landlords on interest-only mortgages were quite happy to profit from rising house prices at the expense of renters unable to get on the housing ladder. They now seem horrified that their good times are coming to an end.
I forget who on here has been repeatedly mentioning how inflation has been high for years through house prices (may of been @MaxPB ). If it had been included and the BoE had to target that too then we would never have seen such low interest rates for year after year. People would have been more cautious and house prices would have been more affordable.
I expect to see large numbers of people very soon to be unable to afford their mortgages and trying to sell. House prices will fall and then causing negative equity too. The government will get blamed for this but it has been a disaster 20 years in the making along with the BoE recently totally failing in their remit.
I hope that lessons are learned from this and that house prices are included in the rate of inflation that the BoE has to target.
It is the 1990's repeating all over again and it took 5 years for house prices to recover
Age is not of itself a bar, especially in the US where the work hard ethos is part of the American dream and I think @MikeSmithson is misreading the cultural differences.
In the US hard work is part of the American Dream. If you're fit and able you work on, and on. As I've posted before, there have been several nonagenarian elected Senators, and there are currently two serving senators who are over 89 years old. The oldest serving senator was Strom Thurmond who crossed the 100 mark whilst still in office. This is something unthinkable in the UK and alien to our culture where 'retirement' is the dream, as opposed to working hard and making your way until the end. For a fictional portrayal of this point, see Brian Cox's character in Succession.
Strom Thurmond was an extraordinary politician. He switched from Democrat to Republican. He conducted the longest ever single filibuster by a lone senator at 24 hours and 18 minutes in length. He was also a staunch opponent of civil rights legislation.
And guess who delivered the eulogy at both Strom Thurmond's funeral and burial plot? Yep ... one Joe Biden.
So I wouldn't bank any of your money on Joe standing down. If he remains sufficiently agile mentally and physically then he will erm ... run.
That may be true for a few super rich and elite politician Americans, the average American certainly wants to retire by mid 60s
That's a slightly different point. "I want to retire before I'm old" is not incompatible with "I rdespect and will vote for people willing to carry on indefinitely".
I think we overdo the ageism a bit in British politics. Speaking personally I'd be delighted to have another term and immodestly think I'd be better than some, but it's really unlikely to happen at age 73 so I'm not even trying. (Being CLP chair and on the Borough exec is a compromise.)
Anecdotally, when I was one of Corbyn's constituents and had half an hour with him talking about diverse topics, I said I wouldn't be a bad hard-working loyalist if he wanted to stick me in the Lords. He looked suitably nonplussed and we hastily moved on.
As an MP, I was well aware that there were plenty of subjects about which I knew nothing... An opinion/recommendation from respected experts in the Lords would have been useful.
I said I wouldn't be a bad hard-working loyalist if he wanted to stick me in the Lords
Anyone else see a contradiction here?
No, absolutely none.
Some years back, I was reading through some old debates in Parliament and the Lords.
One struck me - it was a discussion, in the Lords, about the introduction of the famous Lee-Enfield No.4 rifle. The one carried by British soldiers in both world wars.
The depth of debate was fascinating - as usual on such things, there was a group who wanted the most accurate rifle possible be a group who wanted reliability. But both groups acknowledge their biases. They discussed possible flaws in their own thinking, suggested ways to test if the rifle actually met their concerns. There were a number of shooting experts and former soldiers in the debate of course.
The whole thing was a group of obviously intelligent people trying to buy the best all round option - both for the public purse, but also for the Army.
One comment stood out. Something like “I thank the Noble Lord for his response to my comment. I hadn’t considered X. It is a very good point and in consequence I withdraw my comment.”
People who can publicly admit they are mistaken in a discussion…
This is all well and good, but to achieve that level of debate you don't need membership for life, political appointees, arcane rituals, and so on. The idea that expertise can only be made available to the Commons in this manner is unspoken because it's so obviously false. And in matters of expertise, given the pace at which some subject matters move, especially around some sciences and technologies, the idea of keeping some fossil on the books whose practical experience in the subject hasn't been updated since the 1980s is clearly not the right way to get up to date expert advice. On top of all that, why would you need experts kept on the books for years on end when no legislation is incoming related to that?
The whole system is ossified, anachronistic, inefficient, inherently conservative, and if I might say so, not how any of us would design it if we were setting up a constitution from scratch.
If it was properly conservative it would still be a Lords mainly made up of hereditary peers
I don't think anybody really takes your idea of "properly conservative" seriously
Because there are few real Tories now, even on here many Conservatives are really just centre right liberals or Brexit supporters
A real Tory is surely someone who was on the side of the King and Church in the political struggles of the Exclusion Crisis of the 1670s and of the Stuarts against the Hanoverians. Are you still siding with that bunch of losers?
Or are you defining real Tories as people who agree with you all the time?
Surely a Real Tory would have been On Message for the raising of the Kings Standard on 22nd August 1642 - not some johnny-come-lately from the the 1670s?
A Real Tory™ isn't obsessed with modern concerns from the 1640s, the rot set limiting the power of the monarchy via the Magna Carta in 1215.
Surely, it starts from the criticism of Ethelred The Unready?
Obama is getting pilloried by Ukrainians for suggesting that a Ukrainian national identity separate from Russia only emerged after the annexation of Crimea, which didn't require an armed invasion because of all the Russian speakers.
That analysis perhaps has its root in defensiveness about his own failure adequately to respond to the annexation.
And evidently a degree of historical ignorance.
On some level he seemed to regard Russia as a kind of ally, and thought the idea of seriously confronting Putin was just a fringe obsession for Cold War dinosaurs.
You would normally want a US president to be opposing Cold War dinosaurs, though, wouldn't you? Better that instinct than the opposite. Especially when there's a chance for a new and better way.
As a Remainer here’s a list of things I want Labour to bring in if it can get agreement with the EU .
Youth/student mobility scheme. 6 month stays in the EU not the current 90 in a 180 days . Return to Erasmus . Relax rules on the creative industries . Vetinerary agreement to help farming and fisheries .
There are others but I really don’t see why any of the above should be controversial.
It seems Sunak has already indicated he is working with UVDL on most of those
He's working on quite a few things that don't seem to be happening.
Age is not of itself a bar, especially in the US where the work hard ethos is part of the American dream and I think @MikeSmithson is misreading the cultural differences.
In the US hard work is part of the American Dream. If you're fit and able you work on, and on. As I've posted before, there have been several nonagenarian elected Senators, and there are currently two serving senators who are over 89 years old. The oldest serving senator was Strom Thurmond who crossed the 100 mark whilst still in office. This is something unthinkable in the UK and alien to our culture where 'retirement' is the dream, as opposed to working hard and making your way until the end. For a fictional portrayal of this point, see Brian Cox's character in Succession.
Strom Thurmond was an extraordinary politician. He switched from Democrat to Republican. He conducted the longest ever single filibuster by a lone senator at 24 hours and 18 minutes in length. He was also a staunch opponent of civil rights legislation.
And guess who delivered the eulogy at both Strom Thurmond's funeral and burial plot? Yep ... one Joe Biden.
So I wouldn't bank any of your money on Joe standing down. If he remains sufficiently agile mentally and physically then he will erm ... run.
That may be true for a few super rich and elite politician Americans, the average American certainly wants to retire by mid 60s
That's a slightly different point. "I want to retire before I'm old" is not incompatible with "I rdespect and will vote for people willing to carry on indefinitely".
I think we overdo the ageism a bit in British politics. Speaking personally I'd be delighted to have another term and immodestly think I'd be better than some, but it's really unlikely to happen at age 73 so I'm not even trying. (Being CLP chair and on the Borough exec is a compromise.)
Anecdotally, when I was one of Corbyn's constituents and had half an hour with him talking about diverse topics, I said I wouldn't be a bad hard-working loyalist if he wanted to stick me in the Lords. He looked suitably nonplussed and we hastily moved on.
As an MP, I was well aware that there were plenty of subjects about which I knew nothing... An opinion/recommendation from respected experts in the Lords would have been useful.
I said I wouldn't be a bad hard-working loyalist if he wanted to stick me in the Lords
Anyone else see a contradiction here?
No, absolutely none.
Some years back, I was reading through some old debates in Parliament and the Lords.
One struck me - it was a discussion, in the Lords, about the introduction of the famous Lee-Enfield No.4 rifle. The one carried by British soldiers in both world wars.
The depth of debate was fascinating - as usual on such things, there was a group who wanted the most accurate rifle possible be a group who wanted reliability. But both groups acknowledge their biases. They discussed possible flaws in their own thinking, suggested ways to test if the rifle actually met their concerns. There were a number of shooting experts and former soldiers in the debate of course.
The whole thing was a group of obviously intelligent people trying to buy the best all round option - both for the public purse, but also for the Army.
One comment stood out. Something like “I thank the Noble Lord for his response to my comment. I hadn’t considered X. It is a very good point and in consequence I withdraw my comment.”
People who can publicly admit they are mistaken in a discussion…
THis book was (still is, I think) going cheap so I bagged it. As so often with the best railway histories it was an absolutely fascinating social history with insight into the NRA (UK), 19th and 20th century, and its shooting meetings in Winbledon Common and out at Bisley and how exactly the sort of debate you cite was bound up with the NRA's activities and the symbiosis between the Army, both professional and reservist, and the wider body politic.
Age is not of itself a bar, especially in the US where the work hard ethos is part of the American dream and I think @MikeSmithson is misreading the cultural differences.
In the US hard work is part of the American Dream. If you're fit and able you work on, and on. As I've posted before, there have been several nonagenarian elected Senators, and there are currently two serving senators who are over 89 years old. The oldest serving senator was Strom Thurmond who crossed the 100 mark whilst still in office. This is something unthinkable in the UK and alien to our culture where 'retirement' is the dream, as opposed to working hard and making your way until the end. For a fictional portrayal of this point, see Brian Cox's character in Succession.
Strom Thurmond was an extraordinary politician. He switched from Democrat to Republican. He conducted the longest ever single filibuster by a lone senator at 24 hours and 18 minutes in length. He was also a staunch opponent of civil rights legislation.
And guess who delivered the eulogy at both Strom Thurmond's funeral and burial plot? Yep ... one Joe Biden.
So I wouldn't bank any of your money on Joe standing down. If he remains sufficiently agile mentally and physically then he will erm ... run.
That may be true for a few super rich and elite politician Americans, the average American certainly wants to retire by mid 60s
That's a slightly different point. "I want to retire before I'm old" is not incompatible with "I rdespect and will vote for people willing to carry on indefinitely".
I think we overdo the ageism a bit in British politics. Speaking personally I'd be delighted to have another term and immodestly think I'd be better than some, but it's really unlikely to happen at age 73 so I'm not even trying. (Being CLP chair and on the Borough exec is a compromise.)
Anecdotally, when I was one of Corbyn's constituents and had half an hour with him talking about diverse topics, I said I wouldn't be a bad hard-working loyalist if he wanted to stick me in the Lords. He looked suitably nonplussed and we hastily moved on.
As an MP, I was well aware that there were plenty of subjects about which I knew nothing... An opinion/recommendation from respected experts in the Lords would have been useful.
I said I wouldn't be a bad hard-working loyalist if he wanted to stick me in the Lords
Anyone else see a contradiction here?
No, absolutely none.
Some years back, I was reading through some old debates in Parliament and the Lords.
One struck me - it was a discussion, in the Lords, about the introduction of the famous Lee-Enfield No.4 rifle. The one carried by British soldiers in both world wars.
The depth of debate was fascinating - as usual on such things, there was a group who wanted the most accurate rifle possible be a group who wanted reliability. But both groups acknowledge their biases. They discussed possible flaws in their own thinking, suggested ways to test if the rifle actually met their concerns. There were a number of shooting experts and former soldiers in the debate of course.
The whole thing was a group of obviously intelligent people trying to buy the best all round option - both for the public purse, but also for the Army.
One comment stood out. Something like “I thank the Noble Lord for his response to my comment. I hadn’t considered X. It is a very good point and in consequence I withdraw my comment.”
People who can publicly admit they are mistaken in a discussion…
THis book was (still is, I think) going cheap so I bagged it. As so often with the best railway histories it was an absolutely fascinating social history with insight into the NRA (UK), 19th and 20th century, and its shooting meetings in Winbledon Common and out at Bisley and how exactly the sort of debate you cite was bound up with the NRA's activities and the symbiosis between the Army, both professional and reservist, and the wider body politic.
Joining EEA/EFTA (the Norway option) thus retaining Brexit and doing most of what most people now want looks a bit of a no-brainer. Very interesting that the possibility is being ignored on all sides. Is Labour keeping it for after the election?
At the moment rejoin the EU still has less than 50% support, but rejoin the EU or rejoin the single market has nearly 60% support amongst all voters (though 70% of Remainers would rejoin the full EU).
However, amongst Leavers the median position is to stay out of the EU and single market still (hence either would be political suicide in the redwall and Leave voting Tory marginals Starmer must win to become PM). Leavers do want a closer trade and security relationship with the EU though which is Labour's current position.
If he wins back the marginals he needs to become PM then Labour can start to consider rejoining the single market if it wins a second term. If Labour won a third term some in the party might even then push to rejoin the full EU
Noted. The swing opinion - the middling one of stay out of SM but get closer - is precisely the one which the Brexit deal would have achieved if it could. And it's the one involving a great deal of hand waving. No-one can tell you what it looks like. Except that it looked like a unicorn then and it does now.
Good morning
Sunak needs to spring a huge surprise early next year and announce he will take us back into the singe market
Now that would be a game changer
Yes, it means free movement and RefUK would probably replace the Tories as the main opposition while Starmer Labour would sweep every seat in the Redwall
Why don't you just join RefUK as you act as a de facto supporter
You seem to have this quaint idea RefUK with approx 5% support are going to become some dynamic force in UK politics
As far as the red wall is concerned it is lost anyway
The vast majority of current Conservative voters do not want to rejoin the single market and nor do they want to restore free movement from the EEA, so would switch en masse to RefUK if Sunak proposed that. Farage would of course return to lead RefUK instantly if Sunak did that.
So the Tories would face Canada 1993 style obliteration, losing the Redwall and Leave marginals to Starmer Labour, losing their traditional Leave seats to Farage and RefUK and losing Remain seats still anyway to the LDs who would push to go further and rejoin the EU while the Tories split the Leave vote with Farage
The CEO didn't want 50-year old white guys. So it's a woke tragedy as well as a people have too much money tragedy.
Everything about it sounds horrific. The comparisons with NASA and Apollo 1 are well made. NASA's first question on everything is "and how does it fail?"
That's nothing about wokery - that's about the "tech disruptor" mindset; "we don't need specialists or experts to build a submarine, we're going to be pioneers and do it ourselves"
Also, like, it's a good way to make sure your labour is cheap
This is another sad example of something I've mentioned before: that far too many people come up with new schemes that replace the old, yet put 'safety' into the magic category.
As an example of how things should be done: railways. Railways have large, often redundant, safety systems, which has led to an unprecedented safety record on our railway network. These systems are *very* expensive, and have been developed because of hard lessons taught in blood.
So someone comes up with a new system. They realise safety is expensive, but of course, their system is safer. Therefore safety gets, at best, a hand-wave.
We saw this with the German Maglev system, where the operators claimed collisions were impossible because of the way the system was designed. That was right before the Lathen collision that killed 23 people (1).
We see this with (say) Hyperloop, a brain-dead scheme that gave f-all thought to safety, and would have been a human jam-maker. We see this with this submarine, where safety was very much not at the forefront of the operator's mind, and lessons from previous experience ignored (there are apparently safer deep submersibles out there). We see it with autonomous driving, where beta-testing is put on the roads with the public. etc, etc.
Age is not of itself a bar, especially in the US where the work hard ethos is part of the American dream and I think @MikeSmithson is misreading the cultural differences.
In the US hard work is part of the American Dream. If you're fit and able you work on, and on. As I've posted before, there have been several nonagenarian elected Senators, and there are currently two serving senators who are over 89 years old. The oldest serving senator was Strom Thurmond who crossed the 100 mark whilst still in office. This is something unthinkable in the UK and alien to our culture where 'retirement' is the dream, as opposed to working hard and making your way until the end. For a fictional portrayal of this point, see Brian Cox's character in Succession.
Strom Thurmond was an extraordinary politician. He switched from Democrat to Republican. He conducted the longest ever single filibuster by a lone senator at 24 hours and 18 minutes in length. He was also a staunch opponent of civil rights legislation.
And guess who delivered the eulogy at both Strom Thurmond's funeral and burial plot? Yep ... one Joe Biden.
So I wouldn't bank any of your money on Joe standing down. If he remains sufficiently agile mentally and physically then he will erm ... run.
That may be true for a few super rich and elite politician Americans, the average American certainly wants to retire by mid 60s
That's a slightly different point. "I want to retire before I'm old" is not incompatible with "I rdespect and will vote for people willing to carry on indefinitely".
I think we overdo the ageism a bit in British politics. Speaking personally I'd be delighted to have another term and immodestly think I'd be better than some, but it's really unlikely to happen at age 73 so I'm not even trying. (Being CLP chair and on the Borough exec is a compromise.)
Anecdotally, when I was one of Corbyn's constituents and had half an hour with him talking about diverse topics, I said I wouldn't be a bad hard-working loyalist if he wanted to stick me in the Lords. He looked suitably nonplussed and we hastily moved on.
As an MP, I was well aware that there were plenty of subjects about which I knew nothing... An opinion/recommendation from respected experts in the Lords would have been useful.
I said I wouldn't be a bad hard-working loyalist if he wanted to stick me in the Lords
Anyone else see a contradiction here?
No, absolutely none.
Some years back, I was reading through some old debates in Parliament and the Lords.
One struck me - it was a discussion, in the Lords, about the introduction of the famous Lee-Enfield No.4 rifle. The one carried by British soldiers in both world wars.
The depth of debate was fascinating - as usual on such things, there was a group who wanted the most accurate rifle possible be a group who wanted reliability. But both groups acknowledge their biases. They discussed possible flaws in their own thinking, suggested ways to test if the rifle actually met their concerns. There were a number of shooting experts and former soldiers in the debate of course.
The whole thing was a group of obviously intelligent people trying to buy the best all round option - both for the public purse, but also for the Army.
One comment stood out. Something like “I thank the Noble Lord for his response to my comment. I hadn’t considered X. It is a very good point and in consequence I withdraw my comment.”
People who can publicly admit they are mistaken in a discussion…
This is all well and good, but to achieve that level of debate you don't need membership for life, political appointees, arcane rituals, and so on. The idea that expertise can only be made available to the Commons in this manner is unspoken because it's so obviously false. And in matters of expertise, given the pace at which some subject matters move, especially around some sciences and technologies, the idea of keeping some fossil on the books whose practical experience in the subject hasn't been updated since the 1980s is clearly not the right way to get up to date expert advice. On top of all that, why would you need experts kept on the books for years on end when no legislation is incoming related to that?
The whole system is ossified, anachronistic, inefficient, inherently conservative, and if I might say so, not how any of us would design it if we were setting up a constitution from scratch.
If it was properly conservative it would still be a Lords mainly made up of hereditary peers
I don't think anybody really takes your idea of "properly conservative" seriously
Because there are few real Tories now, even on here many Conservatives are really just centre right liberals or Brexit supporters
A real Tory is surely someone who was on the side of the King and Church in the political struggles of the Exclusion Crisis of the 1670s and of the Stuarts against the Hanoverians. Are you still siding with that bunch of losers?
Or are you defining real Tories as people who agree with you all the time?
Surely a Real Tory would have been On Message for the raising of the Kings Standard on 22nd August 1642 - not some johnny-come-lately from the the 1670s?
A Real Tory™ isn't obsessed with modern concerns from the 1640s, the rot set limiting the power of the monarchy via the Magna Carta in 1215.
I think Peel would probably have regarded all such views as pretty absurdly reactionary. But then, the current Tory party thinks Redwood or Rees Mogg are cutting edge, so why should modern Bob get any respect, just because he dragged the Tories -kicking and screaming- into the 19th century.
I have been reading journalist articles with stories of pain today. It strikes me that many of these people were naive, stupid or both. Examples of people having been on interest-only mortgages for 20 years to pay for home improvements and whatever else they wanted to spend their money on (cars, holidays etc.). Buy-to-let landlords on interest-only mortgages were quite happy to profit from rising house prices at the expense of renters unable to get on the housing ladder. They now seem horrified that their good times are coming to an end.
I forget who on here has been repeatedly mentioning how inflation has been high for years through house prices (may of been @MaxPB ). If it had been included and the BoE had to target that too then we would never have seen such low interest rates for year after year. People would have been more cautious and house prices would have been more affordable.
I expect to see large numbers of people very soon to be unable to afford their mortgages and trying to sell. House prices will fall and then causing negative equity too. The government will get blamed for this but it has been a disaster 20 years in the making along with the BoE recently totally failing in their remit.
