Hard to find anything to argue with in OGH's summary. At least for yours truly!
Morning all.
@MikeSmithson keeps taking GE2019 as the benchmark. Whilst this looks right on paper, it's an illusion and for punters it's an error. GE2019 was a one-off 'Get Brexit Done' election to unblock the jam created during the Remainer Parliament. Boris Johnson galvanised the voters against the unelectable trotskyite anti-semitic Jeremy Corbyn with the sole aim of Getting Brexit Done. Hence the December election. In many ways GE2019 was NOT a General Election.
The last proper General Election in the UK was June 2017, which resulted in a hung parliament. That's your benchmark.
Bet accordingly.
p.s. I'm personally very glad that Keir Starmer is no Tony Blair.
I think I understand the point you are making - whilst the 2019 election is the status quo, its artificial. Ordinarily the Labour task would be considered politically unlikely - as we all said in the aftermath.
But if we consider the 2019 result to be the aberration, then a revision to the norm can be expected to happen as the start of any new electoral move. There are swathes of red wall seats which endless polls have shows will not just revert to Labour but will deliver them 5 figure majorities.
If we bake that 2017 reversion in, the task facing Starmer is much smaller, and much more attainable. Then we look at the two other political low tides from 2015 likely to come back in:
The absence of unionist MPs in Scotland feels like a situation that can't be sustained - so expect 20-30 seats to switch from the motorhome party. The absence of yellow MPs in rural England is already a tide rushing back in. The focus is always on Labour, but as is clear it is the LibDems who will mop up disaffected sane voters in places where "Sink the Boats" makes people feel sick.
So, we reset the Red Wall. We drain out the SNP flood. We remove the dam from the LibDems. And suddenly a thumping Tory defeat is not just possible, it feels likely. To stay in power they need to preserve all three of these artificial positions. Which politically means they need to be Janus, a task they are spectacularly failing to pull off.
Yes, I think the Tories have snookered themselves. It is hard to see any of those 3 fronts being contained next GE. While Scotland is unique, the other 2 fronts play out across most E and W constituencies. They are sociological rather than geographical waves.
Tory unpopularity with the working age population is astonishing. I doubt there’s been anything like it in the history of two-party politics in this country.
What possible reason is there at the minute for someone who works for a living to support the Tories?
Sunak has made his bed and shown that working people only exist in his eyes to be taxed ever higher to provide welfare for those who don't work. That's something you can understand from Labour, but from the Tories?
The jack boots will be on next and barbed wire being put up to intern unemployed and pensioners. Give it a rest Adolf.
Hang on. Barty is an absolutist which often translates into absurdist straw man positions - the rant about 30mph zones a perfect example. But he has a point - the status quo is broken. We *are* paying vast amounts in taxes. Where he descends into the absurdist is the suggestion that the money is going into welfare. When our welfare system grudgingly gives people living poverty assuming it pays anything at all.
We're paying record taxes, true. But its going to spivs, not on services, not on infrastructure, not on welfare. We pay lots and get little. Where does all that money go? Even if you are as high Tory and say "inefficiency" that is literally my point. Inefficiency means money is being wasted. Spent on consultants. Advisers. Middlemen. Spivs...
The problem we have is that whilst "we pay taxes and get little back" is good analysis, nobody wants to go after why that is. And propose a solution because the problem is too big and our politicians too timid.
Your jackboots analogy is one solution. Hungary have done it. France wants to do it. Spain and Germany are toying with it...
The bit in bold: it goes on debt repayments.
We have a shit-ton of debt. We need to reflate the economy to lessen the debt burden over time via inflation. But the anti-inflationary reflexes we built up in the neoliberal era prevent us from doing this. So we have problems.
That isn't true with public services. We spend ever larger amounts on schools and hospitals despite front line service provision being catastrophically starved of money.
A basic problem is that everything has been marketised. Instead of driving market-led efficiency we have endless overlapping targets and contracts and regulations. The market is a vast business by itself.
How much money did we waste creating Clinical Commissioning Groups in the NHS? Then replacing them with Integrated Care Boards? How integrated are the dozens of "integrated" boards and how many contracts do they negotiate and manage and how much is spent on administration?
Thats our problem. A fat layer of middlemen who suck the cash out of the system.
Dr Amir Khan gave a very eloquent description the other day on how the private sector hollows out NHS capacity and finances.
The Conservatives and Labour will always be the two main parties... until they are not.
Time was when: ...every boy and every gal That’s born into the world alive Is either a little Liberal Or else a little Conservative!
Neither party has a divine right to compete for power; it's not inconceivable that the LDs replace the Tories permanently (until the next change).
The oddness of the current polling is that we keep getting mad predictions of Labour winning everything everywhere. Supposedly that Channel 4 Poll last night had Labour taking Richmond off Sunak.
The electorate have shown they are well up for tactical voting. There is no mass desire for Sunak in the way there was for Blair. But there is a mass demand to get shut of this government. And people showing that they are motivated and well informed about how to vote to bring that about.
If there truly was a Tory collapse, surely there would be scores more LibDems elected rather than Labour winning Richmond. Some Greens too. But in what gets simplified as a two party choice the pollsters interpret national polls nationally instead of looking at reality.
Compare and contrast the LD vote in a seat we're the ABC choice in vs a seat where its Labour. In one seat we pick up a 5 figure majority, In the other seat we lose our deposit. That is what we can expect in the GE - Labour and LD candidates winning outrageous seats whilst their colleagues elsewhere lose their deposit.
Forget UNS.
All sounds entirely sensible, until you remember how poorly the LDs have performed at national elections since 2010.
Which is where Dave'n'George were smarter than the current team.
If Lib and Lab take potshots at each other (2015 due to coalition fallout, 2019 due to the awfulness of Jez 2.0), Conservatives can do well without too much difficulty.
By being so awful, the 2019-now government has made it clear to the red and yellow teams where they should be aiming their fire. And that's good for the Lib Dems in the 50(?) seats they can put on a decent show in, and good for Labour everywhere else in England.
Damned with faint praise there, much?
Electorally the current Tory team are simply not up to it. Activists locally getting restless. Suspect another bad set of locals would be Rishi's last.
May 24 is much too far into the endgame for a putsch.
If May 2024 shows Tory MPs down to the 91st safest (as per recent polling) losing their seats, 24 hours would be time enough.
It takes 24 seconds for a PM to call a General Election.
You know that the constitutional advice on a PM requesting a dissolution in the event of his imminent ousting is that it won't be accepted, right?
No, I didn't know that. I do know the Lascelles convention if that is what you mean, which states that refusal is an OPTION iff
1. the existing Parliament is still "vital, viable, and capable of doing its job", 2. a general election would be "detrimental to the national economy", and 3. the sovereign could "rely on finding another prime minister who could govern for a reasonable period with a working majority in the House of Commons".
1 and 2 LOL, to satisfy 3 you're going to have to have pre-coronated someone again.
1 is met, there is a majority Government.
2 is no longer part of the Convention AFAIK.
3 no need for a pre-coronation, the convention is that governments can undergo leadership campaigns while in office.
If the PM were ousted and a majority of the Commons were willing to have the Deputy PM (currently Oliver Dowden) or someone else as interim PM until the end of the leadership campaign, then Lascelles condition 3 would be met too.
On 1, it doesn't say "there is a majority" it says something different
I don't see what mechanism there is for amendment of the principles short of a further letter from Senex. What are you referring to?
The problem is, R granting the request is the default. You are suggesting he be asked to depart from precedent and go out of his way to further the interests of one faction in one political party. Not going to happen.
A majority of the Commons is one that is viable and capable of doing its job.
The Cabinet Office maintains the principles and the second was dropped from its guidance thirty years ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lascelles_Principles Historian Peter Hennessy stated in 1994 that the second of the three conditions had since been "dropped from the canon", being no longer included in internal Cabinet Office guidance.[4]
R doesn't have to further any interests of any faction, he has to follow the guidance as it exists from the Cabinet Office, in order to stay out of political decisions.
A necessary, not a sufficient condition. If Sir Reg had meant a majority he would have said so.
And it doesn't matter. HM has to be positively satisfied on all points to even consider refusing a dissolution. All it takes is one Sunakite MP to suggest by back channels - say, a note thrust into the Equerry's stocking-top - that he and 30 of his mates will be voting with the oppo from here on it in protest against the ousting - and that creates too much doubt for him to refuse.
You're wrong.
HM has to follow his guidance. If the guidance is that the PM no longer commands a majority of the Commons, but someone else does, then that someone else will be invited to Downing Street to form a new government.
30 backbenchers can say what they like, unless they resign the whip they are counted in the government party and that there is a majority of the Commons to back the new PM.
You do make it up as you go along, don't you?
Putative new PM has to assure HM that he commands a majority in the HoC. If the 30 just tell the whips informally that they are looking at their options, PNPM cannot give that assurance. I am guessing you regard Johnson's lying to the monarch, breaking international treaties etc as signs of strength and integrity, but I don't see it happening twice. And if it did it would leak that it did, and the electoral vengeance on the tories would be awesome to behold
Hard to find anything to argue with in OGH's summary. At least for yours truly!
Morning all.
@MikeSmithson keeps taking GE2019 as the benchmark. Whilst this looks right on paper, it's an illusion and for punters it's an error. GE2019 was a one-off 'Get Brexit Done' election to unblock the jam created during the Remainer Parliament. Boris Johnson galvanised the voters against the unelectable trotskyite anti-semitic Jeremy Corbyn with the sole aim of Getting Brexit Done. Hence the December election. In many ways GE2019 was NOT a General Election.
The last proper General Election in the UK was June 2017, which resulted in a hung parliament. That's your benchmark.
Bet accordingly.
p.s. I'm personally very glad that Keir Starmer is no Tony Blair.
I think I understand the point you are making - whilst the 2019 election is the status quo, its artificial. Ordinarily the Labour task would be considered politically unlikely - as we all said in the aftermath.
