A deal has been reached for Ursula von der Leyen to become the next Nato Secretary General and the first woman to head the alliance, The National understands.
The year-long extension of incumbent Jens Stoltenberg’s tenure has been arranged so Ms von der Leyen can finish her five-year term as President of the European Commission in 2024, a Nato insider has said.
As predicted by pb's own @Dura_Ace iirc (or at least, he noted the strange coincidence of JS's extension and UvdL becoming available).
A German aristocrat being parachuted into a job despite little personal achievement or democratic mandate in her history. I suppose it isn't quite as egregious as how she got the EU job. There she was given it in a backroom deal over the rules that got Juncker the job.
She was Germany's defence minister and has won as many elections as Rishi Sunak. There was no rule forcing member states to nominate ... let's check... Manfred Weber (!) as President of the Commission, for the very good reason that the national governments never ceded their rights enjoyed under law.
I just got an email inviting me to invest in What 3 Words.
avoid.like.plague
I actually made that call last weekend: 999, "Police", "Mountain Rescue please".
Provided grid reference with OS Locate app (download it now!). Then received a text message from Police Scotland that pinged my phone and sent the same grid reference again to Mountain Rescue.
They hate W3W. Rarely get all three of the words, particularly over a radio, and have to guess. Almost always used by people who only have a vague idea of what mountain they are on, so impossible to scan a W3W map and work it out.
Anyway, top tip I learnt. If very windy, chuck your jacket over your head so you can get your message across. Simple, but I didn't think of it till the MR guy asked me too. Also, bivvy bags are great.
No, two different issues here. There's no money in it but it's still a brilliant idea because it is inherently error correcting. A word can only be confused with one or two other words, a 6 digit map ref is no more or less likely than any other 6 digit number.
If you are calling out mountain rescue in this weather, either you had really bad luck or you are not much of an oracle on safety issues anyway
Perhaps, just perhaps, he was calling out Mountain Rescue for *someone else* ?
Watching Sunak at the Liaison Committee man he's going to be absolutely destroyed during a general election campaign and that's before lawyer Starmer tears him a new one.,
The big picture is a simple one. Two (I think) uncontroversial observations:
1 Rushi Sunak is horribly overpromoted. He might have been a decent PM ten years down the line, but right now, he isn't up to the job.
2 There is nobody in the Conservative Party who could do better than he is doing.
Therefore, Rishi, the Conservatives and the country face 12-18 months of painful stasis before the government finally falls over the cliff.
Short of a Simply Enormous Event, that's it, isn't it?
I spoke to a Brexiteer the other day, he reckons the Tories are out of power until they embrace Rejoin.
A sort of Nixon goes to China moment*.
Ironically the person he thinks who could pull this off is the person he rather despises , one Boris Johnson.
*I did point out joining the EC/EU has been standard Tory orthodoxy for most of the last 70 years. Brexit was the Nixon goes to China moment.
I am firmly of the opinion that, at some point during the next Labour decade, a Tory leadership contender will run on a Rejoin platform. And do surprisingly well. He/she probably isn't in government yet, and maybe not in Parliament.
To get a decade in power Labour will have to find a solution to the doctors 35% pay demand.
Don't pay it and get continuous NHS strikes, pay it and get equivalent pay demands from the rest of the public sector.
Perhaps they could pay everyone by taxing property but that will create other sets of people angry at losing out.
Juggling the different groups isn't going to be easy especially as those who gain forget quicker than those who lose out.
Paying something in between instead of paying the same people agency fees of £2k+ per shift to cover themselves striking will save money, improve retention and productivity.
What's something in between ?
20% ? 25% ? 30% ?
That demand for 35% is likely to increase with a Labour government.
Whatever the doctors are given will become the minimum demand for the rest of the public sector.
And why not - if the high paid get a big pay rise the low paid deserve the same.
Less than those numbers, at least per year. And anything over inflation should be for junior doctors (£40-60k) rather than the higher paid more experienced doctors who might be earning £100k+.
It would be better if we moved to make doctor pay significantly flatter over their careers rather than quite so back loaded, especially with long degrees and higher student debt, tax and house prices.
But regardless, paying regularly someone £2k to cover a single shift of a striking worker (possibly themself!) because we are not willing to give a £5k annual pay rise makes absolutely zero mathematical sense. I don't quite get why people think it saves us any taxpayer money.
Why would the doctors accept less than even 20% ?
It would be an admittance that their initial demands were based upon greed and lies and that all the damage they've done by striking was unnecessary.
As to the current costs well doesn't that apply to every dispute ? But the cost of giving way is in the further demands it prompts. In this case whatever the doctors get will be the immediate demand for the rest of the public sector.
I don't think it applies to every dispute at all. Sometimes employers have more power. But not when we need to recruit a load more people, the existing ones are leaving and we have a backlog of 7m operations.
We have just gone through a decade where a lot of public sector was heavily squeezed, initially correctly so, but it has increasingly become a doctrine done out of political belief rather than common sense and pragmatism. It is now hugely counter productive and a big part of why the government is failing.
But it always comes back to my initial point.
That if the doctors got their big pay rise then the rest of the public sector will want the same.
We can discuss the details of individual cases on the internet but in the real world it will be "they got X% so we want X%".
So its going to be strikes or more taxation.
But this failed status quo costs more! Paying £2k per shift is not cheaper than a £5k pay rise to give an average cost of £300 per shift. There is no saving.......
It cuts taxation to pay properly. And get the 7m back to higher productivity raises tax elsewhere in the economy.
I just got an email inviting me to invest in What 3 Words.
avoid.like.plague
I actually made that call last weekend: 999, "Police", "Mountain Rescue please".
Provided grid reference with OS Locate app (download it now!). Then received a text message from Police Scotland that pinged my phone and sent the same grid reference again to Mountain Rescue.
They hate W3W. Rarely get all three of the words, particularly over a radio, and have to guess. Almost always used by people who only have a vague idea of what mountain they are on, so impossible to scan a W3W map and work it out.
Anyway, top tip I learnt. If very windy, chuck your jacket over your head so you can get your message across. Simple, but I didn't think of it till the MR guy asked me too. Also, bivvy bags are great.
No, two different issues here. There's no money in it but it's still a brilliant idea because it is inherently error correcting. A word can only be confused with one or two other words, a 6 digit map ref is no more or less likely than any other 6 digit number.
If you are calling out mountain rescue in this weather, either you had really bad luck or you are not much of an oracle on safety issues anyway
If it was error correcting, you'd have a point. But the W3W implementation is terrible, and has similar sounding words and plurals in close enough geographical proximity to be confused.
Worse - now nobody can create a much better implementation of what was a reasonable idea because they'd get sued.
Watching Sunak at the Liaison Committee man he's going to be absolutely destroyed during a general election campaign and that's before lawyer Starmer tears him a new one.,
The big picture is a simple one. Two (I think) uncontroversial observations:
1 Rushi Sunak is horribly overpromoted. He might have been a decent PM ten years down the line, but right now, he isn't up to the job.
2 There is nobody in the Conservative Party who could do better than he is doing.
Therefore, Rishi, the Conservatives and the country face 12-18 months of painful stasis before the government finally falls over the cliff.
Short of a Simply Enormous Event, that's it, isn't it?
I spoke to a Brexiteer the other day, he reckons the Tories are out of power until they embrace Rejoin.
A sort of Nixon goes to China moment*.
Ironically the person he thinks who could pull this off is the person he rather despises , one Boris Johnson.
*I did point out joining the EC/EU has been standard Tory orthodoxy for most of the last 70 years. Brexit was the Nixon goes to China moment.
I am firmly of the opinion that, at some point during the next Labour decade, a Tory leadership contender will run on a Rejoin platform. And do surprisingly well. He/she probably isn't in government yet, and maybe not in Parliament.
To get a decade in power Labour will have to find a solution to the doctors 35% pay demand.
Don't pay it and get continuous NHS strikes, pay it and get equivalent pay demands from the rest of the public sector.
Perhaps they could pay everyone by taxing property but that will create other sets of people angry at losing out.
Juggling the different groups isn't going to be easy especially as those who gain forget quicker than those who lose out.
Paying something in between instead of paying the same people agency fees of £2k+ per shift to cover themselves striking will save money, improve retention and productivity.
What's something in between ?
20% ? 25% ? 30% ?
That demand for 35% is likely to increase with a Labour government.
Whatever the doctors are given will become the minimum demand for the rest of the public sector.
And why not - if the high paid get a big pay rise the low paid deserve the same.
Less than those numbers, at least per year. And anything over inflation should be for junior doctors (£40-60k) rather than the higher paid more experienced doctors who might be earning £100k+.
It would be better if we moved to make doctor pay significantly flatter over their careers rather than quite so back loaded, especially with long degrees and higher student debt, tax and house prices.
But regardless, paying regularly someone £2k to cover a single shift of a striking worker (possibly themself!) because we are not willing to give a £5k annual pay rise makes absolutely zero mathematical sense. I don't quite get why people think it saves us any taxpayer money.
Why would the doctors accept less than even 20% ?
It would be an admittance that their initial demands were based upon greed and lies and that all the damage they've done by striking was unnecessary.
As to the current costs well doesn't that apply to every dispute ? But the cost of giving way is in the further demands it prompts. In this case whatever the doctors get will be the immediate demand for the rest of the public sector.
I don't think it applies to every dispute at all. Sometimes employers have more power. But not when we need to recruit a load more people, the existing ones are leaving and we have a backlog of 7m operations.
We have just gone through a decade where a lot of public sector was heavily squeezed, initially correctly so, but it has increasingly become a doctrine done out of political belief rather than common sense and pragmatism. It is now hugely counter productive and a big part of why the government is failing.
But it always comes back to my initial point.
That if the doctors got their big pay rise then the rest of the public sector will want the same.
We can discuss the details of individual cases on the internet but in the real world it will be "they got X% so we want X%".
So its going to be strikes or more taxation.
Why shouldn't they get the same?
Why is it good enough to give double-digit pay rises to those on welfare but only 3-4% for those who work for a living like teachers?
How is it any more outrageous to be asking for more than inflation, when you're getting offered less than inflation?
The Government started this mess by dicking around and picking priority groups to pander to, which predominantly was those who aren't working because that's their client vote. When others are being treated better than you are, why shouldn't those who are working demand their slice too?
Responsible governance would have been to say "we're all in it together" and mean it, scrap the triple lock etc and have flat rates across the board - but instead some groups were pandered to and others told suck up nearly double-digit real terms pay cuts.
I just got an email inviting me to invest in What 3 Words.
avoid.like.plague
I actually made that call last weekend: 999, "Police", "Mountain Rescue please".
Provided grid reference with OS Locate app (download it now!). Then received a text message from Police Scotland that pinged my phone and sent the same grid reference again to Mountain Rescue.
They hate W3W. Rarely get all three of the words, particularly over a radio, and have to guess. Almost always used by people who only have a vague idea of what mountain they are on, so impossible to scan a W3W map and work it out.
Anyway, top tip I learnt. If very windy, chuck your jacket over your head so you can get your message across. Simple, but I didn't think of it till the MR guy asked me too. Also, bivvy bags are great.
No, two different issues here. There's no money in it but it's still a brilliant idea because it is inherently error correcting. A word can only be confused with one or two other words, a 6 digit map ref is no more or less likely than any other 6 digit number.
If you are calling out mountain rescue in this weather, either you had really bad luck or you are not much of an oracle on safety issues anyway
Perhaps, just perhaps, he was calling out Mountain Rescue for *someone else* ?
Not impossible and I will wait with bated breath till we know the answer, but I am guessing most calls are made by actual casualty or a member of their party
I just got an email inviting me to invest in What 3 Words.
avoid.like.plague
I actually made that call last weekend: 999, "Police", "Mountain Rescue please".
Provided grid reference with OS Locate app (download it now!). Then received a text message from Police Scotland that pinged my phone and sent the same grid reference again to Mountain Rescue.
They hate W3W. Rarely get all three of the words, particularly over a radio, and have to guess. Almost always used by people who only have a vague idea of what mountain they are on, so impossible to scan a W3W map and work it out.
Anyway, top tip I learnt. If very windy, chuck your jacket over your head so you can get your message across. Simple, but I didn't think of it till the MR guy asked me too. Also, bivvy bags are great.
No, two different issues here. There's no money in it but it's still a brilliant idea because it is inherently error correcting. A word can only be confused with one or two other words, a 6 digit map ref is no more or less likely than any other 6 digit number.
If you are calling out mountain rescue in this weather, either you had really bad luck or you are not much of an oracle on safety issues anyway
May not have been for himself. I've called for assistance on mountains twice, neither time for me.
(Both old fashioned grid references from a paper map)
Another nugget from my recent reading. The soldiers of the Union were often as brutally racist as the Confederates
eg They would "liberate" a Southern Plantation and immediately rape all the young, attractive, female slaves. Then they'd set the slaves to work, cooking, cleaning, farming - for no money. So life got no better for slaves at all, unless you could get away, and for the women slaves it got worse
I just got an email inviting me to invest in What 3 Words.
avoid.like.plague
I actually made that call last weekend: 999, "Police", "Mountain Rescue please".
Provided grid reference with OS Locate app (download it now!). Then received a text message from Police Scotland that pinged my phone and sent the same grid reference again to Mountain Rescue.
They hate W3W. Rarely get all three of the words, particularly over a radio, and have to guess. Almost always used by people who only have a vague idea of what mountain they are on, so impossible to scan a W3W map and work it out.
Anyway, top tip I learnt. If very windy, chuck your jacket over your head so you can get your message across. Simple, but I didn't think of it till the MR guy asked me too. Also, bivvy bags are great.
No, two different issues here. There's no money in it but it's still a brilliant idea because it is inherently error correcting. A word can only be confused with one or two other words, a 6 digit map ref is no more or less likely than any other 6 digit number.
If you are calling out mountain rescue in this weather, either you had really bad luck or you are not much of an oracle on safety issues anyway
If it was error correcting, you'd have a point. But the W3W implementation is terrible, and has similar sounding words and plurals in close enough geographical proximity to be confused.
Worse - nobody can create a much better implementation of what was a reasonable idea because they'd get sued.
Actually, might it be possible to create a letter error correction or detection code at the end of the words? Say 'Apple Banana Stupid g'; if the words mentioned do not match 'g' in the ecc or edc, then the person receiving it knows it has been incorrectly sent, and might even be able to correct it?
I just researched who was the UK's contemporary of Von der Leyen, Britain's most senior political civil servant. It turns out he was a man, a very clever man by all his accounts, who decided to drive 400 kilometres because of Covid symptoms during lockdown travel restrictions designed to suppress Covid. Then he drove to an optician because he couldn't see well. Muppet.
I just got an email inviting me to invest in What 3 Words.
avoid.like.plague
I actually made that call last weekend: 999, "Police", "Mountain Rescue please".
Provided grid reference with OS Locate app (download it now!). Then received a text message from Police Scotland that pinged my phone and sent the same grid reference again to Mountain Rescue.
They hate W3W. Rarely get all three of the words, particularly over a radio, and have to guess. Almost always used by people who only have a vague idea of what mountain they are on, so impossible to scan a W3W map and work it out.
Anyway, top tip I learnt. If very windy, chuck your jacket over your head so you can get your message across. Simple, but I didn't think of it till the MR guy asked me too. Also, bivvy bags are great.
No, two different issues here. There's no money in it but it's still a brilliant idea because it is inherently error correcting. A word can only be confused with one or two other words, a 6 digit map ref is no more or less likely than any other 6 digit number.
If you are calling out mountain rescue in this weather, either you had really bad luck or you are not much of an oracle on safety issues anyway
Wrong.
3Words screwed up by having similar sounding and spelled words on their list. And not having a checksum.
I just got an email inviting me to invest in What 3 Words.
avoid.like.plague
Seriously though.
what3words has raised £100m+ so far.
In their last published accounts, they lost £43m on turnover of £444,000. Turnover was actually down on the previous year. Their chief commercial officer is by all accounts amazing and talks the talk (I know several people who've worked with her) but it doesn't alter the fact there's no path to profitability in sight.
To call w3w a basketcase would be unfair to Guatemalan artisan basket-weavers, who at least have a viable business model.
I just researched who was the UK's contemporary of Von der Leyen, Britain's most senior political civil servant. It turns out he was a man, a very clever man by all his accounts, who decided to drive 400 kilometres because of Covid symptoms during lockdown travel restrictions designed to suppress Covid. Then he drove to an optician because he couldn't see well. Muppet.
No he didn't.
He just drove. There was no optician waiting for him.
And incidentally the jury is very much out on his intelligence. His tutors considered him to have at best a superficial intellect and having had the misfortune to work with some of the results of his projects that's my view too.
I just got an email inviting me to invest in What 3 Words.
avoid.like.plague
I actually made that call last weekend: 999, "Police", "Mountain Rescue please".
Provided grid reference with OS Locate app (download it now!). Then received a text message from Police Scotland that pinged my phone and sent the same grid reference again to Mountain Rescue.
They hate W3W. Rarely get all three of the words, particularly over a radio, and have to guess. Almost always used by people who only have a vague idea of what mountain they are on, so impossible to scan a W3W map and work it out.
Anyway, top tip I learnt. If very windy, chuck your jacket over your head so you can get your message across. Simple, but I didn't think of it till the MR guy asked me too. Also, bivvy bags are great.
No, two different issues here. There's no money in it but it's still a brilliant idea because it is inherently error correcting. A word can only be confused with one or two other words, a 6 digit map ref is no more or less likely than any other 6 digit number.
If you are calling out mountain rescue in this weather, either you had really bad luck or you are not much of an oracle on safety issues anyway
Wrong.
3Words screwed up by having similar sounding and spelled words on their list. And not having a checksum.
W3W is a half-baked idea, terribly implemented, in a way to sound impressive to fleece the gullible out of their money.
Your hound looks like he is having a grand old time.
Hopefully, although as a road trip heading for Finland he also gets to spend a lot of time in the car.
What's your itinerary Ian? I have often fancied driving up the coast of Norway.
Ferries to Holland and Norway - gets the car to Norway with only three hours driving on the continent, then zigzagging up through the fjords, taking in Stavanger, Bergen, Alesund and Trondheim, a few days on an island out to sea, then just reaching the arctic circle before cutting down through Sweden and the ferry to Finland, doing about ten days in Finland finishing in Helsinki, long ferry back to Travemunde then driving back for the ferry from Holland, hopefully taking in the world's largest model railway en route.
Sounds brilliant! Shame the Newcastle to Norway ferry is no longer running but perhaps it will be back in 2026?
Ooh, that would be good. I used that route a couple of times before it stopped - it was very convenient, and we much preferred adventuring in Norway to the Alps, even when the weather was a bit rubbish at times. [Head East if it is]
We sailed from Newcastle to Oslo in 1964 on our honeymoon
Indeed we have been to Norway quite a few times but the best way to see the coast is on the Hurtigruten coastal express which bobs in and out of the fjords all the way up to the North Cape
Indeed it was Hurtigruten who took us on our Antarctica expedition
Jealous of Antarctica!
I think to appreciate the fjords you do need to go inland as well - I think I'd find 'which fjord is it today?' a bit dull after a while. You don't really get a good view of the glaciers and high mountains from below. Besides, some of the roads are quite amusing, even at Norwegian speed limits.