I hope that lessons are learned from this and that house prices are included in the rate of inflation that the BoE has to target.
I've been harping on about house price inflation for years.
The original reason for putting it outside inflation measures, was that the inflation measures were being used to set interest rates, so there would be an immediate feedback loop - put up interest rates to control inflation, mortgages get more expensive, more inflation.....
The huge hole in that excuse is that we have multiple inflation measures, already.
We have squeezed inflation into property....
A few of us have.
The worst argument is the fallacious one that houses are an "asset" and not a cost so shouldn't be included.
If you're buying to invest a home to let then houses may be an asset, but if you're paying so you have a roof over your head and aren't homeless they absolutely are an essential cost.
For anyone selling a home may be an asset, in the same way as stock of gas may be an asset to an oil and gas firm, but for anyone who is purchasing to have somewhere to live it is a cost just as much as anyone purchasing gas to keep their home warm it is a cost.
We need to stop treating homes as assets and instead think of them as costs.
Joining EEA/EFTA (the Norway option) thus retaining Brexit and doing most of what most people now want looks a bit of a no-brainer. Very interesting that the possibility is being ignored on all sides. Is Labour keeping it for after the election?
At the moment rejoin the EU still has less than 50% support, but rejoin the EU or rejoin the single market has nearly 60% support amongst all voters (though 70% of Remainers would rejoin the full EU).
However, amongst Leavers the median position is to stay out of the EU and single market still (hence either would be political suicide in the redwall and Leave voting Tory marginals Starmer must win to become PM). Leavers do want a closer trade and security relationship with the EU though which is Labour's current position.
If he wins back the marginals he needs to become PM then Labour can start to consider rejoining the single market if it wins a second term. If Labour won a third term some in the party might even then push to rejoin the full EU
Noted. The swing opinion - the middling one of stay out of SM but get closer - is precisely the one which the Brexit deal would have achieved if it could. And it's the one involving a great deal of hand waving. No-one can tell you what it looks like. Except that it looked like a unicorn then and it does now.
Good morning
Sunak needs to spring a huge surprise early next year and announce he will take us back into the singe market
Now that would be a game changer
Yes, it means free movement and RefUK would probably replace the Tories as the main opposition while Starmer Labour would sweep every seat in the Redwall
Why don't you just join RefUK as you act as a de facto supporter
You seem to have this quaint idea RefUK with approx 5% support are going to become some dynamic force in UK politics
As far as the red wall is concerned it is lost anyway
The vast majority of current Conservative voters do not want to rejoin the single market and nor do they want to restore free movement from the EEA, so would switch en masse to RefUK if Sunak proposed that. Farage would of course return to lead RefUK instantly if Sunak did that.
So the Tories would face Canada 1993 style obliteration, losing the Redwall and Leave marginals to Starmer Labour, losing their traditional Leave seats to Farage and RefUK and losing Remain seats still anyway to the LDs who would push to go further and rejoin the EU while the Tories split the Leave vote with Farage
'The vast majority of current Conservative voters do not want to rejoin the single market'
You need to back that up with up to date polling of conservative voters (and not members)
And as for the rest of your comments they are so predictable they write themselves
Have you ever thought of writing 'fairy tales' ?
Only a third of 2016 Leave voters now want to rejoin the single market.
I have been reading journalist articles with stories of pain today. It strikes me that many of these people were naive, stupid or both. Examples of people having been on interest-only mortgages for 20 years to pay for home improvements and whatever else they wanted to spend their money on (cars, holidays etc.). Buy-to-let landlords on interest-only mortgages were quite happy to profit from rising house prices at the expense of renters unable to get on the housing ladder. They now seem horrified that their good times are coming to an end.
I forget who on here has been repeatedly mentioning how inflation has been high for years through house prices (may of been @MaxPB ). If it had been included and the BoE had to target that too then we would never have seen such low interest rates for year after year. People would have been more cautious and house prices would have been more affordable.
I expect to see large numbers of people very soon to be unable to afford their mortgages and trying to sell. House prices will fall and then causing negative equity too. The government will get blamed for this but it has been a disaster 20 years in the making along with the BoE recently totally failing in their remit.
I hope that lessons are learned from this and that house prices are included in the rate of inflation that the BoE has to target.
It is the 1990's repeating all over again and it took 5 years for house prices to recover
I bought my first flat in 1998 for the price it sold for, when built, in 1988. In actual pounds.
I have been reading journalist articles with stories of pain today. It strikes me that many of these people were naive, stupid or both. Examples of people having been on interest-only mortgages for 20 years to pay for home improvements and whatever else they wanted to spend their money on (cars, holidays etc.). Buy-to-let landlords on interest-only mortgages were quite happy to profit from rising house prices at the expense of renters unable to get on the housing ladder. They now seem horrified that their good times are coming to an end.
I forget who on here has been repeatedly mentioning how inflation has been high for years through house prices (may of been @MaxPB ). If it had been included and the BoE had to target that too then we would never have seen such low interest rates for year after year. People would have been more cautious and house prices would have been more affordable.
I expect to see large numbers of people very soon to be unable to afford their mortgages and trying to sell. House prices will fall and then causing negative equity too. The government will get blamed for this but it has been a disaster 20 years in the making along with the BoE recently totally failing in their remit.
I hope that lessons are learned from this and that house prices are included in the rate of inflation that the BoE has to target.
It is the 1990's repeating all over again and it took 5 years for house prices to recover
So good news then?
It would need to take more than 5 years for the house prices to recover this time ideally, as the bubble that's been inflated today is much worse than the one in 1990s.
We still need to build, build, build though regardless of any crash in the market.
I've just had an absolutely lovely run. It was not too hot this morning, and mist was rising from the grass after the overnight rain. Scores of rabbits were gambolling about, and a deer nonchalantly looked up as I jogged past.
In these summer mornings, it is worth getting up early and going into the local countryside - or even a local park - just before and/or after dawn, to see nature at its freshest. One of life's free joys.
We've not had any rabbits around here for over a year now as a virus took them all out. But it is a rare walk in the woods (my knees are not really up for running these days) where I don't see a deer, mainly roe but the odd red.
Ditto here. Saw a young roe fawn in the long grass of a meadow within sight of houses the other day.
Their numbers are seriously up, they must be causing significant losses to farmers.
The Scottish government has stopped the use of a chemical for controlling bracken and, indirectly ticks. The son of friends of ours lost 2 years of his life to Lymes disease, having to defer his University place. It is a deeply pernicious disease and he is still not fully over it.
Quite righ about deer; I do my best by buying and eating local venison, woke as it is.
Ticks aren't particularly specific to bracken, though - they're quite happy to use long grass, heather, and so on as we know ourselves (even though we never wear shorts on country walks, tuck in our socks, etc). The worst problem is the small instars (immature ones) which are difficult to spot. We have a couple of cheap plastic tick extractors stashed in our rucksacks.
The idea that farmers/landowners want to control bracken and thereby ticks out of concern for walkers on their land is most entertaining. Tbf it seems to be SCons pushing this particular line. How many of them are farmers and/or landowners I couldn’t say.
The control of deer is also politically interesting - though ISTR it's species based. Lots of Red Deer = Good in Toryland, becauyse of hunting estates (and fuck the vegetation). It's usually the (real) ecologists who want a lower, and more realistic, population density - the problem being that deer move between landowners' parcels.
Are hunting estates the main objectors to culls? If so probably the only time my late ma would have been on the same page. She lived for three years in Breanish on the west coast of Lewis (in retrospect probably the happiest years of her life) and being very tender towards animals used to dread the visit of the deer killer; the hills would be booming with rifle shots for days and nights. Very unworthily (she admitted herself) she felt some satisfaction when he blew one of his fingers off in an accident with a rifle. I believe karma may have been mentioned..
I have been reading journalist articles with stories of pain today. It strikes me that many of these people were naive, stupid or both. Examples of people having been on interest-only mortgages for 20 years to pay for home improvements and whatever else they wanted to spend their money on (cars, holidays etc.). Buy-to-let landlords on interest-only mortgages were quite happy to profit from rising house prices at the expense of renters unable to get on the housing ladder. They now seem horrified that their good times are coming to an end.
I forget who on here has been repeatedly mentioning how inflation has been high for years through house prices (may of been @MaxPB ). If it had been included and the BoE had to target that too then we would never have seen such low interest rates for year after year. People would have been more cautious and house prices would have been more affordable.
I expect to see large numbers of people very soon to be unable to afford their mortgages and trying to sell. House prices will fall and then causing negative equity too. The government will get blamed for this but it has been a disaster 20 years in the making along with the BoE recently totally failing in their remit.
I hope that lessons are learned from this and that house prices are included in the rate of inflation that the BoE has to target.
It is the 1990's repeating all over again and it took 5 years for house prices to recover
I bought my first flat in 1998 for the price it sold for, when built, in 1988. In actual pounds.
At current house price to income ratios ideally people in 2040 ought to be able to stay they bought their home for the same price it was sold for in 2020, in actual pounds.
Ot but interesting and open access paper - specially for @Flatlander perhaps - on road problems in Lincs thanks to climate change and its effect on the soft local geology. Impressive attempt to assess the problem by the Geological Survey and the council.
Take home message - road maintenance is going to become a worse issue in the UK.
Obama is getting pilloried by Ukrainians for suggesting that a Ukrainian national identity separate from Russia only emerged after the annexation of Crimea, which didn't require an armed invasion because of all the Russian speakers.
That analysis perhaps has its root in defensiveness about his own failure adequately to respond to the annexation.
And evidently a degree of historical ignorance.
On some level he seemed to regard Russia as a kind of ally, and thought the idea of seriously confronting Putin was just a fringe obsession for Cold War dinosaurs.
You would normally want a US president to be opposing Cold War dinosaurs, though, wouldn't you? Better that instinct than the opposite. Especially when there's a chance for a new and better way.
Prigozhin released today a new interview going over the current state of affairs as well as looking back at the events preceding the start of the "SMO". In this first bit, he explains that the Donbas was plundered by Russians since 2014 and the 2022 war began for reasons very different from those advertised to the public.
As a Remainer here’s a list of things I want Labour to bring in if it can get agreement with the EU .
Youth/student mobility scheme. 6 month stays in the EU not the current 90 in a 180 days . Return to Erasmus . Relax rules on the creative industries . Vetinerary agreement to help farming and fisheries .
There are others but I really don’t see why any of the above should be controversial.
On Erasmus, you might think that student exchange has ground to a halt. It hasn't. I have hosted a delightful student from Copenhagen this year, and currently have two students from the USA. I'm happy to be part of Erasmus again, but not at ANY price. Reportedly (and I may have this wrong) the EU tried to make the UK pay significantly more than before for something that is about exchange.
We expect to send around 20 Pharmacy students on exchange round the world this autumn.
Obama is getting pilloried by Ukrainians for suggesting that a Ukrainian national identity separate from Russia only emerged after the annexation of Crimea, which didn't require an armed invasion because of all the Russian speakers.
That analysis perhaps has its root in defensiveness about his own failure adequately to respond to the annexation.
And evidently a degree of historical ignorance.
On some level he seemed to regard Russia as a kind of ally, and thought the idea of seriously confronting Putin was just a fringe obsession for Cold War dinosaurs.
You would normally want a US president to be opposing Cold War dinosaurs, though, wouldn't you? Better that instinct than the opposite. Especially when there's a chance for a new and better way.
But, yes, Putin played 'us' a bit, no question.
Putin was, and is a Cold War dinosaur, of course.
Who fantasies about doing back to the Good Old Days. Quite openly and literally.
Joining EEA/EFTA (the Norway option) thus retaining Brexit and doing most of what most people now want looks a bit of a no-brainer. Very interesting that the possibility is being ignored on all sides. Is Labour keeping it for after the election?
At the moment rejoin the EU still has less than 50% support, but rejoin the EU or rejoin the single market has nearly 60% support amongst all voters (though 70% of Remainers would rejoin the full EU).
However, amongst Leavers the median position is to stay out of the EU and single market still (hence either would be political suicide in the redwall and Leave voting Tory marginals Starmer must win to become PM). Leavers do want a closer trade and security relationship with the EU though which is Labour's current position.
If he wins back the marginals he needs to become PM then Labour can start to consider rejoining the single market if it wins a second term. If Labour won a third term some in the party might even then push to rejoin the full EU
Noted. The swing opinion - the middling one of stay out of SM but get closer - is precisely the one which the Brexit deal would have achieved if it could. And it's the one involving a great deal of hand waving. No-one can tell you what it looks like. Except that it looked like a unicorn then and it does now.
Good morning
Sunak needs to spring a huge surprise early next year and announce he will take us back into the singe market
Now that would be a game changer
Yes, it means free movement and RefUK would probably replace the Tories as the main opposition while Starmer Labour would sweep every seat in the Redwall
Why don't you just join RefUK as you act as a de facto supporter
You seem to have this quaint idea RefUK with approx 5% support are going to become some dynamic force in UK politics
As far as the red wall is concerned it is lost anyway
The vast majority of current Conservative voters do not want to rejoin the single market and nor do they want to restore free movement from the EEA, so would switch en masse to RefUK if Sunak proposed that. Farage would of course return to lead RefUK instantly if Sunak did that.
So the Tories would face Canada 1993 style obliteration, losing the Redwall and Leave marginals to Starmer Labour, losing their traditional Leave seats to Farage and RefUK and losing Remain seats still anyway to the LDs who would push to go further and rejoin the EU while the Tories split the Leave vote with Farage
'The vast majority of current Conservative voters do not want to rejoin the single market'
You need to back that up with up to date polling of conservative voters (and not members)
And as for the rest of your comments they are so predictable they write themselves
Have you ever thought of writing 'fairy tales' ?
He's right, however unfortunate you and I think that is.
Have a closer economic relationship with the EU to boost our trade with EU countries, even if this means having to follow more EU rules and regulations (48% overall, but 26% of current Conservative voters)
vs
Keep our existing relationship with the EU so we are less subject to EU rules and regulations, even if this means more difficulties trading with EU countries (33% overall, but 58% of current Conservative voters)
Like it or not, the Conservatives are the party of Brexit and keeping Brexit pure. The idea that Rishi wants to dilute Brexit, or has the space to do so, is sadly for the birds.
Age is not of itself a bar, especially in the US where the work hard ethos is part of the American dream and I think @MikeSmithson is misreading the cultural differences.
In the US hard work is part of the American Dream. If you're fit and able you work on, and on. As I've posted before, there have been several nonagenarian elected Senators, and there are currently two serving senators who are over 89 years old. The oldest serving senator was Strom Thurmond who crossed the 100 mark whilst still in office. This is something unthinkable in the UK and alien to our culture where 'retirement' is the dream, as opposed to working hard and making your way until the end. For a fictional portrayal of this point, see Brian Cox's character in Succession.
Strom Thurmond was an extraordinary politician. He switched from Democrat to Republican. He conducted the longest ever single filibuster by a lone senator at 24 hours and 18 minutes in length. He was also a staunch opponent of civil rights legislation.
And guess who delivered the eulogy at both Strom Thurmond's funeral and burial plot? Yep ... one Joe Biden.
So I wouldn't bank any of your money on Joe standing down. If he remains sufficiently agile mentally and physically then he will erm ... run.
That may be true for a few super rich and elite politician Americans, the average American certainly wants to retire by mid 60s
That's a slightly different point. "I want to retire before I'm old" is not incompatible with "I rdespect and will vote for people willing to carry on indefinitely".
I think we overdo the ageism a bit in British politics. Speaking personally I'd be delighted to have another term and immodestly think I'd be better than some, but it's really unlikely to happen at age 73 so I'm not even trying. (Being CLP chair and on the Borough exec is a compromise.)
Anecdotally, when I was one of Corbyn's constituents and had half an hour with him talking about diverse topics, I said I wouldn't be a bad hard-working loyalist if he wanted to stick me in the Lords. He looked suitably nonplussed and we hastily moved on.
As an MP, I was well aware that there were plenty of subjects about which I knew nothing... An opinion/recommendation from respected experts in the Lords would have been useful.
I said I wouldn't be a bad hard-working loyalist if he wanted to stick me in the Lords
Anyone else see a contradiction here?
No, absolutely none.
Some years back, I was reading through some old debates in Parliament and the Lords.
One struck me - it was a discussion, in the Lords, about the introduction of the famous Lee-Enfield No.4 rifle. The one carried by British soldiers in both world wars.
The depth of debate was fascinating - as usual on such things, there was a group who wanted the most accurate rifle possible be a group who wanted reliability. But both groups acknowledge their biases. They discussed possible flaws in their own thinking, suggested ways to test if the rifle actually met their concerns. There were a number of shooting experts and former soldiers in the debate of course.
The whole thing was a group of obviously intelligent people trying to buy the best all round option - both for the public purse, but also for the Army.
One comment stood out. Something like “I thank the Noble Lord for his response to my comment. I hadn’t considered X. It is a very good point and in consequence I withdraw my comment.”
People who can publicly admit they are mistaken in a discussion…
This is all well and good, but to achieve that level of debate you don't need membership for life, political appointees, arcane rituals, and so on. The idea that expertise can only be made available to the Commons in this manner is unspoken because it's so obviously false. And in matters of expertise, given the pace at which some subject matters move, especially around some sciences and technologies, the idea of keeping some fossil on the books whose practical experience in the subject hasn't been updated since the 1980s is clearly not the right way to get up to date expert advice. On top of all that, why would you need experts kept on the books for years on end when no legislation is incoming related to that?
The whole system is ossified, anachronistic, inefficient, inherently conservative, and if I might say so, not how any of us would design it if we were setting up a constitution from scratch.
If it was properly conservative it would still be a Lords mainly made up of hereditary peers
I don't think anybody really takes your idea of "properly conservative" seriously
Because there are few real Tories now, even on here many Conservatives are really just centre right liberals or Brexit supporters
A real Tory is surely someone who was on the side of the King and Church in the political struggles of the Exclusion Crisis of the 1670s and of the Stuarts against the Hanoverians. Are you still siding with that bunch of losers?
Or are you defining real Tories as people who agree with you all the time?
Surely a Real Tory would have been On Message for the raising of the Kings Standard on 22nd August 1642 - not some johnny-come-lately from the the 1670s?
I love historical pedantry. In the 1640s and 1650s, the word Tory was used as a nasty term for dispossessed Irish Catholics or rebels. So applying it to HYUFD would be odd.
It got attached to extreme royalists when it was used as a term of abuse during the political struggles of the 1680s, apparently by Titus Oates, the notorious perjurer.
Notorious perjurer is somewhat on brand for the Tories.
Age is not of itself a bar, especially in the US where the work hard ethos is part of the American dream and I think @MikeSmithson is misreading the cultural differences.
In the US hard work is part of the American Dream. If you're fit and able you work on, and on. As I've posted before, there have been several nonagenarian elected Senators, and there are currently two serving senators who are over 89 years old. The oldest serving senator was Strom Thurmond who crossed the 100 mark whilst still in office. This is something unthinkable in the UK and alien to our culture where 'retirement' is the dream, as opposed to working hard and making your way until the end. For a fictional portrayal of this point, see Brian Cox's character in Succession.
And guess who delivered the eulogy at both Strom Thurmond's funeral and burial plot? Yep ... one Joe Biden.
So I wouldn't bank any of your money on Joe standing down. If he remains sufficiently agile mentally and physically then he will erm ... run.
I question this, as I have before.
Long serving Senators in the US upper house may stay there for a long time.
It is also the case here. In the UK upper house - the Lords - we have had plenty of people in their late 90s. The oldest current member is Lord Christopher, aged 98
You may question Matt but as someone who studied US politics, formally for a qualification, I suggest your knowledge is lacking.
There's a huge difference between Senators and Lords in the UK second chamber. Unlike the HoL, US Senators are all elected and they work hard: on average 70 hours a week. Lords here are unelected and don't even have to attend.
This is another classic example of Brits completely failing to understand the US Constitution.
From a betting point of view, don't bet on things you don't know much about.
I question that as well. Perhaps we need to focus on what happens rather than what we imagine.
I am Matt. The US Senate is a fully elected chamber and exercises huge constitutional power. The committee process, which I mentioned below, really is a thing of wondrous accountability and the UK Parliamentary committees derived from seeing how effective the ones in the US were.
The HoL is a very different entity.
My point is that Senators elected on six years terms, not plonked there for life, are accountable to the electorate and anyone who has even the slightest comprehension of US politics will know how full-bore, and often acrimonious, Senate elections are. Some of the Senate battles are truly mesmerising.
If you're a Senator you know you face the electorate every six years. If you try to drift you will be taken down. It's all part of the intrinsically hard work ethos of the States which is so alien to the UK.
As an aside, look at work and holidays. The average US worker gets just 14 days holiday a year.
Here I agree with you, HOL is full of dross, parfty grifters and donors etc. You coudl dump teh lot and nobody woudl notice the difference other than saving a couple of million a week on their troughing.