But if we consider the 2019 result to be the aberration, then a revision to the norm can be expected to happen as the start of any new electoral move. There are swathes of red wall seats which endless polls have shows will not just revert to Labour but will deliver them 5 figure majorities.
If we bake that 2017 reversion in, the task facing Starmer is much smaller, and much more attainable. Then we look at the two other political low tides from 2015 likely to come back in:
The absence of unionist MPs in Scotland feels like a situation that can't be sustained - so expect 20-30 seats to switch from the motorhome party. The absence of yellow MPs in rural England is already a tide rushing back in. The focus is always on Labour, but as is clear it is the LibDems who will mop up disaffected sane voters in places where "Sink the Boats" makes people feel sick.
So, we reset the Red Wall. We drain out the SNP flood. We remove the dam from the LibDems. And suddenly a thumping Tory defeat is not just possible, it feels likely. To stay in power they need to preserve all three of these artificial positions. Which politically means they need to be Janus, a task they are spectacularly failing to pull off.
Yes, I think the Tories have snookered themselves. It is hard to see any of those 3 fronts being contained next GE. While Scotland is unique, the other 2 fronts play out across most E and W constituencies. They are sociological rather than geographical waves.
Tory unpopularity with the working age population is astonishing. I doubt there’s been anything like it in the history of two-party politics in this country.
What possible reason is there at the minute for someone who works for a living to support the Tories?
Sunak has made his bed and shown that working people only exist in his eyes to be taxed ever higher to provide welfare for those who don't work. That's something you can understand from Labour, but from the Tories?
The jack boots will be on next and barbed wire being put up to intern unemployed and pensioners. Give it a rest Adolf.
Hang on. Barty is an absolutist which often translates into absurdist straw man positions - the rant about 30mph zones a perfect example. But he has a point - the status quo is broken. We *are* paying vast amounts in taxes. Where he descends into the absurdist is the suggestion that the money is going into welfare. When our welfare system grudgingly gives people living poverty assuming it pays anything at all.
We're paying record taxes, true. But its going to spivs, not on services, not on infrastructure, not on welfare. We pay lots and get little. Where does all that money go? Even if you are as high Tory and say "inefficiency" that is literally my point. Inefficiency means money is being wasted. Spent on consultants. Advisers. Middlemen. Spivs...
The problem we have is that whilst "we pay taxes and get little back" is good analysis, nobody wants to go after why that is. And propose a solution because the problem is too big and our politicians too timid.
Your jackboots analogy is one solution. Hungary have done it. France wants to do it. Spain and Germany are toying with it...
The bit in bold: it goes on debt repayments.
We have a shit-ton of debt. We need to reflate the economy to lessen the debt burden over time via inflation. But the anti-inflationary reflexes we built up in the neoliberal era prevent us from doing this. So we have problems.
That isn't true with public services. We spend ever larger amounts on schools and hospitals despite front line service provision being catastrophically starved of money.
A basic problem is that everything has been marketised. Instead of driving market-led efficiency we have endless overlapping targets and contracts and regulations. The market is a vast business by itself.
How much money did we waste creating Clinical Commissioning Groups in the NHS? Then replacing them with Integrated Care Boards? How integrated are the dozens of "integrated" boards and how many contracts do they negotiate and manage and how much is spent on administration?
Thats our problem. A fat layer of middlemen who suck the cash out of the system.
That and house prices.
The pointless middleman thing has been around for ages- it's there in the Golgafrincham B Ark, and Hitchhikers was first written in 1978. But it does seem to have got worse and more expensive as a phenomenon.
Though you rather forgotten the fact that the rest of the population of Golgafrincham died due to not having the people on the B Ark.
But didn't they also spend millions of years in paradise before the ailment contracted through dirty telephones did for them?
Hard to find anything to argue with in OGH's summary. At least for yours truly!
Morning all.
@MikeSmithson keeps taking GE2019 as the benchmark. Whilst this looks right on paper, it's an illusion and for punters it's an error. GE2019 was a one-off 'Get Brexit Done' election to unblock the jam created during the Remainer Parliament. Boris Johnson galvanised the voters against the unelectable trotskyite anti-semitic Jeremy Corbyn with the sole aim of Getting Brexit Done. Hence the December election. In many ways GE2019 was NOT a General Election.
The last proper General Election in the UK was June 2017, which resulted in a hung parliament. That's your benchmark.
Bet accordingly.
p.s. I'm personally very glad that Keir Starmer is no Tony Blair.
I think I understand the point you are making - whilst the 2019 election is the status quo, its artificial. Ordinarily the Labour task would be considered politically unlikely - as we all said in the aftermath.
But if we consider the 2019 result to be the aberration, then a revision to the norm can be expected to happen as the start of any new electoral move. There are swathes of red wall seats which endless polls have shows will not just revert to Labour but will deliver them 5 figure majorities.
If we bake that 2017 reversion in, the task facing Starmer is much smaller, and much more attainable. Then we look at the two other political low tides from 2015 likely to come back in:
The absence of unionist MPs in Scotland feels like a situation that can't be sustained - so expect 20-30 seats to switch from the motorhome party. The absence of yellow MPs in rural England is already a tide rushing back in. The focus is always on Labour, but as is clear it is the LibDems who will mop up disaffected sane voters in places where "Sink the Boats" makes people feel sick.
So, we reset the Red Wall. We drain out the SNP flood. We remove the dam from the LibDems. And suddenly a thumping Tory defeat is not just possible, it feels likely. To stay in power they need to preserve all three of these artificial positions. Which politically means they need to be Janus, a task they are spectacularly failing to pull off.
Yes, I think the Tories have snookered themselves. It is hard to see any of those 3 fronts being contained next GE. While Scotland is unique, the other 2 fronts play out across most E and W constituencies. They are sociological rather than geographical waves.
Tory unpopularity with the working age population is astonishing. I doubt there’s been anything like it in the history of two-party politics in this country.
What possible reason is there at the minute for someone who works for a living to support the Tories?
Sunak has made his bed and shown that working people only exist in his eyes to be taxed ever higher to provide welfare for those who don't work. That's something you can understand from Labour, but from the Tories?
The jack boots will be on next and barbed wire being put up to intern unemployed and pensioners. Give it a rest Adolf.
Hang on. Barty is an absolutist which often translates into absurdist straw man positions - the rant about 30mph zones a perfect example. But he has a point - the status quo is broken. We *are* paying vast amounts in taxes. Where he descends into the absurdist is the suggestion that the money is going into welfare. When our welfare system grudgingly gives people living poverty assuming it pays anything at all.
We're paying record taxes, true. But its going to spivs, not on services, not on infrastructure, not on welfare. We pay lots and get little. Where does all that money go? Even if you are as high Tory and say "inefficiency" that is literally my point. Inefficiency means money is being wasted. Spent on consultants. Advisers. Middlemen. Spivs...
The problem we have is that whilst "we pay taxes and get little back" is good analysis, nobody wants to go after why that is. And propose a solution because the problem is too big and our politicians too timid.
Your jackboots analogy is one solution. Hungary have done it. France wants to do it. Spain and Germany are toying with it...
The bit in bold: it goes on debt repayments.
We have a shit-ton of debt. We need to reflate the economy to lessen the debt burden over time via inflation. But the anti-inflationary reflexes we built up in the neoliberal era prevent us from doing this. So we have problems.
That isn't true with public services. We spend ever larger amounts on schools and hospitals despite front line service provision being catastrophically starved of money.
A basic problem is that everything has been marketised. Instead of driving market-led efficiency we have endless overlapping targets and contracts and regulations. The market is a vast business by itself.
How much money did we waste creating Clinical Commissioning Groups in the NHS? Then replacing them with Integrated Care Boards? How integrated are the dozens of "integrated" boards and how many contracts do they negotiate and manage and how much is spent on administration?
Thats our problem. A fat layer of middlemen who suck the cash out of the system.
This government *is* fiscally dry, however they’ve had to increase the number of civil servants due to Brexit and they continue to stuff gold down the throat of the client vote.
I think we're starting to identify the issues on this thread.
i) Frictional, beaurocratic & administrative cost increases due to putting up trade barriers between ourselves and our nearest neighbours. ii) A culture of gold plating & empire building prevalent in the civil service - driven (certainly in part) by unintended consequences of pseudo-marketisation & i) iii) Increasing debt costs.
Altogether it means we're collectively paying more than ever for less.
The problem is more that any organisation that exists over a period of time accretes bureaucracy.
Read the "Mitrokhin Archive" - it demythologises the KGB. In 1919 the predecessor organisation(s) were lean and mean and could get things done.
1976 The KGB was x100K people in multiple tower block offices. Where meetings to decide the budget for the proposal for the meeting to discuss a KGB officer in Vienna hiring a local thug to break Rudolf Nureyev's legs... faded into nothing.
In the private sector, eventually, such organisation are reformed or swept away. In the aftermath of 2008, CITI Bank fired whole floors of people - we joked (contractors) that the tower in Canary Wharf was getting shorter.
The other problem in the public sector (apart from permanency) is isolation from modern best practise. So we have industrial relations from the 1950s. Lots of people is shit jobs (no automation) doing mind numbing reparative tasks. etc etc
The Conservatives and Labour will always be the two main parties... until they are not.
Time was when: ...every boy and every gal That’s born into the world alive Is either a little Liberal Or else a little Conservative!
Neither party has a divine right to compete for power; it's not inconceivable that the LDs replace the Tories permanently (until the next change).
The oddness of the current polling is that we keep getting mad predictions of Labour winning everything everywhere. Supposedly that Channel 4 Poll last night had Labour taking Richmond off Sunak.
The electorate have shown they are well up for tactical voting. There is no mass desire for Sunak in the way there was for Blair. But there is a mass demand to get shut of this government. And people showing that they are motivated and well informed about how to vote to bring that about.
If there truly was a Tory collapse, surely there would be scores more LibDems elected rather than Labour winning Richmond. Some Greens too. But in what gets simplified as a two party choice the pollsters interpret national polls nationally instead of looking at reality.