Rishi Sunak is 43, there is zero chance he gives a shit about Imperial measurements. So as a sign of desperation it is pretty striking.
Most people use imperial measurements for height, weight, long distances.
I've noticed the generation below me (not even a whole generation really) will respond with '185cm' or the like if you ask them their height. Distance I suspect is a side-effect of road signage. I've never been so impolite as to ask about their weight. Though I've noticed metric being somewhat more common in cooking outside of 'a teaspoon of...' kinda measures.
Strangely enough, 2 work colleagues in mid 30's discovered a shared interest in weight/power lifting today. They knew all the same people. They casually discussed their own weight and what they could lift. All in kilos. The complete takeover of temperature has been perhaps the most rapid and complete though. There were regular headlines not long ago about weather hitting the 80's. Not any more.
Watching Sunak at the Liaison Committee man he's going to be absolutely destroyed during a general election campaign and that's before lawyer Starmer tears him a new one.,
The big picture is a simple one. Two (I think) uncontroversial observations:
1 Rushi Sunak is horribly overpromoted. He might have been a decent PM ten years down the line, but right now, he isn't up to the job.
2 There is nobody in the Conservative Party who could do better than he is doing.
Therefore, Rishi, the Conservatives and the country face 12-18 months of painful stasis before the government finally falls over the cliff.
Short of a Simply Enormous Event, that's it, isn't it?
I spoke to a Brexiteer the other day, he reckons the Tories are out of power until they embrace Rejoin.
A sort of Nixon goes to China moment*.
Ironically the person he thinks who could pull this off is the person he rather despises , one Boris Johnson.
*I did point out joining the EC/EU has been standard Tory orthodoxy for most of the last 70 years. Brexit was the Nixon goes to China moment.
If the Tories embraced Rejoin they would cease to be the main party of the right in the UK, RefUK under a newly returned Farage would replace them as the main right of centre party and opposition to Labour.
Even Labour wouldn't embrace Rejoin now because of the redwall, at most they would consider EEA if they win and are then re elected.
The only UK wide party whose voter coalition would allow them to consider Rejoin are the LDs you vote for
The Tories are on course for ceasing to be the main party of the right if they embrace the blood and soil nationalism of the New Tories.
No they aren't, they are still about 25-30% with another 5-10% voting Reform.
Embrace Rejoin and they would collapse to 10% or less, probably fall to even fewer seats than the SNP and LDs under FPTP, Reform would get 30-35% and become the main opposition to Starmer's Labour government
It will be interesting to see which way the Tories go after the coming defeat.
Ron De Santis is banning books and attacking Disney for the crime of being in the 21st century. And the leading Tory in leadership betting is happy to stand right beside him declaring herself at one with all that agenda. In the history of the Conservative Party, have they ever been so in bed with nonsense coming out of the US right wing, as might be about to happen?
Loopyness on Social media was never such a danger to UK politics in the past was it? Like what it’s doing to the republicans, it can turn the UKs default party of government into a factionally riven, out of touch party no longer so many’s choice for strong government.
But there’s more factions than that. Truss won the last proper leadership election because members preferred her slash and burn approach to taxation and government spending. And despite Truss leading it, it’s still a faction with traction - especially as the current faction, Hunt and Sunak’s carefully hands off management of UK decline, won’t be so popular after the defeat.
And then there’s the Boris faction, that’s not simply about Boris but all the embrace the freedoms of Brexit so everyone in UK is high skilled and high payed arguments of frosty the no man, and others like group happy to sign their names on the B Ark manifest yesterday with pull up drawbridge to make Britain Great Again, a faction supported by every daily telegraph columnist, editorial, as well as the Mail and Express. How influential will this faction be post election? And just how damaging will it be to getting Tories back to centre ground and winning again?
TSE is right, being the Brexit Party, the enablers of brexit, leaving us with a rock hard brexit not even a softer one, is a game changer for the Tories in UK politics. A quick revival, or even any revival using current name and branding, and we got Brexit done logo, might be hard work.
Down to 100 to 150 MPs and ridden by factional infighting and policies they can’t rally behind, will the Tories enjoy government limousines ever again?
I just got an email inviting me to invest in What 3 Words.
avoid.like.plague
I actually made that call last weekend: 999, "Police", "Mountain Rescue please".
Provided grid reference with OS Locate app (download it now!). Then received a text message from Police Scotland that pinged my phone and sent the same grid reference again to Mountain Rescue.
They hate W3W. Rarely get all three of the words, particularly over a radio, and have to guess. Almost always used by people who only have a vague idea of what mountain they are on, so impossible to scan a W3W map and work it out.
Anyway, top tip I learnt. If very windy, chuck your jacket over your head so you can get your message across. Simple, but I didn't think of it till the MR guy asked me too. Also, bivvy bags are great.
No, two different issues here. There's no money in it but it's still a brilliant idea because it is inherently error correcting. A word can only be confused with one or two other words, a 6 digit map ref is no more or less likely than any other 6 digit number.
If you are calling out mountain rescue in this weather, either you had really bad luck or you are not much of an oracle on safety issues anyway
May not have been for himself. I've called for assistance on mountains twice, neither time for me.
(Both old fashioned grid references from a paper map)
I've never had to call out mountain rescue, but I have once had to persuade someone they were on the wrong hill, and heading in totally the wrong direction. They did not want to believe me, despite my GPS and the landmarks I was pointing out.
Important lessons for us all from that, perhaps. There are times we believe we're right, even when all the evidence says otherwise.
I think there's a bit in Barry Pilton's 'One Man and his Bog, where he describes his first night on walking the Pennine Way. "I worked out how to use my compass, and as the sun set in the north..."
I just got an email inviting me to invest in What 3 Words.
avoid.like.plague
I actually made that call last weekend: 999, "Police", "Mountain Rescue please".
Provided grid reference with OS Locate app (download it now!). Then received a text message from Police Scotland that pinged my phone and sent the same grid reference again to Mountain Rescue.
They hate W3W. Rarely get all three of the words, particularly over a radio, and have to guess. Almost always used by people who only have a vague idea of what mountain they are on, so impossible to scan a W3W map and work it out.
Anyway, top tip I learnt. If very windy, chuck your jacket over your head so you can get your message across. Simple, but I didn't think of it till the MR guy asked me too. Also, bivvy bags are great.
No, two different issues here. There's no money in it but it's still a brilliant idea because it is inherently error correcting. A word can only be confused with one or two other words, a 6 digit map ref is no more or less likely than any other 6 digit number.
If you are calling out mountain rescue in this weather, either you had really bad luck or you are not much of an oracle on safety issues anyway
If it was error correcting, you'd have a point. But the W3W implementation is terrible, and has similar sounding words and plurals in close enough geographical proximity to be confused.
Worse - now nobody can create a much better implementation of what was a reasonable idea because they'd get sued.
Yes the implementation sucks and they lied about everything. They said prism would be nowhere near prison and it was. Still, prism/prison is one of two possibilities where a 5 digit number could be any one of 10000 possibilities of which none can be ruled out as "not a word".
Watching Sunak at the Liaison Committee man he's going to be absolutely destroyed during a general election campaign and that's before lawyer Starmer tears him a new one.,
The big picture is a simple one. Two (I think) uncontroversial observations:
1 Rushi Sunak is horribly overpromoted. He might have been a decent PM ten years down the line, but right now, he isn't up to the job.
2 There is nobody in the Conservative Party who could do better than he is doing.
Therefore, Rishi, the Conservatives and the country face 12-18 months of painful stasis before the government finally falls over the cliff.
Short of a Simply Enormous Event, that's it, isn't it?
I spoke to a Brexiteer the other day, he reckons the Tories are out of power until they embrace Rejoin.
A sort of Nixon goes to China moment*.
Ironically the person he thinks who could pull this off is the person he rather despises , one Boris Johnson.
*I did point out joining the EC/EU has been standard Tory orthodoxy for most of the last 70 years. Brexit was the Nixon goes to China moment.
If the Tories embraced Rejoin they would cease to be the main party of the right in the UK, RefUK under a newly returned Farage would replace them as the main right of centre party and opposition to Labour.
Even Labour wouldn't embrace Rejoin now because of the redwall, at most they would consider EEA if they win and are then re elected.
The only UK wide party whose voter coalition would allow them to consider Rejoin are the LDs you vote for
The Tories are on course for ceasing to be the main party of the right if they embrace the blood and soil nationalism of the New Tories.
No they aren't, they are still about 25-30% with another 5-10% voting Reform.
Embrace Rejoin and they would collapse to 10% or less, probably fall to even fewer seats than the SNP and LDs under FPTP, Reform would get 30-35% and become the main opposition to Starmer's Labour government
I just can’t envisage any scenario where Reform would get 30-35%. Do you have any evidence for your assertion?
I just got an email inviting me to invest in What 3 Words.
avoid.like.plague
I actually made that call last weekend: 999, "Police", "Mountain Rescue please".
Provided grid reference with OS Locate app (download it now!). Then received a text message from Police Scotland that pinged my phone and sent the same grid reference again to Mountain Rescue.
They hate W3W. Rarely get all three of the words, particularly over a radio, and have to guess. Almost always used by people who only have a vague idea of what mountain they are on, so impossible to scan a W3W map and work it out.
Anyway, top tip I learnt. If very windy, chuck your jacket over your head so you can get your message across. Simple, but I didn't think of it till the MR guy asked me too. Also, bivvy bags are great.
No, two different issues here. There's no money in it but it's still a brilliant idea because it is inherently error correcting. A word can only be confused with one or two other words, a 6 digit map ref is no more or less likely than any other 6 digit number.
If you are calling out mountain rescue in this weather, either you had really bad luck or you are not much of an oracle on safety issues anyway
Wrong.
3Words screwed up by having similar sounding and spelled words on their list. And not having a checksum.
W3W is a half-baked idea, terribly implemented, in a way to sound impressive to fleece the gullible out of their money.
A bit like Crypto.
The basic idea is fine. Map grids have been a thing for a long long time. The sensible ones, for communication over a noisy channel, have checksums and use things like the phonetic alphabet.
The biggest problem was that the guy doing it hard no idea of the huge amount of prior art,. Stand on the shoulders of giants, and all that.
Watching Sunak at the Liaison Committee man he's going to be absolutely destroyed during a general election campaign and that's before lawyer Starmer tears him a new one.,
The big picture is a simple one. Two (I think) uncontroversial observations:
1 Rushi Sunak is horribly overpromoted. He might have been a decent PM ten years down the line, but right now, he isn't up to the job.
2 There is nobody in the Conservative Party who could do better than he is doing.
Therefore, Rishi, the Conservatives and the country face 12-18 months of painful stasis before the government finally falls over the cliff.
Short of a Simply Enormous Event, that's it, isn't it?
I spoke to a Brexiteer the other day, he reckons the Tories are out of power until they embrace Rejoin.
A sort of Nixon goes to China moment*.
Ironically the person he thinks who could pull this off is the person he rather despises , one Boris Johnson.
*I did point out joining the EC/EU has been standard Tory orthodoxy for most of the last 70 years. Brexit was the Nixon goes to China moment.
If the Tories embraced Rejoin they would cease to be the main party of the right in the UK, RefUK under a newly returned Farage would replace them as the main right of centre party and opposition to Labour.
Even Labour wouldn't embrace Rejoin now because of the redwall, at most they would consider EEA if they win and are then re elected.
The only UK wide party whose voter coalition would allow them to consider Rejoin are the LDs you vote for
The Tories are on course for ceasing to be the main party of the right if they embrace the blood and soil nationalism of the New Tories.
No they aren't, they are still about 25-30% with another 5-10% voting Reform.
Embrace Rejoin and they would collapse to 10% or less, probably fall to even fewer seats than the SNP and LDs under FPTP, Reform would get 30-35% and become the main opposition to Starmer's Labour government
I just can’t envisage any scenario where Reform would get 30-35%. Do you have any evidence for your assertion?
He loves Reform.
That is it.
They are a pathetic joke of a party, only HYUFD takes them seriously.
Watching Sunak at the Liaison Committee man he's going to be absolutely destroyed during a general election campaign and that's before lawyer Starmer tears him a new one.,
The big picture is a simple one. Two (I think) uncontroversial observations:
1 Rushi Sunak is horribly overpromoted. He might have been a decent PM ten years down the line, but right now, he isn't up to the job.
2 There is nobody in the Conservative Party who could do better than he is doing.
Therefore, Rishi, the Conservatives and the country face 12-18 months of painful stasis before the government finally falls over the cliff.
Short of a Simply Enormous Event, that's it, isn't it?
I spoke to a Brexiteer the other day, he reckons the Tories are out of power until they embrace Rejoin.
A sort of Nixon goes to China moment*.
Ironically the person he thinks who could pull this off is the person he rather despises , one Boris Johnson.
*I did point out joining the EC/EU has been standard Tory orthodoxy for most of the last 70 years. Brexit was the Nixon goes to China moment.
I am firmly of the opinion that, at some point during the next Labour decade, a Tory leadership contender will run on a Rejoin platform. And do surprisingly well. He/she probably isn't in government yet, and maybe not in Parliament.
To get a decade in power Labour will have to find a solution to the doctors 35% pay demand.
Don't pay it and get continuous NHS strikes, pay it and get equivalent pay demands from the rest of the public sector.
Perhaps they could pay everyone by taxing property but that will create other sets of people angry at losing out.
Juggling the different groups isn't going to be easy especially as those who gain forget quicker than those who lose out.
Paying something in between instead of paying the same people agency fees of £2k+ per shift to cover themselves striking will save money, improve retention and productivity.
What's something in between ?
20% ? 25% ? 30% ?
That demand for 35% is likely to increase with a Labour government.
Whatever the doctors are given will become the minimum demand for the rest of the public sector.
And why not - if the high paid get a big pay rise the low paid deserve the same.
Less than those numbers, at least per year. And anything over inflation should be for junior doctors (£40-60k) rather than the higher paid more experienced doctors who might be earning £100k+.
It would be better if we moved to make doctor pay significantly flatter over their careers rather than quite so back loaded, especially with long degrees and higher student debt, tax and house prices.
But regardless, paying regularly someone £2k to cover a single shift of a striking worker (possibly themself!) because we are not willing to give a £5k annual pay rise makes absolutely zero mathematical sense. I don't quite get why people think it saves us any taxpayer money.
Why would the doctors accept less than even 20% ?
It would be an admittance that their initial demands were based upon greed and lies and that all the damage they've done by striking was unnecessary.
As to the current costs well doesn't that apply to every dispute ? But the cost of giving way is in the further demands it prompts. In this case whatever the doctors get will be the immediate demand for the rest of the public sector.
I don't think it applies to every dispute at all. Sometimes employers have more power. But not when we need to recruit a load more people, the existing ones are leaving and we have a backlog of 7m operations.
We have just gone through a decade where a lot of public sector was heavily squeezed, initially correctly so, but it has increasingly become a doctrine done out of political belief rather than common sense and pragmatism. It is now hugely counter productive and a big part of why the government is failing.
But it always comes back to my initial point.
That if the doctors got their big pay rise then the rest of the public sector will want the same.
We can discuss the details of individual cases on the internet but in the real world it will be "they got X% so we want X%".
Rishi Sunak is 43, there is zero chance he gives a shit about Imperial measurements. So as a sign of desperation it is pretty striking.
Most people use imperial measurements for height, weight, long distances.
This was the predictable missing-the-point response. I use them for my height and weight, and turns out I don't need any government action to do so.
With government policies we should always ask:
i) what problem is the problem trying to be fixed? ii) is it actually a problem? iii) does the proposal actually address that problem? iv) does it have any other negative effects?
You tell me, what problem is being fixed by 'restoring' imperial measurements?
As far as I know you will not get arrested for saying you are 5ft 8 inches, and no one is harmed if they should see reference to 2.2 litres on a milk container.
Are we saying people are too confused after 40 years? What an insulting thing to say.
Are they simply going to not 'punish' people who sell sausages only by the pound with no reference to kilos? Fine, no harm done - but what benefit is there?
To announce things like this they must think it a winner. Why?
This would be bonkers. I'm in my mid-50s and basically use metric for everything except distance, and that's only because road signs persist in showing miles. I buy pints in a pub because that's the quantity they sell beer in; if it was 50cl or 60cl I really wouldn't care. I do know my height in imperial because that's what older people understood when I reached my full height. I have to stop and think to know how many ounces in a pound or pounds in a stone. I know a hundredweight isn't 100lb despite the name and I'm glad I don't have to know how much it actually is. Who, under 70, cares about any of this?
I have zero ideas how many pounds are in a stone, or how much an ounce is. Sometimes someone will mention those units and I just nod vaguely as if they a character from a deranged Chaucer story.
"Three and a half kettles of water with a quarter spludgeon of butter you say? And a furlong of salt? Sounds good!"
The measurement that really confuses me is the cup in American recipes. We have several sizes of cups in our cupboard. Which one should I use?
Rishi Sunak is 43, there is zero chance he gives a shit about Imperial measurements. So as a sign of desperation it is pretty striking.
Most people use imperial measurements for height, weight, long distances.
Do they? I'm an old codger (68) so I expect people younger than me to be more metric. I measure my weight in kg, I measure my height in feet and inches, but I'm guessing that is because I achieved my maximum height when that was the norm and long distances depending upon what I am doing and where I am, so I only use miles for journeys in the UK (which of course is the majority of long distance measurements). Note when I posted here all my cycling distances on my holiday they were all in km.
Imperial for me is limited to: pints of beer, mpg, distance of journeys in the uk, height of people. I think that is about it.
I've no idea what I weigh in imperial measures (I can guestimate the lbs fairly easily from the kg, need some long division for stone - is that 14lb?). Height I know both. Distances I drive in miles, cycle in miles but run in km (these are due to the car display/road signs and the apps I use to track cycling and running).
I just got an email inviting me to invest in What 3 Words.
avoid.like.plague
I actually made that call last weekend: 999, "Police", "Mountain Rescue please".
Provided grid reference with OS Locate app (download it now!). Then received a text message from Police Scotland that pinged my phone and sent the same grid reference again to Mountain Rescue.
They hate W3W. Rarely get all three of the words, particularly over a radio, and have to guess. Almost always used by people who only have a vague idea of what mountain they are on, so impossible to scan a W3W map and work it out.
Anyway, top tip I learnt. If very windy, chuck your jacket over your head so you can get your message across. Simple, but I didn't think of it till the MR guy asked me too. Also, bivvy bags are great.
No, two different issues here. There's no money in it but it's still a brilliant idea because it is inherently error correcting. A word can only be confused with one or two other words, a 6 digit map ref is no more or less likely than any other 6 digit number.
If you are calling out mountain rescue in this weather, either you had really bad luck or you are not much of an oracle on safety issues anyway
Wrong.
3Words screwed up by having similar sounding and spelled words on their list. And not having a checksum.
Yes.
Again, let us all strive with every sinew to understand the difference between idea and implementation. I am sure even the weakest thinkers will get there in the end.
I just got an email inviting me to invest in What 3 Words.
avoid.like.plague
I actually made that call last weekend: 999, "Police", "Mountain Rescue please".