Do you believe in a second chamber in general? I wonder if some of the Scottish Government's legal problems wouldn't have materialised if Holyrood had one.
At least it acts as a deterrent against pushing through political legislation that doesn't really work.
A modest proposal for HoL reform that needs no legislation is that an outgoing PM invites nominations from bodies whose knowledge and experience could enhance the Upper House and appoint them.
I’m thinking the Royal Colleges (eg Nursing), trade bodies, unions, certain charities etc etc. If Sunak or Starmer said that is what they would do on departure it could (emphasis could) set a precedent successors would find hard to abandon.
So, a bit like the Seanad Éireann.
What will the party donors get for their bribes valuable contributions?
I've just had an absolutely lovely run. It was not too hot this morning, and mist was rising from the grass after the overnight rain. Scores of rabbits were gambolling about, and a deer nonchalantly looked up as I jogged past.
In these summer mornings, it is worth getting up early and going into the local countryside - or even a local park - just before and/or after dawn, to see nature at its freshest. One of life's free joys.
We've not had any rabbits around here for over a year now as a virus took them all out. But it is a rare walk in the woods (my knees are not really up for running these days) where I don't see a deer, mainly roe but the odd red.
Ditto here. Saw a young roe fawn in the long grass of a meadow within sight of houses the other day.
Their numbers are seriously up, they must be causing significant losses to farmers.
The Scottish government has stopped the use of a chemical for controlling bracken and, indirectly ticks. The son of friends of ours lost 2 years of his life to Lymes disease, having to defer his University place. It is a deeply pernicious disease and he is still not fully over it.
Quite righ about deer; I do my best by buying and eating local venison, woke as it is.
Ticks aren't particularly specific to bracken, though - they're quite happy to use long grass, heather, and so on as we know ourselves (even though we never wear shorts on country walks, tuck in our socks, etc). The worst problem is the small instars (immature ones) which are difficult to spot. We have a couple of cheap plastic tick extractors stashed in our rucksacks.
The idea that farmers/landowners want to control bracken and thereby ticks out of concern for walkers on their land is most entertaining. Tbf it seems to be SCons pushing this particular line. How many of them are farmers and/or landowners I couldn’t say.
The control of deer is also politically interesting - though ISTR it's species based. Lots of Red Deer = Good in Toryland, becauyse of hunting estates (and fuck the vegetation). It's usually the (real) ecologists who want a lower, and more realistic, population density - the problem being that deer move between landowners' parcels.
Are hunting estates the main objectors to culls? If so probably the only time my late ma would have been on the same page. She lived for three years in Breanish on the west coast of Lewis (in retrospect probably the happiest years of her life) and being very tender towards animals used to dread the visit of the deer killer; the hills would be booming with rifle shots for days and nights. Very unworthily (she admitted herself) she felt some satisfaction when he blew one of his fingers off in an accident with a rifle. I believe karma may have been mentioned..
No; not just the Lord Chatterleys and Dukes of Omnium. Clearly what one might call the deer lovers are also objectors.
But also an issue is people don't eat enough venison. So we ought to welcome, pace some of us, the recent news that venison is woke. So both the woke and unwoke can and should buy the stuff. As I do, as commented earlier.
Ther other solution is to reintroduce the wolf and bear ...
Joining EEA/EFTA (the Norway option) thus retaining Brexit and doing most of what most people now want looks a bit of a no-brainer. Very interesting that the possibility is being ignored on all sides. Is Labour keeping it for after the election?
At the moment rejoin the EU still has less than 50% support, but rejoin the EU or rejoin the single market has nearly 60% support amongst all voters (though 70% of Remainers would rejoin the full EU).
However, amongst Leavers the median position is to stay out of the EU and single market still (hence either would be political suicide in the redwall and Leave voting Tory marginals Starmer must win to become PM). Leavers do want a closer trade and security relationship with the EU though which is Labour's current position.
If he wins back the marginals he needs to become PM then Labour can start to consider rejoining the single market if it wins a second term. If Labour won a third term some in the party might even then push to rejoin the full EU
Noted. The swing opinion - the middling one of stay out of SM but get closer - is precisely the one which the Brexit deal would have achieved if it could. And it's the one involving a great deal of hand waving. No-one can tell you what it looks like. Except that it looked like a unicorn then and it does now.
Good morning
Sunak needs to spring a huge surprise early next year and announce he will take us back into the singe market
Now that would be a game changer
Yes, it means free movement and RefUK would probably replace the Tories as the main opposition while Starmer Labour would sweep every seat in the Redwall
Why don't you just join RefUK as you act as a de facto supporter
You seem to have this quaint idea RefUK with approx 5% support are going to become some dynamic force in UK politics
As far as the red wall is concerned it is lost anyway
The vast majority of current Conservative voters do not want to rejoin the single market and nor do they want to restore free movement from the EEA, so would switch en masse to RefUK if Sunak proposed that. Farage would of course return to lead RefUK instantly if Sunak did that.
So the Tories would face Canada 1993 style obliteration, losing the Redwall and Leave marginals to Starmer Labour, losing their traditional Leave seats to Farage and RefUK and losing Remain seats still anyway to the LDs who would push to go further and rejoin the EU while the Tories split the Leave vote with Farage
Sounds good to me.
Sunak could only switch to EEA if we had PR, that way the Tories would still win seats on a pro single market ticket even if they only got say 10-15% of the vote.
However under FPTP switching to EEA would see the Tories wiped out, Labour would win a landslide and sweep the redwall, Farage would win traditional Tory Leave seats and the LDs would take Tory Remain seats helped by the split Tory and Farage vote
I've just had an absolutely lovely run. It was not too hot this morning, and mist was rising from the grass after the overnight rain. Scores of rabbits were gambolling about, and a deer nonchalantly looked up as I jogged past.
In these summer mornings, it is worth getting up early and going into the local countryside - or even a local park - just before and/or after dawn, to see nature at its freshest. One of life's free joys.
We've not had any rabbits around here for over a year now as a virus took them all out. But it is a rare walk in the woods (my knees are not really up for running these days) where I don't see a deer, mainly roe but the odd red.
Ditto here. Saw a young roe fawn in the long grass of a meadow within sight of houses the other day.
Their numbers are seriously up, they must be causing significant losses to farmers.
The Scottish government has stopped the use of a chemical for controlling bracken and, indirectly ticks. The son of friends of ours lost 2 years of his life to Lymes disease, having to defer his University place. It is a deeply pernicious disease and he is still not fully over it.
Quite righ about deer; I do my best by buying and eating local venison, woke as it is.
Ticks aren't particularly specific to bracken, though - they're quite happy to use long grass, heather, and so on as we know ourselves (even though we never wear shorts on country walks, tuck in our socks, etc). The worst problem is the small instars (immature ones) which are difficult to spot. We have a couple of cheap plastic tick extractors stashed in our rucksacks.
The idea that farmers/landowners want to control bracken and thereby ticks out of concern for walkers on their land is most entertaining. Tbf it seems to be SCons pushing this particular line. How many of them are farmers and/or landowners I couldn’t say.
The control of deer is also politically interesting - though ISTR it's species based. Lots of Red Deer = Good in Toryland, becauyse of hunting estates (and fuck the vegetation). It's usually the (real) ecologists who want a lower, and more realistic, population density - the problem being that deer move between landowners' parcels.
Are hunting estates the main objectors to culls? If so probably the only time my late ma would have been on the same page. She lived for three years in Breanish on the west coast of Lewis (in retrospect probably the happiest years of her life) and being very tender towards animals used to dread the visit of the deer killer; the hills would be booming with rifle shots for days and nights. Very unworthily (she admitted herself) she felt some satisfaction when he blew one of his fingers off in an accident with a rifle. I believe karma may have been mentioned..
No; not just the Lord Chatterleys and Dukes of Omnium. Clearly what one might call the deer lovers are also objectors.
But also an issue is people don't eat enough venison. So we ought to welcome, pace some of us, the recent news that venison is woke. So both the woke and unwoke can and should buy the stuff. As I do, as commented earlier.
Ther other solution is to reintroduce the wolf and bear ...
I have been reading journalist articles with stories of pain today. It strikes me that many of these people were naive, stupid or both. Examples of people having been on interest-only mortgages for 20 years to pay for home improvements and whatever else they wanted to spend their money on (cars, holidays etc.). Buy-to-let landlords on interest-only mortgages were quite happy to profit from rising house prices at the expense of renters unable to get on the housing ladder. They now seem horrified that their good times are coming to an end.
I forget who on here has been repeatedly mentioning how inflation has been high for years through house prices (may of been @MaxPB ). If it had been included and the BoE had to target that too then we would never have seen such low interest rates for year after year. People would have been more cautious and house prices would have been more affordable.
I expect to see large numbers of people very soon to be unable to afford their mortgages and trying to sell. House prices will fall and then causing negative equity too. The government will get blamed for this but it has been a disaster 20 years in the making along with the BoE recently totally failing in their remit.
I hope that lessons are learned from this and that house prices are included in the rate of inflation that the BoE has to target.
It is the 1990's repeating all over again and it took 5 years for house prices to recover
So you are talking about the period from 1992 to 1997 where prices went from the lows to something approaching the high prices reached in 1989... (an aside but it took longer than that a neighbour in the old house we bought in Kent took until 2001 before his house reached the price he bought it at).
At the moment the market is still in the no-mans land where asking prices are sky high but surveyors are returning lower valuations. It's still probably a year minimum until reality hits the markets.
Right-wing idiots joining the left-wing idiots from yesterday, in tying to make political capital from a tragedy.
Can people no longer think before opening their mouths online?
The guy who built the sub was one of the victims, he wouldn’t have been there if he thought it was unsafe. That said, deep-sea exploration is unfathomably (sic) dangerous, and they all knew there was a chance of catastrophic failure.
I sympathise with the sentiment that these deaths should not be used to make cheap political points. I feel particularly awful about the University of Strathclyde student who went on the trip with his Dad as a Father's Day present and was apparently terrified.
Nevertheless, I think I don't think we can shy away from discussing the fact that this tragedy has resulted in eye watering amounts of public money (largely North American public money) being spent on rescue efforts and the diversion of military resources. To get on a ski slope in most places you have to take out insurance to cover the chances of something going wrong. Doing something this inherently dangerous (I read that the disclaimer mentioned 'death' three times on the first page) needs to have some sort of financial scheme to cover these eventualities. Isn't there a £10k fee for climbing Everest now?
Also, the Titanic is a resting place for about 1500 people. Can we not leave them in peace as we do Military Maritime Graves under the Protection of Military Remains Act 1986 (although perhaps that doesn't stop tourism)?
Joining EEA/EFTA (the Norway option) thus retaining Brexit and doing most of what most people now want looks a bit of a no-brainer. Very interesting that the possibility is being ignored on all sides. Is Labour keeping it for after the election?
At the moment rejoin the EU still has less than 50% support, but rejoin the EU or rejoin the single market has nearly 60% support amongst all voters (though 70% of Remainers would rejoin the full EU).
However, amongst Leavers the median position is to stay out of the EU and single market still (hence either would be political suicide in the redwall and Leave voting Tory marginals Starmer must win to become PM). Leavers do want a closer trade and security relationship with the EU though which is Labour's current position.
If he wins back the marginals he needs to become PM then Labour can start to consider rejoining the single market if it wins a second term. If Labour won a third term some in the party might even then push to rejoin the full EU
Noted. The swing opinion - the middling one of stay out of SM but get closer - is precisely the one which the Brexit deal would have achieved if it could. And it's the one involving a great deal of hand waving. No-one can tell you what it looks like. Except that it looked like a unicorn then and it does now.
Good morning
Sunak needs to spring a huge surprise early next year and announce he will take us back into the singe market
Now that would be a game changer
Yes, it means free movement and RefUK would probably replace the Tories as the main opposition while Starmer Labour would sweep every seat in the Redwall
Why don't you just join RefUK as you act as a de facto supporter
You seem to have this quaint idea RefUK with approx 5% support are going to become some dynamic force in UK politics
As far as the red wall is concerned it is lost anyway
The vast majority of current Conservative voters do not want to rejoin the single market and nor do they want to restore free movement from the EEA, so would switch en masse to RefUK if Sunak proposed that. Farage would of course return to lead RefUK instantly if Sunak did that.
So the Tories would face Canada 1993 style obliteration, losing the Redwall and Leave marginals to Starmer Labour, losing their traditional Leave seats to Farage and RefUK and losing Remain seats still anyway to the LDs who would push to go further and rejoin the EU while the Tories split the Leave vote with Farage
'The vast majority of current Conservative voters do not want to rejoin the single market'
You need to back that up with up to date polling of conservative voters (and not members)
And as for the rest of your comments they are so predictable they write themselves
Have you ever thought of writing 'fairy tales' ?
He's right, however unfortunate you and I think that is.
Have a closer economic relationship with the EU to boost our trade with EU countries, even if this means having to follow more EU rules and regulations (48% overall, but 26% of current Conservative voters)
vs
Keep our existing relationship with the EU so we are less subject to EU rules and regulations, even if this means more difficulties trading with EU countries (33% overall, but 58% of current Conservative voters)
Like it or not, the Conservatives are the party of Brexit and keeping Brexit pure. The idea that Rishi wants to dilute Brexit, or has the space to do so, is sadly for the birds.
SFAICS it doesn't matter what Conservative policy is on the matter. They are not forming the next government. They have already lost the voters who want a more intelligent settlement, and for the moment they are not coming back. The Labour party (preferably with LD help) are the only possible option for a new deal, even if that's not brilliant.
Obama is getting pilloried by Ukrainians for suggesting that a Ukrainian national identity separate from Russia only emerged after the annexation of Crimea, which didn't require an armed invasion because of all the Russian speakers.
That analysis perhaps has its root in defensiveness about his own failure adequately to respond to the annexation.
And evidently a degree of historical ignorance.
On some level he seemed to regard Russia as a kind of ally, and thought the idea of seriously confronting Putin was just a fringe obsession for Cold War dinosaurs.
You would normally want a US president to be opposing Cold War dinosaurs, though, wouldn't you? Better that instinct than the opposite. Especially when there's a chance for a new and better way.
But, yes, Putin played 'us' a bit, no question.
Putin was, and is a Cold War dinosaur, of course.
Who fantasies about doing back to the Good Old Days. Quite openly and literally.
Just recently re-embraced Katyn denial, for example.
To be fair to Obama, there was a period of semi-convincing dissembling, as the Katyn story illustrates.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre#Those_adopting_pre-1990_views ...On 4 February 2010, the Prime Minister of Russia, Vladimir Putin, invited his Polish counterpart, Donald Tusk, to attend a Katyn memorial service in April. The visit took place on 7 April 2010, when Tusk and Putin together commemorated the 70th anniversary of the massacre. Before the visit, the 2007 film Katyń was shown on Russian state television for the first time. The Moscow Times commented that the film's premiere in Russia was likely a result of Putin's intervention.
On 10 April 2010, an aircraft carrying Polish President Lech Kaczyński with his wife and 87 other politicians and high-ranking army officers crashed in Smolensk, killing all 96 aboard the aircraft. The passengers were to attend a ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre. The Polish nation was stunned; Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who was not on the plane, referred to the crash as "the most tragic Polish event since the war." In the aftermath, a number of conspiracy theories began to circulate.] The catastrophe has also had major echoes in the international and particularly the Russian press, prompting a rebroadcast of Katyń on Russian television. The Polish President was to deliver a speech at the formal commemorations. The speech was to honour the victims, highlight the significance of the massacres in the context of post-war communist political history, as well as stress the need for Polish–Russian relations to focus on reconciliation. Although the speech was never delivered, it has been published with a narration in the original Polish and a translation has also been made available in English.
In November 2010, the State Duma (lower house of the Russian parliament) passed a resolution declaring long-classified documents "showed that the Katyn crime was carried out on direct orders of Stalin and other Soviet officials". The declaration also called for the massacre to be investigated further to confirm the list of victims. Members of the Duma from the Communist Party denied the Soviet Union had been to blame for the Katyn massacre and voted against the declaration...
Right-wing idiots joining the left-wing idiots from yesterday, in tying to make political capital from a tragedy.
Can people no longer think before opening their mouths online?
The guy who built the sub was one of the victims, he wouldn’t have been there if he thought it was unsafe. That said, deep-sea exploration is unfathomably (sic) dangerous, and they all knew there was a chance of catastrophic failure.
I sympathise with the sentiment that these deaths should not be used to make cheap political points. I feel particularly awful about the University of Strathclyde student who went on the trip with his Dad as a Father's Day present and was apparently terrified.
Nevertheless, I think I don't think we can shy away from discussing the fact that this tragedy has resulted in eye watering amounts of public money (largely North American public money) being spent on rescue efforts and the diversion of military resources. To get on a ski slope in most places you have to take out insurance to cover the chances of something going wrong. Doing something this inherently dangerous (I read that the disclaimer mentioned 'death' three times on the first page) needs to have some sort of financial scheme to cover these eventualities. Isn't there a £10k fee for climbing Everest now?
Also, the Titanic is a resting place for about 1500 people. Can we not leave them in peace as we do Military Maritime Graves under the Protection of Military Remains Act 1986 (although perhaps that doesn't stop tourism)?
I've seen a few people making the rest place remark, but resting places are also places people go to visit, and not out of just morbid curiosity.
When I was last in Washington I went to Arlington National Cemetery, it was very sombre and moving. I don't think it was disrespectful to go there.
How many people here have been to a cemetery, or places like Auschwitz, or the Somme etc?
Right-wing idiots joining the left-wing idiots from yesterday, in tying to make political capital from a tragedy.
Can people no longer think before opening their mouths online?
The guy who built the sub was one of the victims, he wouldn’t have been there if he thought it was unsafe. That said, deep-sea exploration is unfathomably (sic) dangerous, and they all knew there was a chance of catastrophic failure.
I sympathise with the sentiment that these deaths should not be used to make cheap political points. I feel particularly awful about the University of Strathclyde student who went on the trip with his Dad as a Father's Day present and was apparently terrified.
Nevertheless, I think I don't think we can shy away from discussing the fact that this tragedy has resulted in eye watering amounts of public money (largely North American public money) being spent on rescue efforts and the diversion of military resources. To get on a ski slope in most places you have to take out insurance to cover the chances of something going wrong. Doing something this inherently dangerous (I read that the disclaimer mentioned 'death' three times on the first page) needs to have some sort of financial scheme to cover these eventualities. Isn't there a £10k fee for climbing Everest now?
Also, the Titanic is a resting place for about 1500 people. Can we not leave them in peace as we do Military Maritime Graves under the Protection of Military Remains Act 1986 (although perhaps that doesn't stop tourism)?
The Military Maritime Graves thing only stops you touching.
Mind you, the Titanic was in receipt of a subsidy from the British Government, so as to be available as an Auxiliary Cruiser* in time of war. So you could make an argument that she should be covered as a military vessel....
*The smaller liners were used for this. The larger ones were too big and specialised - they were used as troop ships. See the Olympic and Britannic.
I have been reading journalist articles with stories of pain today. It strikes me that many of these people were naive, stupid or both. Examples of people having been on interest-only mortgages for 20 years to pay for home improvements and whatever else they wanted to spend their money on (cars, holidays etc.). Buy-to-let landlords on interest-only mortgages were quite happy to profit from rising house prices at the expense of renters unable to get on the housing ladder. They now seem horrified that their good times are coming to an end.
I forget who on here has been repeatedly mentioning how inflation has been high for years through house prices (may of been @MaxPB ). If it had been included and the BoE had to target that too then we would never have seen such low interest rates for year after year. People would have been more cautious and house prices would have been more affordable.
I expect to see large numbers of people very soon to be unable to afford their mortgages and trying to sell. House prices will fall and then causing negative equity too. The government will get blamed for this but it has been a disaster 20 years in the making along with the BoE recently totally failing in their remit.
I hope that lessons are learned from this and that house prices are included in the rate of inflation that the BoE has to target.
I've been harping on about house price inflation for years.
The original reason for putting it outside inflation measures, was that the inflation measures were being used to set interest rates, so there would be an immediate feedback loop - put up interest rates to control inflation, mortgages get more expensive, more inflation.....
The huge hole in that excuse is that we have multiple inflation measures, already.
We have squeezed inflation into property....
A few of us have.
The worst argument is the fallacious one that houses are an "asset" and not a cost so shouldn't be included.
If you're buying to invest a home to let then houses may be an asset, but if you're paying so you have a roof over your head and aren't homeless they absolutely are an essential cost.
For anyone selling a home may be an asset, in the same way as stock of gas may be an asset to an oil and gas firm, but for anyone who is purchasing to have somewhere to live it is a cost just as much as anyone purchasing gas to keep their home warm it is a cost.
We need to stop treating homes as assets and instead think of them as costs.
The most suitable 'cost' for inflation measuring purposes is the annual rent equivalent (not the capital value). Don't know how it's done atm but that's the way imo.