Compare and contrast the LD vote in a seat we're the ABC choice in vs a seat where its Labour. In one seat we pick up a 5 figure majority, In the other seat we lose our deposit. That is what we can expect in the GE - Labour and LD candidates winning outrageous seats whilst their colleagues elsewhere lose their deposit.
Forget UNS.
All sounds entirely sensible, until you remember how poorly the LDs have performed at national elections since 2010.
Which is where Dave'n'George were smarter than the current team.
If Lib and Lab take potshots at each other (2015 due to coalition fallout, 2019 due to the awfulness of Jez 2.0), Conservatives can do well without too much difficulty.
By being so awful, the 2019-now government has made it clear to the red and yellow teams where they should be aiming their fire. And that's good for the Lib Dems in the 50(?) seats they can put on a decent show in, and good for Labour everywhere else in England.
Damned with faint praise there, much?
Electorally the current Tory team are simply not up to it. Activists locally getting restless. Suspect another bad set of locals would be Rishi's last.
May 24 is much too far into the endgame for a putsch.
If May 2024 shows Tory MPs down to the 91st safest (as per recent polling) losing their seats, 24 hours would be time enough.
It takes 24 seconds for a PM to call a General Election.
You know that the constitutional advice on a PM requesting a dissolution in the event of his imminent ousting is that it won't be accepted, right?
No, I didn't know that. I do know the Lascelles convention if that is what you mean, which states that refusal is an OPTION iff
1. the existing Parliament is still "vital, viable, and capable of doing its job", 2. a general election would be "detrimental to the national economy", and 3. the sovereign could "rely on finding another prime minister who could govern for a reasonable period with a working majority in the House of Commons".
1 and 2 LOL, to satisfy 3 you're going to have to have pre-coronated someone again.
1 is met, there is a majority Government.
2 is no longer part of the Convention AFAIK.
3 no need for a pre-coronation, the convention is that governments can undergo leadership campaigns while in office.
If the PM were ousted and a majority of the Commons were willing to have the Deputy PM (currently Oliver Dowden) or someone else as interim PM until the end of the leadership campaign, then Lascelles condition 3 would be met too.
On 1, it doesn't say "there is a majority" it says something different
I don't see what mechanism there is for amendment of the principles short of a further letter from Senex. What are you referring to?
The problem is, R granting the request is the default. You are suggesting he be asked to depart from precedent and go out of his way to further the interests of one faction in one political party. Not going to happen.
A majority of the Commons is one that is viable and capable of doing its job.
The Cabinet Office maintains the principles and the second was dropped from its guidance thirty years ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lascelles_Principles Historian Peter Hennessy stated in 1994 that the second of the three conditions had since been "dropped from the canon", being no longer included in internal Cabinet Office guidance.[4]
R doesn't have to further any interests of any faction, he has to follow the guidance as it exists from the Cabinet Office, in order to stay out of political decisions.
A necessary, not a sufficient condition. If Sir Reg had meant a majority he would have said so.
And it doesn't matter. HM has to be positively satisfied on all points to even consider refusing a dissolution. All it takes is one Sunakite MP to suggest by back channels - say, a note thrust into the Equerry's stocking-top - that he and 30 of his mates will be voting with the oppo from here on it in protest against the ousting - and that creates too much doubt for him to refuse.
You're wrong.
HM has to follow his guidance. If the guidance is that the PM no longer commands a majority of the Commons, but someone else does, then that someone else will be invited to Downing Street to form a new government.
30 backbenchers can say what they like, unless they resign the whip they are counted in the government party and that there is a majority of the Commons to back the new PM.
You do make it up as you go along, don't you?
Putative new PM has to assure HM that he commands a majority in the HoC. If the 30 just tell the whips informally that they are looking at their options, PNPM cannot give that assurance. I am guessing you regard Johnson's lying to the monarch, breaking international treaties etc as signs of strength and integrity, but I don't see it happening twice. And if it did it would leak that it did, and the electoral vengeance on the tories would be awesome to behold
You're the one making it up.
Informally telling the whips that they are looking at their options is neither here nor there. Resigning the whip is, but nobody is going to do that.
Parties can change leader during a Parliament, that is not a problem. If the Tories change their leader, and the Tories control a majority of the Commons, then convention is to send for the new Tory leader to become Prime Minister.
Informal complaints about looking at their options aren't relevant.
A huge explosion was reported in Zagorskiy Optical and Mechanical plant near Moscow
The factory had contracts with the Russian Ministry of Defense. It is part of Shvabe Holding, which is producing sights, thermal imagers, laser rangefinders, and other similar products. https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1689192323588947968
That’s damn careless. How many Russian military contractors is that, whose buildings “went on fire”?
A huge explosion was reported in Zagorskiy Optical and Mechanical plant near Moscow
The factory had contracts with the Russian Ministry of Defense. It is part of Shvabe Holding, which is producing sights, thermal imagers, laser rangefinders, and other similar products. https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1689192323588947968
That’s damn careless. How many Russian military contractors is that, whose buildings “went on fire”?
Hard to find anything to argue with in OGH's summary. At least for yours truly!
Morning all.
@MikeSmithson keeps taking GE2019 as the benchmark. Whilst this looks right on paper, it's an illusion and for punters it's an error. GE2019 was a one-off 'Get Brexit Done' election to unblock the jam created during the Remainer Parliament. Boris Johnson galvanised the voters against the unelectable trotskyite anti-semitic Jeremy Corbyn with the sole aim of Getting Brexit Done. Hence the December election. In many ways GE2019 was NOT a General Election.
The last proper General Election in the UK was June 2017, which resulted in a hung parliament. That's your benchmark.
Bet accordingly.
p.s. I'm personally very glad that Keir Starmer is no Tony Blair.
I think I understand the point you are making - whilst the 2019 election is the status quo, its artificial. Ordinarily the Labour task would be considered politically unlikely - as we all said in the aftermath.
But if we consider the 2019 result to be the aberration, then a revision to the norm can be expected to happen as the start of any new electoral move. There are swathes of red wall seats which endless polls have shows will not just revert to Labour but will deliver them 5 figure majorities.
If we bake that 2017 reversion in, the task facing Starmer is much smaller, and much more attainable. Then we look at the two other political low tides from 2015 likely to come back in:
The absence of unionist MPs in Scotland feels like a situation that can't be sustained - so expect 20-30 seats to switch from the motorhome party. The absence of yellow MPs in rural England is already a tide rushing back in. The focus is always on Labour, but as is clear it is the LibDems who will mop up disaffected sane voters in places where "Sink the Boats" makes people feel sick.
So, we reset the Red Wall. We drain out the SNP flood. We remove the dam from the LibDems. And suddenly a thumping Tory defeat is not just possible, it feels likely. To stay in power they need to preserve all three of these artificial positions. Which politically means they need to be Janus, a task they are spectacularly failing to pull off.
Yes, I think the Tories have snookered themselves. It is hard to see any of those 3 fronts being contained next GE. While Scotland is unique, the other 2 fronts play out across most E and W constituencies. They are sociological rather than geographical waves.
Tory unpopularity with the working age population is astonishing. I doubt there’s been anything like it in the history of two-party politics in this country.
What possible reason is there at the minute for someone who works for a living to support the Tories?
Sunak has made his bed and shown that working people only exist in his eyes to be taxed ever higher to provide welfare for those who don't work. That's something you can understand from Labour, but from the Tories?
The jack boots will be on next and barbed wire being put up to intern unemployed and pensioners. Give it a rest Adolf.
Hang on. Barty is an absolutist which often translates into absurdist straw man positions - the rant about 30mph zones a perfect example. But he has a point - the status quo is broken. We *are* paying vast amounts in taxes. Where he descends into the absurdist is the suggestion that the money is going into welfare. When our welfare system grudgingly gives people living poverty assuming it pays anything at all.
We're paying record taxes, true. But its going to spivs, not on services, not on infrastructure, not on welfare. We pay lots and get little. Where does all that money go? Even if you are as high Tory and say "inefficiency" that is literally my point. Inefficiency means money is being wasted. Spent on consultants. Advisers. Middlemen. Spivs...
The problem we have is that whilst "we pay taxes and get little back" is good analysis, nobody wants to go after why that is. And propose a solution because the problem is too big and our politicians too timid.
Your jackboots analogy is one solution. Hungary have done it. France wants to do it. Spain and Germany are toying with it...
Interestingly the idea that all our taxes are going on "spivs" is a bit like Tory extremists who think all our taxes are going on "diversity officers" etc
I never said all our money is going on welfare. What I said, is that we now spend more on welfare than we spend on all public sector employees put together.
That's right, we spend more on welfare than we spend on every doctor, nurse, police officer, prison officer, teacher and more combined. Including any spivs the state hires.
And those on welfare are getting a double-digit pay rise, while those who work for a living for the state are not.
That is where our money is going. Well some of it.
Between welfare, people working for the state and debt interest out of every £5 the state spends of our taxes approximately £2 goes on welfare, £2 goes on people working for a living (slightly less than the welfare amount, but we're rounding here), and £1 goes on debt interest.
So only 40% of that expenditure is 'productive', even if you generously assume all public sector employees are productive.
You can eliminate every spiv, or every diversity officer, or whatever other prejudice you have. But when between those three issues we spend 60% of our taxes on welfare and debt interest then we have a problem.
Especially when the government is increasing annually the amount we spend on welfare and debt interest, and reducing annually the amount we spend on wages.
PS who said anything about "people living in poverty". Very little of our welfare system goes to people living in poverty. Welfare != support for poverty, that is the problem.
Oh Dear , you don't even realise that benefits & pensions are spent in the economy as opposed to the billions the spivs take and send to tax havens etc. Explain why the £2 on workers is productive and yet the £2 on pensions/benefits is not, give us another laugh. You really don't have a clue.
Actually giving wealthy people living offshore double digit increases to their pensions doesn't get spent in the economy, whereas giving people who are working for a living in this country a pay rise does.
The problem is that people assume that 'welfare' goes to those who need it, so is a good thing. If it did, there'd be a lot less poverty in this country, considering that is where our money is going yet those who are in poverty get sod all - then the question to ask is where is the rest of the welfare budget going?