Provided grid reference with OS Locate app (download it now!). Then received a text message from Police Scotland that pinged my phone and sent the same grid reference again to Mountain Rescue.
They hate W3W. Rarely get all three of the words, particularly over a radio, and have to guess. Almost always used by people who only have a vague idea of what mountain they are on, so impossible to scan a W3W map and work it out.
Anyway, top tip I learnt. If very windy, chuck your jacket over your head so you can get your message across. Simple, but I didn't think of it till the MR guy asked me too. Also, bivvy bags are great.
No, two different issues here. There's no money in it but it's still a brilliant idea because it is inherently error correcting. A word can only be confused with one or two other words, a 6 digit map ref is no more or less likely than any other 6 digit number.
If you are calling out mountain rescue in this weather, either you had really bad luck or you are not much of an oracle on safety issues anyway
Wrong.
3Words screwed up by having similar sounding and spelled words on their list. And not having a checksum.
W3W is a half-baked idea, terribly implemented, in a way to sound impressive to fleece the gullible out of their money.
A bit like Crypto.
The basic idea is fine. Map grids have been a thing for a long long time. The sensible ones, for communication over a noisy channel, have checksums and use things like the phonetic alphabet.
The biggest problem was that the guy doing it hard no idea of the huge amount of prior art,. Stand on the shoulders of giants, and all that.
That's like saying the basic idea of crypto is fine.
The problem is that w3w is not fine. w3w is not the basic idea. Bitscam is not fine.
Rishi Sunak is 43, there is zero chance he gives a shit about Imperial measurements. So as a sign of desperation it is pretty striking.
Most people use imperial measurements for height, weight, long distances.
This was the predictable missing-the-point response. I use them for my height and weight, and turns out I don't need any government action to do so.
With government policies we should always ask:
i) what problem is the problem trying to be fixed? ii) is it actually a problem? iii) does the proposal actually address that problem? iv) does it have any other negative effects?
You tell me, what problem is being fixed by 'restoring' imperial measurements?
As far as I know you will not get arrested for saying you are 5ft 8 inches, and no one is harmed if they should see reference to 2.2 litres on a milk container.
Are we saying people are too confused after 40 years? What an insulting thing to say.
Are they simply going to not 'punish' people who sell sausages only by the pound with no reference to kilos? Fine, no harm done - but what benefit is there?
To announce things like this they must think it a winner. Why?
This would be bonkers. I'm in my mid-50s and basically use metric for everything except distance, and that's only because road signs persist in showing miles. I buy pints in a pub because that's the quantity they sell beer in; if it was 50cl or 60cl I really wouldn't care. I do know my height in imperial because that's what older people understood when I reached my full height. I have to stop and think to know how many ounces in a pound or pounds in a stone. I know a hundredweight isn't 100lb despite the name and I'm glad I don't have to know how much it actually is. Who, under 70, cares about any of this?
I have zero ideas how many pounds are in a stone, or how much an ounce is. Sometimes someone will mention those units and I just nod vaguely as if they a character from a deranged Chaucer story.
"Three and a half kettles of water with a quarter spludgeon of butter you say? And a furlong of salt? Sounds good!"
The measurement that really confuses me is the cup in American recipes. We have several sizes of cups in our cupboard. Which one should I use?
Another nugget from my recent reading. The soldiers of the Union were often as brutally racist as the Confederates
eg They would "liberate" a Southern Plantation and immediately rape all the young, attractive, female slaves. Then they'd set the slaves to work, cooking, cleaning, farming - for no money. So life got no better for slaves at all, unless you could get away, and for the women slaves it got worse
I just got an email inviting me to invest in What 3 Words.
avoid.like.plague
I actually made that call last weekend: 999, "Police", "Mountain Rescue please".
Provided grid reference with OS Locate app (download it now!). Then received a text message from Police Scotland that pinged my phone and sent the same grid reference again to Mountain Rescue.
They hate W3W. Rarely get all three of the words, particularly over a radio, and have to guess. Almost always used by people who only have a vague idea of what mountain they are on, so impossible to scan a W3W map and work it out.
Anyway, top tip I learnt. If very windy, chuck your jacket over your head so you can get your message across. Simple, but I didn't think of it till the MR guy asked me too. Also, bivvy bags are great.
No, two different issues here. There's no money in it but it's still a brilliant idea because it is inherently error correcting. A word can only be confused with one or two other words, a 6 digit map ref is no more or less likely than any other 6 digit number.
If you are calling out mountain rescue in this weather, either you had really bad luck or you are not much of an oracle on safety issues anyway
May not have been for himself. I've called for assistance on mountains twice, neither time for me.
(Both old fashioned grid references from a paper map)
I've never had to call out mountain rescue, but I have once had to persuade someone they were on the wrong hill, and heading in totally the wrong direction. They did not want to believe me, despite my GPS and the landmarks I was pointing out.
Important lessons for us all from that, perhaps. There are times we believe we're right, even when all the evidence says otherwise.
I think there's a bit in Barry Pilton's 'One Man and his Bog, where he describes his first night on walking the Pennine Way. "I worked out how to use my compass, and as the sun set in the north..."
The other one is to take it all seriously. Even when it seems like a walk i the park
I went out for all day walk in the Cotswolds - cross country over footpaths. By the end of it, I given away water to 2 different utterly exhausted people.
Note - flip flops are the least useful form of footwear for walking. At least unless your feet are actually made of shoes leather. I had some plasters in my usual walking bag - purely by accident. They helped one of the people, as well.
I just got an email inviting me to invest in What 3 Words.
avoid.like.plague
I actually made that call last weekend: 999, "Police", "Mountain Rescue please".
Provided grid reference with OS Locate app (download it now!). Then received a text message from Police Scotland that pinged my phone and sent the same grid reference again to Mountain Rescue.
They hate W3W. Rarely get all three of the words, particularly over a radio, and have to guess. Almost always used by people who only have a vague idea of what mountain they are on, so impossible to scan a W3W map and work it out.
Anyway, top tip I learnt. If very windy, chuck your jacket over your head so you can get your message across. Simple, but I didn't think of it till the MR guy asked me too. Also, bivvy bags are great.
No, two different issues here. There's no money in it but it's still a brilliant idea because it is inherently error correcting. A word can only be confused with one or two other words, a 6 digit map ref is no more or less likely than any other 6 digit number.
If you are calling out mountain rescue in this weather, either you had really bad luck or you are not much of an oracle on safety issues anyway
May not have been for himself. I've called for assistance on mountains twice, neither time for me.
(Both old fashioned grid references from a paper map)
I've never had to call out mountain rescue, but I have once had to persuade someone they were on the wrong hill, and heading in totally the wrong direction. They did not want to believe me, despite my GPS and the landmarks I was pointing out.
Important lessons for us all from that, perhaps. There are times we believe we're right, even when all the evidence says otherwise.
I think there's a bit in Barry Pilton's 'One Man and his Bog, where he describes his first night on walking the Pennine Way. "I worked out how to use my compass, and as the sun set in the north..."
I once, with a group of friends, tried to locate a cathedral in Milan using one of those small tourist maps. We'd spent a bit of time and got fairly confused before we realised we'd pulled out the map of a completely different city
Another nugget from my recent reading. The soldiers of the Union were often as brutally racist as the Confederates
eg They would "liberate" a Southern Plantation and immediately rape all the young, attractive, female slaves. Then they'd set the slaves to work, cooking, cleaning, farming - for no money. So life got no better for slaves at all, unless you could get away, and for the women slaves it got worse
Watching Sunak at the Liaison Committee man he's going to be absolutely destroyed during a general election campaign and that's before lawyer Starmer tears him a new one.,
The big picture is a simple one. Two (I think) uncontroversial observations:
1 Rushi Sunak is horribly overpromoted. He might have been a decent PM ten years down the line, but right now, he isn't up to the job.
2 There is nobody in the Conservative Party who could do better than he is doing.
Therefore, Rishi, the Conservatives and the country face 12-18 months of painful stasis before the government finally falls over the cliff.
Short of a Simply Enormous Event, that's it, isn't it?
I spoke to a Brexiteer the other day, he reckons the Tories are out of power until they embrace Rejoin.
A sort of Nixon goes to China moment*.
Ironically the person he thinks who could pull this off is the person he rather despises , one Boris Johnson.
*I did point out joining the EC/EU has been standard Tory orthodoxy for most of the last 70 years. Brexit was the Nixon goes to China moment.
If the Tories embraced Rejoin they would cease to be the main party of the right in the UK, RefUK under a newly returned Farage would replace them as the main right of centre party and opposition to Labour.
Even Labour wouldn't embrace Rejoin now because of the redwall, at most they would consider EEA if they win and are then re elected.
The only UK wide party whose voter coalition would allow them to consider Rejoin are the LDs you vote for
The Tories are on course for ceasing to be the main party of the right if they embrace the blood and soil nationalism of the New Tories.
No they aren't, they are still about 25-30% with another 5-10% voting Reform.
Embrace Rejoin and they would collapse to 10% or less, probably fall to even fewer seats than the SNP and LDs under FPTP, Reform would get 30-35% and become the main opposition to Starmer's Labour government
I just can’t envisage any scenario where Reform would get 30-35%. Do you have any evidence for your assertion?
He loves Reform.
That is it.
They are a pathetic joke of a party, only HYUFD takes them seriously.
HYUFD's posts are occasional flashes of insight surrounded by acres/hectares of bollocks.
I just got an email inviting me to invest in What 3 Words.
avoid.like.plague
I actually made that call last weekend: 999, "Police", "Mountain Rescue please".
Provided grid reference with OS Locate app (download it now!). Then received a text message from Police Scotland that pinged my phone and sent the same grid reference again to Mountain Rescue.
They hate W3W. Rarely get all three of the words, particularly over a radio, and have to guess. Almost always used by people who only have a vague idea of what mountain they are on, so impossible to scan a W3W map and work it out.
Anyway, top tip I learnt. If very windy, chuck your jacket over your head so you can get your message across. Simple, but I didn't think of it till the MR guy asked me too. Also, bivvy bags are great.
No, two different issues here. There's no money in it but it's still a brilliant idea because it is inherently error correcting. A word can only be confused with one or two other words, a 6 digit map ref is no more or less likely than any other 6 digit number.
If you are calling out mountain rescue in this weather, either you had really bad luck or you are not much of an oracle on safety issues anyway
May not have been for himself. I've called for assistance on mountains twice, neither time for me.
(Both old fashioned grid references from a paper map)
I've never had to call out mountain rescue, but I have once had to persuade someone they were on the wrong hill, and heading in totally the wrong direction. They did not want to believe me, despite my GPS and the landmarks I was pointing out.
Important lessons for us all from that, perhaps. There are times we believe we're right, even when all the evidence says otherwise.
I think there's a bit in Barry Pilton's 'One Man and his Bog, where he describes his first night on walking the Pennine Way. "I worked out how to use my compass, and as the sun set in the north..."
The other one is to take it all seriously. Even when it seems like a walk i the park
I went out for all day walk in the Cotswolds - cross country over footpaths. By the end of it, I given away water to 2 different utterly exhausted people.
Note - flip flops are the least useful form of footwear for walking. At least unless your feet are actually made of shoes leather. I had some plasters in my usual walking bag - purely by accident. They helped one of the people, as well.
I went up Scafell Pike last May and everything I read about it was all "the weather closes in quickly" etc. etc.
What they didn't say was "very occasionally, it's a brilliant sunny day, don't forget sun cream".
Watching Sunak at the Liaison Committee man he's going to be absolutely destroyed during a general election campaign and that's before lawyer Starmer tears him a new one.,
The big picture is a simple one. Two (I think) uncontroversial observations:
1 Rushi Sunak is horribly overpromoted. He might have been a decent PM ten years down the line, but right now, he isn't up to the job.
2 There is nobody in the Conservative Party who could do better than he is doing.
Therefore, Rishi, the Conservatives and the country face 12-18 months of painful stasis before the government finally falls over the cliff.
Short of a Simply Enormous Event, that's it, isn't it?
I spoke to a Brexiteer the other day, he reckons the Tories are out of power until they embrace Rejoin.
A sort of Nixon goes to China moment*.
Ironically the person he thinks who could pull this off is the person he rather despises , one Boris Johnson.
*I did point out joining the EC/EU has been standard Tory orthodoxy for most of the last 70 years. Brexit was the Nixon goes to China moment.
If the Tories embraced Rejoin they would cease to be the main party of the right in the UK, RefUK under a newly returned Farage would replace them as the main right of centre party and opposition to Labour.
Even Labour wouldn't embrace Rejoin now because of the redwall, at most they would consider EEA if they win and are then re elected.
The only UK wide party whose voter coalition would allow them to consider Rejoin are the LDs you vote for
The Tories are on course for ceasing to be the main party of the right if they embrace the blood and soil nationalism of the New Tories.
No they aren't, they are still about 25-30% with another 5-10% voting Reform.
Embrace Rejoin and they would collapse to 10% or less, probably fall to even fewer seats than the SNP and LDs under FPTP, Reform would get 30-35% and become the main opposition to Starmer's Labour government
I just can’t envisage any scenario where Reform would get 30-35%. Do you have any evidence for your assertion?
He loves Reform.
That is it.
They are a pathetic joke of a party, only HYUFD takes them seriously.
I have to say I'm a little uncomfortable with Nigel Farage's personal financial affairs being dragged into the public domain. He's no longer an MEP or an elected official of any kind and apart from appearing on right-wing media, I don't actually know why he's still a person of interest in politics.
Nonetheless, he is still entitled to the same personal privacy as the rest of us.
Speaking of privacy, we have had the Conservative candidate's leaflet in the Wall End by-election. He's a "businessman" (whatever that means) and while his diagnosis of the main issue in the area is valid - anti social behaviour and a fear of crime, his solution seems to be CCTV on every street corner. I'm not quite sure who is going to pay for that nor am I entirely certain being observed from every street corner is quite what we want from a "free society".
Apparently he's also going to set the police "goals" - not quite sure what that means - along with the usual blether of more Police. I'm not sure he knows who pays for the Police in London or who will fund the training of new officers but these are just details.
It's a well-produced leaflet - doesn't mention Rishi Sunak and barely says the word "Conservative". As I've said elsewhere, claiming to be the local candidate may work in rural Shropshire - less convinced it has the same cadence in East London.
I just got an email inviting me to invest in What 3 Words.
avoid.like.plague
I actually made that call last weekend: 999, "Police", "Mountain Rescue please".
Provided grid reference with OS Locate app (download it now!). Then received a text message from Police Scotland that pinged my phone and sent the same grid reference again to Mountain Rescue.
They hate W3W. Rarely get all three of the words, particularly over a radio, and have to guess. Almost always used by people who only have a vague idea of what mountain they are on, so impossible to scan a W3W map and work it out.
Anyway, top tip I learnt. If very windy, chuck your jacket over your head so you can get your message across. Simple, but I didn't think of it till the MR guy asked me too. Also, bivvy bags are great.
No, two different issues here. There's no money in it but it's still a brilliant idea because it is inherently error correcting. A word can only be confused with one or two other words, a 6 digit map ref is no more or less likely than any other 6 digit number.
If you are calling out mountain rescue in this weather, either you had really bad luck or you are not much of an oracle on safety issues anyway
May not have been for himself. I've called for assistance on mountains twice, neither time for me.
(Both old fashioned grid references from a paper map)
I've never had to call out mountain rescue, but I have once had to persuade someone they were on the wrong hill, and heading in totally the wrong direction. They did not want to believe me, despite my GPS and the landmarks I was pointing out.
Important lessons for us all from that, perhaps. There are times we believe we're right, even when all the evidence says otherwise.
I think there's a bit in Barry Pilton's 'One Man and his Bog, where he describes his first night on walking the Pennine Way. "I worked out how to use my compass, and as the sun set in the north..."
Been on Pen y Fan in the mist, and had the grim pleasure of pointing out to the party leader he had the wrong end of the needle lined up witrh the bearing arrow in the Silva compass. (For those who don't know, some directions off Pen y Fan, the highest hill in the Brycheiniog area, end in sheer cliffs.) Fortunately, he was persuadable the red bit was pointing in the wrong direction. Which is why we are still friends. But I remind him of it every 20 years or so, just to keep him humble, especially now he has his own cruising yacht. And in later years he did meet some folk going in completely the wrong direction on the high Cairngorms, and took them down to low level himself.
A deal has been reached for Ursula von der Leyen to become the next Nato Secretary General and the first woman to head the alliance, The National understands.
The year-long extension of incumbent Jens Stoltenberg’s tenure has been arranged so Ms von der Leyen can finish her five-year term as President of the European Commission in 2024, a Nato insider has said.
As predicted by pb's own @Dura_Ace iirc (or at least, he noted the strange coincidence of JS's extension and UvdL becoming available).
A German aristocrat being parachuted into a job despite little personal achievement or democratic mandate in her history. I suppose it isn't quite as egregious as how she got the EU job. There she was given it in a backroom deal over the rules that got Juncker the job.
She was Germany's defence minister and has won as many elections as Rishi Sunak. There was no rule forcing member states to nominate ... let's check... Manfred Weber (!) as President of the Commission, for the very good reason that the national governments never ceded their rights enjoyed under law.
Hang on a minute. At the time when every major UK party protested to Juncker, we were told that it didn't matter he was a drunken muppet... he was supposedly the duly elected Spitzenkandidat, so the issue couldn't be revisited.
Then of course the next election Germany didn't like the Spitzenkandidat so they quickly switched him out. The contrast was such clear example of how the EU was always one rule for the UK and a different one for France/Germany.
I just got an email inviting me to invest in What 3 Words.
avoid.like.plague
I actually made that call last weekend: 999, "Police", "Mountain Rescue please".
Provided grid reference with OS Locate app (download it now!). Then received a text message from Police Scotland that pinged my phone and sent the same grid reference again to Mountain Rescue.
They hate W3W. Rarely get all three of the words, particularly over a radio, and have to guess. Almost always used by people who only have a vague idea of what mountain they are on, so impossible to scan a W3W map and work it out.
Anyway, top tip I learnt. If very windy, chuck your jacket over your head so you can get your message across. Simple, but I didn't think of it till the MR guy asked me too. Also, bivvy bags are great.
No, two different issues here. There's no money in it but it's still a brilliant idea because it is inherently error correcting. A word can only be confused with one or two other words, a 6 digit map ref is no more or less likely than any other 6 digit number.
If you are calling out mountain rescue in this weather, either you had really bad luck or you are not much of an oracle on safety issues anyway
May not have been for himself. I've called for assistance on mountains twice, neither time for me.
(Both old fashioned grid references from a paper map)
I've never had to call out mountain rescue, but I have once had to persuade someone they were on the wrong hill, and heading in totally the wrong direction. They did not want to believe me, despite my GPS and the landmarks I was pointing out.
Important lessons for us all from that, perhaps. There are times we believe we're right, even when all the evidence says otherwise.
I think there's a bit in Barry Pilton's 'One Man and his Bog, where he describes his first night on walking the Pennine Way. "I worked out how to use my compass, and as the sun set in the north..."
The other one is to take it all seriously. Even when it seems like a walk i the park
I went out for all day walk in the Cotswolds - cross country over footpaths. By the end of it, I given away water to 2 different utterly exhausted people.