Obama is getting pilloried by Ukrainians for suggesting that a Ukrainian national identity separate from Russia only emerged after the annexation of Crimea, which didn't require an armed invasion because of all the Russian speakers.
That analysis perhaps has its root in defensiveness about his own failure adequately to respond to the annexation.
And evidently a degree of historical ignorance.
On some level he seemed to regard Russia as a kind of ally, and thought the idea of seriously confronting Putin was just a fringe obsession for Cold War dinosaurs.
You would normally want a US president to be opposing Cold War dinosaurs, though, wouldn't you? Better that instinct than the opposite. Especially when there's a chance for a new and better way.
But, yes, Putin played 'us' a bit, no question.
Putin was, and is a Cold War dinosaur, of course.
So it transpires and in spades. Many in the West were fooled by him in the early days but I think I blame George Bush the most because he was in the privileged position of being able to see into his soul.
Right-wing idiots joining the left-wing idiots from yesterday, in tying to make political capital from a tragedy.
Can people no longer think before opening their mouths online?
The guy who built the sub was one of the victims, he wouldn’t have been there if he thought it was unsafe. That said, deep-sea exploration is unfathomably (sic) dangerous, and they all knew there was a chance of catastrophic failure.
I sympathise with the sentiment that these deaths should not be used to make cheap political points. I feel particularly awful about the University of Strathclyde student who went on the trip with his Dad as a Father's Day present and was apparently terrified.
Nevertheless, I think I don't think we can shy away from discussing the fact that this tragedy has resulted in eye watering amounts of public money (largely North American public money) being spent on rescue efforts and the diversion of military resources. To get on a ski slope in most places you have to take out insurance to cover the chances of something going wrong. Doing something this inherently dangerous (I read that the disclaimer mentioned 'death' three times on the first page) needs to have some sort of financial scheme to cover these eventualities. Isn't there a £10k fee for climbing Everest now?
Also, the Titanic is a resting place for about 1500 people. Can we not leave them in peace as we do Military Maritime Graves under the Protection of Military Remains Act 1986 (although perhaps that doesn't stop tourism)?
I've seen a few people making the rest place remark, but resting places are also places people go to visit, and not out of just morbid curiosity.
When I was last in Washington I went to Arlington National Cemetery, it was very sombre and moving. I don't think it was disrespectful to go there.
How many people here have been to a cemetery, or places like Auschwitz, or the Somme etc?
Peering out of a tiny 7” thick porthole while inhaling your own and others’ farts is certainly not a traditional form of respect, but chacun à son goût.
Right-wing idiots joining the left-wing idiots from yesterday, in tying to make political capital from a tragedy.
Can people no longer think before opening their mouths online?
The guy who built the sub was one of the victims, he wouldn’t have been there if he thought it was unsafe. That said, deep-sea exploration is unfathomably (sic) dangerous, and they all knew there was a chance of catastrophic failure.
I sympathise with the sentiment that these deaths should not be used to make cheap political points. I feel particularly awful about the University of Strathclyde student who went on the trip with his Dad as a Father's Day present and was apparently terrified.
Nevertheless, I think I don't think we can shy away from discussing the fact that this tragedy has resulted in eye watering amounts of public money (largely North American public money) being spent on rescue efforts and the diversion of military resources. To get on a ski slope in most places you have to take out insurance to cover the chances of something going wrong. Doing something this inherently dangerous (I read that the disclaimer mentioned 'death' three times on the first page) needs to have some sort of financial scheme to cover these eventualities. Isn't there a £10k fee for climbing Everest now?
Also, the Titanic is a resting place for about 1500 people. Can we not leave them in peace as we do Military Maritime Graves under the Protection of Military Remains Act 1986 (although perhaps that doesn't stop tourism)?
As regards 'graves' there presumably won't be any bodies left at that depth (except possibly buried quickly in sediment). The various scavenging microorganisms and larger animals will deal with flesh and bone. (And the mineral content of bone might dissolve anyway at that pressure in sea water, but I'd need to check). I seem to recall seeing a photo of a leather jacket and sea boots lying on the sea floor near a wartime wreck, just as if the owner had vanished completely - presumably the microorganisms and worms couldn't digest the cross-linked keratin molecules of the tanned leather.
Right-wing idiots joining the left-wing idiots from yesterday, in tying to make political capital from a tragedy.
Can people no longer think before opening their mouths online?
The guy who built the sub was one of the victims, he wouldn’t have been there if he thought it was unsafe. That said, deep-sea exploration is unfathomably (sic) dangerous, and they all knew there was a chance of catastrophic failure.
I sympathise with the sentiment that these deaths should not be used to make cheap political points. I feel particularly awful about the University of Strathclyde student who went on the trip with his Dad as a Father's Day present and was apparently terrified.
Nevertheless, I think I don't think we can shy away from discussing the fact that this tragedy has resulted in eye watering amounts of public money (largely North American public money) being spent on rescue efforts and the diversion of military resources. To get on a ski slope in most places you have to take out insurance to cover the chances of something going wrong. Doing something this inherently dangerous (I read that the disclaimer mentioned 'death' three times on the first page) needs to have some sort of financial scheme to cover these eventualities. Isn't there a £10k fee for climbing Everest now?
Also, the Titanic is a resting place for about 1500 people. Can we not leave them in peace as we do Military Maritime Graves under the Protection of Military Remains Act 1986 (although perhaps that doesn't stop tourism)?
Doesn't stop the Chinese either. They will scrap any sunken warship they can get to for low residue steel.
Right-wing idiots joining the left-wing idiots from yesterday, in tying to make political capital from a tragedy.
Can people no longer think before opening their mouths online?
The guy who built the sub was one of the victims, he wouldn’t have been there if he thought it was unsafe. That said, deep-sea exploration is unfathomably (sic) dangerous, and they all knew there was a chance of catastrophic failure.
I sympathise with the sentiment that these deaths should not be used to make cheap political points. I feel particularly awful about the University of Strathclyde student who went on the trip with his Dad as a Father's Day present and was apparently terrified.
Nevertheless, I think I don't think we can shy away from discussing the fact that this tragedy has resulted in eye watering amounts of public money (largely North American public money) being spent on rescue efforts and the diversion of military resources. To get on a ski slope in most places you have to take out insurance to cover the chances of something going wrong. Doing something this inherently dangerous (I read that the disclaimer mentioned 'death' three times on the first page) needs to have some sort of financial scheme to cover these eventualities. Isn't there a £10k fee for climbing Everest now?
Also, the Titanic is a resting place for about 1500 people. Can we not leave them in peace as we do Military Maritime Graves under the Protection of Military Remains Act 1986 (although perhaps that doesn't stop tourism)?
As regards 'graves' there presumably won't be any bodies left at that depth (except possibly buried quickly in sediment). The various scavenging microorganisms and larger animals will deal with flesh and bone. (And the mineral content of bone might dissolve anyway at that pressure in sea water, but I'd need to check). I seem to recall seeing a photo of a leather jacket and sea boots lying on the sea floor near a wartime wreck, just as if the owner had vanished completely - presumably the microorganisms and worms couldn't digest the cross-linked keratin molecules of the tanned leather.
I'm not sure relative state of decomposition should be a measure for the solemnity of a site...
Joining EEA/EFTA (the Norway option) thus retaining Brexit and doing most of what most people now want looks a bit of a no-brainer. Very interesting that the possibility is being ignored on all sides. Is Labour keeping it for after the election?
At the moment rejoin the EU still has less than 50% support, but rejoin the EU or rejoin the single market has nearly 60% support amongst all voters (though 70% of Remainers would rejoin the full EU).
However, amongst Leavers the median position is to stay out of the EU and single market still (hence either would be political suicide in the redwall and Leave voting Tory marginals Starmer must win to become PM). Leavers do want a closer trade and security relationship with the EU though which is Labour's current position.
If he wins back the marginals he needs to become PM then Labour can start to consider rejoining the single market if it wins a second term. If Labour won a third term some in the party might even then push to rejoin the full EU
Noted. The swing opinion - the middling one of stay out of SM but get closer - is precisely the one which the Brexit deal would have achieved if it could. And it's the one involving a great deal of hand waving. No-one can tell you what it looks like. Except that it looked like a unicorn then and it does now.
Good morning
Sunak needs to spring a huge surprise early next year and announce he will take us back into the singe market
Now that would be a game changer
Yes, it means free movement and RefUK would probably replace the Tories as the main opposition while Starmer Labour would sweep every seat in the Redwall
Why don't you just join RefUK as you act as a de facto supporter
You seem to have this quaint idea RefUK with approx 5% support are going to become some dynamic force in UK politics
As far as the red wall is concerned it is lost anyway
The vast majority of current Conservative voters do not want to rejoin the single market and nor do they want to restore free movement from the EEA, so would switch en masse to RefUK if Sunak proposed that. Farage would of course return to lead RefUK instantly if Sunak did that.
So the Tories would face Canada 1993 style obliteration, losing the Redwall and Leave marginals to Starmer Labour, losing their traditional Leave seats to Farage and RefUK and losing Remain seats still anyway to the LDs who would push to go further and rejoin the EU while the Tories split the Leave vote with Farage
'The vast majority of current Conservative voters do not want to rejoin the single market'
You need to back that up with up to date polling of conservative voters (and not members)
And as for the rest of your comments they are so predictable they write themselves
Have you ever thought of writing 'fairy tales' ?
He's right, however unfortunate you and I think that is.
Have a closer economic relationship with the EU to boost our trade with EU countries, even if this means having to follow more EU rules and regulations (48% overall, but 26% of current Conservative voters)
vs
Keep our existing relationship with the EU so we are less subject to EU rules and regulations, even if this means more difficulties trading with EU countries (33% overall, but 58% of current Conservative voters)
Like it or not, the Conservatives are the party of Brexit and keeping Brexit pure. The idea that Rishi wants to dilute Brexit, or has the space to do so, is sadly for the birds.
SFAICS it doesn't matter what Conservative policy is on the matter. They are not forming the next government. They have already lost the voters who want a more intelligent settlement, and for the moment they are not coming back. The Labour party (preferably with LD help) are the only possible option for a new deal, even if that's not brilliant.
Was just writing something similar... Those of us who thought Brexit would be a disaster (and believe that it is) are pissed with the Conservatives, from Cameron onwards, for doing it and for the complete dog's breakfast they've made of it. Partial fixing of the mess is not going to win me round.
For me, it will need either a 'cleanskin' leader (i.e. a remainer/someone not active during the referendum and absent or sensible during the ensuing clusterfuck) or a clearly repentent Brexiter and that person will also need to drop the culture war nonsense and the presence of loons in cabinet before I consider voting Con again. Or someone really unelectable in charge of Labour could persuade me to hold my nose (I'd probably vote Sunak Con over Lab if Corbyn was still in charge, but I'd be taking a good hard look at policies and cabinet v shadow cabinet).
I actually don't know how I'm going to vote in S&A. I can't really motivate myself to give Sunak a kicking, given that would probably please Johnson. I'm not enthused by Starmer, nor by Davey, particularly. I do have money on Lab not taking the seat... If I get any leaftlets from them I'll likely consider Green or YP, depending on candidate. If the seat looks in play at the next GE then I'll likely go Lab, tactically (at the next GE). It's been fairly quiet campaign wise - one Tory 'survey', one Lab leaflet plus a Lab 'survey'. Doesn't feel like they're going at it hammer and tongs and my area is one where there will be both Lab and Con voters (and others) so it would be worth targetting, bit of a mix of older Con-leaners and more of the younger non-metroplitan liberal elite.
I've just had an absolutely lovely run. It was not too hot this morning, and mist was rising from the grass after the overnight rain. Scores of rabbits were gambolling about, and a deer nonchalantly looked up as I jogged past.
In these summer mornings, it is worth getting up early and going into the local countryside - or even a local park - just before and/or after dawn, to see nature at its freshest. One of life's free joys.
We've not had any rabbits around here for over a year now as a virus took them all out. But it is a rare walk in the woods (my knees are not really up for running these days) where I don't see a deer, mainly roe but the odd red.
Ditto here. Saw a young roe fawn in the long grass of a meadow within sight of houses the other day.
Their numbers are seriously up, they must be causing significant losses to farmers.
The Scottish government has stopped the use of a chemical for controlling bracken and, indirectly ticks. The son of friends of ours lost 2 years of his life to Lymes disease, having to defer his University place. It is a deeply pernicious disease and he is still not fully over it.
Quite righ about deer; I do my best by buying and eating local venison, woke as it is.
Ticks aren't particularly specific to bracken, though - they're quite happy to use long grass, heather, and so on as we know ourselves (even though we never wear shorts on country walks, tuck in our socks, etc). The worst problem is the small instars (immature ones) which are difficult to spot. We have a couple of cheap plastic tick extractors stashed in our rucksacks.
The idea that farmers/landowners want to control bracken and thereby ticks out of concern for walkers on their land is most entertaining. Tbf it seems to be SCons pushing this particular line. How many of them are farmers and/or landowners I couldn’t say.
The control of deer is also politically interesting - though ISTR it's species based. Lots of Red Deer = Good in Toryland, becauyse of hunting estates (and fuck the vegetation). It's usually the (real) ecologists who want a lower, and more realistic, population density - the problem being that deer move between landowners' parcels.
Are hunting estates the main objectors to culls? If so probably the only time my late ma would have been on the same page. She lived for three years in Breanish on the west coast of Lewis (in retrospect probably the happiest years of her life) and being very tender towards animals used to dread the visit of the deer killer; the hills would be booming with rifle shots for days and nights. Very unworthily (she admitted herself) she felt some satisfaction when he blew one of his fingers off in an accident with a rifle. I believe karma may have been mentioned..
No; not just the Lord Chatterleys and Dukes of Omnium. Clearly what one might call the deer lovers are also objectors.
But also an issue is people don't eat enough venison. So we ought to welcome, pace some of us, the recent news that venison is woke. So both the woke and unwoke can and should buy the stuff. As I do, as commented earlier.
Ther other solution is to reintroduce the wolf and bear ...
Surely the important bit is that venison is vegan?
Difficult to argue that it isn't organic [sic], anyway. Not as if they import thousands of little deer from France and let then run around for a bit before doing a Bambi on them*.
*Reference is to pheasants and partridges, etc., in case anyone is unfamiliar.
Joining EEA/EFTA (the Norway option) thus retaining Brexit and doing most of what most people now want looks a bit of a no-brainer. Very interesting that the possibility is being ignored on all sides. Is Labour keeping it for after the election?
It's not a no-brainer, because when asked about Freedom of Movement even most Remainers didn't want that. The UK public wants to access the single market without complying with the laws of the single market. The only no-brainer is the EU saying "no" to any such deal.
Joining EEA/EFTA (the Norway option) thus retaining Brexit and doing most of what most people now want looks a bit of a no-brainer. Very interesting that the possibility is being ignored on all sides. Is Labour keeping it for after the election?
At the moment rejoin the EU still has less than 50% support, but rejoin the EU or rejoin the single market has nearly 60% support amongst all voters (though 70% of Remainers would rejoin the full EU).
However, amongst Leavers the median position is to stay out of the EU and single market still (hence either would be political suicide in the redwall and Leave voting Tory marginals Starmer must win to become PM). Leavers do want a closer trade and security relationship with the EU though which is Labour's current position.
If he wins back the marginals he needs to become PM then Labour can start to consider rejoining the single market if it wins a second term. If Labour won a third term some in the party might even then push to rejoin the full EU
Noted. The swing opinion - the middling one of stay out of SM but get closer - is precisely the one which the Brexit deal would have achieved if it could. And it's the one involving a great deal of hand waving. No-one can tell you what it looks like. Except that it looked like a unicorn then and it does now.
Good morning
Sunak needs to spring a huge surprise early next year and announce he will take us back into the singe market
Now that would be a game changer
Yes, it means free movement and RefUK would probably replace the Tories as the main opposition while Starmer Labour would sweep every seat in the Redwall
Why don't you just join RefUK as you act as a de facto supporter
You seem to have this quaint idea RefUK with approx 5% support are going to become some dynamic force in UK politics
As far as the red wall is concerned it is lost anyway
The vast majority of current Conservative voters do not want to rejoin the single market and nor do they want to restore free movement from the EEA, so would switch en masse to RefUK if Sunak proposed that. Farage would of course return to lead RefUK instantly if Sunak did that.
So the Tories would face Canada 1993 style obliteration, losing the Redwall and Leave marginals to Starmer Labour, losing their traditional Leave seats to Farage and RefUK and losing Remain seats still anyway to the LDs who would push to go further and rejoin the EU while the Tories split the Leave vote with Farage
'The vast majority of current Conservative voters do not want to rejoin the single market'
You need to back that up with up to date polling of conservative voters (and not members)
And as for the rest of your comments they are so predictable they write themselves
Have you ever thought of writing 'fairy tales' ?
He's right, however unfortunate you and I think that is.
Have a closer economic relationship with the EU to boost our trade with EU countries, even if this means having to follow more EU rules and regulations (48% overall, but 26% of current Conservative voters)
vs
Keep our existing relationship with the EU so we are less subject to EU rules and regulations, even if this means more difficulties trading with EU countries (33% overall, but 58% of current Conservative voters)
Like it or not, the Conservatives are the party of Brexit and keeping Brexit pure. The idea that Rishi wants to dilute Brexit, or has the space to do so, is sadly for the birds.
SFAICS it doesn't matter what Conservative policy is on the matter. They are not forming the next government. They have already lost the voters who want a more intelligent settlement, and for the moment they are not coming back. The Labour party (preferably with LD help) are the only possible option for a new deal, even if that's not brilliant.
Was just writing something similar... Those of us who thought Brexit would be a disaster (and believe that it is) are pissed with the Conservatives, from Cameron onwards, for doing it and for the complete dog's breakfast they've made of it. Partial fixing of the mess is not going to win me round.
For me, it will need either a 'cleanskin' leader (i.e. a remainer/someone not active during the referendum and absent or sensible during the ensuing clusterfuck) or a clearly repentent Brexiter and that person will also need to drop the culture war nonsense and the presence of loons in cabinet before I consider voting Con again. Or someone really unelectable in charge of Labour could persuade me to hold my nose (I'd probably vote Sunak Con over Lab if Corbyn was still in charge, but I'd be taking a good hard look at policies and cabinet v shadow cabinet).
I actually don't know how I'm going to vote in S&A. I can't really motivate myself to give Sunak a kicking, given that would probably please Johnson. I'm not enthused by Starmer, nor by Davey, particularly. I do have money on Lab not taking the seat... If I get any leaftlets from them I'll likely consider Green or YP, depending on candidate. If the seat looks in play at the next GE then I'll likely go Lab, tactically (at the next GE). It's been fairly quiet campaign wise - one Tory 'survey', one Lab leaflet plus a Lab 'survey'. Doesn't feel like they're going at it hammer and tongs and my area is one where there will be both Lab and Con voters (and others) so it would be worth targetting, bit of a mix of older Con-leaners and more of the younger non-metroplitan liberal elite.
I have been reading journalist articles with stories of pain today. It strikes me that many of these people were naive, stupid or both. Examples of people having been on interest-only mortgages for 20 years to pay for home improvements and whatever else they wanted to spend their money on (cars, holidays etc.). Buy-to-let landlords on interest-only mortgages were quite happy to profit from rising house prices at the expense of renters unable to get on the housing ladder. They now seem horrified that their good times are coming to an end.
I forget who on here has been repeatedly mentioning how inflation has been high for years through house prices (may of been @MaxPB ). If it had been included and the BoE had to target that too then we would never have seen such low interest rates for year after year. People would have been more cautious and house prices would have been more affordable.
I expect to see large numbers of people very soon to be unable to afford their mortgages and trying to sell. House prices will fall and then causing negative equity too. The government will get blamed for this but it has been a disaster 20 years in the making along with the BoE recently totally failing in their remit.
I hope that lessons are learned from this and that house prices are included in the rate of inflation that the BoE has to target.
I've been harping on about house price inflation for years.
The original reason for putting it outside inflation measures, was that the inflation measures were being used to set interest rates, so there would be an immediate feedback loop - put up interest rates to control inflation, mortgages get more expensive, more inflation.....
The huge hole in that excuse is that we have multiple inflation measures, already.
We have squeezed inflation into property....
A few of us have.
The worst argument is the fallacious one that houses are an "asset" and not a cost so shouldn't be included.
If you're buying to invest a home to let then houses may be an asset, but if you're paying so you have a roof over your head and aren't homeless they absolutely are an essential cost.
For anyone selling a home may be an asset, in the same way as stock of gas may be an asset to an oil and gas firm, but for anyone who is purchasing to have somewhere to live it is a cost just as much as anyone purchasing gas to keep their home warm it is a cost.
We need to stop treating homes as assets and instead think of them as costs.
The most suitable 'cost' for inflation measuring purposes is the annual rent equivalent (not the capital value). Don't know how it's done atm but that's the way imo.