If you don't understand why people working for a living might be more productive than those who aren't, then I'm not sure I can help you understand it better. Others smarter than you do though.
Well let me just answer a few of your mistaken points I answered your point re the equal spending of £2 by a "worker" or your interpretation of a "sponger". Someone unemployed or retired spending £2 is the same benefit to the economy as someone working spending £2. Your dumb theory only works if those working are spending more than £2 and so is a false argument. How many people abroad get pensions , guaranteed it is a small fraction of overall pensions and ZERO on benefits, another one shot down and eth amount sent to tax havens by Tory spivs, tax evaders etc dwarves it by many many times.
The Conservatives and Labour will always be the two main parties... until they are not.
Time was when: ...every boy and every gal That’s born into the world alive Is either a little Liberal Or else a little Conservative!
Neither party has a divine right to compete for power; it's not inconceivable that the LDs replace the Tories permanently (until the next change).
The oddness of the current polling is that we keep getting mad predictions of Labour winning everything everywhere. Supposedly that Channel 4 Poll last night had Labour taking Richmond off Sunak.
The electorate have shown they are well up for tactical voting. There is no mass desire for Sunak in the way there was for Blair. But there is a mass demand to get shut of this government. And people showing that they are motivated and well informed about how to vote to bring that about.
If there truly was a Tory collapse, surely there would be scores more LibDems elected rather than Labour winning Richmond. Some Greens too. But in what gets simplified as a two party choice the pollsters interpret national polls nationally instead of looking at reality.
Compare and contrast the LD vote in a seat we're the ABC choice in vs a seat where its Labour. In one seat we pick up a 5 figure majority, In the other seat we lose our deposit. That is what we can expect in the GE - Labour and LD candidates winning outrageous seats whilst their colleagues elsewhere lose their deposit.
Forget UNS.
All sounds entirely sensible, until you remember how poorly the LDs have performed at national elections since 2010.
Which is where Dave'n'George were smarter than the current team.
If Lib and Lab take potshots at each other (2015 due to coalition fallout, 2019 due to the awfulness of Jez 2.0), Conservatives can do well without too much difficulty.
By being so awful, the 2019-now government has made it clear to the red and yellow teams where they should be aiming their fire. And that's good for the Lib Dems in the 50(?) seats they can put on a decent show in, and good for Labour everywhere else in England.
Damned with faint praise there, much?
Electorally the current Tory team are simply not up to it. Activists locally getting restless. Suspect another bad set of locals would be Rishi's last.
May 24 is much too far into the endgame for a putsch.
If May 2024 shows Tory MPs down to the 91st safest (as per recent polling) losing their seats, 24 hours would be time enough.
It takes 24 seconds for a PM to call a General Election.
You know that the constitutional advice on a PM requesting a dissolution in the event of his imminent ousting is that it won't be accepted, right?
No, I didn't know that. I do know the Lascelles convention if that is what you mean, which states that refusal is an OPTION iff
1. the existing Parliament is still "vital, viable, and capable of doing its job", 2. a general election would be "detrimental to the national economy", and 3. the sovereign could "rely on finding another prime minister who could govern for a reasonable period with a working majority in the House of Commons".
1 and 2 LOL, to satisfy 3 you're going to have to have pre-coronated someone again.
1 is met, there is a majority Government.
2 is no longer part of the Convention AFAIK.
3 no need for a pre-coronation, the convention is that governments can undergo leadership campaigns while in office.
If the PM were ousted and a majority of the Commons were willing to have the Deputy PM (currently Oliver Dowden) or someone else as interim PM until the end of the leadership campaign, then Lascelles condition 3 would be met too.
On 1, it doesn't say "there is a majority" it says something different
I don't see what mechanism there is for amendment of the principles short of a further letter from Senex. What are you referring to?
The problem is, R granting the request is the default. You are suggesting he be asked to depart from precedent and go out of his way to further the interests of one faction in one political party. Not going to happen.
A majority of the Commons is one that is viable and capable of doing its job.
The Cabinet Office maintains the principles and the second was dropped from its guidance thirty years ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lascelles_Principles Historian Peter Hennessy stated in 1994 that the second of the three conditions had since been "dropped from the canon", being no longer included in internal Cabinet Office guidance.[4]
R doesn't have to further any interests of any faction, he has to follow the guidance as it exists from the Cabinet Office, in order to stay out of political decisions.
A necessary, not a sufficient condition. If Sir Reg had meant a majority he would have said so.
And it doesn't matter. HM has to be positively satisfied on all points to even consider refusing a dissolution. All it takes is one Sunakite MP to suggest by back channels - say, a note thrust into the Equerry's stocking-top - that he and 30 of his mates will be voting with the oppo from here on it in protest against the ousting - and that creates too much doubt for him to refuse.
You're wrong.
HM has to follow his guidance. If the guidance is that the PM no longer commands a majority of the Commons, but someone else does, then that someone else will be invited to Downing Street to form a new government.
30 backbenchers can say what they like, unless they resign the whip they are counted in the government party and that there is a majority of the Commons to back the new PM.
You do make it up as you go along, don't you?
Putative new PM has to assure HM that he commands a majority in the HoC. If the 30 just tell the whips informally that they are looking at their options, PNPM cannot give that assurance. I am guessing you regard Johnson's lying to the monarch, breaking international treaties etc as signs of strength and integrity, but I don't see it happening twice. And if it did it would leak that it did, and the electoral vengeance on the tories would be awesome to behold
You're the one making it up.
Informally telling the whips that they are looking at their options is neither here nor there. Resigning the whip is, but nobody is going to do that.
Parties can change leader during a Parliament, that is not a problem. If the Tories change their leader, and the Tories control a majority of the Commons, then convention is to send for the new Tory leader to become Prime Minister.
Informal complaints about looking at their options aren't relevant.
You don't seem to understand the concept of a lie, Bart. It is usually understood by children from about 3 upwards. You cannot tell X that you are sure about Y when you know there is a query about Y. Saying Yebbut it wasn't a *formal* doubt does not make it less a lie.
I will offer you 50/1 if you like that HM accedes to RS's first request to dissolve parliament.
A huge explosion was reported in Zagorskiy Optical and Mechanical plant near Moscow
The factory had contracts with the Russian Ministry of Defense. It is part of Shvabe Holding, which is producing sights, thermal imagers, laser rangefinders, and other similar products. https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1689192323588947968
That’s damn careless. How many Russian military contractors is that, whose buildings “went on fire”?
Hard to find anything to argue with in OGH's summary. At least for yours truly!
Morning all.
@MikeSmithson keeps taking GE2019 as the benchmark. Whilst this looks right on paper, it's an illusion and for punters it's an error. GE2019 was a one-off 'Get Brexit Done' election to unblock the jam created during the Remainer Parliament. Boris Johnson galvanised the voters against the unelectable trotskyite anti-semitic Jeremy Corbyn with the sole aim of Getting Brexit Done. Hence the December election. In many ways GE2019 was NOT a General Election.
The last proper General Election in the UK was June 2017, which resulted in a hung parliament. That's your benchmark.
Bet accordingly.
p.s. I'm personally very glad that Keir Starmer is no Tony Blair.
I think I understand the point you are making - whilst the 2019 election is the status quo, its artificial. Ordinarily the Labour task would be considered politically unlikely - as we all said in the aftermath.
But if we consider the 2019 result to be the aberration, then a revision to the norm can be expected to happen as the start of any new electoral move. There are swathes of red wall seats which endless polls have shows will not just revert to Labour but will deliver them 5 figure majorities.
If we bake that 2017 reversion in, the task facing Starmer is much smaller, and much more attainable. Then we look at the two other political low tides from 2015 likely to come back in:
The absence of unionist MPs in Scotland feels like a situation that can't be sustained - so expect 20-30 seats to switch from the motorhome party. The absence of yellow MPs in rural England is already a tide rushing back in. The focus is always on Labour, but as is clear it is the LibDems who will mop up disaffected sane voters in places where "Sink the Boats" makes people feel sick.
So, we reset the Red Wall. We drain out the SNP flood. We remove the dam from the LibDems. And suddenly a thumping Tory defeat is not just possible, it feels likely. To stay in power they need to preserve all three of these artificial positions. Which politically means they need to be Janus, a task they are spectacularly failing to pull off.
Yes, I think the Tories have snookered themselves. It is hard to see any of those 3 fronts being contained next GE. While Scotland is unique, the other 2 fronts play out across most E and W constituencies. They are sociological rather than geographical waves.
Tory unpopularity with the working age population is astonishing. I doubt there’s been anything like it in the history of two-party politics in this country.
Yes, it is deeply concerning.
The only people they seem to look after (and protect from policy) is the retired and they've dug a hole so deep there I struggle to see how they get out now.
Opposition will do a lot of the work.
Labour, in government, will be unlikely to resist the temptation to try to buy pensioner votes. I think some of the bias of the old to the Tories is in fact a bias of the old to the incumbent government.
Things could change quite rapidly, at least in terms of rhetoric and polling. But would a new Tory government, after a Starmer interregnum, be able to resist the temptation to buy pensioner votes? I have my doubts. (Well, okay, not many doubts, I'm fairly confident that governments of both sides will follow the path of least resistance and genuflect to the pensioner vote.)
OTOH, many pensioners will still vote Tory regardless, so why should SKS bother going all out Tory? Or (as remarked to me yesterday) so cowardly in his approach to Brexit etc. that he might as well be Tory. And ditto with baby starving, Scottish referendum, and so on and so forth.
The Tories have gone so far (as already remarked in the thread) it's probably impossible to rebalance things and make a fairer balance with the people actually doing the work without upsetting the pensioner vote irreparably (for instance, by imposing NI on all, or merging it with income tax, or cutting IHT allowances or converting them to CGT).
My argument is mainly grounded on what happened under the previous Labour government, rather than on hypotheticals about the future.