Note - flip flops are the least useful form of footwear for walking. At least unless your feet are actually made of shoes leather. I had some plasters in my usual walking bag - purely by accident. They helped one of the people, as well.
I went up Scafell Pike last May and everything I read about it was all "the weather closes in quickly" etc. etc.
What they didn't say was "very occasionally, it's a brilliant sunny day, don't forget sun cream".
If you ask the mountain rescue, they will tell you tales of people pulled off the mountain, hypothermic and soaked. With nice side order of sunburn from earlier.
Watching Sunak at the Liaison Committee man he's going to be absolutely destroyed during a general election campaign and that's before lawyer Starmer tears him a new one.,
The big picture is a simple one. Two (I think) uncontroversial observations:
1 Rushi Sunak is horribly overpromoted. He might have been a decent PM ten years down the line, but right now, he isn't up to the job.
2 There is nobody in the Conservative Party who could do better than he is doing.
Therefore, Rishi, the Conservatives and the country face 12-18 months of painful stasis before the government finally falls over the cliff.
Short of a Simply Enormous Event, that's it, isn't it?
I spoke to a Brexiteer the other day, he reckons the Tories are out of power until they embrace Rejoin.
A sort of Nixon goes to China moment*.
Ironically the person he thinks who could pull this off is the person he rather despises , one Boris Johnson.
*I did point out joining the EC/EU has been standard Tory orthodoxy for most of the last 70 years. Brexit was the Nixon goes to China moment.
I am firmly of the opinion that, at some point during the next Labour decade, a Tory leadership contender will run on a Rejoin platform. And do surprisingly well. He/she probably isn't in government yet, and maybe not in Parliament.
To get a decade in power Labour will have to find a solution to the doctors 35% pay demand.
Don't pay it and get continuous NHS strikes, pay it and get equivalent pay demands from the rest of the public sector.
Perhaps they could pay everyone by taxing property but that will create other sets of people angry at losing out.
Juggling the different groups isn't going to be easy especially as those who gain forget quicker than those who lose out.
Paying something in between instead of paying the same people agency fees of £2k+ per shift to cover themselves striking will save money, improve retention and productivity.
What's something in between ?
20% ? 25% ? 30% ?
That demand for 35% is likely to increase with a Labour government.
Whatever the doctors are given will become the minimum demand for the rest of the public sector.
And why not - if the high paid get a big pay rise the low paid deserve the same.
Less than those numbers, at least per year. And anything over inflation should be for junior doctors (£40-60k) rather than the higher paid more experienced doctors who might be earning £100k+.
It would be better if we moved to make doctor pay significantly flatter over their careers rather than quite so back loaded, especially with long degrees and higher student debt, tax and house prices.
But regardless, paying regularly someone £2k to cover a single shift of a striking worker (possibly themself!) because we are not willing to give a £5k annual pay rise makes absolutely zero mathematical sense. I don't quite get why people think it saves us any taxpayer money.
Why would the doctors accept less than even 20% ?
It would be an admittance that their initial demands were based upon greed and lies and that all the damage they've done by striking was unnecessary.
As to the current costs well doesn't that apply to every dispute ? But the cost of giving way is in the further demands it prompts. In this case whatever the doctors get will be the immediate demand for the rest of the public sector.
I don't think it applies to every dispute at all. Sometimes employers have more power. But not when we need to recruit a load more people, the existing ones are leaving and we have a backlog of 7m operations.
We have just gone through a decade where a lot of public sector was heavily squeezed, initially correctly so, but it has increasingly become a doctrine done out of political belief rather than common sense and pragmatism. It is now hugely counter productive and a big part of why the government is failing.
But it always comes back to my initial point.
That if the doctors got their big pay rise then the rest of the public sector will want the same.
We can discuss the details of individual cases on the internet but in the real world it will be "they got X% so we want X%".
So its going to be strikes or more taxation.
Why shouldn't they get the same?
Why is it good enough to give double-digit pay rises to those on welfare but only 3-4% for those who work for a living like teachers?
How is it any more outrageous to be asking for more than inflation, when you're getting offered less than inflation?
The Government started this mess by dicking around and picking priority groups to pander to, which predominantly was those who aren't working because that's their client vote. When others are being treated better than you are, why shouldn't those who are working demand their slice too?
Responsible governance would have been to say "we're all in it together" and mean it, scrap the triple lock etc and have flat rates across the board - but instead some groups were pandered to and others told suck up nearly double-digit real terms pay cuts.
I agree - they should get the same.
Which is the problem PM Starmer will have:
Giving the doctors what they want means having to give everyone else the same which means more taxation on someone else plus private sector workers now being aggrieved.
Alternatively don't give the doctors what they want and have continuous strikes from them.
I just got an email inviting me to invest in What 3 Words.
avoid.like.plague
I actually made that call last weekend: 999, "Police", "Mountain Rescue please".
Provided grid reference with OS Locate app (download it now!). Then received a text message from Police Scotland that pinged my phone and sent the same grid reference again to Mountain Rescue.
They hate W3W. Rarely get all three of the words, particularly over a radio, and have to guess. Almost always used by people who only have a vague idea of what mountain they are on, so impossible to scan a W3W map and work it out.
Anyway, top tip I learnt. If very windy, chuck your jacket over your head so you can get your message across. Simple, but I didn't think of it till the MR guy asked me too. Also, bivvy bags are great.
No, two different issues here. There's no money in it but it's still a brilliant idea because it is inherently error correcting. A word can only be confused with one or two other words, a 6 digit map ref is no more or less likely than any other 6 digit number.
If you are calling out mountain rescue in this weather, either you had really bad luck or you are not much of an oracle on safety issues anyway
May not have been for himself. I've called for assistance on mountains twice, neither time for me.
(Both old fashioned grid references from a paper map)
I've never had to call out mountain rescue, but I have once had to persuade someone they were on the wrong hill, and heading in totally the wrong direction. They did not want to believe me, despite my GPS and the landmarks I was pointing out.
Important lessons for us all from that, perhaps. There are times we believe we're right, even when all the evidence says otherwise.
I think there's a bit in Barry Pilton's 'One Man and his Bog, where he describes his first night on walking the Pennine Way. "I worked out how to use my compass, and as the sun set in the north..."
The other one is to take it all seriously. Even when it seems like a walk i the park
I went out for all day walk in the Cotswolds - cross country over footpaths. By the end of it, I given away water to 2 different utterly exhausted people.
Note - flip flops are the least useful form of footwear for walking. At least unless your feet are actually made of shoes leather. I had some plasters in my usual walking bag - purely by accident. They helped one of the people, as well.
I went up Scafell Pike last May and everything I read about it was all "the weather closes in quickly" etc. etc.
What they didn't say was "very occasionally, it's a brilliant sunny day, don't forget sun cream".
Last time I was on Pen y Fan, en route to a friend's party in a cottage near by, we camped on the high hills, and woke in the sun to see the sea of mist in the valley below, and walked along the ridge to Pen y Fan where there was a young lady with a bikini, woolly socks, and - sensibly - boots standing on the trig point. But on other occasions ... you'd be lucky to see the trig point.
I just got an email inviting me to invest in What 3 Words.
avoid.like.plague
I actually made that call last weekend: 999, "Police", "Mountain Rescue please".
Provided grid reference with OS Locate app (download it now!). Then received a text message from Police Scotland that pinged my phone and sent the same grid reference again to Mountain Rescue.
They hate W3W. Rarely get all three of the words, particularly over a radio, and have to guess. Almost always used by people who only have a vague idea of what mountain they are on, so impossible to scan a W3W map and work it out.
Anyway, top tip I learnt. If very windy, chuck your jacket over your head so you can get your message across. Simple, but I didn't think of it till the MR guy asked me too. Also, bivvy bags are great.
No, two different issues here. There's no money in it but it's still a brilliant idea because it is inherently error correcting. A word can only be confused with one or two other words, a 6 digit map ref is no more or less likely than any other 6 digit number.
If you are calling out mountain rescue in this weather, either you had really bad luck or you are not much of an oracle on safety issues anyway
Wrong.
3Words screwed up by having similar sounding and spelled words on their list. And not having a checksum.
W3W is a half-baked idea, terribly implemented, in a way to sound impressive to fleece the gullible out of their money.
A deal has been reached for Ursula von der Leyen to become the next Nato Secretary General and the first woman to head the alliance, The National understands.
The year-long extension of incumbent Jens Stoltenberg’s tenure has been arranged so Ms von der Leyen can finish her five-year term as President of the European Commission in 2024, a Nato insider has said.
As predicted by pb's own @Dura_Ace iirc (or at least, he noted the strange coincidence of JS's extension and UvdL becoming available).
A German aristocrat being parachuted into a job despite little personal achievement or democratic mandate in her history. I suppose it isn't quite as egregious as how she got the EU job. There she was given it in a backroom deal over the rules that got Juncker the job.
She was Germany's defence minister and has won as many elections as Rishi Sunak. There was no rule forcing member states to nominate ... let's check... Manfred Weber (!) as President of the Commission, for the very good reason that the national governments never ceded their rights enjoyed under law.
Hang on a minute. At the time when every major UK party protested to Juncker, we were told that it didn't matter he was a drunken muppet... he was supposedly the duly elected Spitzenkandidat, so the issue couldn't be revisited.
Then of course the next election Germany didn't like the Spitzenkandidat so they quickly switched him out. The contrast was such clear example of how the EU was always one rule for the UK and a different one for France/Germany.
So what. Given the choice the UK chose a bloke who drove around a large town during lockdown BECAUSE, not IN SPITE OF, the fact that he didn't think he could see well enough to drive. Jump up and down about that instead of crocodile tears for the larger neighbour.
I have to say I'm a little uncomfortable with Nigel Farage's personal financial affairs being dragged into the public domain. He's no longer an MEP or an elected official of any kind and apart from appearing on right-wing media, I don't actually know why he's still a person of interest in politics.
Nonetheless, he is still entitled to the same personal privacy as the rest of us.
Speaking of privacy, we have had the Conservative candidate's leaflet in the Wall End by-election. He's a "businessman" (whatever that means) and while his diagnosis of the main issue in the area is valid - anti social behaviour and a fear of crime, his solution seems to be CCTV on every street corner. I'm not quite sure who is going to pay for that nor am I entirely certain being observed from every street corner is quite what we want from a "free society".
Apparently he's also going to set the police "goals" - not quite sure what that means - along with the usual blether of more Police. I'm not sure he knows who pays for the Police in London or who will fund the training of new officers but these are just details.
It's a well-produced leaflet - doesn't mention Rishi Sunak and barely says the word "Conservative". As I've said elsewhere, claiming to be the local candidate may work in rural Shropshire - less convinced it has the same cadence in East London.
He's entitled to privacy about his banking arrangements. However. He's the one banging on about them to anyone who'll listen.
A deal has been reached for Ursula von der Leyen to become the next Nato Secretary General and the first woman to head the alliance, The National understands.
The year-long extension of incumbent Jens Stoltenberg’s tenure has been arranged so Ms von der Leyen can finish her five-year term as President of the European Commission in 2024, a Nato insider has said.
As predicted by pb's own @Dura_Ace iirc (or at least, he noted the strange coincidence of JS's extension and UvdL becoming available).
A German aristocrat being parachuted into a job despite little personal achievement or democratic mandate in her history. I suppose it isn't quite as egregious as how she got the EU job. There she was given it in a backroom deal over the rules that got Juncker the job.
She was Germany's defence minister and has won as many elections as Rishi Sunak. There was no rule forcing member states to nominate ... let's check... Manfred Weber (!) as President of the Commission, for the very good reason that the national governments never ceded their rights enjoyed under law.
Hang on a minute. At the time when every major UK party protested to Juncker, we were told that it didn't matter he was a drunken muppet... he was supposedly the duly elected Spitzenkandidat, so the issue couldn't be revisited.
Then of course the next election Germany didn't like the Spitzenkandidat so they quickly switched him out. The contrast was such clear example of how the EU was always one rule for the UK and a different one for France/Germany.
So what. Given the choice the UK chose a bloke who drove around a large town during lockdown BECAUSE, not IN SPITE OF, the fact that he didn't think he could see well enough to drive. Jump up and down about that instead of crocodile tears for the larger neighbour.
This is whataboutism of the highest order. You can't defend the obvious hypocrisy of the EU system of choosing its head of governmemt so you try to distract with some random UK civil servant.
I just got an email inviting me to invest in What 3 Words.
avoid.like.plague
I actually made that call last weekend: 999, "Police", "Mountain Rescue please".
Provided grid reference with OS Locate app (download it now!). Then received a text message from Police Scotland that pinged my phone and sent the same grid reference again to Mountain Rescue.
They hate W3W. Rarely get all three of the words, particularly over a radio, and have to guess. Almost always used by people who only have a vague idea of what mountain they are on, so impossible to scan a W3W map and work it out.
Anyway, top tip I learnt. If very windy, chuck your jacket over your head so you can get your message across. Simple, but I didn't think of it till the MR guy asked me too. Also, bivvy bags are great.
No, two different issues here. There's no money in it but it's still a brilliant idea because it is inherently error correcting. A word can only be confused with one or two other words, a 6 digit map ref is no more or less likely than any other 6 digit number.
If you are calling out mountain rescue in this weather, either you had really bad luck or you are not much of an oracle on safety issues anyway
Wasn't me, and the person in trouble had some seriously bad luck. Experienced hillwalker, bivvy bag, map, full waterproofs despite it being late June.
Similar to that PBer who broke both their legs just walking along.
I just got an email inviting me to invest in What 3 Words.
avoid.like.plague
Seriously though.
what3words has raised £100m+ so far.
In their last published accounts, they lost £43m on turnover of £444,000. Turnover was actually down on the previous year. Their chief commercial officer is by all accounts amazing and talks the talk (I know several people who've worked with her) but it doesn't alter the fact there's no path to profitability in sight.
To call w3w a basketcase would be unfair to Guatemalan artisan basket-weavers, who at least have a viable business model.
Watching Sunak at the Liaison Committee man he's going to be absolutely destroyed during a general election campaign and that's before lawyer Starmer tears him a new one.,
The big picture is a simple one. Two (I think) uncontroversial observations:
1 Rushi Sunak is horribly overpromoted. He might have been a decent PM ten years down the line, but right now, he isn't up to the job.
2 There is nobody in the Conservative Party who could do better than he is doing.
Therefore, Rishi, the Conservatives and the country face 12-18 months of painful stasis before the government finally falls over the cliff.
Short of a Simply Enormous Event, that's it, isn't it?
I spoke to a Brexiteer the other day, he reckons the Tories are out of power until they embrace Rejoin.
A sort of Nixon goes to China moment*.
Ironically the person he thinks who could pull this off is the person he rather despises , one Boris Johnson.
*I did point out joining the EC/EU has been standard Tory orthodoxy for most of the last 70 years. Brexit was the Nixon goes to China moment.
I am firmly of the opinion that, at some point during the next Labour decade, a Tory leadership contender will run on a Rejoin platform. And do surprisingly well. He/she probably isn't in government yet, and maybe not in Parliament.
To get a decade in power Labour will have to find a solution to the doctors 35% pay demand.
Don't pay it and get continuous NHS strikes, pay it and get equivalent pay demands from the rest of the public sector.
Perhaps they could pay everyone by taxing property but that will create other sets of people angry at losing out.
Juggling the different groups isn't going to be easy especially as those who gain forget quicker than those who lose out.
Paying something in between instead of paying the same people agency fees of £2k+ per shift to cover themselves striking will save money, improve retention and productivity.
What's something in between ?
20% ? 25% ? 30% ?
That demand for 35% is likely to increase with a Labour government.
Whatever the doctors are given will become the minimum demand for the rest of the public sector.
And why not - if the high paid get a big pay rise the low paid deserve the same.
Less than those numbers, at least per year. And anything over inflation should be for junior doctors (£40-60k) rather than the higher paid more experienced doctors who might be earning £100k+.
It would be better if we moved to make doctor pay significantly flatter over their careers rather than quite so back loaded, especially with long degrees and higher student debt, tax and house prices.
But regardless, paying regularly someone £2k to cover a single shift of a striking worker (possibly themself!) because we are not willing to give a £5k annual pay rise makes absolutely zero mathematical sense. I don't quite get why people think it saves us any taxpayer money.
Why would the doctors accept less than even 20% ?
It would be an admittance that their initial demands were based upon greed and lies and that all the damage they've done by striking was unnecessary.
As to the current costs well doesn't that apply to every dispute ? But the cost of giving way is in the further demands it prompts. In this case whatever the doctors get will be the immediate demand for the rest of the public sector.
I don't think it applies to every dispute at all. Sometimes employers have more power. But not when we need to recruit a load more people, the existing ones are leaving and we have a backlog of 7m operations.
We have just gone through a decade where a lot of public sector was heavily squeezed, initially correctly so, but it has increasingly become a doctrine done out of political belief rather than common sense and pragmatism. It is now hugely counter productive and a big part of why the government is failing.
But it always comes back to my initial point.
That if the doctors got their big pay rise then the rest of the public sector will want the same.
We can discuss the details of individual cases on the internet but in the real world it will be "they got X% so we want X%".
So its going to be strikes or more taxation.
Why shouldn't they get the same?
Why is it good enough to give double-digit pay rises to those on welfare but only 3-4% for those who work for a living like teachers?
How is it any more outrageous to be asking for more than inflation, when you're getting offered less than inflation?
The Government started this mess by dicking around and picking priority groups to pander to, which predominantly was those who aren't working because that's their client vote. When others are being treated better than you are, why shouldn't those who are working demand their slice too?
Responsible governance would have been to say "we're all in it together" and mean it, scrap the triple lock etc and have flat rates across the board - but instead some groups were pandered to and others told suck up nearly double-digit real terms pay cuts.
I agree - they should get the same.
Which is the problem PM Starmer will have:
Giving the doctors what they want means having to give everyone else the same which means more taxation on someone else plus private sector workers now being aggrieved.
Alternatively don't give the doctors what they want and have continuous strikes from them.
But. As the nurses have shown, folk get fed up of striking pretty soon. There won't be any prospect of doctors still striking this time next year.
I have to say I'm a little uncomfortable with Nigel Farage's personal financial affairs being dragged into the public domain. He's no longer an MEP or an elected official of any kind and apart from appearing on right-wing media, I don't actually know why he's still a person of interest in politics.
Nonetheless, he is still entitled to the same personal privacy as the rest of us.
Speaking of privacy, we have had the Conservative candidate's leaflet in the Wall End by-election. He's a "businessman" (whatever that means) and while his diagnosis of the main issue in the area is valid - anti social behaviour and a fear of crime, his solution seems to be CCTV on every street corner. I'm not quite sure who is going to pay for that nor am I entirely certain being observed from every street corner is quite what we want from a "free society".
Apparently he's also going to set the police "goals" - not quite sure what that means - along with the usual blether of more Police. I'm not sure he knows who pays for the Police in London or who will fund the training of new officers but these are just details.
It's a well-produced leaflet - doesn't mention Rishi Sunak and barely says the word "Conservative". As I've said elsewhere, claiming to be the local candidate may work in rural Shropshire - less convinced it has the same cadence in East London.