The CEO didn't want 50-year old white guys. So it's a woke tragedy as well as a people have too much money tragedy.
Everything about it sounds horrific. The comparisons with NASA and Apollo 1 are well made. NASA's first question on everything is "and how does it fail?"
That's nothing about wokery - that's about the "tech disruptor" mindset; "we don't need specialists or experts to build a submarine, we're going to be pioneers and do it ourselves"
Also, like, it's a good way to make sure your labour is cheap
This is another sad example of something I've mentioned before: that far too many people come up with new schemes that replace the old, yet put 'safety' into the magic category.
As an example of how things should be done: railways. Railways have large, often redundant, safety systems, which has led to an unprecedented safety record on our railway network. These systems are *very* expensive, and have been developed because of hard lessons taught in blood.
So someone comes up with a new system. They realise safety is expensive, but of course, their system is safer. Therefore safety gets, at best, a hand-wave.
We saw this with the German Maglev system, where the operators claimed collisions were impossible because of the way the system was designed. That was right before the Lathen collision that killed 23 people (1).
We see this with (say) Hyperloop, a brain-dead scheme that gave f-all thought to safety, and would have been a human jam-maker. We see this with this submarine, where safety was very much not at the forefront of the operator's mind, and lessons from previous experience ignored (there are apparently safer deep submersibles out there). We see it with autonomous driving, where beta-testing is put on the roads with the public. etc, etc.
Seems to me that the children of homeowners in their last days, who benefited from huge price rises and could afford to have their deposits financed, before they were left yet another hugely valuable house, are potentially forming a new social caste. With interests entirely opposite to those who didn't benefit. People have a tendency to marry within caste too. I don't like the implications of that.
Inheritance tax needs to be larger, and have no allowance for anyone other than a spouse/partner, or some dependents in particular circumstances. In fact have a maximum inheritance too, with a 100% rate above that.
Why does the state have the right to confiscate someone’s savings (on which they have already paid tax) just because they are unfortunate enough to die?
It reverses the relationship between the individual and the state
"Already paid tax" is a misnomer which for some reason only comes out via advocates of exempting just one thing from taxation.
Taxes are not a one-off and done, because the state's expenditure is not a one-off and done. Even as a right-winger, if you want pensioners to receive their pensions, if you want healthcare to exist, if you want the military to have supplies and military wages to exist, if you want schools or roads or anything else then taxes have to be on-going as expenditure is ongoing.
If you receive your wages you pay tax on that.
If you spend that money on eg petrol or alcohol, that product also has a duty on it, which you must pay, despite your wages already being taxed.
You then get taxed VAT which you must pay on both the product you want to buy and the duty itself. The tax you're paying is itself taxed. So you're paying VAT, despite your wages and duty already being taxed.
The premises selling you the product will need to pay NNDR, despite your wages, VAT and duty already being taxed.
If the premises selling you the product makes a profit, they will be taxed on that. Despite your wages, VAT, duty and NNDR already being taxed.
The employee selling you the product needs to be paid. Their employment will face Employers NI. Despite your wages, duty, VAT, NNDR and the corporation already being taxed.
The employee will actually then be paid. For which they will have to pay National Insurance, despite the fact their employer has already paid National Insurance and despite your wages, duty, VAT, NNDR and corporation already being taxed.
And of course lets not forget to bring this circle back in a loop that employee's wages will be taxed. Despite the fact that their own wages have already faced not one but two sets of National Insurance taxes and the fact that your wages that started this circle, duty, VAT, NNDR and the corporation were all already taxed too.
And that's just one circle and forgetting many other taxes that occur along the way too. You can barely blink in this country without being taxed, so please don't use an "already taxed" line.
Joining EEA/EFTA (the Norway option) thus retaining Brexit and doing most of what most people now want looks a bit of a no-brainer. Very interesting that the possibility is being ignored on all sides. Is Labour keeping it for after the election?
At the moment rejoin the EU still has less than 50% support, but rejoin the EU or rejoin the single market has nearly 60% support amongst all voters (though 70% of Remainers would rejoin the full EU).
However, amongst Leavers the median position is to stay out of the EU and single market still (hence either would be political suicide in the redwall and Leave voting Tory marginals Starmer must win to become PM). Leavers do want a closer trade and security relationship with the EU though which is Labour's current position.
If he wins back the marginals he needs to become PM then Labour can start to consider rejoining the single market if it wins a second term. If Labour won a third term some in the party might even then push to rejoin the full EU
Noted. The swing opinion - the middling one of stay out of SM but get closer - is precisely the one which the Brexit deal would have achieved if it could. And it's the one involving a great deal of hand waving. No-one can tell you what it looks like. Except that it looked like a unicorn then and it does now.
Good morning
Sunak needs to spring a huge surprise early next year and announce he will take us back into the singe market
Now that would be a game changer
Yes, it means free movement and RefUK would probably replace the Tories as the main opposition while Starmer Labour would sweep every seat in the Redwall
Why don't you just join RefUK as you act as a de facto supporter
You seem to have this quaint idea RefUK with approx 5% support are going to become some dynamic force in UK politics
As far as the red wall is concerned it is lost anyway
The vast majority of current Conservative voters do not want to rejoin the single market and nor do they want to restore free movement from the EEA, so would switch en masse to RefUK if Sunak proposed that. Farage would of course return to lead RefUK instantly if Sunak did that.
So the Tories would face Canada 1993 style obliteration, losing the Redwall and Leave marginals to Starmer Labour, losing their traditional Leave seats to Farage and RefUK and losing Remain seats still anyway to the LDs who would push to go further and rejoin the EU while the Tories split the Leave vote with Farage
'The vast majority of current Conservative voters do not want to rejoin the single market'
You need to back that up with up to date polling of conservative voters (and not members)
And as for the rest of your comments they are so predictable they write themselves
Have you ever thought of writing 'fairy tales' ?
He's right, however unfortunate you and I think that is.
Have a closer economic relationship with the EU to boost our trade with EU countries, even if this means having to follow more EU rules and regulations (48% overall, but 26% of current Conservative voters)
vs
Keep our existing relationship with the EU so we are less subject to EU rules and regulations, even if this means more difficulties trading with EU countries (33% overall, but 58% of current Conservative voters)
Like it or not, the Conservatives are the party of Brexit and keeping Brexit pure. The idea that Rishi wants to dilute Brexit, or has the space to do so, is sadly for the birds.
SFAICS it doesn't matter what Conservative policy is on the matter. They are not forming the next government. They have already lost the voters who want a more intelligent settlement, and for the moment they are not coming back. The Labour party (preferably with LD help) are the only possible option for a new deal, even if that's not brilliant.
Was just writing something similar... Those of us who thought Brexit would be a disaster (and believe that it is) are pissed with the Conservatives, from Cameron onwards, for doing it and for the complete dog's breakfast they've made of it. Partial fixing of the mess is not going to win me round.
For me, it will need either a 'cleanskin' leader (i.e. a remainer/someone not active during the referendum and absent or sensible during the ensuing clusterfuck) or a clearly repentent Brexiter and that person will also need to drop the culture war nonsense and the presence of loons in cabinet before I consider voting Con again. Or someone really unelectable in charge of Labour could persuade me to hold my nose (I'd probably vote Sunak Con over Lab if Corbyn was still in charge, but I'd be taking a good hard look at policies and cabinet v shadow cabinet).
I actually don't know how I'm going to vote in S&A. I can't really motivate myself to give Sunak a kicking, given that would probably please Johnson. I'm not enthused by Starmer, nor by Davey, particularly. I do have money on Lab not taking the seat... If I get any leaftlets from them I'll likely consider Green or YP, depending on candidate. If the seat looks in play at the next GE then I'll likely go Lab, tactically (at the next GE). It's been fairly quiet campaign wise - one Tory 'survey', one Lab leaflet plus a Lab 'survey'. Doesn't feel like they're going at it hammer and tongs and my area is one where there will be both Lab and Con voters (and others) so it would be worth targetting, bit of a mix of older Con-leaners and more of the younger non-metroplitan liberal elite.
Yorkshire Party! Yorkshire Party!
Please, pretty please - we need one on PB.
"Mr Jordan [YP candidate], who previously left the Conservatives for the Yorkshire Party in 2018 before rejoining, said his concerns did not relate to how the council was run, but was due to the national party's policies, such as hitting carbon cutting targets and taxation." (from a report when he quit the Tories for a second time and joined the YP for a second time)
I'll look into it more, but not feeling the love. Now, if one Mr MeeksRichardDavid Herdson was to stand...
(Edited to correct my mistake of PB alumni, and again to correct DH's first name, d'oh)
ETA: YP do unfortunately strike me as a bit like the various Residents' Associations, a retirement home for lost Tories
Age is not of itself a bar, especially in the US where the work hard ethos is part of the American dream and I think @MikeSmithson is misreading the cultural differences.
In the US hard work is part of the American Dream. If you're fit and able you work on, and on. As I've posted before, there have been several nonagenarian elected Senators, and there are currently two serving senators who are over 89 years old. The oldest serving senator was Strom Thurmond who crossed the 100 mark whilst still in office. This is something unthinkable in the UK and alien to our culture where 'retirement' is the dream, as opposed to working hard and making your way until the end. For a fictional portrayal of this point, see Brian Cox's character in Succession.
Strom Thurmond was an extraordinary politician. He switched from Democrat to Republican. He conducted the longest ever single filibuster by a lone senator at 24 hours and 18 minutes in length. He was also a staunch opponent of civil rights legislation.
And guess who delivered the eulogy at both Strom Thurmond's funeral and burial plot? Yep ... one Joe Biden.
So I wouldn't bank any of your money on Joe standing down. If he remains sufficiently agile mentally and physically then he will erm ... run.
That may be true for a few super rich and elite politician Americans, the average American certainly wants to retire by mid 60s
That's a slightly different point. "I want to retire before I'm old" is not incompatible with "I rdespect and will vote for people willing to carry on indefinitely".
I think we overdo the ageism a bit in British politics. Speaking personally I'd be delighted to have another term and immodestly think I'd be better than some, but it's really unlikely to happen at age 73 so I'm not even trying. (Being CLP chair and on the Borough exec is a compromise.)
Anecdotally, when I was one of Corbyn's constituents and had half an hour with him talking about diverse topics, I said I wouldn't be a bad hard-working loyalist if he wanted to stick me in the Lords. He looked suitably nonplussed and we hastily moved on.
As an MP, I was well aware that there were plenty of subjects about which I knew nothing... An opinion/recommendation from respected experts in the Lords would have been useful.
I said I wouldn't be a bad hard-working loyalist if he wanted to stick me in the Lords
Anyone else see a contradiction here?
No, absolutely none.
Some years back, I was reading through some old debates in Parliament and the Lords.
One struck me - it was a discussion, in the Lords, about the introduction of the famous Lee-Enfield No.4 rifle. The one carried by British soldiers in both world wars.
The depth of debate was fascinating - as usual on such things, there was a group who wanted the most accurate rifle possible be a group who wanted reliability. But both groups acknowledge their biases. They discussed possible flaws in their own thinking, suggested ways to test if the rifle actually met their concerns. There were a number of shooting experts and former soldiers in the debate of course.
The whole thing was a group of obviously intelligent people trying to buy the best all round option - both for the public purse, but also for the Army.
One comment stood out. Something like “I thank the Noble Lord for his response to my comment. I hadn’t considered X. It is a very good point and in consequence I withdraw my comment.”
People who can publicly admit they are mistaken in a discussion…
This is all well and good, but to achieve that level of debate you don't need membership for life, political appointees, arcane rituals, and so on. The idea that expertise can only be made available to the Commons in this manner is unspoken because it's so obviously false. And in matters of expertise, given the pace at which some subject matters move, especially around some sciences and technologies, the idea of keeping some fossil on the books whose practical experience in the subject hasn't been updated since the 1980s is clearly not the right way to get up to date expert advice. On top of all that, why would you need experts kept on the books for years on end when no legislation is incoming related to that?
The whole system is ossified, anachronistic, inefficient, inherently conservative, and if I might say so, not how any of us would design it if we were setting up a constitution from scratch.
If it was properly conservative it would still be a Lords mainly made up of hereditary peers
House of Lords reform has been an ongoing discussion and process for 112 years. What could be more conservative than continuing a 112 year tradition? (OK, obviously, continuing a 113 year tradition...)
Life (non-hereditary) peerages, I recently learnt, have a very long history in the Lords, going back at least as far as 1377.
The CEO didn't want 50-year old white guys. So it's a woke tragedy as well as a people have too much money tragedy.
Everything about it sounds horrific. The comparisons with NASA and Apollo 1 are well made. NASA's first question on everything is "and how does it fail?"
That's nothing about wokery - that's about the "tech disruptor" mindset; "we don't need specialists or experts to build a submarine, we're going to be pioneers and do it ourselves"
Also, like, it's a good way to make sure your labour is cheap
This is another sad example of something I've mentioned before: that far too many people come up with new schemes that replace the old, yet put 'safety' into the magic category.
As an example of how things should be done: railways. Railways have large, often redundant, safety systems, which has led to an unprecedented safety record on our railway network. These systems are *very* expensive, and have been developed because of hard lessons taught in blood.
So someone comes up with a new system. They realise safety is expensive, but of course, their system is safer. Therefore safety gets, at best, a hand-wave.
We saw this with the German Maglev system, where the operators claimed collisions were impossible because of the way the system was designed. That was right before the Lathen collision that killed 23 people (1).
We see this with (say) Hyperloop, a brain-dead scheme that gave f-all thought to safety, and would have been a human jam-maker. We see this with this submarine, where safety was very much not at the forefront of the operator's mind, and lessons from previous experience ignored (there are apparently safer deep submersibles out there). We see it with autonomous driving, where beta-testing is put on the roads with the public. etc, etc.
Once a bedsore develops, it can take days, months, or even years to heal. It can also become infected, causing fever and chills. An infected bedsore can take a long time to clear up. As the infection spreads through your body, it can also cause mental confusion, a fast heartbeat, and generalized weakness.
The CEO didn't want 50-year old white guys. So it's a woke tragedy as well as a people have too much money tragedy.
Everything about it sounds horrific. The comparisons with NASA and Apollo 1 are well made. NASA's first question on everything is "and how does it fail?"
That's nothing about wokery - that's about the "tech disruptor" mindset; "we don't need specialists or experts to build a submarine, we're going to be pioneers and do it ourselves"
Also, like, it's a good way to make sure your labour is cheap
This is another sad example of something I've mentioned before: that far too many people come up with new schemes that replace the old, yet put 'safety' into the magic category.
As an example of how things should be done: railways. Railways have large, often redundant, safety systems, which has led to an unprecedented safety record on our railway network. These systems are *very* expensive, and have been developed because of hard lessons taught in blood.
So someone comes up with a new system. They realise safety is expensive, but of course, their system is safer. Therefore safety gets, at best, a hand-wave.
We saw this with the German Maglev system, where the operators claimed collisions were impossible because of the way the system was designed. That was right before the Lathen collision that killed 23 people (1).
We see this with (say) Hyperloop, a brain-dead scheme that gave f-all thought to safety, and would have been a human jam-maker. We see this with this submarine, where safety was very much not at the forefront of the operator's mind, and lessons from previous experience ignored (there are apparently safer deep submersibles out there). We see it with autonomous driving, where beta-testing is put on the roads with the public. etc, etc.
Really? Bills herself as an "aviatrix" which turns out to mean, taking flying lessons in a Cessna, which says fantasist to me. Dead wrong about the ballast jettisoning systems on titan, which were actually multiply redundant and rather well thought out.
What does PB think about automatic speed limiters on cars?
If cars were invented today they would definitely have them - see the 15mph limit on e-bikes.
I've often wondered about that. I put it to someone once and the reply was, 'If you're travelling at 70mph and there's a crash around you, then being able to accelerate to 100mph will allow you get out of the way.' I wasn't wholly convinced.
Joining EEA/EFTA (the Norway option) thus retaining Brexit and doing most of what most people now want looks a bit of a no-brainer. Very interesting that the possibility is being ignored on all sides. Is Labour keeping it for after the election?
It's not a no-brainer, because when asked about Freedom of Movement even most Remainers didn't want that. The UK public wants to access the single market without complying with the laws of the single market. The only no-brainer is the EU saying "no" to any such deal.
According to Perter Kellner on radio 4 yesterday that is incorrect. Only 23% now don't want freedom of movement for EU citizens. Well worth reading his piece in the European.
The CEO didn't want 50-year old white guys. So it's a woke tragedy as well as a people have too much money tragedy.
Everything about it sounds horrific. The comparisons with NASA and Apollo 1 are well made. NASA's first question on everything is "and how does it fail?"
That's nothing about wokery - that's about the "tech disruptor" mindset; "we don't need specialists or experts to build a submarine, we're going to be pioneers and do it ourselves"
Also, like, it's a good way to make sure your labour is cheap
This is another sad example of something I've mentioned before: that far too many people come up with new schemes that replace the old, yet put 'safety' into the magic category.
As an example of how things should be done: railways. Railways have large, often redundant, safety systems, which has led to an unprecedented safety record on our railway network. These systems are *very* expensive, and have been developed because of hard lessons taught in blood.
So someone comes up with a new system. They realise safety is expensive, but of course, their system is safer. Therefore safety gets, at best, a hand-wave.
We saw this with the German Maglev system, where the operators claimed collisions were impossible because of the way the system was designed. That was right before the Lathen collision that killed 23 people (1).
We see this with (say) Hyperloop, a brain-dead scheme that gave f-all thought to safety, and would have been a human jam-maker. We see this with this submarine, where safety was very much not at the forefront of the operator's mind, and lessons from previous experience ignored (there are apparently safer deep submersibles out there). We see it with autonomous driving, where beta-testing is put on the roads with the public. etc, etc.
Once a bedsore develops, it can take days, months, or even years to heal. It can also become infected, causing fever and chills. An infected bedsore can take a long time to clear up. As the infection spreads through your body, it can also cause mental confusion, a fast heartbeat, and generalized weakness.
As, sadly, Christopher Reeve could attest...
Not just him, by a long chalk. Lots of the very old die limbless because bedsores have got into the bone:
The CEO didn't want 50-year old white guys. So it's a woke tragedy as well as a people have too much money tragedy.
Everything about it sounds horrific. The comparisons with NASA and Apollo 1 are well made. NASA's first question on everything is "and how does it fail?"
That's nothing about wokery - that's about the "tech disruptor" mindset; "we don't need specialists or experts to build a submarine, we're going to be pioneers and do it ourselves"
Also, like, it's a good way to make sure your labour is cheap
This is another sad example of something I've mentioned before: that far too many people come up with new schemes that replace the old, yet put 'safety' into the magic category.
As an example of how things should be done: railways. Railways have large, often redundant, safety systems, which has led to an unprecedented safety record on our railway network. These systems are *very* expensive, and have been developed because of hard lessons taught in blood.
So someone comes up with a new system. They realise safety is expensive, but of course, their system is safer. Therefore safety gets, at best, a hand-wave.
We saw this with the German Maglev system, where the operators claimed collisions were impossible because of the way the system was designed. That was right before the Lathen collision that killed 23 people (1).
We see this with (say) Hyperloop, a brain-dead scheme that gave f-all thought to safety, and would have been a human jam-maker. We see this with this submarine, where safety was very much not at the forefront of the operator's mind, and lessons from previous experience ignored (there are apparently safer deep submersibles out there). We see it with autonomous driving, where beta-testing is put on the roads with the public. etc, etc.
Really? Bills herself as an "aviatrix" which turns out to mean, taking flying lessons in a Cessna, which says fantasist to me. Dead wrong about the ballast jettisoning systems on titan, which were actually multiply redundant and rather well thought out.
Do you have any available links for that, please? My engineering side would love to know.
Joining EEA/EFTA (the Norway option) thus retaining Brexit and doing most of what most people now want looks a bit of a no-brainer. Very interesting that the possibility is being ignored on all sides. Is Labour keeping it for after the election?
At the moment rejoin the EU still has less than 50% support, but rejoin the EU or rejoin the single market has nearly 60% support amongst all voters (though 70% of Remainers would rejoin the full EU).
However, amongst Leavers the median position is to stay out of the EU and single market still (hence either would be political suicide in the redwall and Leave voting Tory marginals Starmer must win to become PM). Leavers do want a closer trade and security relationship with the EU though which is Labour's current position.
If he wins back the marginals he needs to become PM then Labour can start to consider rejoining the single market if it wins a second term. If Labour won a third term some in the party might even then push to rejoin the full EU
Noted. The swing opinion - the middling one of stay out of SM but get closer - is precisely the one which the Brexit deal would have achieved if it could. And it's the one involving a great deal of hand waving. No-one can tell you what it looks like. Except that it looked like a unicorn then and it does now.