Under the Labour government of 1997-2010* we saw several moves that increased spending on pensioners. We had the first pension lock, to ensure there wasn't a repeat of low inflation leading to a tiny increase in the state pension. We had various freebies given to pensioners - TV licenses, bus passes, fuel allowances.
The consequence of this was seen in election results. In the 2010 GE the bias of the old to vote Tories was at its lowest since 1992.
Expect to see the same again. I'd be gobsmacked if pensioners were not reassured by Labour budgets, and I'd expect votes to change as they did before.
The attraction of buying the votes of pensioners is that it is really simple. The government only has to keep the money flowing. Sorting out the problems for younger voters, such as the housing crisis, might sound simple - just build more houses! - but runs into all sorts of other issues - Who will build them? Will there be enough building materials at a low enough price? Where? - which make them practically more difficult, and even in a best case scenario will take years to deliver tangible results.
* Actually, probably more correctly in the period 2001-2010. I'd have to dig out the details of when the various reforms were made. But the very small pension increase happened in the first Parliament, 1997-2001, and Labour consequently fell further behind with the pensioner vote at the 2001 GE. They learnt their lesson then and I don't think they will be looking for a refresher.
House building needs to be increased.
All of the problem you list are fixable over time.
When it was proposed to hire x,000 more police officers, some said it was actually impossible.
The current block is the hoarding of planning permission. Which is logical for various actors.
Imagine you are a big developer. You have the permission to build an estate of 5,000 homes. If you try and build 5,000 homes now
1) the local house prices will crash 2) the local council will find the strain on infrastructure intolerable 3) the NIMBYs will riot 4) finding the builders may be a problem
So, instead, you build 250 a year. That makes the council mellow. The NIMBYs will get bored with the inevitable. The house prices won’t crash. The building companies and suppliers you contract with will love a steady 20 years of work….
Bolded the key issue. They are fixable, in principle, but it requires some action to be taken. This immediately makes it more difficult than the alternative.
This is the situation that pertains in Ireland now. Independent builders won't provide quotes for projects because they don't know what the materials will cost. The question is whether the government can maintain the increased demand for building materials despite this (and so provide the demand that will lead to increased supply and lower prices in the future) and make any targeted interventions that might decrease building materials costs, or if house building numbers will fall back as a reaction to the increase in building costs.
It's a bit early to tell, and the government reporting of the building numbers is wildly inconsistent, but the signs aren't good.
How many years have people been speaking about increasing housebuilding in Britain? Years and years and years and years. It took seven years to increase the number of completions in the UK from the 2012 nadir of 133k to 210k in the pre-pandemic year of 2019.
So to take housebuilding up to 300k a year, and sustain it at that level for long enough to bring house prices down, is going to take more than one electoral cycle. To win the next-next election any government is going to need to keep pensioners on side.
A huge explosion was reported in Zagorskiy Optical and Mechanical plant near Moscow
The factory had contracts with the Russian Ministry of Defense. It is part of Shvabe Holding, which is producing sights, thermal imagers, laser rangefinders, and other similar products. https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1689192323588947968
That’s damn careless. How many Russian military contractors is that, whose buildings “went on fire”?
On topic, sort of: Our Gracious Host reminds me of a question I have been wondering about, off and on, for decades:
Are some (many?) environmentalists members of what it is fair to consider more a religious movement than a political movement?
@Jim_Miller - Yes, you are on the right lines. You may find it useful to look at any or all of the following:
* Triodos Bank - start with what the word and symbol mean
* a sequence of "extinctions" - straight outta Blavatsky
* the word "organic" when applied only to some kinds of food - got a very clear origin for this one
* anything to do with "people, planet, and profit" - the idea that there should be some kind of triple goal of serving the interests of the people, the planet, and commercial business - sometimes appearing as "social, environmental, and economic"
A huge explosion was reported in Zagorskiy Optical and Mechanical plant near Moscow
The factory had contracts with the Russian Ministry of Defense. It is part of Shvabe Holding, which is producing sights, thermal imagers, laser rangefinders, and other similar products. https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1689192323588947968
That’s damn careless. How many Russian military contractors is that, whose buildings “went on fire”?
Like old British pubs.
If people are interested in the spate of people falling down stairs or accidentally dying by fires or falling out of 12 storey windows - Jake Hanrahan (of Popular Front) is doing a podcast called Sad Oligarch looking into the increased number of suspicious deaths of the Russian elite since the beginning of the war against Ukraine.
A huge explosion was reported in Zagorskiy Optical and Mechanical plant near Moscow
The factory had contracts with the Russian Ministry of Defense. It is part of Shvabe Holding, which is producing sights, thermal imagers, laser rangefinders, and other similar products. https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1689192323588947968
That’s damn careless. How many Russian military contractors is that, whose buildings “went on fire”?
Not enough of them unfortunately.
We can agree on that. Unlike wonky pubs in England, more fires in Russia please.
Hard to find anything to argue with in OGH's summary. At least for yours truly!
Morning all.
@MikeSmithson keeps taking GE2019 as the benchmark. Whilst this looks right on paper, it's an illusion and for punters it's an error. GE2019 was a one-off 'Get Brexit Done' election to unblock the jam created during the Remainer Parliament. Boris Johnson galvanised the voters against the unelectable trotskyite anti-semitic Jeremy Corbyn with the sole aim of Getting Brexit Done. Hence the December election. In many ways GE2019 was NOT a General Election.
The last proper General Election in the UK was June 2017, which resulted in a hung parliament. That's your benchmark.
Bet accordingly.
p.s. I'm personally very glad that Keir Starmer is no Tony Blair.
I think I understand the point you are making - whilst the 2019 election is the status quo, its artificial. Ordinarily the Labour task would be considered politically unlikely - as we all said in the aftermath.
But if we consider the 2019 result to be the aberration, then a revision to the norm can be expected to happen as the start of any new electoral move. There are swathes of red wall seats which endless polls have shows will not just revert to Labour but will deliver them 5 figure majorities.
If we bake that 2017 reversion in, the task facing Starmer is much smaller, and much more attainable. Then we look at the two other political low tides from 2015 likely to come back in:
The absence of unionist MPs in Scotland feels like a situation that can't be sustained - so expect 20-30 seats to switch from the motorhome party. The absence of yellow MPs in rural England is already a tide rushing back in. The focus is always on Labour, but as is clear it is the LibDems who will mop up disaffected sane voters in places where "Sink the Boats" makes people feel sick.
So, we reset the Red Wall. We drain out the SNP flood. We remove the dam from the LibDems. And suddenly a thumping Tory defeat is not just possible, it feels likely. To stay in power they need to preserve all three of these artificial positions. Which politically means they need to be Janus, a task they are spectacularly failing to pull off.
Yes, I think the Tories have snookered themselves. It is hard to see any of those 3 fronts being contained next GE. While Scotland is unique, the other 2 fronts play out across most E and W constituencies. They are sociological rather than geographical waves.
Tory unpopularity with the working age population is astonishing. I doubt there’s been anything like it in the history of two-party politics in this country.
What possible reason is there at the minute for someone who works for a living to support the Tories?
Sunak has made his bed and shown that working people only exist in his eyes to be taxed ever higher to provide welfare for those who don't work. That's something you can understand from Labour, but from the Tories?
The jack boots will be on next and barbed wire being put up to intern unemployed and pensioners. Give it a rest Adolf.
Hang on. Barty is an absolutist which often translates into absurdist straw man positions - the rant about 30mph zones a perfect example. But he has a point - the status quo is broken. We *are* paying vast amounts in taxes. Where he descends into the absurdist is the suggestion that the money is going into welfare. When our welfare system grudgingly gives people living poverty assuming it pays anything at all.
We're paying record taxes, true. But its going to spivs, not on services, not on infrastructure, not on welfare. We pay lots and get little. Where does all that money go? Even if you are as high Tory and say "inefficiency" that is literally my point. Inefficiency means money is being wasted. Spent on consultants. Advisers. Middlemen. Spivs...
The problem we have is that whilst "we pay taxes and get little back" is good analysis, nobody wants to go after why that is. And propose a solution because the problem is too big and our politicians too timid.
Your jackboots analogy is one solution. Hungary have done it. France wants to do it. Spain and Germany are toying with it...
Interestingly the idea that all our taxes are going on "spivs" is a bit like Tory extremists who think all our taxes are going on "diversity officers" etc
I never said all our money is going on welfare. What I said, is that we now spend more on welfare than we spend on all public sector employees put together.
That's right, we spend more on welfare than we spend on every doctor, nurse, police officer, prison officer, teacher and more combined. Including any spivs the state hires.
And those on welfare are getting a double-digit pay rise, while those who work for a living for the state are not.
That is where our money is going. Well some of it.
Between welfare, people working for the state and debt interest out of every £5 the state spends of our taxes approximately £2 goes on welfare, £2 goes on people working for a living (slightly less than the welfare amount, but we're rounding here), and £1 goes on debt interest.
So only 40% of that expenditure is 'productive', even if you generously assume all public sector employees are productive.
You can eliminate every spiv, or every diversity officer, or whatever other prejudice you have. But when between those three issues we spend 60% of our taxes on welfare and debt interest then we have a problem.
Especially when the government is increasing annually the amount we spend on welfare and debt interest, and reducing annually the amount we spend on wages.
PS who said anything about "people living in poverty". Very little of our welfare system goes to people living in poverty. Welfare != support for poverty, that is the problem.
Oh Dear , you don't even realise that benefits & pensions are spent in the economy as opposed to the billions the spivs take and send to tax havens etc. Explain why the £2 on workers is productive and yet the £2 on pensions/benefits is not, give us another laugh. You really don't have a clue.
Actually giving wealthy people living offshore double digit increases to their pensions doesn't get spent in the economy, whereas giving people who are working for a living in this country a pay rise does.
The problem is that people assume that 'welfare' goes to those who need it, so is a good thing. If it did, there'd be a lot less poverty in this country, considering that is where our money is going yet those who are in poverty get sod all - then the question to ask is where is the rest of the welfare budget going?
If you don't understand why people working for a living might be more productive than those who aren't, then I'm not sure I can help you understand it better. Others smarter than you do though.