He's entitled to privacy about his banking arrangements. However. He's the one banging on about them to anyone who'll listen.
His arrangements should be private, but he chose to waive that.
And having waived it, its pretty hilarious the problem isn't that he's being unpersoned as claimed, just that he's not got enough money to be banking with Coutts instead of Natwest.
Rishi Sunak is 43, there is zero chance he gives a shit about Imperial measurements. So as a sign of desperation it is pretty striking.
Most people use imperial measurements for height, weight, long distances.
This was the predictable missing-the-point response. I use them for my height and weight, and turns out I don't need any government action to do so.
With government policies we should always ask:
i) what problem is the problem trying to be fixed? ii) is it actually a problem? iii) does the proposal actually address that problem? iv) does it have any other negative effects?
You tell me, what problem is being fixed by 'restoring' imperial measurements?
As far as I know you will not get arrested for saying you are 5ft 8 inches, and no one is harmed if they should see reference to 2.2 litres on a milk container.
Are we saying people are too confused after 40 years? What an insulting thing to say.
Are they simply going to not 'punish' people who sell sausages only by the pound with no reference to kilos? Fine, no harm done - but what benefit is there?
To announce things like this they must think it a winner. Why?
This would be bonkers. I'm in my mid-50s and basically use metric for everything except distance, and that's only because road signs persist in showing miles. I buy pints in a pub because that's the quantity they sell beer in; if it was 50cl or 60cl I really wouldn't care. I do know my height in imperial because that's what older people understood when I reached my full height. I have to stop and think to know how many ounces in a pound or pounds in a stone. I know a hundredweight isn't 100lb despite the name and I'm glad I don't have to know how much it actually is. Who, under 70, cares about any of this?
I have zero ideas how many pounds are in a stone, or how much an ounce is. Sometimes someone will mention those units and I just nod vaguely as if they a character from a deranged Chaucer story.
"Three and a half kettles of water with a quarter spludgeon of butter you say? And a furlong of salt? Sounds good!"
The measurement that really confuses me is the cup in American recipes. We have several sizes of cups in our cupboard. Which one should I use?
A "cup" in American cooking is a unit of volume. Half a US pint, or 8 fluid ounces.
I have to say I'm a little uncomfortable with Nigel Farage's personal financial affairs being dragged into the public domain. He's no longer an MEP or an elected official of any kind and apart from appearing on right-wing media, I don't actually know why he's still a person of interest in politics.
Nonetheless, he is still entitled to the same personal privacy as the rest of us.
Speaking of privacy, we have had the Conservative candidate's leaflet in the Wall End by-election. He's a "businessman" (whatever that means) and while his diagnosis of the main issue in the area is valid - anti social behaviour and a fear of crime, his solution seems to be CCTV on every street corner. I'm not quite sure who is going to pay for that nor am I entirely certain being observed from every street corner is quite what we want from a "free society".
Apparently he's also going to set the police "goals" - not quite sure what that means - along with the usual blether of more Police. I'm not sure he knows who pays for the Police in London or who will fund the training of new officers but these are just details.
It's a well-produced leaflet - doesn't mention Rishi Sunak and barely says the word "Conservative". As I've said elsewhere, claiming to be the local candidate may work in rural Shropshire - less convinced it has the same cadence in East London.
He's entitled to privacy about his banking arrangements. However. He's the one banging on about them to anyone who'll listen.
His arrangements should be private, but he chose to waive that.
And having waived it, its pretty hilarious the problem isn't that he's being unpersoned as claimed, just that he's not got enough money to be banking with Coutts instead of Natwest.
I have to say I'm a little uncomfortable with Nigel Farage's personal financial affairs being dragged into the public domain. He's no longer an MEP or an elected official of any kind and apart from appearing on right-wing media, I don't actually know why he's still a person of interest in politics.
Nonetheless, he is still entitled to the same personal privacy as the rest of us.
Speaking of privacy, we have had the Conservative candidate's leaflet in the Wall End by-election. He's a "businessman" (whatever that means) and while his diagnosis of the main issue in the area is valid - anti social behaviour and a fear of crime, his solution seems to be CCTV on every street corner. I'm not quite sure who is going to pay for that nor am I entirely certain being observed from every street corner is quite what we want from a "free society".
Apparently he's also going to set the police "goals" - not quite sure what that means - along with the usual blether of more Police. I'm not sure he knows who pays for the Police in London or who will fund the training of new officers but these are just details.
It's a well-produced leaflet - doesn't mention Rishi Sunak and barely says the word "Conservative". As I've said elsewhere, claiming to be the local candidate may work in rural Shropshire - less convinced it has the same cadence in East London.
CCPTV. Let's not be more like Beijing.
As for Farage, he's most certainly a Politically Exposed Person. He's honorary president of a political party, and has connections way across the political world, from Eastern Europe to the USA, and, of course, very prominently in this country. When it comes to determining PEPs, that's a 100% hit all day long, zero doubt about it.
Heard a fun one over lunch, the other day.
Apparently, a new hire, non-British (so didn’t get local context), in one of the agencies used by banks for vetting, decided to flag all the elected people and senior officers of a political party.
One in Northern Ireland.
If it had gone through, the story went, they would all have lost accounts, credit cards and mortgages across multiple banks.
Fortunately someone noticed and stopped the enthusiasm.
A deal has been reached for Ursula von der Leyen to become the next Nato Secretary General and the first woman to head the alliance, The National understands.
The year-long extension of incumbent Jens Stoltenberg’s tenure has been arranged so Ms von der Leyen can finish her five-year term as President of the European Commission in 2024, a Nato insider has said.
As predicted by pb's own @Dura_Ace iirc (or at least, he noted the strange coincidence of JS's extension and UvdL becoming available).
I am sure Putin is quaking in his boots at von der Leyen as Nato Secretary General
She’s been a hell of a lot more effective at strategy in this war than Vlad has. The EC, much more than the individual member states, has played it pretty well.
What is it with you right wingers and this idea that wars must be won by muscly hetero Russian types with scowls on their faces rather than those woke westerners and ladies who wear suits? It’s all over American alt-right social media and evidently exists here too.
It was Boris who gave Zelensky the weapons to hold Putin off at the initial invasion, not the EU.
The biggest military aid to the Ukranians since the war began has come from the US, not the EU.
Outer sphere EU nations like Poland have also been tougher on Putin than France and Germany
Oh give me a break. Have you actually considered what powers the European Commission has and what it’s been able to achieve, including a more comprehensive sanctions regime than anyone expected and the near total elimination of Russian hydrocarbons from the EU? And then considered what the role of the NATO Secretary general actually involves (hint, like the EC president it doesn’t include supplying weapons)? Do you seriously think Boris would do a good job in that overwhelmingly diplomatic post?
Probably he would, yes, he did well on the international sphere consistently. But does it matter?
Its absurd the amount people want to take their own national petty politics and big it up on the international stage where is not frigging relevant.
What do David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer have in common? They've all handled the situation in Ukraine well. Besides the abberation of Jeremy Corbyn, who is sui generis, this isn't a Labour or Tory issue - the UK has rallied behind Ukraine consistently now since 2014 at the very least.
And the EU and Germany and France have done well too since the 2022 invasion as well.
Some things are bigger than petty party politics. The UK has done well helping Ukraine. So has the EU. So has America. So have many international allies and partners.
Labour isn't the enemy when it comes to Ukraine, nor are the Conservatives, nor is the EU or anyone else. There's only one villain in this piece. Russia as led by Vladimir Putin, and anyone who supports them or excuses them. That is it.
Agree with most of what you said, but I do think it's a bad idea to appoint anyone who has spent their career insulting and antagonising leaders of important NATO countries. That criterion would exclude a number of people from contention in my mind, of which Boris is but one.
I could explain how Boris's relationship with the leaders of France and Turkey could be problematic, but actually there's another country in this mix that's easy to miss but once you think about it you realise how unsuitable a candidate Boris would be: the United Kingdom.
Boris has been commendable on Ukraine, but this job is about more than just that.
I also agree with most of what he said despite the fact it was a reply to me. The original post that riled me was an incredibly (and actually somewhat uncharacteristically for HYUFD) 4-Chan style comment along the lines of “ooh I bet Putin will be quaking in his boots at UVDL” as if the role of the NATO Secretary general is to beat an oiled-up Putin in a bare chested cage fight rather than to be a very good diplomat able to get consensus on difficult issues like persuading Turkey to admit Sweden into the alliance.
I have to say I'm a little uncomfortable with Nigel Farage's personal financial affairs being dragged into the public domain. He's no longer an MEP or an elected official of any kind and apart from appearing on right-wing media, I don't actually know why he's still a person of interest in politics.
Nonetheless, he is still entitled to the same personal privacy as the rest of us.
Speaking of privacy, we have had the Conservative candidate's leaflet in the Wall End by-election. He's a "businessman" (whatever that means) and while his diagnosis of the main issue in the area is valid - anti social behaviour and a fear of crime, his solution seems to be CCTV on every street corner. I'm not quite sure who is going to pay for that nor am I entirely certain being observed from every street corner is quite what we want from a "free society".
Apparently he's also going to set the police "goals" - not quite sure what that means - along with the usual blether of more Police. I'm not sure he knows who pays for the Police in London or who will fund the training of new officers but these are just details.
It's a well-produced leaflet - doesn't mention Rishi Sunak and barely says the word "Conservative". As I've said elsewhere, claiming to be the local candidate may work in rural Shropshire - less convinced it has the same cadence in East London.
He's entitled to privacy about his banking arrangements. However. He's the one banging on about them to anyone who'll listen.
His arrangements should be private, but he chose to waive that.
And having waived it, its pretty hilarious the problem isn't that he's being unpersoned as claimed, just that he's not got enough money to be banking with Coutts instead of Natwest.
Another nugget from my recent reading. The soldiers of the Union were often as brutally racist as the Confederates
eg They would "liberate" a Southern Plantation and immediately rape all the young, attractive, female slaves. Then they'd set the slaves to work, cooking, cleaning, farming - for no money. So life got no better for slaves at all, unless you could get away, and for the women slaves it got worse
I just got an email inviting me to invest in What 3 Words.
avoid.like.plague
I actually made that call last weekend: 999, "Police", "Mountain Rescue please".
Provided grid reference with OS Locate app (download it now!). Then received a text message from Police Scotland that pinged my phone and sent the same grid reference again to Mountain Rescue.
They hate W3W. Rarely get all three of the words, particularly over a radio, and have to guess. Almost always used by people who only have a vague idea of what mountain they are on, so impossible to scan a W3W map and work it out.
Anyway, top tip I learnt. If very windy, chuck your jacket over your head so you can get your message across. Simple, but I didn't think of it till the MR guy asked me too. Also, bivvy bags are great.
No, two different issues here. There's no money in it but it's still a brilliant idea because it is inherently error correcting. A word can only be confused with one or two other words, a 6 digit map ref is no more or less likely than any other 6 digit number.
If you are calling out mountain rescue in this weather, either you had really bad luck or you are not much of an oracle on safety issues anyway
May not have been for himself. I've called for assistance on mountains twice, neither time for me.
(Both old fashioned grid references from a paper map)
I've never had to call out mountain rescue, but I have once had to persuade someone they were on the wrong hill, and heading in totally the wrong direction. They did not want to believe me, despite my GPS and the landmarks I was pointing out.
Important lessons for us all from that, perhaps. There are times we believe we're right, even when all the evidence says otherwise.
I think there's a bit in Barry Pilton's 'One Man and his Bog, where he describes his first night on walking the Pennine Way. "I worked out how to use my compass, and as the sun set in the north..."
The other one is to take it all seriously. Even when it seems like a walk i the park
I went out for all day walk in the Cotswolds - cross country over footpaths. By the end of it, I given away water to 2 different utterly exhausted people.
Note - flip flops are the least useful form of footwear for walking. At least unless your feet are actually made of shoes leather. I had some plasters in my usual walking bag - purely by accident. They helped one of the people, as well.
I went up Scafell Pike last May and everything I read about it was all "the weather closes in quickly" etc. etc.
What they didn't say was "very occasionally, it's a brilliant sunny day, don't forget sun cream".
Last time I was on Pen y Fan, en route to a friend's party in a cottage near by, we camped on the high hills, and woke in the sun to see the sea of mist in the valley below, and walked along the ridge to Pen y Fan where there was a young lady with a bikini, woolly socks, and - sensibly - boots standing on the trig point. But on other occasions ... you'd be lucky to see the trig point.
Oh, there's always a young lady in a bikini, woolly socks and boots at the trig point. Most people just don't notice due to the mist/rain reducing visibility
I just got an email inviting me to invest in What 3 Words.
avoid.like.plague
I actually made that call last weekend: 999, "Police", "Mountain Rescue please".
Provided grid reference with OS Locate app (download it now!). Then received a text message from Police Scotland that pinged my phone and sent the same grid reference again to Mountain Rescue.
They hate W3W. Rarely get all three of the words, particularly over a radio, and have to guess. Almost always used by people who only have a vague idea of what mountain they are on, so impossible to scan a W3W map and work it out.
Anyway, top tip I learnt. If very windy, chuck your jacket over your head so you can get your message across. Simple, but I didn't think of it till the MR guy asked me too. Also, bivvy bags are great.
No, two different issues here. There's no money in it but it's still a brilliant idea because it is inherently error correcting. A word can only be confused with one or two other words, a 6 digit map ref is no more or less likely than any other 6 digit number.
If you are calling out mountain rescue in this weather, either you had really bad luck or you are not much of an oracle on safety issues anyway
May not have been for himself. I've called for assistance on mountains twice, neither time for me.
(Both old fashioned grid references from a paper map)
I've never had to call out mountain rescue, but I have once had to persuade someone they were on the wrong hill, and heading in totally the wrong direction. They did not want to believe me, despite my GPS and the landmarks I was pointing out.
Important lessons for us all from that, perhaps. There are times we believe we're right, even when all the evidence says otherwise.
I think there's a bit in Barry Pilton's 'One Man and his Bog, where he describes his first night on walking the Pennine Way. "I worked out how to use my compass, and as the sun set in the north..."
The other one is to take it all seriously. Even when it seems like a walk i the park
I went out for all day walk in the Cotswolds - cross country over footpaths. By the end of it, I given away water to 2 different utterly exhausted people.
Note - flip flops are the least useful form of footwear for walking. At least unless your feet are actually made of shoes leather. I had some plasters in my usual walking bag - purely by accident. They helped one of the people, as well.
I went up Scafell Pike last May and everything I read about it was all "the weather closes in quickly" etc. etc.
What they didn't say was "very occasionally, it's a brilliant sunny day, don't forget sun cream".
Last time I was on Pen y Fan, en route to a friend's party in a cottage near by, we camped on the high hills, and woke in the sun to see the sea of mist in the valley below, and walked along the ridge to Pen y Fan where there was a young lady with a bikini, woolly socks, and - sensibly - boots standing on the trig point. But on other occasions ... you'd be lucky to see the trig point.
Oh, there's always a young lady in a bikini, woolly socks and boots at the trig point. Most people just don't notice due to the mist/rain reducing visibility
A deal has been reached for Ursula von der Leyen to become the next Nato Secretary General and the first woman to head the alliance, The National understands.
The year-long extension of incumbent Jens Stoltenberg’s tenure has been arranged so Ms von der Leyen can finish her five-year term as President of the European Commission in 2024, a Nato insider has said.
As predicted by pb's own @Dura_Ace iirc (or at least, he noted the strange coincidence of JS's extension and UvdL becoming available).
A German aristocrat being parachuted into a job despite little personal achievement or democratic mandate in her history. I suppose it isn't quite as egregious as how she got the EU job. There she was given it in a backroom deal over the rules that got Juncker the job.
She was Germany's defence minister and has won as many elections as Rishi Sunak. There was no rule forcing member states to nominate ... let's check... Manfred Weber (!) as President of the Commission, for the very good reason that the national governments never ceded their rights enjoyed under law.
Hang on a minute. At the time when every major UK party protested to Juncker, we were told that it didn't matter he was a drunken muppet... he was supposedly the duly elected Spitzenkandidat, so the issue couldn't be revisited.
Then of course the next election Germany didn't like the Spitzenkandidat so they quickly switched him out. The contrast was such clear example of how the EU was always one rule for the UK and a different one for France/Germany.
So what. Given the choice the UK chose a bloke who drove around a large town during lockdown BECAUSE, not IN SPITE OF, the fact that he didn't think he could see well enough to drive. Jump up and down about that instead of crocodile tears for the larger neighbour.
This is whataboutism of the highest order. You can't defend the obvious hypocrisy of the EU system of choosing its head of governmemt so you try to distract with some random UK civil servant.
You didn't like Juncker - and by that, I mean not "everyone", but specifically you right-wing Tories. Then when you guys got the whip hand at home, you appointed Pound-Shop Peter Thiel with a sideline in cavorting with Russia. I think it's a decently representative case of motes and beams.
Another nugget from my recent reading. The soldiers of the Union were often as brutally racist as the Confederates
eg They would "liberate" a Southern Plantation and immediately rape all the young, attractive, female slaves. Then they'd set the slaves to work, cooking, cleaning, farming - for no money. So life got no better for slaves at all, unless you could get away, and for the women slaves it got worse
I just got an email inviting me to invest in What 3 Words.
avoid.like.plague
Seriously though.
what3words has raised £100m+ so far.
In their last published accounts, they lost £43m on turnover of £444,000. Turnover was actually down on the previous year. Their chief commercial officer is by all accounts amazing and talks the talk (I know several people who've worked with her) but it doesn't alter the fact there's no path to profitability in sight.
To call w3w a basketcase would be unfair to Guatemalan artisan basket-weavers, who at least have a viable business model.
Rishi Sunak is 43, there is zero chance he gives a shit about Imperial measurements. So as a sign of desperation it is pretty striking.
Most people use imperial measurements for height, weight, long distances.
This was the predictable missing-the-point response. I use them for my height and weight, and turns out I don't need any government action to do so.
With government policies we should always ask:
i) what problem is the problem trying to be fixed? ii) is it actually a problem? iii) does the proposal actually address that problem? iv) does it have any other negative effects?
You tell me, what problem is being fixed by 'restoring' imperial measurements?
As far as I know you will not get arrested for saying you are 5ft 8 inches, and no one is harmed if they should see reference to 2.2 litres on a milk container.
Are we saying people are too confused after 40 years? What an insulting thing to say.
Are they simply going to not 'punish' people who sell sausages only by the pound with no reference to kilos? Fine, no harm done - but what benefit is there?
To announce things like this they must think it a winner. Why?
This would be bonkers. I'm in my mid-50s and basically use metric for everything except distance, and that's only because road signs persist in showing miles. I buy pints in a pub because that's the quantity they sell beer in; if it was 50cl or 60cl I really wouldn't care. I do know my height in imperial because that's what older people understood when I reached my full height. I have to stop and think to know how many ounces in a pound or pounds in a stone. I know a hundredweight isn't 100lb despite the name and I'm glad I don't have to know how much it actually is. Who, under 70, cares about any of this?
I have zero ideas how many pounds are in a stone, or how much an ounce is. Sometimes someone will mention those units and I just nod vaguely as if they a character from a deranged Chaucer story.