Good morning
Sunak needs to spring a huge surprise early next year and announce he will take us back into the singe market
Now that would be a game changer
Yes, it means free movement and RefUK would probably replace the Tories as the main opposition while Starmer Labour would sweep every seat in the Redwall
Why don't you just join RefUK as you act as a de facto supporter
You seem to have this quaint idea RefUK with approx 5% support are going to become some dynamic force in UK politics
As far as the red wall is concerned it is lost anyway
The vast majority of current Conservative voters do not want to rejoin the single market and nor do they want to restore free movement from the EEA, so would switch en masse to RefUK if Sunak proposed that. Farage would of course return to lead RefUK instantly if Sunak did that.
So the Tories would face Canada 1993 style obliteration, losing the Redwall and Leave marginals to Starmer Labour, losing their traditional Leave seats to Farage and RefUK and losing Remain seats still anyway to the LDs who would push to go further and rejoin the EU while the Tories split the Leave vote with Farage
'The vast majority of current Conservative voters do not want to rejoin the single market'
You need to back that up with up to date polling of conservative voters (and not members)
And as for the rest of your comments they are so predictable they write themselves
Have you ever thought of writing 'fairy tales' ?
He's right, however unfortunate you and I think that is.
Have a closer economic relationship with the EU to boost our trade with EU countries, even if this means having to follow more EU rules and regulations (48% overall, but 26% of current Conservative voters)
vs
Keep our existing relationship with the EU so we are less subject to EU rules and regulations, even if this means more difficulties trading with EU countries (33% overall, but 58% of current Conservative voters)
Like it or not, the Conservatives are the party of Brexit and keeping Brexit pure. The idea that Rishi wants to dilute Brexit, or has the space to do so, is sadly for the birds.
SFAICS it doesn't matter what Conservative policy is on the matter. They are not forming the next government. They have already lost the voters who want a more intelligent settlement, and for the moment they are not coming back. The Labour party (preferably with LD help) are the only possible option for a new deal, even if that's not brilliant.
Was just writing something similar... Those of us who thought Brexit would be a disaster (and believe that it is) are pissed with the Conservatives, from Cameron onwards, for doing it and for the complete dog's breakfast they've made of it. Partial fixing of the mess is not going to win me round.
For me, it will need either a 'cleanskin' leader (i.e. a remainer/someone not active during the referendum and absent or sensible during the ensuing clusterfuck) or a clearly repentent Brexiter and that person will also need to drop the culture war nonsense and the presence of loons in cabinet before I consider voting Con again. Or someone really unelectable in charge of Labour could persuade me to hold my nose (I'd probably vote Sunak Con over Lab if Corbyn was still in charge, but I'd be taking a good hard look at policies and cabinet v shadow cabinet).
I actually don't know how I'm going to vote in S&A. I can't really motivate myself to give Sunak a kicking, given that would probably please Johnson. I'm not enthused by Starmer, nor by Davey, particularly. I do have money on Lab not taking the seat... If I get any leaftlets from them I'll likely consider Green or YP, depending on candidate. If the seat looks in play at the next GE then I'll likely go Lab, tactically (at the next GE). It's been fairly quiet campaign wise - one Tory 'survey', one Lab leaflet plus a Lab 'survey'. Doesn't feel like they're going at it hammer and tongs and my area is one where there will be both Lab and Con voters (and others) so it would be worth targetting, bit of a mix of older Con-leaners and more of the younger non-metroplitan liberal elite.
Yorkshire Party! Yorkshire Party!
Please, pretty please - we need one on PB.
"Mr Jordan [YP candidate], who previously left the Conservatives for the Yorkshire Party in 2018 before rejoining, said his concerns did not relate to how the council was run, but was due to the national party's policies, such as hitting carbon cutting targets and taxation." (from a report when he quit the Tories for a second time and joined the YP for a second time)
I'll look into it more, but not feeling the love. Now, if one Mr MeeksRichardDavid Herdson was to stand...
(Edited to correct my mistake of PB alumni, and again to correct DH's first name, d'oh)
ETA: YP do unfortunately strike me as a bit like the various Residents' Associations, a retirement home for lost Tories
When I was at secondary school we had a "Mock Election" on the day of the 1987 General Election and the Kent Independence Party won.
Right-wing idiots joining the left-wing idiots from yesterday, in tying to make political capital from a tragedy.
Can people no longer think before opening their mouths online?
The guy who built the sub was one of the victims, he wouldn’t have been there if he thought it was unsafe. That said, deep-sea exploration is unfathomably (sic) dangerous, and they all knew there was a chance of catastrophic failure.
I sympathise with the sentiment that these deaths should not be used to make cheap political points. I feel particularly awful about the University of Strathclyde student who went on the trip with his Dad as a Father's Day present and was apparently terrified.
Nevertheless, I think I don't think we can shy away from discussing the fact that this tragedy has resulted in eye watering amounts of public money (largely North American public money) being spent on rescue efforts and the diversion of military resources. To get on a ski slope in most places you have to take out insurance to cover the chances of something going wrong. Doing something this inherently dangerous (I read that the disclaimer mentioned 'death' three times on the first page) needs to have some sort of financial scheme to cover these eventualities. Isn't there a £10k fee for climbing Everest now?
Also, the Titanic is a resting place for about 1500 people. Can we not leave them in peace as we do Military Maritime Graves under the Protection of Military Remains Act 1986 (although perhaps that doesn't stop tourism)?
Most of that American money was spent anyway. It's not like they hurriedly built some ships and press-ganged some new sailors.
What does PB think about automatic speed limiters on cars?
If cars were invented today they would definitely have them - see the 15mph limit on e-bikes.
I've often wondered about that. I put it to someone once and the reply was, 'If you're travelling at 70mph and there's a crash around you, then being able to accelerate to 100mph will allow you get out of the way.' I wasn't wholly convinced.
There are times when accelerating past the speed limit is safer than sticking to it in my view.
An example for me would be on a single lane (each way) carriageway when you want to overtake a slower-moving vehicle in a stretch of road where you have clear visibility and need to go into the currently empty oncoming traffic's lane to do so.
If the speed limit is 60 but they're only doing 50, then accelerating past them at 60 leaves you in the oncoming traffic's lane for longer than if you accelerate to 70 to overtake them, then slow back down to 60 once back in your own lane. Getting out of the oncoming traffic's lane before it appears, while you have clear visibility that its empty, is better than staying there for longer.
The CEO didn't want 50-year old white guys. So it's a woke tragedy as well as a people have too much money tragedy.
Everything about it sounds horrific. The comparisons with NASA and Apollo 1 are well made. NASA's first question on everything is "and how does it fail?"
That's nothing about wokery - that's about the "tech disruptor" mindset; "we don't need specialists or experts to build a submarine, we're going to be pioneers and do it ourselves"
Also, like, it's a good way to make sure your labour is cheap
This is another sad example of something I've mentioned before: that far too many people come up with new schemes that replace the old, yet put 'safety' into the magic category.
As an example of how things should be done: railways. Railways have large, often redundant, safety systems, which has led to an unprecedented safety record on our railway network. These systems are *very* expensive, and have been developed because of hard lessons taught in blood.
So someone comes up with a new system. They realise safety is expensive, but of course, their system is safer. Therefore safety gets, at best, a hand-wave.
We saw this with the German Maglev system, where the operators claimed collisions were impossible because of the way the system was designed. That was right before the Lathen collision that killed 23 people (1).
We see this with (say) Hyperloop, a brain-dead scheme that gave f-all thought to safety, and would have been a human jam-maker. We see this with this submarine, where safety was very much not at the forefront of the operator's mind, and lessons from previous experience ignored (there are apparently safer deep submersibles out there). We see it with autonomous driving, where beta-testing is put on the roads with the public. etc, etc.
Once a bedsore develops, it can take days, months, or even years to heal. It can also become infected, causing fever and chills. An infected bedsore can take a long time to clear up. As the infection spreads through your body, it can also cause mental confusion, a fast heartbeat, and generalized weakness.
As, sadly, Christopher Reeve could attest...
Not just him, by a long chalk. Lots of the very old die limbless because bedsores have got into the bone:
I am increasingly of the view that when I pass age X, I will book a place in Dignitas for, say, 3-5 years out, and just try to be as productive as I can in the time remaining. The last 3-5 years of life seems to be an increasingly large pile of pain and utter indignities and to be frank I just don't want it.
The CEO didn't want 50-year old white guys. So it's a woke tragedy as well as a people have too much money tragedy.
Everything about it sounds horrific. The comparisons with NASA and Apollo 1 are well made. NASA's first question on everything is "and how does it fail?"
That's nothing about wokery - that's about the "tech disruptor" mindset; "we don't need specialists or experts to build a submarine, we're going to be pioneers and do it ourselves"
Also, like, it's a good way to make sure your labour is cheap
This is another sad example of something I've mentioned before: that far too many people come up with new schemes that replace the old, yet put 'safety' into the magic category.
As an example of how things should be done: railways. Railways have large, often redundant, safety systems, which has led to an unprecedented safety record on our railway network. These systems are *very* expensive, and have been developed because of hard lessons taught in blood.
So someone comes up with a new system. They realise safety is expensive, but of course, their system is safer. Therefore safety gets, at best, a hand-wave.
We saw this with the German Maglev system, where the operators claimed collisions were impossible because of the way the system was designed. That was right before the Lathen collision that killed 23 people (1).
We see this with (say) Hyperloop, a brain-dead scheme that gave f-all thought to safety, and would have been a human jam-maker. We see this with this submarine, where safety was very much not at the forefront of the operator's mind, and lessons from previous experience ignored (there are apparently safer deep submersibles out there). We see it with autonomous driving, where beta-testing is put on the roads with the public. etc, etc.
Really? Bills herself as an "aviatrix" which turns out to mean, taking flying lessons in a Cessna, which says fantasist to me. Dead wrong about the ballast jettisoning systems on titan, which were actually multiply redundant and rather well thought out.
Do you have any available links for that, please? My engineering side would love to know.
Interview w/ Stocton Rush, January 2023
"But I also worried about getting back to the surface. Exactly what kind of ballast did this thing have? According to Kyle Bingham, a LOT.
First, there are three enormous, heavy, black, beat-up lead construction pipes on each side of the sub.
KYLE: These triple weights, we call ‘em, are hydraulically driven. So we operate ‘em inside, doesn’t take any electricity, can be done manually, and those drop away and gain us a lot of buoyancy.
Dropping that much weight onto the sea floor means the sub starts rising.
But what if the hydraulic system breaks? Well, then they have roll weights.
KYLE: Ah, so, we’ve got these weights here on the side, these are roll weights, we can actually roll the sub and those come off, and that gains us some buoyancy to come back to the surface.
These are pipes that sit on a shelf that juts out from either side of the sub, held in place only by gravity. If everyone inside the sub shifts their weight to one side, the sub tips enough to let these pipes roll off.
If that doesn’t work, there are ballast bags, full of metal shot, hanging below the sub.
KYLE: These bags down below, we drop those off using motors and electric fingers.
OK. But what if the electronics go out, and the hydraulics fail, and everyone inside has passed out unconscious?
KYLE: There’s fusible links within these that actually can dissolve and come back in time if it’s drop off.
Fusible links are self-dissolving bonds. After 16 hours in seawater, those bonds disintegrate, the weight bags drop off automatically, and you go back to the surface.
And even those four systems aren’t the end of it. The sub’s thrusters can also push it up; the pilot can jettison the sub’s legs as dead weight; and there’s even an airbag they can inflate to provide buoyancy."
Right-wing idiots joining the left-wing idiots from yesterday, in tying to make political capital from a tragedy.
Can people no longer think before opening their mouths online?
The guy who built the sub was one of the victims, he wouldn’t have been there if he thought it was unsafe. That said, deep-sea exploration is unfathomably (sic) dangerous, and they all knew there was a chance of catastrophic failure.
I sympathise with the sentiment that these deaths should not be used to make cheap political points. I feel particularly awful about the University of Strathclyde student who went on the trip with his Dad as a Father's Day present and was apparently terrified.
Nevertheless, I think I don't think we can shy away from discussing the fact that this tragedy has resulted in eye watering amounts of public money (largely North American public money) being spent on rescue efforts and the diversion of military resources. To get on a ski slope in most places you have to take out insurance to cover the chances of something going wrong. Doing something this inherently dangerous (I read that the disclaimer mentioned 'death' three times on the first page) needs to have some sort of financial scheme to cover these eventualities. Isn't there a £10k fee for climbing Everest now?
Also, the Titanic is a resting place for about 1500 people. Can we not leave them in peace as we do Military Maritime Graves under the Protection of Military Remains Act 1986 (although perhaps that doesn't stop tourism)?
I've seen a few people making the rest place remark, but resting places are also places people go to visit, and not out of just morbid curiosity.
When I was last in Washington I went to Arlington National Cemetery, it was very sombre and moving. I don't think it was disrespectful to go there.
How many people here have been to a cemetery, or places like Auschwitz, or the Somme etc?
Peering out of a tiny 7” thick porthole while inhaling your own and others’ farts is certainly not a traditional form of respect, but chacun à son goût.
Surely the only respectful thing to do is raise the wreck, bring it on land and build a theme park around it?
Joining EEA/EFTA (the Norway option) thus retaining Brexit and doing most of what most people now want looks a bit of a no-brainer. Very interesting that the possibility is being ignored on all sides. Is Labour keeping it for after the election?
It's not a no-brainer, because when asked about Freedom of Movement even most Remainers didn't want that. The UK public wants to access the single market without complying with the laws of the single market. The only no-brainer is the EU saying "no" to any such deal.
According to Perter Kellner on radio 4 yesterday that is incorrect. Only 23% now don't want freedom of movement for EU citizens. Well worth reading his piece in the European.
I presume you meant the New European, and the closet thing to what you have claimed in the article is this:
Far fewer people nowadays think immigration damages economic recovery “by taking away jobs from people already living here”. Ipsos finds that it has more than halved since 2012 from 55% to 23%. The number saying “immigrants’ skills and labour are necessary to help Britain’s economic recovery” has more than doubled, from 24% to 53%.
That is nothing like "Only 23% now don't want freedom of movement for EU citizens."
When polled in detail most Remainers do not want free movement. They want the same immigration controls that everyone else has to comply with to apply to EU citizens.
People in the UK are overwhelmingly pro migration, but people are also overwhelmingly pro controlled migration, and as I said even Remainers want migration from the EU to be controlled. That is not Free Movement as the EU expects it to be applied.
WRT Obama, he's definitely wrong. The Ukrainian national identity is at least a century old, and some historians would say, a good deal older than that.
Ot but interesting and open access paper - specially for @Flatlander perhaps - on road problems in Lincs thanks to climate change and its effect on the soft local geology. Impressive attempt to assess the problem by the Geological Survey and the council.
Take home message - road maintenance is going to become a worse issue in the UK.
Thanks for that, I'll have a read later.
It is certainly a problem. There's quite a few roads round here across peat that are terrible to drive on due to soil drying and shrinkage. Any more than 40 and you risk going airborne from all the bumps and they definitely aren't recommended if you've got a dodgy back.
I'm sure DuraAce would enjoy them although any low-clearance car would probably be a bad idea. Also, the wipe-outs are into deep ditches.
The peat drainage has been going on for a long time though, so I'm not sure it is entirely climate change. There's vague plans afoot to do something about that (a change to Paludiculture) but by the time we get anywhere the sea will be reclaiming it all anyway.
See https://www.greatfen.org.uk/ for the kind of thing we are trying to get going. The fens 'proper' are a very similar landscape to here.
Joining EEA/EFTA (the Norway option) thus retaining Brexit and doing most of what most people now want looks a bit of a no-brainer. Very interesting that the possibility is being ignored on all sides. Is Labour keeping it for after the election?
At the moment rejoin the EU still has less than 50% support, but rejoin the EU or rejoin the single market has nearly 60% support amongst all voters (though 70% of Remainers would rejoin the full EU).
However, amongst Leavers the median position is to stay out of the EU and single market still (hence either would be political suicide in the redwall and Leave voting Tory marginals Starmer must win to become PM). Leavers do want a closer trade and security relationship with the EU though which is Labour's current position.
If he wins back the marginals he needs to become PM then Labour can start to consider rejoining the single market if it wins a second term. If Labour won a third term some in the party might even then push to rejoin the full EU
Noted. The swing opinion - the middling one of stay out of SM but get closer - is precisely the one which the Brexit deal would have achieved if it could. And it's the one involving a great deal of hand waving. No-one can tell you what it looks like. Except that it looked like a unicorn then and it does now.
Good morning
Sunak needs to spring a huge surprise early next year and announce he will take us back into the singe market
Now that would be a game changer
Yes, it means free movement and RefUK would probably replace the Tories as the main opposition while Starmer Labour would sweep every seat in the Redwall
Why don't you just join RefUK as you act as a de facto supporter
You seem to have this quaint idea RefUK with approx 5% support are going to become some dynamic force in UK politics
As far as the red wall is concerned it is lost anyway
The vast majority of current Conservative voters do not want to rejoin the single market and nor do they want to restore free movement from the EEA, so would switch en masse to RefUK if Sunak proposed that. Farage would of course return to lead RefUK instantly if Sunak did that.
So the Tories would face Canada 1993 style obliteration, losing the Redwall and Leave marginals to Starmer Labour, losing their traditional Leave seats to Farage and RefUK and losing Remain seats still anyway to the LDs who would push to go further and rejoin the EU while the Tories split the Leave vote with Farage
'The vast majority of current Conservative voters do not want to rejoin the single market'
You need to back that up with up to date polling of conservative voters (and not members)
And as for the rest of your comments they are so predictable they write themselves
Have you ever thought of writing 'fairy tales' ?
He's right, however unfortunate you and I think that is.
Have a closer economic relationship with the EU to boost our trade with EU countries, even if this means having to follow more EU rules and regulations (48% overall, but 26% of current Conservative voters)
vs
Keep our existing relationship with the EU so we are less subject to EU rules and regulations, even if this means more difficulties trading with EU countries (33% overall, but 58% of current Conservative voters)
Like it or not, the Conservatives are the party of Brexit and keeping Brexit pure. The idea that Rishi wants to dilute Brexit, or has the space to do so, is sadly for the birds.
SFAICS it doesn't matter what Conservative policy is on the matter. They are not forming the next government. They have already lost the voters who want a more intelligent settlement, and for the moment they are not coming back. The Labour party (preferably with LD help) are the only possible option for a new deal, even if that's not brilliant.
Was just writing something similar... Those of us who thought Brexit would be a disaster (and believe that it is) are pissed with the Conservatives, from Cameron onwards, for doing it and for the complete dog's breakfast they've made of it. Partial fixing of the mess is not going to win me round.
For me, it will need either a 'cleanskin' leader (i.e. a remainer/someone not active during the referendum and absent or sensible during the ensuing clusterfuck) or a clearly repentent Brexiter and that person will also need to drop the culture war nonsense and the presence of loons in cabinet before I consider voting Con again. Or someone really unelectable in charge of Labour could persuade me to hold my nose (I'd probably vote Sunak Con over Lab if Corbyn was still in charge, but I'd be taking a good hard look at policies and cabinet v shadow cabinet).
I actually don't know how I'm going to vote in S&A. I can't really motivate myself to give Sunak a kicking, given that would probably please Johnson. I'm not enthused by Starmer, nor by Davey, particularly. I do have money on Lab not taking the seat... If I get any leaftlets from them I'll likely consider Green or YP, depending on candidate. If the seat looks in play at the next GE then I'll likely go Lab, tactically (at the next GE). It's been fairly quiet campaign wise - one Tory 'survey', one Lab leaflet plus a Lab 'survey'. Doesn't feel like they're going at it hammer and tongs and my area is one where there will be both Lab and Con voters (and others) so it would be worth targetting, bit of a mix of older Con-leaners and more of the younger non-metroplitan liberal elite.
Right-wing idiots joining the left-wing idiots from yesterday, in tying to make political capital from a tragedy.
Can people no longer think before opening their mouths online?
The guy who built the sub was one of the victims, he wouldn’t have been there if he thought it was unsafe. That said, deep-sea exploration is unfathomably (sic) dangerous, and they all knew there was a chance of catastrophic failure.
I sympathise with the sentiment that these deaths should not be used to make cheap political points. I feel particularly awful about the University of Strathclyde student who went on the trip with his Dad as a Father's Day present and was apparently terrified.
Nevertheless, I think I don't think we can shy away from discussing the fact that this tragedy has resulted in eye watering amounts of public money (largely North American public money) being spent on rescue efforts and the diversion of military resources. To get on a ski slope in most places you have to take out insurance to cover the chances of something going wrong. Doing something this inherently dangerous (I read that the disclaimer mentioned 'death' three times on the first page) needs to have some sort of financial scheme to cover these eventualities. Isn't there a £10k fee for climbing Everest now?
Also, the Titanic is a resting place for about 1500 people. Can we not leave them in peace as we do Military Maritime Graves under the Protection of Military Remains Act 1986 (although perhaps that doesn't stop tourism)?
Most of that American money was spent anyway. It's not like they hurriedly built some ships and press-ganged some new sailors.