Well let me just answer a few of your mistaken points I answered your point re the equal spending of £2 by a "worker" or your interpretation of a "sponger". Someone unemployed or retired spending £2 is the same benefit to the economy as someone working spending £2. Your dumb theory only works if those working are spending more than £2 and so is a false argument. How many people abroad get pensions , guaranteed it is a small fraction of overall pensions and ZERO on benefits, another one shot down and eth amount sent to tax havens by Tory spivs, tax evaders etc dwarves it by many many times.
You're divorced from facts and reality again.
Those working for expenditure is not the same benefit to the economy as those not working for a higher share of expenditure since its not just the amount of they spend that the economy benefits from, but more importantly the amount of work achieved that the economy benefits from too. Which unsurprisingly is more for those working, than not working.
Giving taxpayers money to those who are well off, have a property portfolio and are making a decent and untaxed income not from working but from letting out their properties and calling that "welfare" while those who are working poor get less and less wages does nothing for either alleviating poverty or boosting productivity.
People think that because those in poverty get so little from welfare, that we can't be spending too much on welfare. Well the truth is worse than that, we spend a fortune on welfare, more than we do on all workers combined, yet very little of it goes to those who need it.
Europa: The Last Battle is neo-Nazi propaganda. It claims the Jews and Communists attacked innocent Nazi Germany as part of their evil plan to establish Israel and mix the races, and that Hitler was a good guy. Now it's here on Twitter thanks to a blue tick with 200k followers. https://twitter.com/ariehkovler/status/1689208943841554432
Hard to find anything to argue with in OGH's summary. At least for yours truly!
Morning all.
@MikeSmithson keeps taking GE2019 as the benchmark. Whilst this looks right on paper, it's an illusion and for punters it's an error. GE2019 was a one-off 'Get Brexit Done' election to unblock the jam created during the Remainer Parliament. Boris Johnson galvanised the voters against the unelectable trotskyite anti-semitic Jeremy Corbyn with the sole aim of Getting Brexit Done. Hence the December election. In many ways GE2019 was NOT a General Election.
The last proper General Election in the UK was June 2017, which resulted in a hung parliament. That's your benchmark.
Bet accordingly.
p.s. I'm personally very glad that Keir Starmer is no Tony Blair.
I think I understand the point you are making - whilst the 2019 election is the status quo, its artificial. Ordinarily the Labour task would be considered politically unlikely - as we all said in the aftermath.
But if we consider the 2019 result to be the aberration, then a revision to the norm can be expected to happen as the start of any new electoral move. There are swathes of red wall seats which endless polls have shows will not just revert to Labour but will deliver them 5 figure majorities.
If we bake that 2017 reversion in, the task facing Starmer is much smaller, and much more attainable. Then we look at the two other political low tides from 2015 likely to come back in:
The absence of unionist MPs in Scotland feels like a situation that can't be sustained - so expect 20-30 seats to switch from the motorhome party. The absence of yellow MPs in rural England is already a tide rushing back in. The focus is always on Labour, but as is clear it is the LibDems who will mop up disaffected sane voters in places where "Sink the Boats" makes people feel sick.
So, we reset the Red Wall. We drain out the SNP flood. We remove the dam from the LibDems. And suddenly a thumping Tory defeat is not just possible, it feels likely. To stay in power they need to preserve all three of these artificial positions. Which politically means they need to be Janus, a task they are spectacularly failing to pull off.
Yes, I think the Tories have snookered themselves. It is hard to see any of those 3 fronts being contained next GE. While Scotland is unique, the other 2 fronts play out across most E and W constituencies. They are sociological rather than geographical waves.
Tory unpopularity with the working age population is astonishing. I doubt there’s been anything like it in the history of two-party politics in this country.
Yes, it is deeply concerning.
The only people they seem to look after (and protect from policy) is the retired and they've dug a hole so deep there I struggle to see how they get out now.
Opposition will do a lot of the work.
Labour, in government, will be unlikely to resist the temptation to try to buy pensioner votes. I think some of the bias of the old to the Tories is in fact a bias of the old to the incumbent government.
Things could change quite rapidly, at least in terms of rhetoric and polling. But would a new Tory government, after a Starmer interregnum, be able to resist the temptation to buy pensioner votes? I have my doubts. (Well, okay, not many doubts, I'm fairly confident that governments of both sides will follow the path of least resistance and genuflect to the pensioner vote.)
OTOH, many pensioners will still vote Tory regardless, so why should SKS bother going all out Tory? Or (as remarked to me yesterday) so cowardly in his approach to Brexit etc. that he might as well be Tory. And ditto with baby starving, Scottish referendum, and so on and so forth.
The Tories have gone so far (as already remarked in the thread) it's probably impossible to rebalance things and make a fairer balance with the people actually doing the work without upsetting the pensioner vote irreparably (for instance, by imposing NI on all, or merging it with income tax, or cutting IHT allowances or converting them to CGT).
My argument is mainly grounded on what happened under the previous Labour government, rather than on hypotheticals about the future.
Under the Labour government of 1997-2010* we saw several moves that increased spending on pensioners. We had the first pension lock, to ensure there wasn't a repeat of low inflation leading to a tiny increase in the state pension. We had various freebies given to pensioners - TV licenses, bus passes, fuel allowances.
The consequence of this was seen in election results. In the 2010 GE the bias of the old to vote Tories was at its lowest since 1992.
Expect to see the same again. I'd be gobsmacked if pensioners were not reassured by Labour budgets, and I'd expect votes to change as they did before.
The attraction of buying the votes of pensioners is that it is really simple. The government only has to keep the money flowing. Sorting out the problems for younger voters, such as the housing crisis, might sound simple - just build more houses! - but runs into all sorts of other issues - Who will build them? Will there be enough building materials at a low enough price? Where? - which make them practically more difficult, and even in a best case scenario will take years to deliver tangible results.
* Actually, probably more correctly in the period 2001-2010. I'd have to dig out the details of when the various reforms were made. But the very small pension increase happened in the first Parliament, 1997-2001, and Labour consequently fell further behind with the pensioner vote at the 2001 GE. They learnt their lesson then and I don't think they will be looking for a refresher.
House building needs to be increased.
All of the problem you list are fixable over time.
When it was proposed to hire x,000 more police officers, some said it was actually impossible.
The current block is the hoarding of planning permission. Which is logical for various actors.
Imagine you are a big developer. You have the permission to build an estate of 5,000 homes. If you try and build 5,000 homes now
1) the local house prices will crash 2) the local council will find the strain on infrastructure intolerable 3) the NIMBYs will riot 4) finding the builders may be a problem
So, instead, you build 250 a year. That makes the council mellow. The NIMBYs will get bored with the inevitable. The house prices won’t crash. The building companies and suppliers you contract with will love a steady 20 years of work….
Bolded the key issue. They are fixable, in principle, but it requires some action to be taken. This immediately makes it more difficult than the alternative.
This is the situation that pertains in Ireland now. Independent builders won't provide quotes for projects because they don't know what the materials will cost. The question is whether the government can maintain the increased demand for building materials despite this (and so provide the demand that will lead to increased supply and lower prices in the future) and make any targeted interventions that might decrease building materials costs, or if house building numbers will fall back as a reaction to the increase in building costs.
It's a bit early to tell, and the government reporting of the building numbers is wildly inconsistent, but the signs aren't good.
How many years have people been speaking about increasing housebuilding in Britain? Years and years and years and years. It took seven years to increase the number of completions in the UK from the 2012 nadir of 133k to 210k in the pre-pandemic year of 2019.
So to take housebuilding up to 300k a year, and sustain it at that level for long enough to bring house prices down, is going to take more than one electoral cycle. To win the next-next election any government is going to need to keep pensioners on side.
The road to Mars requires walking to the rocket factory....
If fact, progress has been made. We have got the planning system producing more planning permissions than are used. So next, we need to get the building bottleneck sorted.
Don't create local monopolies. In the case of a big development, sell one side of the street to one developer, then the other to the next guy. If you have 10 developers competing in the 5K housing development (above), then the winning move is not to be last.
On topic, sort of: Our Gracious Host reminds me of a question I have been wondering about, off and on, for decades:
Are some (many?) environmentalists members of what it is fair to consider more a religious movement than a political movement?
No - I would argue the opposite. The evidence is pretty clear and has been clear for some time - the economic dependency on fossil fuels will change the climate of this Earth to such a degree as to destroy human civilisation as we know it. That is not a religious belief, that is a belief backed up by mountains and mountains of evidence. It is a fact based position.
The religious belief is that the invisible hand of the market, some divine force that is always all knowing and correct, will somehow help us overcome this rather than the dedicated work of individuals and nation states. The belief in infinite economic growth on a planet with finite resources is also a pretty religious dogma - infinite growth is not possible and arguably not good (the only natural thing to grow like that are cancer cells).
That a percentage of people are not being "pragmatic" has more to do with your definition of "pragmatic" - if for you it is "we can only tinker at the edges" then sure, it makes no sense to vote Labour, if for you it starts with "we need a habitable planet to have any kind of society at all" then the "pragmatic" position is to vote only for parties that make promises for a future that includes a habitable planet.
If your claim was is the environmental movement more "ideological" or "single-issue", I may agree with you, but certainly not more a "religious" movement than a political one.
Re Sir Chris Bryant's sporty little gambit to ban non-attending parliamentarians, where does this leave Sinn Fein MPs?
One might argue "but that's different", but I think this is why we should steer well away from this sort of thing. The moment you create exceptions, it becomes very messy.
A huge explosion was reported in Zagorskiy Optical and Mechanical plant near Moscow
The factory had contracts with the Russian Ministry of Defense. It is part of Shvabe Holding, which is producing sights, thermal imagers, laser rangefinders, and other similar products. https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1689192323588947968
That’s damn careless. How many Russian military contractors is that, whose buildings “went on fire”?