"Three and a half kettles of water with a quarter spludgeon of butter you say? And a furlong of salt? Sounds good!"
The measurement that really confuses me is the cup in American recipes. We have several sizes of cups in our cupboard. Which one should I use?
A "cup" in American cooking is a unit of volume. Half a US pint, or 8 fluid ounces.
I just got an email inviting me to invest in What 3 Words.
avoid.like.plague
I actually made that call last weekend: 999, "Police", "Mountain Rescue please".
Provided grid reference with OS Locate app (download it now!). Then received a text message from Police Scotland that pinged my phone and sent the same grid reference again to Mountain Rescue.
They hate W3W. Rarely get all three of the words, particularly over a radio, and have to guess. Almost always used by people who only have a vague idea of what mountain they are on, so impossible to scan a W3W map and work it out.
Anyway, top tip I learnt. If very windy, chuck your jacket over your head so you can get your message across. Simple, but I didn't think of it till the MR guy asked me too. Also, bivvy bags are great.
No, two different issues here. There's no money in it but it's still a brilliant idea because it is inherently error correcting. A word can only be confused with one or two other words, a 6 digit map ref is no more or less likely than any other 6 digit number.
If you are calling out mountain rescue in this weather, either you had really bad luck or you are not much of an oracle on safety issues anyway
May not have been for himself. I've called for assistance on mountains twice, neither time for me.
(Both old fashioned grid references from a paper map)
I've never had to call out mountain rescue, but I have once had to persuade someone they were on the wrong hill, and heading in totally the wrong direction. They did not want to believe me, despite my GPS and the landmarks I was pointing out.
Important lessons for us all from that, perhaps. There are times we believe we're right, even when all the evidence says otherwise.
I think there's a bit in Barry Pilton's 'One Man and his Bog, where he describes his first night on walking the Pennine Way. "I worked out how to use my compass, and as the sun set in the north..."
The other one is to take it all seriously. Even when it seems like a walk i the park
I went out for all day walk in the Cotswolds - cross country over footpaths. By the end of it, I given away water to 2 different utterly exhausted people.
Note - flip flops are the least useful form of footwear for walking. At least unless your feet are actually made of shoes leather. I had some plasters in my usual walking bag - purely by accident. They helped one of the people, as well.
I went up Scafell Pike last May and everything I read about it was all "the weather closes in quickly" etc. etc.
What they didn't say was "very occasionally, it's a brilliant sunny day, don't forget sun cream".
Last time I was on Pen y Fan, en route to a friend's party in a cottage near by, we camped on the high hills, and woke in the sun to see the sea of mist in the valley below, and walked along the ridge to Pen y Fan where there was a young lady with a bikini, woolly socks, and - sensibly - boots standing on the trig point. But on other occasions ... you'd be lucky to see the trig point.
Oh, there's always a young lady in a bikini, woolly socks and boots at the trig point. Most people just don't notice due to the mist/rain reducing visibility
In old mountaineering myth, I believe the young lady was always Swedish, and accompanied by the rest of her hockey team.
Probably best that such things are lost in the mists of time now.
A deal has been reached for Ursula von der Leyen to become the next Nato Secretary General and the first woman to head the alliance, The National understands.
The year-long extension of incumbent Jens Stoltenberg’s tenure has been arranged so Ms von der Leyen can finish her five-year term as President of the European Commission in 2024, a Nato insider has said.
As predicted by pb's own @Dura_Ace iirc (or at least, he noted the strange coincidence of JS's extension and UvdL becoming available).
A German aristocrat being parachuted into a job despite little personal achievement or democratic mandate in her history. I suppose it isn't quite as egregious as how she got the EU job. There she was given it in a backroom deal over the rules that got Juncker the job.
She was Germany's defence minister and has won as many elections as Rishi Sunak. There was no rule forcing member states to nominate ... let's check... Manfred Weber (!) as President of the Commission, for the very good reason that the national governments never ceded their rights enjoyed under law.
Hang on a minute. At the time when every major UK party protested to Juncker, we were told that it didn't matter he was a drunken muppet... he was supposedly the duly elected Spitzenkandidat, so the issue couldn't be revisited.
Then of course the next election Germany didn't like the Spitzenkandidat so they quickly switched him out. The contrast was such clear example of how the EU was always one rule for the UK and a different one for France/Germany.
So what. Given the choice the UK chose a bloke who drove around a large town during lockdown BECAUSE, not IN SPITE OF, the fact that he didn't think he could see well enough to drive. Jump up and down about that instead of crocodile tears for the larger neighbour.
This is whataboutism of the highest order. You can't defend the obvious hypocrisy of the EU system of choosing its head of governmemt so you try to distract with some random UK civil servant.
You didn't like Juncker - and by that, I mean not "everyone", but specifically you right-wing Tories. Then when you guys got the whip hand at home, you appointed Pound-Shop Peter Thiel with a sideline in cavorting with Russia. I think it's a decently representative case of motes and beams.
You don't have to be a right-wing Tory to despise Juncker, surely? The man was (is) a truly repellant excuse for a human being, ran Luxembourg as a tax haven for all sorts of dodgy multinationals, practised cronyism on a scale that would have made Nicky Morgan blink and approximately as democratic in his behaviour as Trump - arguably, less so given AFAIK Trump was never accused of using the Secret Service to tap Biden's phone.
Two weeks ago, we were sweltering, this evening in London it's cold and wet - that's the British summer for you. In a strange way, I wouldn't like to lose it if the alternative were some long Mediterranean heat-fest for two months.
Some will disagree but we are a temperate people used to a temperate climate.
Interesting to read a rather different political analysis from one @Peck this morning who, despite the rather condescending and patronising style, did try at least to look at politics in a different way.
Clearly a Conservative supporter, however, the juxtaposition of immigration vs health told the story. The diagnosis from strong from the right side of the fence but the misconceptions of the left were all too apparent.
I suspect those who think the next election will be about "the economy, stupid" will be right as often as those who say we won't have a White Christmas. Politics is complex, nuanced, emotional and often illogical - it comes down to perceptions, experiences and feelings which are quantifiable only to a point.
The Conservatives are in trouble because of a) the way they have comported themselves, individually and collectively, while in Government and b) because if you ask two cliched questions, what are the answers? Cliche question one is "what have the Conservatives ever done for us?" and cliche question two " why should I vote Conservative next time?".
I'm also often told if you're part of the problem you can't be part of the solution - if you think the Conservatives have, since 2010, failed to address key problems, why would you assume 2024-29 would be any better or different? Labour aren't perfect, we know, but at least they want to try something - the Conservatives look and sound not so much bankrupt but empty and exhausted.
The fact we have these "New Conservatives" thrashing around (and being allowed to) shows the beginnings of the internal disintegration - as collective discipline erodes, so does the ability to govern.
A deal has been reached for Ursula von der Leyen to become the next Nato Secretary General and the first woman to head the alliance, The National understands.
The year-long extension of incumbent Jens Stoltenberg’s tenure has been arranged so Ms von der Leyen can finish her five-year term as President of the European Commission in 2024, a Nato insider has said.
As predicted by pb's own @Dura_Ace iirc (or at least, he noted the strange coincidence of JS's extension and UvdL becoming available).
I am sure Putin is quaking in his boots at von der Leyen as Nato Secretary General
She’s been a hell of a lot more effective at strategy in this war than Vlad has. The EC, much more than the individual member states, has played it pretty well.
What is it with you right wingers and this idea that wars must be won by muscly hetero Russian types with scowls on their faces rather than those woke westerners and ladies who wear suits? It’s all over American alt-right social media and evidently exists here too.
It was Boris who gave Zelensky the weapons to hold Putin off at the initial invasion, not the EU.
The biggest military aid to the Ukranians since the war began has come from the US, not the EU.
Outer sphere EU nations like Poland have also been tougher on Putin than France and Germany
Oh give me a break. Have you actually considered what powers the European Commission has and what it’s been able to achieve, including a more comprehensive sanctions regime than anyone expected and the near total elimination of Russian hydrocarbons from the EU? And then considered what the role of the NATO Secretary general actually involves (hint, like the EC president it doesn’t include supplying weapons)? Do you seriously think Boris would do a good job in that overwhelmingly diplomatic post?
Probably he would, yes, he did well on the international sphere consistently. But does it matter?
Its absurd the amount people want to take their own national petty politics and big it up on the international stage where is not frigging relevant.
What do David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer have in common? They've all handled the situation in Ukraine well. Besides the abberation of Jeremy Corbyn, who is sui generis, this isn't a Labour or Tory issue - the UK has rallied behind Ukraine consistently now since 2014 at the very least.
And the EU and Germany and France have done well too since the 2022 invasion as well.
Some things are bigger than petty party politics. The UK has done well helping Ukraine. So has the EU. So has America. So have many international allies and partners.
Labour isn't the enemy when it comes to Ukraine, nor are the Conservatives, nor is the EU or anyone else. There's only one villain in this piece. Russia as led by Vladimir Putin, and anyone who supports them or excuses them. That is it.
Agree with most of what you said, but I do think it's a bad idea to appoint anyone who has spent their career insulting and antagonising leaders of important NATO countries. That criterion would exclude a number of people from contention in my mind, of which Boris is but one.
I could explain how Boris's relationship with the leaders of France and Turkey could be problematic, but actually there's another country in this mix that's easy to miss but once you think about it you realise how unsuitable a candidate Boris would be: the United Kingdom.
Boris has been commendable on Ukraine, but this job is about more than just that.
I also agree with most of what he said despite the fact it was a reply to me. The original post that riled me was an incredibly (and actually somewhat uncharacteristically for HYUFD) 4-Chan style comment along the lines of “ooh I bet Putin will be quaking in his boots at UVDL” as if the role of the NATO Secretary general is to beat an oiled-up Putin in a bare chested cage fight rather than to be a very good diplomat able to get consensus on difficult issues like persuading Turkey to admit Sweden into the alliance.
Watching Sunak at the Liaison Committee man he's going to be absolutely destroyed during a general election campaign and that's before lawyer Starmer tears him a new one.,
The big picture is a simple one. Two (I think) uncontroversial observations:
1 Rushi Sunak is horribly overpromoted. He might have been a decent PM ten years down the line, but right now, he isn't up to the job.
2 There is nobody in the Conservative Party who could do better than he is doing.
Therefore, Rishi, the Conservatives and the country face 12-18 months of painful stasis before the government finally falls over the cliff.
Short of a Simply Enormous Event, that's it, isn't it?
I spoke to a Brexiteer the other day, he reckons the Tories are out of power until they embrace Rejoin.
A sort of Nixon goes to China moment*.
Ironically the person he thinks who could pull this off is the person he rather despises , one Boris Johnson.
*I did point out joining the EC/EU has been standard Tory orthodoxy for most of the last 70 years. Brexit was the Nixon goes to China moment.
If the Tories embraced Rejoin they would cease to be the main party of the right in the UK, RefUK under a newly returned Farage would replace them as the main right of centre party and opposition to Labour.
Even Labour wouldn't embrace Rejoin now because of the redwall, at most they would consider EEA if they win and are then re elected.
The only UK wide party whose voter coalition would allow them to consider Rejoin are the LDs you vote for
The Tories are on course for ceasing to be the main party of the right if they embrace the blood and soil nationalism of the New Tories.
No they aren't, they are still about 25-30% with another 5-10% voting Reform.
Embrace Rejoin and they would collapse to 10% or less, probably fall to even fewer seats than the SNP and LDs under FPTP, Reform would get 30-35% and become the main opposition to Starmer's Labour government
It will be interesting to see which way the Tories go after the coming defeat.
Ron De Santis is banning books and attacking Disney for the crime of being in the 21st century. And the leading Tory in leadership betting is happy to stand right beside him declaring herself at one with all that agenda. In the history of the Conservative Party, have they ever been so in bed with nonsense coming out of the US right wing, as might be about to happen?
Loopyness on Social media was never such a danger to UK politics in the past was it? Like what it’s doing to the republicans, it can turn the UKs default party of government into a factionally riven, out of touch party no longer so many’s choice for strong government.
But there’s more factions than that. Truss won the last proper leadership election because members preferred her slash and burn approach to taxation and government spending. And despite Truss leading it, it’s still a faction with traction - especially as the current faction, Hunt and Sunak’s carefully hands off management of UK decline, won’t be so popular after the defeat.
And then there’s the Boris faction, that’s not simply about Boris but all the embrace the freedoms of Brexit so everyone in UK is high skilled and high payed arguments of frosty the no man, and others like group happy to sign their names on the B Ark manifest yesterday with pull up drawbridge to make Britain Great Again, a faction supported by every daily telegraph columnist, editorial, as well as the Mail and Express. How influential will this faction be post election? And just how damaging will it be to getting Tories back to centre ground and winning again?
TSE is right, being the Brexit Party, the enablers of brexit, leaving us with a rock hard brexit not even a softer one, is a game changer for the Tories in UK politics. A quick revival, or even any revival using current name and branding, and we got Brexit done logo, might be hard work.
Down to 100 to 150 MPs and ridden by factional infighting and policies they can’t rally behind, will the Tories enjoy government limousines ever again?
You have to think that a party like the Conservatives will be in government again eventually. The relevant questions ought to be when and after what compromises?
And yet...
Every other time a party has really gone off the reservation in recent years (Labour under Foot or Corbyn, Conservatives under IDS) there has been enough ballast to stop it completely disconnecting from reality, and enough of a remnant (since it's been Bible Reference Day on PB) for the party to regrow in an electorally useful way.
This time... I'm not so sure. I want to think that the Conservative Wet tradition can regrow, but I fear that it's proved to be just too wet. My fear is that the triumph of Suella Braverman over the harmless Flick Drummond in the Battle for Fareham is a sign of where the Conservative Party is. And by the time it realises it needs saving, there won't be much left to save.
Watching Sunak at the Liaison Committee man he's going to be absolutely destroyed during a general election campaign and that's before lawyer Starmer tears him a new one.,
The big picture is a simple one. Two (I think) uncontroversial observations:
1 Rushi Sunak is horribly overpromoted. He might have been a decent PM ten years down the line, but right now, he isn't up to the job.
2 There is nobody in the Conservative Party who could do better than he is doing.
Therefore, Rishi, the Conservatives and the country face 12-18 months of painful stasis before the government finally falls over the cliff.
Short of a Simply Enormous Event, that's it, isn't it?
I spoke to a Brexiteer the other day, he reckons the Tories are out of power until they embrace Rejoin.
A sort of Nixon goes to China moment*.
Ironically the person he thinks who could pull this off is the person he rather despises , one Boris Johnson.
*I did point out joining the EC/EU has been standard Tory orthodoxy for most of the last 70 years. Brexit was the Nixon goes to China moment.
If the Tories embraced Rejoin they would cease to be the main party of the right in the UK, RefUK under a newly returned Farage would replace them as the main right of centre party and opposition to Labour.
Even Labour wouldn't embrace Rejoin now because of the redwall, at most they would consider EEA if they win and are then re elected.
The only UK wide party whose voter coalition would allow them to consider Rejoin are the LDs you vote for
The Tories are on course for ceasing to be the main party of the right if they embrace the blood and soil nationalism of the New Tories.
No they aren't, they are still about 25-30% with another 5-10% voting Reform.
Embrace Rejoin and they would collapse to 10% or less, probably fall to even fewer seats than the SNP and LDs under FPTP, Reform would get 30-35% and become the main opposition to Starmer's Labour government
I just can’t envisage any scenario where Reform would get 30-35%. Do you have any evidence for your assertion?
He loves Reform.
That is it.
They are a pathetic joke of a party, only HYUFD takes them seriously.
HYUFD can't imaging people continuing to follow a Conservative government if they changed stance on the EU, despite him having done exactly that.
76% of current Conservative voters voted Leave, they would not stick with a party that pushed Rejoin.
Watching Sunak at the Liaison Committee man he's going to be absolutely destroyed during a general election campaign and that's before lawyer Starmer tears him a new one.,
The big picture is a simple one. Two (I think) uncontroversial observations:
1 Rushi Sunak is horribly overpromoted. He might have been a decent PM ten years down the line, but right now, he isn't up to the job.
2 There is nobody in the Conservative Party who could do better than he is doing.
Therefore, Rishi, the Conservatives and the country face 12-18 months of painful stasis before the government finally falls over the cliff.
Short of a Simply Enormous Event, that's it, isn't it?
I spoke to a Brexiteer the other day, he reckons the Tories are out of power until they embrace Rejoin.
A sort of Nixon goes to China moment*.
Ironically the person he thinks who could pull this off is the person he rather despises , one Boris Johnson.
*I did point out joining the EC/EU has been standard Tory orthodoxy for most of the last 70 years. Brexit was the Nixon goes to China moment.
I am firmly of the opinion that, at some point during the next Labour decade, a Tory leadership contender will run on a Rejoin platform. And do surprisingly well. He/she probably isn't in government yet, and maybe not in Parliament.
To get a decade in power Labour will have to find a solution to the doctors 35% pay demand.
Don't pay it and get continuous NHS strikes, pay it and get equivalent pay demands from the rest of the public sector.
Perhaps they could pay everyone by taxing property but that will create other sets of people angry at losing out.
Juggling the different groups isn't going to be easy especially as those who gain forget quicker than those who lose out.
Paying something in between instead of paying the same people agency fees of £2k+ per shift to cover themselves striking will save money, improve retention and productivity.
What's something in between ?
20% ? 25% ? 30% ?
That demand for 35% is likely to increase with a Labour government.
Whatever the doctors are given will become the minimum demand for the rest of the public sector.
And why not - if the high paid get a big pay rise the low paid deserve the same.
Less than those numbers, at least per year. And anything over inflation should be for junior doctors (£40-60k) rather than the higher paid more experienced doctors who might be earning £100k+.
It would be better if we moved to make doctor pay significantly flatter over their careers rather than quite so back loaded, especially with long degrees and higher student debt, tax and house prices.
But regardless, paying regularly someone £2k to cover a single shift of a striking worker (possibly themself!) because we are not willing to give a £5k annual pay rise makes absolutely zero mathematical sense. I don't quite get why people think it saves us any taxpayer money.
Why would the doctors accept less than even 20% ?
It would be an admittance that their initial demands were based upon greed and lies and that all the damage they've done by striking was unnecessary.
As to the current costs well doesn't that apply to every dispute ? But the cost of giving way is in the further demands it prompts. In this case whatever the doctors get will be the immediate demand for the rest of the public sector.
The campaign for pay restoration is not expecting 35% in a single year, and our negotiators are not insisting on that.
What we do want is for the independence of the payload to be restored and abided by, and for staff retention and salaries in comparable fields to be taken into account.
Our position has worsened considerably since the GFC in comparison to UK others:
Another nugget from my recent reading. The soldiers of the Union were often as brutally racist as the Confederates
eg They would "liberate" a Southern Plantation and immediately rape all the young, attractive, female slaves. Then they'd set the slaves to work, cooking, cleaning, farming - for no money. So life got no better for slaves at all, unless you could get away, and for the women slaves it got worse
Have you apologised for spreading fake news about the French riots?
Was one of the photos I resnapped of dubious origin?
Desole, if so. Also: pfff!
Several in fact.
The sniper most egregiously.