Also probably seen as a bit of a training exercise.
The CEO didn't want 50-year old white guys. So it's a woke tragedy as well as a people have too much money tragedy.
Everything about it sounds horrific. The comparisons with NASA and Apollo 1 are well made. NASA's first question on everything is "and how does it fail?"
That's nothing about wokery - that's about the "tech disruptor" mindset; "we don't need specialists or experts to build a submarine, we're going to be pioneers and do it ourselves"
Also, like, it's a good way to make sure your labour is cheap
This is another sad example of something I've mentioned before: that far too many people come up with new schemes that replace the old, yet put 'safety' into the magic category.
As an example of how things should be done: railways. Railways have large, often redundant, safety systems, which has led to an unprecedented safety record on our railway network. These systems are *very* expensive, and have been developed because of hard lessons taught in blood.
So someone comes up with a new system. They realise safety is expensive, but of course, their system is safer. Therefore safety gets, at best, a hand-wave.
We saw this with the German Maglev system, where the operators claimed collisions were impossible because of the way the system was designed. That was right before the Lathen collision that killed 23 people (1).
We see this with (say) Hyperloop, a brain-dead scheme that gave f-all thought to safety, and would have been a human jam-maker. We see this with this submarine, where safety was very much not at the forefront of the operator's mind, and lessons from previous experience ignored (there are apparently safer deep submersibles out there). We see it with autonomous driving, where beta-testing is put on the roads with the public. etc, etc.
Once a bedsore develops, it can take days, months, or even years to heal. It can also become infected, causing fever and chills. An infected bedsore can take a long time to clear up. As the infection spreads through your body, it can also cause mental confusion, a fast heartbeat, and generalized weakness.
As, sadly, Christopher Reeve could attest...
Not just him, by a long chalk. Lots of the very old die limbless because bedsores have got into the bone:
I am increasingly of the view that when I pass age X, I will book a place in Dignitas for, say, 3-5 years out, and just try to be as productive as I can in the time remaining. The last 3-5 years of life seems to be an increasingly large pile of pain and utter indignities and to be frank I just don't want it.
I agree with the principle, but not the age X. It varies depending upon the individual.
My eldest grandad is 92 and still [for his age] reasonably fit and healthy. Still mobile, still living in his own home. Rather hard of hearing and definitely slowing down, but that's to be expected, but still able to get out and about and do things he wants to do, still cracking jokes etc.
Whereas my late Nan at a younger age died in a care home after being unable to leave her own bed, not being able to recognise anyone and thanks to Covid restrictions not being able to have visitors except her direct children and my other grandad.
For me, my line is simpler. If the time comes I need to go to a Care Home, I'd rather go to Dignitas instead.
Its horrendous we still don't have death with dignity in this country. Hopefully its something the next Government addresses.
Right-wing idiots joining the left-wing idiots from yesterday, in tying to make political capital from a tragedy.
Can people no longer think before opening their mouths online?
The guy who built the sub was one of the victims, he wouldn’t have been there if he thought it was unsafe. That said, deep-sea exploration is unfathomably (sic) dangerous, and they all knew there was a chance of catastrophic failure.
I sympathise with the sentiment that these deaths should not be used to make cheap political points. I feel particularly awful about the University of Strathclyde student who went on the trip with his Dad as a Father's Day present and was apparently terrified.
Nevertheless, I think I don't think we can shy away from discussing the fact that this tragedy has resulted in eye watering amounts of public money (largely North American public money) being spent on rescue efforts and the diversion of military resources. To get on a ski slope in most places you have to take out insurance to cover the chances of something going wrong. Doing something this inherently dangerous (I read that the disclaimer mentioned 'death' three times on the first page) needs to have some sort of financial scheme to cover these eventualities. Isn't there a £10k fee for climbing Everest now?
Also, the Titanic is a resting place for about 1500 people. Can we not leave them in peace as we do Military Maritime Graves under the Protection of Military Remains Act 1986 (although perhaps that doesn't stop tourism)?
I've seen a few people making the rest place remark, but resting places are also places people go to visit, and not out of just morbid curiosity.
When I was last in Washington I went to Arlington National Cemetery, it was very sombre and moving. I don't think it was disrespectful to go there.
How many people here have been to a cemetery, or places like Auschwitz, or the Somme etc?
Peering out of a tiny 7” thick porthole while inhaling your own and others’ farts is certainly not a traditional form of respect, but chacun à son goût.
Surely the only respectful thing to do is raise the wreck, bring it on land and build a theme park around it?
Leave it where it is and film the ending of the next James Bond film down there. Or at least a Dr Who two-parter.
WRT Obama, he's definitely wrong. The Ukrainian national identity is at least a century old, and some historians would say, a good deal older than that.
Of course it's a great deal older than that. It's just that they spent many centuries as subjects of shifting empires.
They have a greater claim to a unitary identity than does, say, Russia.
The CEO didn't want 50-year old white guys. So it's a woke tragedy as well as a people have too much money tragedy.
Everything about it sounds horrific. The comparisons with NASA and Apollo 1 are well made. NASA's first question on everything is "and how does it fail?"
That's nothing about wokery - that's about the "tech disruptor" mindset; "we don't need specialists or experts to build a submarine, we're going to be pioneers and do it ourselves"
Also, like, it's a good way to make sure your labour is cheap
This is another sad example of something I've mentioned before: that far too many people come up with new schemes that replace the old, yet put 'safety' into the magic category.
As an example of how things should be done: railways. Railways have large, often redundant, safety systems, which has led to an unprecedented safety record on our railway network. These systems are *very* expensive, and have been developed because of hard lessons taught in blood.
So someone comes up with a new system. They realise safety is expensive, but of course, their system is safer. Therefore safety gets, at best, a hand-wave.
We saw this with the German Maglev system, where the operators claimed collisions were impossible because of the way the system was designed. That was right before the Lathen collision that killed 23 people (1).
We see this with (say) Hyperloop, a brain-dead scheme that gave f-all thought to safety, and would have been a human jam-maker. We see this with this submarine, where safety was very much not at the forefront of the operator's mind, and lessons from previous experience ignored (there are apparently safer deep submersibles out there). We see it with autonomous driving, where beta-testing is put on the roads with the public. etc, etc.
Once a bedsore develops, it can take days, months, or even years to heal. It can also become infected, causing fever and chills. An infected bedsore can take a long time to clear up. As the infection spreads through your body, it can also cause mental confusion, a fast heartbeat, and generalized weakness.
As, sadly, Christopher Reeve could attest...
Not just him, by a long chalk. Lots of the very old die limbless because bedsores have got into the bone:
I am increasingly of the view that when I pass age X, I will book a place in Dignitas for, say, 3-5 years out, and just try to be as productive as I can in the time remaining. The last 3-5 years of life seems to be an increasingly large pile of pain and utter indignities and to be frank I just don't want it.
I agree with the principle, but not the age X. It varies depending upon the individual.
My eldest grandad is 92 and still [for his age] reasonably fit and healthy. Still mobile, still living in his own home. Rather hard of hearing and definitely slowing down, but that's to be expected, but still able to get out and about and do things he wants to do, still cracking jokes etc.
Whereas my late Nan at a younger age died in a care home after being unable to leave her own bed, not being able to recognise anyone and thanks to Covid restrictions not being able to have visitors except her direct children and my other grandad.
For me, my line is simpler. If the time comes I need to go to a Care Home, I'd rather go to Dignitas instead.
Its horrendous we still don't have death with dignity in this country. Hopefully its something the next Government addresses.
Agreed. My grandfather didn't really slow down until he fell out of a tree (which he was pruning) in his early nineties and fractured his sternum.
The CEO didn't want 50-year old white guys. So it's a woke tragedy as well as a people have too much money tragedy.
Everything about it sounds horrific. The comparisons with NASA and Apollo 1 are well made. NASA's first question on everything is "and how does it fail?"
That's nothing about wokery - that's about the "tech disruptor" mindset; "we don't need specialists or experts to build a submarine, we're going to be pioneers and do it ourselves"
Also, like, it's a good way to make sure your labour is cheap
This is another sad example of something I've mentioned before: that far too many people come up with new schemes that replace the old, yet put 'safety' into the magic category.
As an example of how things should be done: railways. Railways have large, often redundant, safety systems, which has led to an unprecedented safety record on our railway network. These systems are *very* expensive, and have been developed because of hard lessons taught in blood.
So someone comes up with a new system. They realise safety is expensive, but of course, their system is safer. Therefore safety gets, at best, a hand-wave.
We saw this with the German Maglev system, where the operators claimed collisions were impossible because of the way the system was designed. That was right before the Lathen collision that killed 23 people (1).
We see this with (say) Hyperloop, a brain-dead scheme that gave f-all thought to safety, and would have been a human jam-maker. We see this with this submarine, where safety was very much not at the forefront of the operator's mind, and lessons from previous experience ignored (there are apparently safer deep submersibles out there). We see it with autonomous driving, where beta-testing is put on the roads with the public. etc, etc.
Once a bedsore develops, it can take days, months, or even years to heal. It can also become infected, causing fever and chills. An infected bedsore can take a long time to clear up. As the infection spreads through your body, it can also cause mental confusion, a fast heartbeat, and generalized weakness.
As, sadly, Christopher Reeve could attest...
Not just him, by a long chalk. Lots of the very old die limbless because bedsores have got into the bone:
I am increasingly of the view that when I pass age X, I will book a place in Dignitas for, say, 3-5 years out, and just try to be as productive as I can in the time remaining. The last 3-5 years of life seems to be an increasingly large pile of pain and utter indignities and to be frank I just don't want it.
I agree with the principle, but not the age X. It varies depending upon the individual.
My eldest grandad is 92 and still [for his age] reasonably fit and healthy. Still mobile, still living in his own home. Rather hard of hearing and definitely slowing down, but that's to be expected, but still able to get out and about and do things he wants to do, still cracking jokes etc.
Whereas my late Nan at a younger age died in a care home after being unable to leave her own bed, not being able to recognise anyone and thanks to Covid restrictions not being able to have visitors except her direct children and my other grandad.
For me, my line is simpler. If the time comes I need to go to a Care Home, I'd rather go to Dignitas instead.
Its horrendous we still don't have death with dignity in this country. Hopefully its something the next Government addresses.
Yep. And age 10 seems far too early
But yes, agree with what you say. I'm in favour of voluntary euthanasia/assisted dying in principle, but it's a tricky one to get right in practice with the needed protections (but it can be done). Re care homes, I have an elderly friend in the early(ish) stages of Alzheimers in a care home. She cannot live independently,* but she is living a good life in there - it's an expensive one! - and seeing her and talking to her still a pleasure, she just asks the same questions several times during a meeting.
*she lived in her own home well into her 90s, but started doing some very unsafe things due to the memory loss and some confusion. The confusion, interestingly, has eased a lot since going into a care home, maybe due to feeling safer/less stress?
WRT Obama, he's definitely wrong. The Ukrainian national identity is at least a century old, and some historians would say, a good deal older than that.
Of course it's a great deal older than that. It's just that they spent many centuries as subjects of shifting empires.
They have a greater claim to a unitary identity than does, say, Russia.
I had no idea till recently, that Ukrainian nationalists actually came pretty close to overrunning Western Ukraine in 1945/6. The Soviets had immense difficulty suppressing that insurgency.
They fought the Nazis from 1943, although many had collaborated with the Nazis prior to that, and conducted massacres of Jews and Poles.
Joining EEA/EFTA (the Norway option) thus retaining Brexit and doing most of what most people now want looks a bit of a no-brainer. Very interesting that the possibility is being ignored on all sides. Is Labour keeping it for after the election?
At the moment rejoin the EU still has less than 50% support, but rejoin the EU or rejoin the single market has nearly 60% support amongst all voters (though 70% of Remainers would rejoin the full EU).
However, amongst Leavers the median position is to stay out of the EU and single market still (hence either would be political suicide in the redwall and Leave voting Tory marginals Starmer must win to become PM). Leavers do want a closer trade and security relationship with the EU though which is Labour's current position.
If he wins back the marginals he needs to become PM then Labour can start to consider rejoining the single market if it wins a second term. If Labour won a third term some in the party might even then push to rejoin the full EU
Noted. The swing opinion - the middling one of stay out of SM but get closer - is precisely the one which the Brexit deal would have achieved if it could. And it's the one involving a great deal of hand waving. No-one can tell you what it looks like. Except that it looked like a unicorn then and it does now.
Good morning
Sunak needs to spring a huge surprise early next year and announce he will take us back into the singe market
Now that would be a game changer
Yes, it means free movement and RefUK would probably replace the Tories as the main opposition while Starmer Labour would sweep every seat in the Redwall
Why don't you just join RefUK as you act as a de facto supporter
You seem to have this quaint idea RefUK with approx 5% support are going to become some dynamic force in UK politics
As far as the red wall is concerned it is lost anyway
The vast majority of current Conservative voters do not want to rejoin the single market and nor do they want to restore free movement from the EEA, so would switch en masse to RefUK if Sunak proposed that. Farage would of course return to lead RefUK instantly if Sunak did that.
So the Tories would face Canada 1993 style obliteration, losing the Redwall and Leave marginals to Starmer Labour, losing their traditional Leave seats to Farage and RefUK and losing Remain seats still anyway to the LDs who would push to go further and rejoin the EU while the Tories split the Leave vote with Farage
'The vast majority of current Conservative voters do not want to rejoin the single market'
You need to back that up with up to date polling of conservative voters (and not members)
And as for the rest of your comments they are so predictable they write themselves
Have you ever thought of writing 'fairy tales' ?
He's right, however unfortunate you and I think that is.
Have a closer economic relationship with the EU to boost our trade with EU countries, even if this means having to follow more EU rules and regulations (48% overall, but 26% of current Conservative voters)
vs
Keep our existing relationship with the EU so we are less subject to EU rules and regulations, even if this means more difficulties trading with EU countries (33% overall, but 58% of current Conservative voters)
Like it or not, the Conservatives are the party of Brexit and keeping Brexit pure. The idea that Rishi wants to dilute Brexit, or has the space to do so, is sadly for the birds.
SFAICS it doesn't matter what Conservative policy is on the matter. They are not forming the next government. They have already lost the voters who want a more intelligent settlement, and for the moment they are not coming back. The Labour party (preferably with LD help) are the only possible option for a new deal, even if that's not brilliant.
Was just writing something similar... Those of us who thought Brexit would be a disaster (and believe that it is) are pissed with the Conservatives, from Cameron onwards, for doing it and for the complete dog's breakfast they've made of it. Partial fixing of the mess is not going to win me round.
For me, it will need either a 'cleanskin' leader (i.e. a remainer/someone not active during the referendum and absent or sensible during the ensuing clusterfuck) or a clearly repentent Brexiter and that person will also need to drop the culture war nonsense and the presence of loons in cabinet before I consider voting Con again. Or someone really unelectable in charge of Labour could persuade me to hold my nose (I'd probably vote Sunak Con over Lab if Corbyn was still in charge, but I'd be taking a good hard look at policies and cabinet v shadow cabinet).
I actually don't know how I'm going to vote in S&A. I can't really motivate myself to give Sunak a kicking, given that would probably please Johnson. I'm not enthused by Starmer, nor by Davey, particularly. I do have money on Lab not taking the seat... If I get any leaftlets from them I'll likely consider Green or YP, depending on candidate. If the seat looks in play at the next GE then I'll likely go Lab, tactically (at the next GE). It's been fairly quiet campaign wise - one Tory 'survey', one Lab leaflet plus a Lab 'survey'. Doesn't feel like they're going at it hammer and tongs and my area is one where there will be both Lab and Con voters (and others) so it would be worth targetting, bit of a mix of older Con-leaners and more of the younger non-metroplitan liberal elite.
Yorkshire Party! Yorkshire Party!
Please, pretty please - we need one on PB.
"Mr Jordan [YP candidate], who previously left the Conservatives for the Yorkshire Party in 2018 before rejoining, said his concerns did not relate to how the council was run, but was due to the national party's policies, such as hitting carbon cutting targets and taxation." (from a report when he quit the Tories for a second time and joined the YP for a second time)
I'll look into it more, but not feeling the love. Now, if one Mr MeeksRichardDavid Herdson was to stand...
(Edited to correct my mistake of PB alumni, and again to correct DH's first name, d'oh)
ETA: YP do unfortunately strike me as a bit like the various Residents' Associations, a retirement home for lost Tories
When I was at secondary school we had a "Mock Election" on the day of the 1987 General Election and the Kent Independence Party won.
Didn't know you had your secondary schooling in Essex, Doug
What does PB think about automatic speed limiters on cars?
If cars were invented today they would definitely have them - see the 15mph limit on e-bikes.
I've often wondered about that. I put it to someone once and the reply was, 'If you're travelling at 70mph and there's a crash around you, then being able to accelerate to 100mph will allow you get out of the way.' I wasn't wholly convinced.
There are times when accelerating past the speed limit is safer than sticking to it in my view.
An example for me would be on a single lane (each way) carriageway when you want to overtake a slower-moving vehicle in a stretch of road where you have clear visibility and need to go into the currently empty oncoming traffic's lane to do so.
If the speed limit is 60 but they're only doing 50, then accelerating past them at 60 leaves you in the oncoming traffic's lane for longer than if you accelerate to 70 to overtake them, then slow back down to 60 once back in your own lane. Getting out of the oncoming traffic's lane before it appears, while you have clear visibility that its empty, is better than staying there for longer.
Agree. This is part of the reason cyclists are sometimes encouraged to cycle two abreast, as it reduces the overtaking distance.
I think a GPS controlled limits of 20,30,40 make sense (as those limits suggest there is a problem with speed in those areas) and wouldn't cause too much political pain.
What does PB think about automatic speed limiters on cars?
If cars were invented today they would definitely have them - see the 15mph limit on e-bikes.
I've often wondered about that. I put it to someone once and the reply was, 'If you're travelling at 70mph and there's a crash around you, then being able to accelerate to 100mph will allow you get out of the way.' I wasn't wholly convinced.
I suppose a smart speed limiter would allow you to temporarily exceed the speed limit for a short while, but then you'd have to do penance by driving some way below the speed limit for a while so that your average speed didn't exceed 70 mph.
Right-wing idiots joining the left-wing idiots from yesterday, in tying to make political capital from a tragedy.
Can people no longer think before opening their mouths online?
The guy who built the sub was one of the victims, he wouldn’t have been there if he thought it was unsafe. That said, deep-sea exploration is unfathomably (sic) dangerous, and they all knew there was a chance of catastrophic failure.
I sympathise with the sentiment that these deaths should not be used to make cheap political points. I feel particularly awful about the University of Strathclyde student who went on the trip with his Dad as a Father's Day present and was apparently terrified.
Nevertheless, I think I don't think we can shy away from discussing the fact that this tragedy has resulted in eye watering amounts of public money (largely North American public money) being spent on rescue efforts and the diversion of military resources. To get on a ski slope in most places you have to take out insurance to cover the chances of something going wrong. Doing something this inherently dangerous (I read that the disclaimer mentioned 'death' three times on the first page) needs to have some sort of financial scheme to cover these eventualities. Isn't there a £10k fee for climbing Everest now?
Also, the Titanic is a resting place for about 1500 people. Can we not leave them in peace as we do Military Maritime Graves under the Protection of Military Remains Act 1986 (although perhaps that doesn't stop tourism)?
I've seen a few people making the rest place remark, but resting places are also places people go to visit, and not out of just morbid curiosity.
When I was last in Washington I went to Arlington National Cemetery, it was very sombre and moving. I don't think it was disrespectful to go there.
How many people here have been to a cemetery, or places like Auschwitz, or the Somme etc?
Peering out of a tiny 7” thick porthole while inhaling your own and others’ farts is certainly not a traditional form of respect, but chacun à son goût.
Surely the only respectful thing to do is raise the wreck, bring it on land and build a theme park around it?
Leave it where it is and film the ending of the next James Bond film down there. Or at least a Dr Who two-parter.
Or a supernatural comedy where the ghost of Jack has to help the crew of the titan’s ghosts fit in with the titanic ghosts who aren’t too happy with their new neighbours.
The first class ghosts are more accepting as the new ghosts are billionaires but the Irish ghosts are put out until jack explains that the new ghosts are all related to his beloved Rose and came to deliver him a message that neither of them would have survived if they had both got onto the wood panel and everyone “lives” happily ever after until the sequel when the Chinese steel scavengers arrive…
Joining EEA/EFTA (the Norway option) thus retaining Brexit and doing most of what most people now want looks a bit of a no-brainer. Very interesting that the possibility is being ignored on all sides. Is Labour keeping it for after the election?
At the moment rejoin the EU still has less than 50% support, but rejoin the EU or rejoin the single market has nearly 60% support amongst all voters (though 70% of Remainers would rejoin the full EU).