Europa: The Last Battle is neo-Nazi propaganda. It claims the Jews and Communists attacked innocent Nazi Germany as part of their evil plan to establish Israel and mix the races, and that Hitler was a good guy. Now it's here on Twitter thanks to a blue tick with 200k followers. https://twitter.com/ariehkovler/status/1689208943841554432
The blue tick is meaningless since anyone can pay for it. The number of followers is the thing to worry about.
On topic, sort of: Our Gracious Host reminds me of a question I have been wondering about, off and on, for decades:
Are some (many?) environmentalists members of what it is fair to consider more a religious movement than a political movement?
No - I would argue the opposite. The evidence is pretty clear and has been clear for some time - the economic dependency on fossil fuels will change the climate of this Earth to such a degree as to destroy human civilisation as we know it. That is not a religious belief, that is a belief backed up by mountains and mountains of evidence. It is a fact based position.
The religious belief is that the invisible hand of the market, some divine force that is always all knowing and correct, will somehow help us overcome this rather than the dedicated work of individuals and nation states. The belief in infinite economic growth on a planet with finite resources is also a pretty religious dogma - infinite growth is not possible and arguably not good (the only natural thing to grow like that are cancer cells).
That a percentage of people are not being "pragmatic" has more to do with your definition of "pragmatic" - if for you it is "we can only tinker at the edges" then sure, it makes no sense to vote Labour, if for you it starts with "we need a habitable planet to have any kind of society at all" then the "pragmatic" position is to vote only for parties that make promises for a future that includes a habitable planet.
If your claim was is the environmental movement more "ideological" or "single-issue", I may agree with you, but certainly not more a "religious" movement than a political one.
I've seen plenty of religious belief grafted onto environmental beliefs.
For example, it is quite common to find green types who declare that "Electric cars are just as polluting as ICE" - when you actually try and pin them down on the details, they react as if you are challenging Writ. You must not Question, only Believe.
Re Sir Chris Bryant's sporty little gambit to ban non-attending parliamentarians, where does this leave Sinn Fein MPs?
One might argue "but that's different", but I think this is why we should steer well away from this sort of thing. The moment you create exceptions, it becomes very messy.
It is very different. They haven't taken up their seats, they haven't signed up to any of the rules, they draw £0.00 salary (just 22k exes for constituency work). This isn't creating an exception, they are under no more obligation to attend HoC than you or I.
Hard to find anything to argue with in OGH's summary. At least for yours truly!
Morning all.
@MikeSmithson keeps taking GE2019 as the benchmark. Whilst this looks right on paper, it's an illusion and for punters it's an error. GE2019 was a one-off 'Get Brexit Done' election to unblock the jam created during the Remainer Parliament. Boris Johnson galvanised the voters against the unelectable trotskyite anti-semitic Jeremy Corbyn with the sole aim of Getting Brexit Done. Hence the December election. In many ways GE2019 was NOT a General Election.
The last proper General Election in the UK was June 2017, which resulted in a hung parliament. That's your benchmark.
Bet accordingly.
p.s. I'm personally very glad that Keir Starmer is no Tony Blair.
I think I understand the point you are making - whilst the 2019 election is the status quo, its artificial. Ordinarily the Labour task would be considered politically unlikely - as we all said in the aftermath.
But if we consider the 2019 result to be the aberration, then a revision to the norm can be expected to happen as the start of any new electoral move. There are swathes of red wall seats which endless polls have shows will not just revert to Labour but will deliver them 5 figure majorities.
If we bake that 2017 reversion in, the task facing Starmer is much smaller, and much more attainable. Then we look at the two other political low tides from 2015 likely to come back in:
The absence of unionist MPs in Scotland feels like a situation that can't be sustained - so expect 20-30 seats to switch from the motorhome party. The absence of yellow MPs in rural England is already a tide rushing back in. The focus is always on Labour, but as is clear it is the LibDems who will mop up disaffected sane voters in places where "Sink the Boats" makes people feel sick.
So, we reset the Red Wall. We drain out the SNP flood. We remove the dam from the LibDems. And suddenly a thumping Tory defeat is not just possible, it feels likely. To stay in power they need to preserve all three of these artificial positions. Which politically means they need to be Janus, a task they are spectacularly failing to pull off.
Yes, I think the Tories have snookered themselves. It is hard to see any of those 3 fronts being contained next GE. While Scotland is unique, the other 2 fronts play out across most E and W constituencies. They are sociological rather than geographical waves.
Tory unpopularity with the working age population is astonishing. I doubt there’s been anything like it in the history of two-party politics in this country.
Yes, it is deeply concerning.
The only people they seem to look after (and protect from policy) is the retired and they've dug a hole so deep there I struggle to see how they get out now.
Opposition will do a lot of the work.
Labour, in government, will be unlikely to resist the temptation to try to buy pensioner votes. I think some of the bias of the old to the Tories is in fact a bias of the old to the incumbent government.
Things could change quite rapidly, at least in terms of rhetoric and polling. But would a new Tory government, after a Starmer interregnum, be able to resist the temptation to buy pensioner votes? I have my doubts. (Well, okay, not many doubts, I'm fairly confident that governments of both sides will follow the path of least resistance and genuflect to the pensioner vote.)
OTOH, many pensioners will still vote Tory regardless, so why should SKS bother going all out Tory? Or (as remarked to me yesterday) so cowardly in his approach to Brexit etc. that he might as well be Tory. And ditto with baby starving, Scottish referendum, and so on and so forth.
The Tories have gone so far (as already remarked in the thread) it's probably impossible to rebalance things and make a fairer balance with the people actually doing the work without upsetting the pensioner vote irreparably (for instance, by imposing NI on all, or merging it with income tax, or cutting IHT allowances or converting them to CGT).
My argument is mainly grounded on what happened under the previous Labour government, rather than on hypotheticals about the future.
Under the Labour government of 1997-2010* we saw several moves that increased spending on pensioners. We had the first pension lock, to ensure there wasn't a repeat of low inflation leading to a tiny increase in the state pension. We had various freebies given to pensioners - TV licenses, bus passes, fuel allowances.
The consequence of this was seen in election results. In the 2010 GE the bias of the old to vote Tories was at its lowest since 1992.
Expect to see the same again. I'd be gobsmacked if pensioners were not reassured by Labour budgets, and I'd expect votes to change as they did before.
The attraction of buying the votes of pensioners is that it is really simple. The government only has to keep the money flowing. Sorting out the problems for younger voters, such as the housing crisis, might sound simple - just build more houses! - but runs into all sorts of other issues - Who will build them? Will there be enough building materials at a low enough price? Where? - which make them practically more difficult, and even in a best case scenario will take years to deliver tangible results.
* Actually, probably more correctly in the period 2001-2010. I'd have to dig out the details of when the various reforms were made. But the very small pension increase happened in the first Parliament, 1997-2001, and Labour consequently fell further behind with the pensioner vote at the 2001 GE. They learnt their lesson then and I don't think they will be looking for a refresher.
House building needs to be increased.
All of the problem you list are fixable over time.
When it was proposed to hire x,000 more police officers, some said it was actually impossible.
The current block is the hoarding of planning permission. Which is logical for various actors.
Imagine you are a big developer. You have the permission to build an estate of 5,000 homes. If you try and build 5,000 homes now
1) the local house prices will crash 2) the local council will find the strain on infrastructure intolerable 3) the NIMBYs will riot 4) finding the builders may be a problem
So, instead, you build 250 a year. That makes the council mellow. The NIMBYs will get bored with the inevitable. The house prices won’t crash. The building companies and suppliers you contract with will love a steady 20 years of work….
Bolded the key issue. They are fixable, in principle, but it requires some action to be taken. This immediately makes it more difficult than the alternative.
This is the situation that pertains in Ireland now. Independent builders won't provide quotes for projects because they don't know what the materials will cost. The question is whether the government can maintain the increased demand for building materials despite this (and so provide the demand that will lead to increased supply and lower prices in the future) and make any targeted interventions that might decrease building materials costs, or if house building numbers will fall back as a reaction to the increase in building costs.
It's a bit early to tell, and the government reporting of the building numbers is wildly inconsistent, but the signs aren't good.
How many years have people been speaking about increasing housebuilding in Britain? Years and years and years and years. It took seven years to increase the number of completions in the UK from the 2012 nadir of 133k to 210k in the pre-pandemic year of 2019.
So to take housebuilding up to 300k a year, and sustain it at that level for long enough to bring house prices down, is going to take more than one electoral cycle. To win the next-next election any government is going to need to keep pensioners on side.
The road to Mars requires walking to the rocket factory....
If fact, progress has been made. We have got the planning system producing more planning permissions than are used. So next, we need to get the building bottleneck sorted.
Don't create local monopolies. In the case of a big development, sell one side of the street to one developer, then the other to the next guy. If you have 10 developers competing in the 5K housing development (above), then the winning move is not to be last.
The key is to smash the oligopoly altogether.
About 99% of our planning permission goes to large developments.
In other countries developments get built one house at a time. Do that and you have 5000 developers competing for a 5k development, nobody has any reason to be last.
On topic, sort of: Our Gracious Host reminds me of a question I have been wondering about, off and on, for decades:
Are some (many?) environmentalists members of what it is fair to consider more a religious movement than a political movement?
@Jim_Miller - Yes, you are on the right lines. You may find it useful to look at any or all of the following:
* Triodos Bank - start with what the word and symbol mean
* a sequence of "extinctions" - straight outta Blavatsky
* the word "organic" when applied only to some kinds of food - got a very clear origin for this one
* anything to do with "people, planet, and profit" - the idea that there should be some kind of triple goal of serving the interests of the people, the planet, and commercial business - sometimes appearing as "social, environmental, and economic"
* who started the Green party in Germany
The Greens are not a religious movement, although I would happily concede that many of their supporters have a religious fervor. There is a difference between a religion and a fervently-held political position. If you will forgive me, I am also disquieted by the use of "religious movement" as a slur. As I keep in pointing out here, there s nothing wrong with religion.