So many PBers were shocked that you fell for obvious bullshit.
Others were of course not in the slightest bit shocked.
Others may need their irony meters calibrating.
Difficult to tell, there are quite a few credulous PBers on the UFOs are REAL/upside of Truss/upside of Putin/Wokies under the divan bullshit train. Some PB sharp minds were even convinced that Vlad was a goner a couple of weeks ago.
Watching Sunak at the Liaison Committee man he's going to be absolutely destroyed during a general election campaign and that's before lawyer Starmer tears him a new one.,
The big picture is a simple one. Two (I think) uncontroversial observations:
1 Rushi Sunak is horribly overpromoted. He might have been a decent PM ten years down the line, but right now, he isn't up to the job.
2 There is nobody in the Conservative Party who could do better than he is doing.
Therefore, Rishi, the Conservatives and the country face 12-18 months of painful stasis before the government finally falls over the cliff.
Short of a Simply Enormous Event, that's it, isn't it?
I spoke to a Brexiteer the other day, he reckons the Tories are out of power until they embrace Rejoin.
A sort of Nixon goes to China moment*.
Ironically the person he thinks who could pull this off is the person he rather despises , one Boris Johnson.
*I did point out joining the EC/EU has been standard Tory orthodoxy for most of the last 70 years. Brexit was the Nixon goes to China moment.
If the Tories embraced Rejoin they would cease to be the main party of the right in the UK, RefUK under a newly returned Farage would replace them as the main right of centre party and opposition to Labour.
Even Labour wouldn't embrace Rejoin now because of the redwall, at most they would consider EEA if they win and are then re elected.
The only UK wide party whose voter coalition would allow them to consider Rejoin are the LDs you vote for
The Tories are on course for ceasing to be the main party of the right if they embrace the blood and soil nationalism of the New Tories.
No they aren't, they are still about 25-30% with another 5-10% voting Reform.
Embrace Rejoin and they would collapse to 10% or less, probably fall to even fewer seats than the SNP and LDs under FPTP, Reform would get 30-35% and become the main opposition to Starmer's Labour government
I just can’t envisage any scenario where Reform would get 30-35%. Do you have any evidence for your assertion?
He loves Reform.
That is it.
They are a pathetic joke of a party, only HYUFD takes them seriously.
HYUFD can't imaging people continuing to follow a Conservative government if they changed stance on the EU, despite him having done exactly that.
76% of current Conservative voters voted Leave, they would not stick with a party that pushed Rejoin.
I think no one expects the next Tory leader to be a Rejoiner, I agree with you that the party is much more likely to go with a core vote right-wing culture warrior.
It is when the Tories actually want to be elected again after a generation in the wilderness that it will be so.
Watching Sunak at the Liaison Committee man he's going to be absolutely destroyed during a general election campaign and that's before lawyer Starmer tears him a new one.,
The big picture is a simple one. Two (I think) uncontroversial observations:
1 Rushi Sunak is horribly overpromoted. He might have been a decent PM ten years down the line, but right now, he isn't up to the job.
2 There is nobody in the Conservative Party who could do better than he is doing.
Therefore, Rishi, the Conservatives and the country face 12-18 months of painful stasis before the government finally falls over the cliff.
Short of a Simply Enormous Event, that's it, isn't it?
I spoke to a Brexiteer the other day, he reckons the Tories are out of power until they embrace Rejoin.
A sort of Nixon goes to China moment*.
Ironically the person he thinks who could pull this off is the person he rather despises , one Boris Johnson.
*I did point out joining the EC/EU has been standard Tory orthodoxy for most of the last 70 years. Brexit was the Nixon goes to China moment.
If the Tories embraced Rejoin they would cease to be the main party of the right in the UK, RefUK under a newly returned Farage would replace them as the main right of centre party and opposition to Labour.
Even Labour wouldn't embrace Rejoin now because of the redwall, at most they would consider EEA if they win and are then re elected.
The only UK wide party whose voter coalition would allow them to consider Rejoin are the LDs you vote for
The Tories are on course for ceasing to be the main party of the right if they embrace the blood and soil nationalism of the New Tories.
No they aren't, they are still about 25-30% with another 5-10% voting Reform.
Embrace Rejoin and they would collapse to 10% or less, probably fall to even fewer seats than the SNP and LDs under FPTP, Reform would get 30-35% and become the main opposition to Starmer's Labour government
It will be interesting to see which way the Tories go after the coming defeat.
Ron De Santis is banning books and attacking Disney for the crime of being in the 21st century. And the leading Tory in leadership betting is happy to stand right beside him declaring herself at one with all that agenda. In the history of the Conservative Party, have they ever been so in bed with nonsense coming out of the US right wing, as might be about to happen?
Loopyness on Social media was never such a danger to UK politics in the past was it? Like what it’s doing to the republicans, it can turn the UKs default party of government into a factionally riven, out of touch party no longer so many’s choice for strong government.
But there’s more factions than that. Truss won the last proper leadership election because members preferred her slash and burn approach to taxation and government spending. And despite Truss leading it, it’s still a faction with traction - especially as the current faction, Hunt and Sunak’s carefully hands off management of UK decline, won’t be so popular after the defeat.
And then there’s the Boris faction, that’s not simply about Boris but all the embrace the freedoms of Brexit so everyone in UK is high skilled and high payed arguments of frosty the no man, and others like group happy to sign their names on the B Ark manifest yesterday with pull up drawbridge to make Britain Great Again, a faction supported by every daily telegraph columnist, editorial, as well as the Mail and Express. How influential will this faction be post election? And just how damaging will it be to getting Tories back to centre ground and winning again?
TSE is right, being the Brexit Party, the enablers of brexit, leaving us with a rock hard brexit not even a softer one, is a game changer for the Tories in UK politics. A quick revival, or even any revival using current name and branding, and we got Brexit done logo, might be hard work.
Down to 100 to 150 MPs and ridden by factional infighting and policies they can’t rally behind, will the Tories enjoy government limousines ever again?
Even if the hard right took over the Tories, if a Labour government presides over high inflation, continued high interest rates, strikes and increased taxes the Tory opposition would soon be up in the polls again.
It is often forgotten even Michael Foot had poll leads in the early 1980s as the Thatcher government presided over high unemployment. Thatcher herself was initially thought unelectable and too rightwing until the strikes and high inflation and high taxes of the Wilson and Callaghan governments of the late 1970s.
A poor economy can make any opposition potentially electable
A deal has been reached for Ursula von der Leyen to become the next Nato Secretary General and the first woman to head the alliance, The National understands.
The year-long extension of incumbent Jens Stoltenberg’s tenure has been arranged so Ms von der Leyen can finish her five-year term as President of the European Commission in 2024, a Nato insider has said.
As predicted by pb's own @Dura_Ace iirc (or at least, he noted the strange coincidence of JS's extension and UvdL becoming available).
A German aristocrat being parachuted into a job despite little personal achievement or democratic mandate in her history. I suppose it isn't quite as egregious as how she got the EU job. There she was given it in a backroom deal over the rules that got Juncker the job.
She was Germany's defence minister and has won as many elections as Rishi Sunak. There was no rule forcing member states to nominate ... let's check... Manfred Weber (!) as President of the Commission, for the very good reason that the national governments never ceded their rights enjoyed under law.
Hang on a minute. At the time when every major UK party protested to Juncker, we were told that it didn't matter he was a drunken muppet... he was supposedly the duly elected Spitzenkandidat, so the issue couldn't be revisited.
Then of course the next election Germany didn't like the Spitzenkandidat so they quickly switched him out. The contrast was such clear example of how the EU was always one rule for the UK and a different one for France/Germany.
So what. Given the choice the UK chose a bloke who drove around a large town during lockdown BECAUSE, not IN SPITE OF, the fact that he didn't think he could see well enough to drive. Jump up and down about that instead of crocodile tears for the larger neighbour.
This is whataboutism of the highest order. You can't defend the obvious hypocrisy of the EU system of choosing its head of governmemt so you try to distract with some random UK civil servant.
You didn't like Juncker - and by that, I mean not "everyone", but specifically you right-wing Tories. Then when you guys got the whip hand at home, you appointed Pound-Shop Peter Thiel with a sideline in cavorting with Russia. I think it's a decently representative case of motes and beams.
You don't have to be a right-wing Tory to despise Juncker, surely? The man was (is) a truly repellant excuse for a human being, ran Luxembourg as a tax haven for all sorts of dodgy multinationals, practised cronyism on a scale that would have made Nicky Morgan blink and approximately as democratic in his behaviour as Trump - arguably, less so given AFAIK Trump was never accused of using the Secret Service to tap Biden's phone.
That's even before we talk about his 'sciatica.'
You don't have to, but those ones do.
While he doesn't have the worldly experience and geopolitical leadership skills of a schoolteacher, neither does anybody else, by all their accounts.
Terrible Blue Wall polling for the Tories, from the South of England. R&W 2nd July. The lowest Blue Wall voting share for the Conservatives since Sunak became PM.
Con 29% (-21, -2) LD 25% (-2, +3) Lab 36% (+15, -2) Reform 5% (+5, uc) Green 43% (+3, uc)
Changes shown in brackets: change v General Election, followed by change since last Red Wall poll (mid June).
The averages for the LDs and Labour are misleading. The LDs are the clear challengers to the Conservatives in just over half of these seats, Labour being the clear challenger in about two-fifths, with it being unclear in the rest. The Labour and LD votes are already concentrated in the relevant seats and will be even more so now as tactical voting revives. By contrast, the Con vote has to be spread out everywhere to defend every one of these seats.
Given polling like this, the LDs seem to me to be very good value to be the third largest party at the next GE.
Watching Sunak at the Liaison Committee man he's going to be absolutely destroyed during a general election campaign and that's before lawyer Starmer tears him a new one.,
The big picture is a simple one. Two (I think) uncontroversial observations:
1 Rushi Sunak is horribly overpromoted. He might have been a decent PM ten years down the line, but right now, he isn't up to the job.
2 There is nobody in the Conservative Party who could do better than he is doing.
Therefore, Rishi, the Conservatives and the country face 12-18 months of painful stasis before the government finally falls over the cliff.
Short of a Simply Enormous Event, that's it, isn't it?
I spoke to a Brexiteer the other day, he reckons the Tories are out of power until they embrace Rejoin.
A sort of Nixon goes to China moment*.
Ironically the person he thinks who could pull this off is the person he rather despises , one Boris Johnson.
*I did point out joining the EC/EU has been standard Tory orthodoxy for most of the last 70 years. Brexit was the Nixon goes to China moment.
If the Tories embraced Rejoin they would cease to be the main party of the right in the UK, RefUK under a newly returned Farage would replace them as the main right of centre party and opposition to Labour.
Even Labour wouldn't embrace Rejoin now because of the redwall, at most they would consider EEA if they win and are then re elected.
The only UK wide party whose voter coalition would allow them to consider Rejoin are the LDs you vote for
The Tories are on course for ceasing to be the main party of the right if they embrace the blood and soil nationalism of the New Tories.
No they aren't, they are still about 25-30% with another 5-10% voting Reform.
Embrace Rejoin and they would collapse to 10% or less, probably fall to even fewer seats than the SNP and LDs under FPTP, Reform would get 30-35% and become the main opposition to Starmer's Labour government
I just can’t envisage any scenario where Reform would get 30-35%. Do you have any evidence for your assertion?
He loves Reform.
That is it.
They are a pathetic joke of a party, only HYUFD takes them seriously.
HYUFD can't imaging people continuing to follow a Conservative government if they changed stance on the EU, despite him having done exactly that.
76% of current Conservative voters voted Leave, they would not stick with a party that pushed Rejoin.
Brexit is a dead issue electorally. Check the chart on the previous thread header. Or consider the fact that 25% of LD and 32% of Labour intending voters voted Leave.
PS: Bloody hell the Tories are down to 24% in that YouGov!
Watching Sunak at the Liaison Committee man he's going to be absolutely destroyed during a general election campaign and that's before lawyer Starmer tears him a new one.,
The big picture is a simple one. Two (I think) uncontroversial observations:
1 Rushi Sunak is horribly overpromoted. He might have been a decent PM ten years down the line, but right now, he isn't up to the job.
2 There is nobody in the Conservative Party who could do better than he is doing.
Therefore, Rishi, the Conservatives and the country face 12-18 months of painful stasis before the government finally falls over the cliff.
Short of a Simply Enormous Event, that's it, isn't it?
I spoke to a Brexiteer the other day, he reckons the Tories are out of power until they embrace Rejoin.
A sort of Nixon goes to China moment*.
Ironically the person he thinks who could pull this off is the person he rather despises , one Boris Johnson.
*I did point out joining the EC/EU has been standard Tory orthodoxy for most of the last 70 years. Brexit was the Nixon goes to China moment.
If the Tories embraced Rejoin they would cease to be the main party of the right in the UK, RefUK under a newly returned Farage would replace them as the main right of centre party and opposition to Labour.
Even Labour wouldn't embrace Rejoin now because of the redwall, at most they would consider EEA if they win and are then re elected.
The only UK wide party whose voter coalition would allow them to consider Rejoin are the LDs you vote for
The Tories are on course for ceasing to be the main party of the right if they embrace the blood and soil nationalism of the New Tories.
No they aren't, they are still about 25-30% with another 5-10% voting Reform.
Embrace Rejoin and they would collapse to 10% or less, probably fall to even fewer seats than the SNP and LDs under FPTP, Reform would get 30-35% and become the main opposition to Starmer's Labour government
I just can’t envisage any scenario where Reform would get 30-35%. Do you have any evidence for your assertion?
He loves Reform.
That is it.
They are a pathetic joke of a party, only HYUFD takes them seriously.
HYUFD can't imaging people continuing to follow a Conservative government if they changed stance on the EU, despite him having done exactly that.
76% of current Conservative voters voted Leave, they would not stick with a party that pushed Rejoin.
I think no one expects the next Tory leader to be a Rejoiner, I agree with you that the party is much more likely to go with a core vote right-wing culture warrior.
It is when the Tories actually want to be elected again after a generation in the wilderness that it will be so.
The thing is, that the tories can't process what has happened. They still think Brexit is a vote winner even though the polling now suggests a majority think it was a mistake and would vote to rejoin. And then, they are going on about 'getting Brexit done' by having a referendum on leaving the ECHR, not appreciating the risk that they could well lose that vote.
< You have to think that a party like the Conservatives will be in government again eventually. The relevant questions ought to be when and after what compromises?
And yet...
Every other time a party has really gone off the reservation in recent years (Labour under Foot or Corbyn, Conservatives under IDS) there has been enough ballast to stop it completely disconnecting from reality, and enough of a remnant (since it's been Bible Reference Day on PB) for the party to regrow in an electorally useful way.
This time... I'm not so sure. I want to think that the Conservative Wet tradition can regrow, but I fear that it's proved to be just too wet. My fear is that the triumph of Suella Braverman over the harmless Flick Drummond in the Battle for Fareham is a sign of where the Conservative Party is. And by the time it realises it needs saving, there won't be much left to save.
Please, pesuade me that I'm wrong.
Parties like to be in power - the Faustian deals they strike for a taste in power are remarkable to behold.
The Conservatives will eventually want power again and recognise the route back to that power is to stop chasing a world which no longer exists and start re-engaging with the world as it is.
Labour, after two terms, will have made its fair share of mistakes and enemies and those wishing to oppose the Government will need a vehicle for that opposition. It COULD be the Liberal Democrats (and nearly was in the Blair years) but it's likely after a second or perhaps third defeat, just as a man who keeps getting knocked out might decide boxing isn't the sport for him, the Conservatives might decide losing and ideological purity isn't as much fun as it seemed a few years earlier.
Re-designing Conservatism for the mid 21st century is going to be the intellectual challenge - the challenges of climate change, AI and the shifting tectonic plates of global alliances in a world (likely) dominated by the Sino-American conflict in the Pacific will all need thought.
Terrible Blue Wall polling for the Tories, from the South of England. R&W 2nd July. The lowest Blue Wall voting share for the Conservatives since Sunak became PM.
Con 29% (-21, -2) LD 25% (-2, +3) Lab 36% (+15, -2) Reform 5% (+5, uc) Green 43% (+3, uc)
Changes shown in brackets: change v General Election, followed by change since last Red Wall poll (mid June).
The averages for the LDs and Labour are misleading. The LDs are the clear challengers to the Conservatives in just over half of these seats, Labour being the clear challenger in about two-fifths, with it being unclear in the rest. The Labour and LD votes are already concentrated in the relevant seats and will be even more so now as tactical voting revives. By contrast, the Con vote has to be spread out everywhere to defend every one of these seats.
Given polling like this, the LDs seem to me to be very good value to be the third largest party at the next GE.
On those polling trends, the Tories coming third in the "Blue Wall" seems very possible.
Watching Sunak at the Liaison Committee man he's going to be absolutely destroyed during a general election campaign and that's before lawyer Starmer tears him a new one.,
The big picture is a simple one. Two (I think) uncontroversial observations:
1 Rushi Sunak is horribly overpromoted. He might have been a decent PM ten years down the line, but right now, he isn't up to the job.
2 There is nobody in the Conservative Party who could do better than he is doing.
Therefore, Rishi, the Conservatives and the country face 12-18 months of painful stasis before the government finally falls over the cliff.
Short of a Simply Enormous Event, that's it, isn't it?
I spoke to a Brexiteer the other day, he reckons the Tories are out of power until they embrace Rejoin.
A sort of Nixon goes to China moment*.
Ironically the person he thinks who could pull this off is the person he rather despises , one Boris Johnson.
*I did point out joining the EC/EU has been standard Tory orthodoxy for most of the last 70 years. Brexit was the Nixon goes to China moment.
If the Tories embraced Rejoin they would cease to be the main party of the right in the UK, RefUK under a newly returned Farage would replace them as the main right of centre party and opposition to Labour.
Even Labour wouldn't embrace Rejoin now because of the redwall, at most they would consider EEA if they win and are then re elected.
The only UK wide party whose voter coalition would allow them to consider Rejoin are the LDs you vote for
The Tories are on course for ceasing to be the main party of the right if they embrace the blood and soil nationalism of the New Tories.
No they aren't, they are still about 25-30% with another 5-10% voting Reform.
Embrace Rejoin and they would collapse to 10% or less, probably fall to even fewer seats than the SNP and LDs under FPTP, Reform would get 30-35% and become the main opposition to Starmer's Labour government
I just can’t envisage any scenario where Reform would get 30-35%. Do you have any evidence for your assertion?
He loves Reform.
That is it.
They are a pathetic joke of a party, only HYUFD takes them seriously.
HYUFD can't imaging people continuing to follow a Conservative government if they changed stance on the EU, despite him having done exactly that.
76% of current Conservative voters voted Leave, they would not stick with a party that pushed Rejoin.
I think no one expects the next Tory leader to be a Rejoiner, I agree with you that the party is much more likely to go with a core vote right-wing culture warrior.
It is when the Tories actually want to be elected again after a generation in the wilderness that it will be so.