However, amongst Leavers the median position is to stay out of the EU and single market still (hence either would be political suicide in the redwall and Leave voting Tory marginals Starmer must win to become PM). Leavers do want a closer trade and security relationship with the EU though which is Labour's current position.
If he wins back the marginals he needs to become PM then Labour can start to consider rejoining the single market if it wins a second term. If Labour won a third term some in the party might even then push to rejoin the full EU
Noted. The swing opinion - the middling one of stay out of SM but get closer - is precisely the one which the Brexit deal would have achieved if it could. And it's the one involving a great deal of hand waving. No-one can tell you what it looks like. Except that it looked like a unicorn then and it does now.
Good morning
Sunak needs to spring a huge surprise early next year and announce he will take us back into the singe market
Now that would be a game changer
Yes, it means free movement and RefUK would probably replace the Tories as the main opposition while Starmer Labour would sweep every seat in the Redwall
Why don't you just join RefUK as you act as a de facto supporter
You seem to have this quaint idea RefUK with approx 5% support are going to become some dynamic force in UK politics
As far as the red wall is concerned it is lost anyway
The vast majority of current Conservative voters do not want to rejoin the single market and nor do they want to restore free movement from the EEA, so would switch en masse to RefUK if Sunak proposed that. Farage would of course return to lead RefUK instantly if Sunak did that.
So the Tories would face Canada 1993 style obliteration, losing the Redwall and Leave marginals to Starmer Labour, losing their traditional Leave seats to Farage and RefUK and losing Remain seats still anyway to the LDs who would push to go further and rejoin the EU while the Tories split the Leave vote with Farage
'The vast majority of current Conservative voters do not want to rejoin the single market'
You need to back that up with up to date polling of conservative voters (and not members)
And as for the rest of your comments they are so predictable they write themselves
Have you ever thought of writing 'fairy tales' ?
He's right, however unfortunate you and I think that is.
Have a closer economic relationship with the EU to boost our trade with EU countries, even if this means having to follow more EU rules and regulations (48% overall, but 26% of current Conservative voters)
vs
Keep our existing relationship with the EU so we are less subject to EU rules and regulations, even if this means more difficulties trading with EU countries (33% overall, but 58% of current Conservative voters)
Like it or not, the Conservatives are the party of Brexit and keeping Brexit pure. The idea that Rishi wants to dilute Brexit, or has the space to do so, is sadly for the birds.
SFAICS it doesn't matter what Conservative policy is on the matter. They are not forming the next government. They have already lost the voters who want a more intelligent settlement, and for the moment they are not coming back. The Labour party (preferably with LD help) are the only possible option for a new deal, even if that's not brilliant.
Was just writing something similar... Those of us who thought Brexit would be a disaster (and believe that it is) are pissed with the Conservatives, from Cameron onwards, for doing it and for the complete dog's breakfast they've made of it. Partial fixing of the mess is not going to win me round.
For me, it will need either a 'cleanskin' leader (i.e. a remainer/someone not active during the referendum and absent or sensible during the ensuing clusterfuck) or a clearly repentent Brexiter and that person will also need to drop the culture war nonsense and the presence of loons in cabinet before I consider voting Con again. Or someone really unelectable in charge of Labour could persuade me to hold my nose (I'd probably vote Sunak Con over Lab if Corbyn was still in charge, but I'd be taking a good hard look at policies and cabinet v shadow cabinet).
I actually don't know how I'm going to vote in S&A. I can't really motivate myself to give Sunak a kicking, given that would probably please Johnson. I'm not enthused by Starmer, nor by Davey, particularly. I do have money on Lab not taking the seat... If I get any leaftlets from them I'll likely consider Green or YP, depending on candidate. If the seat looks in play at the next GE then I'll likely go Lab, tactically (at the next GE). It's been fairly quiet campaign wise - one Tory 'survey', one Lab leaflet plus a Lab 'survey'. Doesn't feel like they're going at it hammer and tongs and my area is one where there will be both Lab and Con voters (and others) so it would be worth targetting, bit of a mix of older Con-leaners and more of the younger non-metroplitan liberal elite.
Comments
I guess ticks are rather discerning...
(Or could it be the fact my legs are fairly hairy?)
Another Ukrainian farmer modified a tractor into a remotely-controlled demining tool
https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1672031966169030656
So the Tories would face Canada 1993 style obliteration, losing the Redwall and Leave marginals to Starmer Labour, losing their traditional Leave seats to Farage and RefUK and losing Remain seats still anyway to the LDs who would push to go further and rejoin the EU while the Tories split the Leave vote with Farage
Though I did get a nice red deer haunch from the local gamekeeper who shot a couple in the fields above our vines a few months back.
THis book was (still is, I think) going cheap so I bagged it. As so often with the best railway histories it was an absolutely fascinating social history with insight into the NRA (UK), 19th and 20th century, and its shooting meetings in Winbledon Common and out at Bisley and how exactly the sort of debate you cite was bound up with the NRA's activities and the symbiosis between the Army, both professional and reservist, and the wider body politic.
I have been reading journalist articles with stories of pain today. It strikes me that many of these people were naive, stupid or both. Examples of people having been on interest-only mortgages for 20 years to pay for home improvements and whatever else they wanted to spend their money on (cars, holidays etc.). Buy-to-let landlords on interest-only mortgages were quite happy to profit from rising house prices at the expense of renters unable to get on the housing ladder. They now seem horrified that their good times are coming to an end.
I actually had no clue if house prices were included in RPI or CPI (they're not) and did a search and came across this Spectator article from 2015. RPI at least included mortgage payments. That economic elephant trap layer Gordon Brown decided to switch to CPI as the default in 2003. https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-can-t-we-have-an-inflation-index-which-includes-house-prices/
I forget who on here has been repeatedly mentioning how inflation has been high for years through house prices (may of been @MaxPB ). If it had been included and the BoE had to target that too then we would never have seen such low interest rates for year after year. People would have been more cautious and house prices would have been more affordable.
I expect to see large numbers of people very soon to be unable to afford their mortgages and trying to sell. House prices will fall and then causing negative equity too. The government will get blamed for this but it has been a disaster 20 years in the making along with the BoE recently totally failing in their remit.
I hope that lessons are learned from this and that house prices are included in the rate of inflation that the BoE has to target.
If someone dies of pneumonia caused by covid are you claiming they died of pneumonia, not covid?
A Tory is just a component of the current Conservative Party now but its historical elements remain
It got attached to extreme royalists when it was used as a term of abuse during the political struggles of the 1680s, apparently by Titus Oates, the notorious perjurer.
You need to back that up with up to date polling of conservative voters (and not members)
And as for the rest of your comments they are so predictable they write themselves
Have you ever thought of writing 'fairy tales' ?
Either that or we just don't notice them before they fall off.
The original reason for putting it outside inflation measures, was that the inflation measures were being used to set interest rates, so there would be an immediate feedback loop - put up interest rates to control inflation, mortgages get more expensive, more inflation.....
The huge hole in that excuse is that we have multiple inflation measures, already.
We have squeezed inflation into property....
But, yes, Putin played 'us' a bit, no question.
The worst argument is the fallacious one that houses are an "asset" and not a cost so shouldn't be included.
If you're buying to invest a home to let then houses may be an asset, but if you're paying so you have a roof over your head and aren't homeless they absolutely are an essential cost.
For anyone selling a home may be an asset, in the same way as stock of gas may be an asset to an oil and gas firm, but for anyone who is purchasing to have somewhere to live it is a cost just as much as anyone purchasing gas to keep their home warm it is a cost.
We need to stop treating homes as assets and instead think of them as costs.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2023/jun/23/brexit-anniversary-poll-eu-rishi-sunak-jeremy-hunt-inflation-mortgages-uk-politics-live
75% of current Conservative voters voted Leave and 12% of 2019 Conservative voters are already voting RefUK
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2023/06/14/voting-intention-con-26-lab-42-6-7-jun-2023
It would need to take more than 5 years for the house prices to recover this time ideally, as the bubble that's been inflated today is much worse than the one in 1990s.
We still need to build, build, build though regardless of any crash in the market.
Ot but interesting and open access paper - specially for @Flatlander perhaps - on road problems in Lincs thanks to climate change and its effect on the soft local geology. Impressive attempt to assess the problem by the Geological Survey and the council.
Take home message - road maintenance is going to become a worse issue in the UK.
https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1672177488535977984
We expect to send around 20 Pharmacy students on exchange round the world this autumn.
This is some polling by BMG;
https://www.bmgresearch.co.uk/bmg-the-i-polling-4/
Have a closer economic relationship with the EU to boost our trade with EU countries, even if this means having to follow more EU rules and regulations
(48% overall, but 26% of current Conservative voters)
vs
Keep our existing relationship with the EU so we are less subject to EU rules and regulations, even if this means more difficulties trading with EU countries
(33% overall, but 58% of current Conservative voters)
Like it or not, the Conservatives are the party of Brexit and keeping Brexit pure. The idea that Rishi wants to dilute Brexit, or has the space to do so, is sadly for the birds.
bribesvaluable contributions?But also an issue is people don't eat enough venison. So we ought to welcome, pace some of us, the recent news that venison is woke. So both the woke and unwoke can and should buy the stuff. As I do, as commented earlier.
Ther other solution is to reintroduce the wolf and bear ...
https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2023-02-02/debates/30268888-4F3E-4967-A081-152214508F74/WildDeerManagementAndSustainableFood
However under FPTP switching to EEA would see the Tories wiped out, Labour would win a landslide and sweep the redwall, Farage would win traditional Tory Leave seats and the LDs would take Tory Remain seats helped by the split Tory and Farage vote
At the moment the market is still in the no-mans land where asking prices are sky high but surveyors are returning lower valuations. It's still probably a year minimum until reality hits the markets.
Nevertheless, I think I don't think we can shy away from discussing the fact that this tragedy has resulted in eye watering amounts of public money (largely North American public money) being spent on rescue efforts and the diversion of military resources. To get on a ski slope in most places you have to take out insurance to cover the chances of something going wrong. Doing something this inherently dangerous (I read that the disclaimer mentioned 'death' three times on the first page) needs to have some sort of financial scheme to cover these eventualities. Isn't there a £10k fee for climbing Everest now?
Also, the Titanic is a resting place for about 1500 people. Can we not leave them in peace as we do Military Maritime Graves under the Protection of Military Remains Act 1986 (although perhaps that doesn't stop tourism)?
To be fair to Obama, there was a period of semi-convincing dissembling, as the Katyn story illustrates.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre#Those_adopting_pre-1990_views
...On 4 February 2010, the Prime Minister of Russia, Vladimir Putin, invited his Polish counterpart, Donald Tusk, to attend a Katyn memorial service in April. The visit took place on 7 April 2010, when Tusk and Putin together commemorated the 70th anniversary of the massacre. Before the visit, the 2007 film Katyń was shown on Russian state television for the first time. The Moscow Times commented that the film's premiere in Russia was likely a result of Putin's intervention.
On 10 April 2010, an aircraft carrying Polish President Lech Kaczyński with his wife and 87 other politicians and high-ranking army officers crashed in Smolensk, killing all 96 aboard the aircraft. The passengers were to attend a ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre. The Polish nation was stunned; Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who was not on the plane, referred to the crash as "the most tragic Polish event since the war." In the aftermath, a number of conspiracy theories began to circulate.] The catastrophe has also had major echoes in the international and particularly the Russian press, prompting a rebroadcast of Katyń on Russian television. The Polish President was to deliver a speech at the formal commemorations. The speech was to honour the victims, highlight the significance of the massacres in the context of post-war communist political history, as well as stress the need for Polish–Russian relations to focus on reconciliation. Although the speech was never delivered, it has been published with a narration in the original Polish and a translation has also been made available in English.
In November 2010, the State Duma (lower house of the Russian parliament) passed a resolution declaring long-classified documents "showed that the Katyn crime was carried out on direct orders of Stalin and other Soviet officials". The declaration also called for the massacre to be investigated further to confirm the list of victims. Members of the Duma from the Communist Party denied the Soviet Union had been to blame for the Katyn massacre and voted against the declaration...
When I was last in Washington I went to Arlington National Cemetery, it was very sombre and moving. I don't think it was disrespectful to go there.
How many people here have been to a cemetery, or places like Auschwitz, or the Somme etc?
Mind you, the Titanic was in receipt of a subsidy from the British Government, so as to be available as an Auxiliary Cruiser* in time of war. So you could make an argument that she should be covered as a military vessel....
*The smaller liners were used for this. The larger ones were too big and specialised - they were used as troop ships. See the Olympic and Britannic.
If cars were invented today they would definitely have them - see the 15mph limit on e-bikes.
For me, it will need either a 'cleanskin' leader (i.e. a remainer/someone not active during the referendum and absent or sensible during the ensuing clusterfuck) or a clearly repentent Brexiter and that person will also need to drop the culture war nonsense and the presence of loons in cabinet before I consider voting Con again. Or someone really unelectable in charge of Labour could persuade me to hold my nose (I'd probably vote Sunak Con over Lab if Corbyn was still in charge, but I'd be taking a good hard look at policies and cabinet v shadow cabinet).
I actually don't know how I'm going to vote in S&A. I can't really motivate myself to give Sunak a kicking, given that would probably please Johnson. I'm not enthused by Starmer, nor by Davey, particularly. I do have money on Lab not taking the seat... If I get any leaftlets from them I'll likely consider Green or YP, depending on candidate. If the seat looks in play at the next GE then I'll likely go Lab, tactically (at the next GE). It's been fairly quiet campaign wise - one Tory 'survey', one Lab leaflet plus a Lab 'survey'. Doesn't feel like they're going at it hammer and tongs and my area is one where there will be both Lab and Con voters (and others) so it would be worth targetting, bit of a mix of older Con-leaners and more of the younger non-metroplitan liberal elite.
*Reference is to pheasants and partridges, etc., in case anyone is unfamiliar.
Yorkshire Party!
Please, pretty please - we need one on PB.
Taxes are not a one-off and done, because the state's expenditure is not a one-off and done. Even as a right-winger, if you want pensioners to receive their pensions, if you want healthcare to exist, if you want the military to have supplies and military wages to exist, if you want schools or roads or anything else then taxes have to be on-going as expenditure is ongoing.
If you receive your wages you pay tax on that.
If you spend that money on eg petrol or alcohol, that product also has a duty on it, which you must pay, despite your wages already being taxed.
You then get taxed VAT which you must pay on both the product you want to buy and the duty itself. The tax you're paying is itself taxed. So you're paying VAT, despite your wages and duty already being taxed.
The premises selling you the product will need to pay NNDR, despite your wages, VAT and duty already being taxed.
If the premises selling you the product makes a profit, they will be taxed on that. Despite your wages, VAT, duty and NNDR already being taxed.
The employee selling you the product needs to be paid. Their employment will face Employers NI. Despite your wages, duty, VAT, NNDR and the corporation already being taxed.
The employee will actually then be paid. For which they will have to pay National Insurance, despite the fact their employer has already paid National Insurance and despite your wages, duty, VAT, NNDR and corporation already being taxed.
And of course lets not forget to bring this circle back in a loop that employee's wages will be taxed. Despite the fact that their own wages have already faced not one but two sets of National Insurance taxes and the fact that your wages that started this circle, duty, VAT, NNDR and the corporation were all already taxed too.
And that's just one circle and forgetting many other taxes that occur along the way too. You can barely blink in this country without being taxed, so please don't use an "already taxed" line.
(from a report when he quit the Tories for a second time and joined the YP for a second time)
I'll look into it more, but not feeling the love. Now, if one Mr Meeks Richard David Herdson was to stand...
(Edited to correct my mistake of PB alumni, and again to correct DH's first name, d'oh)
ETA: YP do unfortunately strike me as a bit like the various Residents' Associations, a retirement home for lost Tories
Life (non-hereditary) peerages, I recently learnt, have a very long history in the Lords, going back at least as far as 1377.
*Officially stated, this indicates that nothing will change.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/07/17/who-by-very-slow-decay/
An example for me would be on a single lane (each way) carriageway when you want to overtake a slower-moving vehicle in a stretch of road where you have clear visibility and need to go into the currently empty oncoming traffic's lane to do so.
If the speed limit is 60 but they're only doing 50, then accelerating past them at 60 leaves you in the oncoming traffic's lane for longer than if you accelerate to 70 to overtake them, then slow back down to 60 once back in your own lane. Getting out of the oncoming traffic's lane before it appears, while you have clear visibility that its empty, is better than staying there for longer.
"But I also worried about getting back to the surface. Exactly what kind of ballast did this thing have? According to Kyle Bingham, a LOT.
First, there are three enormous, heavy, black, beat-up lead construction pipes on each side of the sub.
KYLE: These triple weights, we call ‘em, are hydraulically driven. So we operate ‘em inside, doesn’t take any electricity, can be done manually, and those drop away and gain us a lot of buoyancy.
Dropping that much weight onto the sea floor means the sub starts rising.
But what if the hydraulic system breaks? Well, then they have roll weights.
KYLE: Ah, so, we’ve got these weights here on the side, these are roll weights, we can actually roll the sub and those come off, and that gains us some buoyancy to come back to the surface.
These are pipes that sit on a shelf that juts out from either side of the sub, held in place only by gravity. If everyone inside the sub shifts their weight to one side, the sub tips enough to let these pipes roll off.
If that doesn’t work, there are ballast bags, full of metal shot, hanging below the sub.
KYLE: These bags down below, we drop those off using motors and electric fingers.
OK. But what if the electronics go out, and the hydraulics fail, and everyone inside has passed out unconscious?
KYLE: There’s fusible links within these that actually can dissolve and come back in time if it’s drop off.
Fusible links are self-dissolving bonds. After 16 hours in seawater, those bonds disintegrate, the weight bags drop off automatically, and you go back to the surface.
And even those four systems aren’t the end of it. The sub’s thrusters can also push it up; the pilot can jettison the sub’s legs as dead weight; and there’s even an airbag they can inflate to provide buoyancy."
https://unsungscience.com/news/back-to-titanic-part-1/
That is nothing like "Only 23% now don't want freedom of movement for EU citizens."
When polled in detail most Remainers do not want free movement. They want the same immigration controls that everyone else has to comply with to apply to EU citizens.
People in the UK are overwhelmingly pro migration, but people are also overwhelmingly pro controlled migration, and as I said even Remainers want migration from the EU to be controlled. That is not Free Movement as the EU expects it to be applied.
It is certainly a problem. There's quite a few roads round here across peat that are terrible to drive on due to soil drying and shrinkage. Any more than 40 and you risk going airborne from all the bumps and they definitely aren't recommended if you've got a dodgy back.
I'm sure DuraAce would enjoy them although any low-clearance car would probably be a bad idea. Also, the wipe-outs are into deep ditches.
The peat drainage has been going on for a long time though, so I'm not sure it is entirely climate change. There's vague plans afoot to do something about that (a change to Paludiculture) but by the time we get anywhere the sea will be reclaiming it all anyway.
See https://www.greatfen.org.uk/ for the kind of thing we are trying to get going. The fens 'proper' are a very similar landscape to here.
My eldest grandad is 92 and still [for his age] reasonably fit and healthy. Still mobile, still living in his own home. Rather hard of hearing and definitely slowing down, but that's to be expected, but still able to get out and about and do things he wants to do, still cracking jokes etc.
Whereas my late Nan at a younger age died in a care home after being unable to leave her own bed, not being able to recognise anyone and thanks to Covid restrictions not being able to have visitors except her direct children and my other grandad.
For me, my line is simpler. If the time comes I need to go to a Care Home, I'd rather go to Dignitas instead.
Its horrendous we still don't have death with dignity in this country. Hopefully its something the next Government addresses.
They have a greater claim to a unitary identity than does, say, Russia.
My grandfather didn't really slow down until he fell out of a tree (which he was pruning) in his early nineties and fractured his sternum.
But yes, agree with what you say. I'm in favour of voluntary euthanasia/assisted dying in principle, but it's a tricky one to get right in practice with the needed protections (but it can be done). Re care homes, I have an elderly friend in the early(ish) stages of Alzheimers in a care home. She cannot live independently,* but she is living a good life in there - it's an expensive one! - and seeing her and talking to her still a pleasure, she just asks the same questions several times during a meeting.
*she lived in her own home well into her 90s, but started doing some very unsafe things due to the memory loss and some confusion. The confusion, interestingly, has eased a lot since going into a care home, maybe due to feeling safer/less stress?
They fought the Nazis from 1943, although many had collaborated with the Nazis prior to that, and conducted massacres of Jews and Poles.
I think a GPS controlled limits of 20,30,40 make sense (as those limits suggest there is a problem with speed in those areas) and wouldn't cause too much political pain.
The first class ghosts are more accepting as the new ghosts are billionaires but the Irish ghosts are put out until jack explains that the new ghosts are all related to his beloved Rose and came to deliver him a message that neither of them would have survived if they had both got onto the wood panel and everyone “lives” happily ever after until the sequel when the Chinese steel scavengers arrive…