By then Labour would probably long ago have taken us back into the EEA at least or even the full EU anyway if the Tories really were out that long
Watching Sunak at the Liaison Committee man he's going to be absolutely destroyed during a general election campaign and that's before lawyer Starmer tears him a new one.,
The big picture is a simple one. Two (I think) uncontroversial observations:
1 Rushi Sunak is horribly overpromoted. He might have been a decent PM ten years down the line, but right now, he isn't up to the job.
2 There is nobody in the Conservative Party who could do better than he is doing.
Therefore, Rishi, the Conservatives and the country face 12-18 months of painful stasis before the government finally falls over the cliff.
Short of a Simply Enormous Event, that's it, isn't it?
I spoke to a Brexiteer the other day, he reckons the Tories are out of power until they embrace Rejoin.
A sort of Nixon goes to China moment*.
Ironically the person he thinks who could pull this off is the person he rather despises , one Boris Johnson.
*I did point out joining the EC/EU has been standard Tory orthodoxy for most of the last 70 years. Brexit was the Nixon goes to China moment.
If the Tories embraced Rejoin they would cease to be the main party of the right in the UK, RefUK under a newly returned Farage would replace them as the main right of centre party and opposition to Labour.
Even Labour wouldn't embrace Rejoin now because of the redwall, at most they would consider EEA if they win and are then re elected.
The only UK wide party whose voter coalition would allow them to consider Rejoin are the LDs you vote for
The Tories are on course for ceasing to be the main party of the right if they embrace the blood and soil nationalism of the New Tories.
No they aren't, they are still about 25-30% with another 5-10% voting Reform.
Embrace Rejoin and they would collapse to 10% or less, probably fall to even fewer seats than the SNP and LDs under FPTP, Reform would get 30-35% and become the main opposition to Starmer's Labour government
I just can’t envisage any scenario where Reform would get 30-35%. Do you have any evidence for your assertion?
He loves Reform.
That is it.
They are a pathetic joke of a party, only HYUFD takes them seriously.
HYUFD can't imaging people continuing to follow a Conservative government if they changed stance on the EU, despite him having done exactly that.
76% of current Conservative voters voted Leave, they would not stick with a party that pushed Rejoin.
I think no one expects the next Tory leader to be a Rejoiner, I agree with you that the party is much more likely to go with a core vote right-wing culture warrior.
It is when the Tories actually want to be elected again after a generation in the wilderness that it will be so.
The thing is, that the tories can't process what has happened. They still think Brexit is a vote winner even though the polling now suggests a majority think it was a mistake and would vote to rejoin. And then, they are going on about 'getting Brexit done' by having a referendum on leaving the ECHR, not appreciating the risk that they could well lose that vote.
Just imagine the Labour posters. "The Tories want to destroy the last remains of Churchill's statesmanship.,"
Watching Sunak at the Liaison Committee man he's going to be absolutely destroyed during a general election campaign and that's before lawyer Starmer tears him a new one.,
The big picture is a simple one. Two (I think) uncontroversial observations:
1 Rushi Sunak is horribly overpromoted. He might have been a decent PM ten years down the line, but right now, he isn't up to the job.
2 There is nobody in the Conservative Party who could do better than he is doing.
Therefore, Rishi, the Conservatives and the country face 12-18 months of painful stasis before the government finally falls over the cliff.
Short of a Simply Enormous Event, that's it, isn't it?
I spoke to a Brexiteer the other day, he reckons the Tories are out of power until they embrace Rejoin.
A sort of Nixon goes to China moment*.
Ironically the person he thinks who could pull this off is the person he rather despises , one Boris Johnson.
*I did point out joining the EC/EU has been standard Tory orthodoxy for most of the last 70 years. Brexit was the Nixon goes to China moment.
If the Tories embraced Rejoin they would cease to be the main party of the right in the UK, RefUK under a newly returned Farage would replace them as the main right of centre party and opposition to Labour.
Even Labour wouldn't embrace Rejoin now because of the redwall, at most they would consider EEA if they win and are then re elected.
The only UK wide party whose voter coalition would allow them to consider Rejoin are the LDs you vote for
The Tories are on course for ceasing to be the main party of the right if they embrace the blood and soil nationalism of the New Tories.
No they aren't, they are still about 25-30% with another 5-10% voting Reform.
Embrace Rejoin and they would collapse to 10% or less, probably fall to even fewer seats than the SNP and LDs under FPTP, Reform would get 30-35% and become the main opposition to Starmer's Labour government
It will be interesting to see which way the Tories go after the coming defeat.
Ron De Santis is banning books and attacking Disney for the crime of being in the 21st century. And the leading Tory in leadership betting is happy to stand right beside him declaring herself at one with all that agenda. In the history of the Conservative Party, have they ever been so in bed with nonsense coming out of the US right wing, as might be about to happen?
Loopyness on Social media was never such a danger to UK politics in the past was it? Like what it’s doing to the republicans, it can turn the UKs default party of government into a factionally riven, out of touch party no longer so many’s choice for strong government.
But there’s more factions than that. Truss won the last proper leadership election because members preferred her slash and burn approach to taxation and government spending. And despite Truss leading it, it’s still a faction with traction - especially as the current faction, Hunt and Sunak’s carefully hands off management of UK decline, won’t be so popular after the defeat.
And then there’s the Boris faction, that’s not simply about Boris but all the embrace the freedoms of Brexit so everyone in UK is high skilled and high payed arguments of frosty the no man, and others like group happy to sign their names on the B Ark manifest yesterday with pull up drawbridge to make Britain Great Again, a faction supported by every daily telegraph columnist, editorial, as well as the Mail and Express. How influential will this faction be post election? And just how damaging will it be to getting Tories back to centre ground and winning again?
TSE is right, being the Brexit Party, the enablers of brexit, leaving us with a rock hard brexit not even a softer one, is a game changer for the Tories in UK politics. A quick revival, or even any revival using current name and branding, and we got Brexit done logo, might be hard work.
Down to 100 to 150 MPs and ridden by factional infighting and policies they can’t rally behind, will the Tories enjoy government limousines ever again?
Even if the hard right took over the Tories, if a Labour government presides over high inflation, continued high interest rates, strikes and increased taxes the Tory opposition would soon be up in the polls again.
It is often forgotten even Michael Foot had poll leads in the early 1980s as the Thatcher government presided over high unemployment. Thatcher herself was initially thought unelectable and too rightwing until the strikes and high inflation and high taxes of the Wilson and Callaghan governments of the late 1970s.
A poor economy can make any opposition potentially electable
They'd have to go some on "high inflation, strikes and taxes" to beat this lot. However. I am happy to that the standard Tory response to the incoming Labour government is an insouciant "they'll be worse". So we can do what really gives us the horn in Opposition. 2 terms nailed on with that attitude.
Terrible Blue Wall polling for the Tories, from the South of England. R&W 2nd July. The lowest Blue Wall voting share for the Conservatives since Sunak became PM.
Con 29% (-21, -2) LD 25% (-2, +3) Lab 36% (+15, -2) Reform 5% (+5, uc) Green 43% (+3, uc)
Changes shown in brackets: change v General Election, followed by change since last Red Wall poll (mid June).
The averages for the LDs and Labour are misleading. The LDs are the clear challengers to the Conservatives in just over half of these seats, Labour being the clear challenger in about two-fifths, with it being unclear in the rest. The Labour and LD votes are already concentrated in the relevant seats and will be even more so now as tactical voting revives. By contrast, the Con vote has to be spread out everywhere to defend every one of these seats.
Given polling like this, the LDs seem to me to be very good value to be the third largest party at the next GE.
Brexit isn't dead, just expressed in different terms. A lot of folk (rightly or wrongly) blame Tory Brexit for our current economic problems for example.
Comments
It cuts taxation to pay properly. And get the 7m back to higher productivity raises tax elsewhere in the economy.
Worse - now nobody can create a much better implementation of what was a reasonable idea because they'd get sued.
Why is it good enough to give double-digit pay rises to those on welfare but only 3-4% for those who work for a living like teachers?
How is it any more outrageous to be asking for more than inflation, when you're getting offered less than inflation?
The Government started this mess by dicking around and picking priority groups to pander to, which predominantly was those who aren't working because that's their client vote. When others are being treated better than you are, why shouldn't those who are working demand their slice too?
Responsible governance would have been to say "we're all in it together" and mean it, scrap the triple lock etc and have flat rates across the board - but instead some groups were pandered to and others told suck up nearly double-digit real terms pay cuts.
(Both old fashioned grid references from a paper map)
3Words screwed up by having similar sounding and spelled words on their list. And not having a checksum.
He just drove. There was no optician waiting for him.
And incidentally the jury is very much out on his intelligence. His tutors considered him to have at best a superficial intellect and having had the misfortune to work with some of the results of his projects that's my view too.
A bit like Crypto.
They casually discussed their own weight and what they could lift.
All in kilos.
The complete takeover of temperature has been perhaps the most rapid and complete though.
There were regular headlines not long ago about weather hitting the
80's.
Not any more.
Ron De Santis is banning books and attacking Disney for the crime of being in the 21st century. And the leading Tory in leadership betting is happy to stand right beside him declaring herself at one with all that agenda. In the history of the Conservative Party, have they ever been so in bed with nonsense coming out of the US right wing, as might be about to happen?
Loopyness on Social media was never such a danger to UK politics in the past was it? Like what it’s doing to the republicans, it can turn the UKs default party of government into a factionally riven, out of touch party no longer so many’s choice for strong government.
But there’s more factions than that. Truss won the last proper leadership election because members preferred her slash and burn approach to taxation and government spending. And despite Truss leading it, it’s still a faction with traction - especially as the current faction, Hunt and Sunak’s carefully hands off management of UK decline, won’t be so popular after the defeat.
And then there’s the Boris faction, that’s not simply about Boris but all the embrace the freedoms of Brexit so everyone in UK is high skilled and high payed arguments of frosty the no man, and others like group happy to sign their names on the B Ark manifest yesterday with pull up drawbridge to make Britain Great Again, a faction supported by every daily telegraph columnist, editorial, as well as the Mail and Express. How influential will this faction be post election? And just how damaging will it be to getting Tories back to centre ground and winning again?
TSE is right, being the Brexit Party, the enablers of brexit, leaving us with a rock hard brexit not even a softer one, is a game changer for the Tories in UK politics. A quick revival, or even any revival using current name and branding, and we got Brexit done logo, might be hard work.
Down to 100 to 150 MPs and ridden by factional infighting and policies they can’t rally behind, will the Tories enjoy government limousines ever again?
Important lessons for us all from that, perhaps. There are times we believe we're right, even when all the evidence says otherwise.
I think there's a bit in Barry Pilton's 'One Man and his Bog, where he describes his first night on walking the Pennine Way. "I worked out how to use my compass, and as the sun set in the north..."
The biggest problem was that the guy doing it hard no idea of the huge amount of prior art,. Stand on the shoulders of giants, and all that.
That is it.
They are a pathetic joke of a party, only HYUFD takes them seriously.
Oh wait.
Again, let us all strive with every sinew to understand the difference between idea and implementation. I am sure even the weakest thinkers will get there in the end.
Obviously.
The problem is that w3w is not fine. w3w is not the basic idea. Bitscam is not fine.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/04/revealed-uk-plans-to-drop-flagship-climate-pledge-rishi-sunak
I went out for all day walk in the Cotswolds - cross country over footpaths. By the end of it, I given away water to 2 different utterly exhausted people.
Note - flip flops are the least useful form of footwear for walking. At least unless your feet are actually made of shoes leather. I had some plasters in my usual walking bag - purely by accident. They helped one of the people, as well.
What they didn't say was "very occasionally, it's a brilliant sunny day, don't forget sun cream".
I have to say I'm a little uncomfortable with Nigel Farage's personal financial affairs being dragged into the public domain. He's no longer an MEP or an elected official of any kind and apart from appearing on right-wing media, I don't actually know why he's still a person of interest in politics.
Nonetheless, he is still entitled to the same personal privacy as the rest of us.
Speaking of privacy, we have had the Conservative candidate's leaflet in the Wall End by-election. He's a "businessman" (whatever that means) and while his diagnosis of the main issue in the area is valid - anti social behaviour and a fear of crime, his solution seems to be CCTV on every street corner. I'm not quite sure who is going to pay for that nor am I entirely certain being observed from every street corner is quite what we want from a "free society".
Apparently he's also going to set the police "goals" - not quite sure what that means - along with the usual blether of more Police. I'm not sure he knows who pays for the Police in London or who will fund the training of new officers but these are just details.
It's a well-produced leaflet - doesn't mention Rishi Sunak and barely says the word "Conservative". As I've said elsewhere, claiming to be the local candidate may work in rural Shropshire - less convinced it has the same cadence in East London.
A sports journalist visiting Liverpool asked me what Everton’s survival from relegation felt like… I blurted out a risky analogy.
I’m pretty sure it fits tho! 👀
https://twitter.com/dave_bennett85/status/1676232000997408770
Then of course the next election Germany didn't like the Spitzenkandidat so they quickly switched him out. The contrast was such clear example of how the EU was always one rule for the UK and a different one for France/Germany.
Which is the problem PM Starmer will have:
Giving the doctors what they want means having to give everyone else the same which means more taxation on someone else plus private sector workers now being aggrieved.
Alternatively don't give the doctors what they want and have continuous strikes from them.
However.
He's the one banging on about them to anyone who'll listen.
Similar to that PBer who broke both their legs just walking along.
There won't be any prospect of doctors still striking this time next year.
And having waived it, its pretty hilarious the problem isn't that he's being unpersoned as claimed, just that he's not got enough money to be banking with Coutts instead of Natwest.
https://www.tomorrowspapers.co.uk/daily-mail-front-page-2023-07-04/
Apparently, a new hire, non-British (so didn’t get local context), in one of the agencies used by banks for vetting, decided to flag all the elected people and senior officers of a political party.
One in Northern Ireland.
If it had gone through, the story went, they would all have lost accounts, credit cards and mortgages across multiple banks.
Fortunately someone noticed and stopped the enthusiasm.
https://www.itv.com/news/anglia/2023-07-04/planners-tell-captain-toms-daughter-garden-pool-house-must-be-demolished
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/04/monday-was-hottest-day-for-global-average-temperature-on-record-as-climate-crisis-bites
Fabulous photographer.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/04/revealed-uk-plans-to-drop-flagship-climate-pledge-rishi-sunak
Probably best that such things are lost in the mists of time now.
That's even before we talk about his 'sciatica.'
Some will disagree but we are a temperate people used to a temperate climate.
Interesting to read a rather different political analysis from one @Peck this morning who, despite the rather condescending and patronising style, did try at least to look at politics in a different way.
Clearly a Conservative supporter, however, the juxtaposition of immigration vs health told the story. The diagnosis from strong from the right side of the fence but the misconceptions of the left were all too apparent.
I suspect those who think the next election will be about "the economy, stupid" will be right as often as those who say we won't have a White Christmas. Politics is complex, nuanced, emotional and often illogical - it comes down to perceptions, experiences and feelings which are quantifiable only to a point.
The Conservatives are in trouble because of a) the way they have comported themselves, individually and collectively, while in Government and b) because if you ask two cliched questions, what are the answers? Cliche question one is "what have the Conservatives ever done for us?" and cliche question two " why should I vote Conservative next time?".
I'm also often told if you're part of the problem you can't be part of the solution - if you think the Conservatives have, since 2010, failed to address key problems, why would you assume 2024-29 would be any better or different? Labour aren't perfect, we know, but at least they want to try something - the Conservatives look and sound not so much bankrupt but empty and exhausted.
The fact we have these "New Conservatives" thrashing around (and being allowed to) shows the beginnings of the internal disintegration - as collective discipline erodes, so does the ability to govern.
And yet...
Every other time a party has really gone off the reservation in recent years (Labour under Foot or Corbyn, Conservatives under IDS) there has been enough ballast to stop it completely disconnecting from reality, and enough of a remnant (since it's been Bible Reference Day on PB) for the party to regrow in an electorally useful way.
This time... I'm not so sure. I want to think that the Conservative Wet tradition can regrow, but I fear that it's proved to be just too wet. My fear is that the triumph of Suella Braverman over the harmless Flick Drummond in the Battle for Fareham is a sign of where the Conservative Party is. And by the time it realises it needs saving, there won't be much left to save.
Please, pesuade me that I'm wrong.
In Antarctica.
In mid-winter.
They would defect to Reform where 15% of 2019 Tory voters have already gone now Sunak leads the party
https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/u1brypjh6p/TheTimes_VI_230628_W.pdf
What we do want is for the independence of the payload to be restored and abided by, and for staff retention and salaries in comparable fields to be taken into account.
Our position has worsened considerably since the GFC in comparison to UK others:
It is when the Tories actually want to be elected again after a generation in the wilderness that it will be so.
It is often forgotten even Michael Foot had poll leads in the early 1980s as the Thatcher government presided over high unemployment. Thatcher herself was initially thought unelectable and too rightwing until the strikes and high inflation and high taxes of the Wilson and Callaghan governments of the late 1970s.
A poor economy can make any opposition potentially electable
While he doesn't have the worldly experience and geopolitical leadership skills of a schoolteacher, neither does anybody else, by all their accounts.
https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/latest-blue-wall-voting-intention-2-july-2023/
Con 29% (-21, -2)
LD 25% (-2, +3)
Lab 36% (+15, -2)
Reform 5% (+5, uc)
Green 43% (+3, uc)
Changes shown in brackets: change v General Election, followed by change since last Red Wall poll (mid June).
The averages for the LDs and Labour are misleading. The LDs are the clear challengers to the Conservatives in just over half of these seats, Labour being the clear challenger in about two-fifths, with it being unclear in the rest. The Labour and LD votes are already concentrated in the relevant seats and will be even more so now as tactical voting revives. By contrast, the Con vote has to be spread out everywhere to defend every one of these seats.
Given polling like this, the LDs seem to me to be very good value to be the third largest party at the next GE.
PS: Bloody hell the Tories are down to 24% in that YouGov!
They still think Brexit is a vote winner even though the polling now suggests a majority think it was a mistake and would vote to rejoin.
And then, they are going on about 'getting Brexit done' by having a referendum on leaving the ECHR, not appreciating the risk that they could well lose that vote.
The Conservatives will eventually want power again and recognise the route back to that power is to stop chasing a world which no longer exists and start re-engaging with the world as it is.
Labour, after two terms, will have made its fair share of mistakes and enemies and those wishing to oppose the Government will need a vehicle for that opposition. It COULD be the Liberal Democrats (and nearly was in the Blair years) but it's likely after a second or perhaps third defeat, just as a man who keeps getting knocked out might decide boxing isn't the sport for him, the Conservatives might decide losing and ideological purity isn't as much fun as it seemed a few years earlier.
Re-designing Conservatism for the mid 21st century is going to be the intellectual challenge - the challenges of climate change, AI and the shifting tectonic plates of global alliances in a world (likely) dominated by the Sino-American conflict in the Pacific will all need thought.
However. I am happy to that the standard Tory response to the incoming Labour government is an insouciant "they'll be worse". So we can do what really gives us the horn in Opposition.
2 terms nailed on with that attitude.
Hours of disruption on the District and Hammersmith & City lines due to "a faulty train".
I can't believe in 2023 the mechanisms don't exist to resolve such issues and restore a service.
Edit: The fact they've chosen to call it Threads is really gonna spook Leon.