Europa: The Last Battle is neo-Nazi propaganda. It claims the Jews and Communists attacked innocent Nazi Germany as part of their evil plan to establish Israel and mix the races, and that Hitler was a good guy. Now it's here on Twitter thanks to a blue tick with 200k followers. https://twitter.com/ariehkovler/status/1689208943841554432
The blue tick is meaningless since anyone can pay for it. The number of followers is the thing to worry about.
The blue tick just means you have done some confirmation to prove that you are who you say you are. Essentially - "I am not a bot"
On topic, sort of: Our Gracious Host reminds me of a question I have been wondering about, off and on, for decades:
Are some (many?) environmentalists members of what it is fair to consider more a religious movement than a political movement?
No - I would argue the opposite. The evidence is pretty clear and has been clear for some time - the economic dependency on fossil fuels will change the climate of this Earth to such a degree as to destroy human civilisation as we know it. That is not a religious belief, that is a belief backed up by mountains and mountains of evidence. It is a fact based position.
The religious belief is that the invisible hand of the market, some divine force that is always all knowing and correct, will somehow help us overcome this rather than the dedicated work of individuals and nation states. The belief in infinite economic growth on a planet with finite resources is also a pretty religious dogma - infinite growth is not possible and arguably not good (the only natural thing to grow like that are cancer cells).
That a percentage of people are not being "pragmatic" has more to do with your definition of "pragmatic" - if for you it is "we can only tinker at the edges" then sure, it makes no sense to vote Labour, if for you it starts with "we need a habitable planet to have any kind of society at all" then the "pragmatic" position is to vote only for parties that make promises for a future that includes a habitable planet.
If your claim was is the environmental movement more "ideological" or "single-issue", I may agree with you, but certainly not more a "religious" movement than a political one.
"destroy human civilisation as we know it" goes beyond the evidence. Greatly alter it for the worse.
Re Sir Chris Bryant's sporty little gambit to ban non-attending parliamentarians, where does this leave Sinn Fein MPs?
One might argue "but that's different", but I think this is why we should steer well away from this sort of thing. The moment you create exceptions, it becomes very messy.
Where's the problem ? Suspend them for a sufficient period for a recall, and see if their constituents care enough to vote for one. We already know the answer.
It clearly demonstrates the measure isn't targeted at any individual, but rather provides a mechanism for the electorate to do something about an absentee MP, should they so wish.
On topic, sort of: Our Gracious Host reminds me of a question I have been wondering about, off and on, for decades:
Are some (many?) environmentalists members of what it is fair to consider more a religious movement than a political movement?
@Jim_Miller - Yes, you are on the right lines. You may find it useful to look at any or all of the following:
* Triodos Bank - start with what the word and symbol mean
* a sequence of "extinctions" - straight outta Blavatsky
* the word "organic" when applied only to some kinds of food - got a very clear origin for this one
* anything to do with "people, planet, and profit" - the idea that there should be some kind of triple goal of serving the interests of the people, the planet, and commercial business - sometimes appearing as "social, environmental, and economic"
* who started the Green party in Germany
As someone who has been in various Green movements over the past decade - this is the first time I've heard of Triodos Bank.
You do know that the use of three words is just a rhetorical devise that seems to (for some cultural reason) resonate in the English language?
As for the references to Blavatsky and organic food - are these supposed to be suggestions about how the green movement are linked to fascism? Because even if we take that connection seriously (which we shouldn't) - fascism is still a political movement and not a religious one! And is also somewhat contradicted by your then weird reference to the German Green Party - which seems to have originated out of the West German / socialist parties.
It would be useful to know what one sees as the difference between a religious movement and a political one - it seems pretty clear to me but that someone is making this claim kind of confuses me.
The beliefs of environmentalists are material - they are based in the physical world, the science and scientific method and on a materialistic understanding of cause and effect. Indeed, the idea that man made climate change is possible and that we can do something about it is very much a material and not religious / spiritual view of existence. I have never been religious and don't really understand spirituality outside of the occasional sense of awe I get looking at things that exist, but I also can look at the data and the opinions of experts and go "we are destroying the possibility of future human life on this planet and have the means to prevent it".
If the issue is the inelasticity of the vote of Greens that is easily explained - if you are a single issue voter, or a voter who bases your politics on the position that a lot of other things don't really matter if we don't secure the sustainability of human life on this planet, then it isn't "pragmatic" to vote Labour when they say things like "if the Tories give 100s of new drilling contracts, we'll uphold them, even though we know that would be disastrous for the planet".
On topic, sort of: Our Gracious Host reminds me of a question I have been wondering about, off and on, for decades:
Are some (many?) environmentalists members of what it is fair to consider more a religious movement than a political movement?
@Jim_Miller - Yes, you are on the right lines. You may find it useful to look at any or all of the following:
* Triodos Bank - start with what the word and symbol mean
* a sequence of "extinctions" - straight outta Blavatsky
* the word "organic" when applied only to some kinds of food - got a very clear origin for this one
* anything to do with "people, planet, and profit" - the idea that there should be some kind of triple goal of serving the interests of the people, the planet, and commercial business - sometimes appearing as "social, environmental, and economic"
* who started the Green party in Germany
The Greens are not a religious movement, although I would happily concede that many of their supporters have a religious fervor. There is a difference between a religion and a fervently-held political position. If you will forgive me, I am also disquieted by the use of "religious movement" as a slur. As I keep in pointing out here, there s nothing wrong with religion.
I'm also puzzled why the Tory Party is not being adduced here. Nobody could accuse the Greens of trying to impose and retain a state religion on the (sort of) UK. But the Tories do.
On topic, sort of: Our Gracious Host reminds me of a question I have been wondering about, off and on, for decades:
Are some (many?) environmentalists members of what it is fair to consider more a religious movement than a political movement?
@Jim_Miller - Yes, you are on the right lines. You may find it useful to look at any or all of the following:
* Triodos Bank - start with what the word and symbol mean
* a sequence of "extinctions" - straight outta Blavatsky
* the word "organic" when applied only to some kinds of food - got a very clear origin for this one
* anything to do with "people, planet, and profit" - the idea that there should be some kind of triple goal of serving the interests of the people, the planet, and commercial business - sometimes appearing as "social, environmental, and economic"
* who started the Green party in Germany
The Greens are not a religious movement, although I would happily concede that many of their supporters have a religious fervor. There is a difference between a religion and a fervently-held political position. If you will forgive me, I am also disquieted by the use of "religious movement" as a slur. As I keep in pointing out here, there s nothing wrong with religion.
You are arguing in the abstract. My points were intended to be far more down to earth.
I am not criticising either religion or politics in general here. I am saying the motivation and ideas of those who created and steer the green movement both in its political-party and in its stunt-action forms are absolutely not what they say they are.
On topic, sort of: Our Gracious Host reminds me of a question I have been wondering about, off and on, for decades:
Are some (many?) environmentalists members of what it is fair to consider more a religious movement than a political movement?
@Jim_Miller - Yes, you are on the right lines. You may find it useful to look at any or all of the following:
* Triodos Bank - start with what the word and symbol mean
* a sequence of "extinctions" - straight outta Blavatsky
* the word "organic" when applied only to some kinds of food - got a very clear origin for this one
* anything to do with "people, planet, and profit" - the idea that there should be some kind of triple goal of serving the interests of the people, the planet, and commercial business - sometimes appearing as "social, environmental, and economic"
* who started the Green party in Germany
The Greens are not a religious movement, although I would happily concede that many of their supporters have a religious fervor. There is a difference between a religion and a fervently-held political position. If you will forgive me, I am also disquieted by the use of "religious movement" as a slur. As I keep in pointing out here, there s nothing wrong with religion.
Yes there is. Ask (to choose a safely non-topical example) Thomas Cranmer, Nicholas Ridley, or Hugh Latimer. If they agree with you, that only makes my point the stronger. A metaphysical debate in which there is widespread agreement that burning the other party alive is a permitted and winning move.
On topic, sort of: Our Gracious Host reminds me of a question I have been wondering about, off and on, for decades:
Are some (many?) environmentalists members of what it is fair to consider more a religious movement than a political movement?
No - I would argue the opposite. The evidence is pretty clear and has been clear for some time - the economic dependency on fossil fuels will change the climate of this Earth to such a degree as to destroy human civilisation as we know it. That is not a religious belief, that is a belief backed up by mountains and mountains of evidence. It is a fact based position.
The religious belief is that the invisible hand of the market, some divine force that is always all knowing and correct, will somehow help us overcome this rather than the dedicated work of individuals and nation states. The belief in infinite economic growth on a planet with finite resources is also a pretty religious dogma - infinite growth is not possible and arguably not good (the only natural thing to grow like that are cancer cells).
That a percentage of people are not being "pragmatic" has more to do with your definition of "pragmatic" - if for you it is "we can only tinker at the edges" then sure, it makes no sense to vote Labour, if for you it starts with "we need a habitable planet to have any kind of society at all" then the "pragmatic" position is to vote only for parties that make promises for a future that includes a habitable planet.
If your claim was is the environmental movement more "ideological" or "single-issue", I may agree with you, but certainly not more a "religious" movement than a political one.
"destroy human civilisation as we know it" goes beyond the evidence. Greatly alter it for the worse.
Risks the destruction of civilisation, then.
That's the whole point about the debate about addressing global warming. It's always been about the balance of risks and costs. Replacing fossil fuels with renewables is not, in global economic terms, particularly expensive over the course of two to three decades.
On topic, sort of: Our Gracious Host reminds me of a question I have been wondering about, off and on, for decades:
Are some (many?) environmentalists members of what it is fair to consider more a religious movement than a political movement?
No - I would argue the opposite. The evidence is pretty clear and has been clear for some time - the economic dependency on fossil fuels will change the climate of this Earth to such a degree as to destroy human civilisation as we know it. That is not a religious belief, that is a belief backed up by mountains and mountains of evidence. It is a fact based position.
The religious belief is that the invisible hand of the market, some divine force that is always all knowing and correct, will somehow help us overcome this rather than the dedicated work of individuals and nation states. The belief in infinite economic growth on a planet with finite resources is also a pretty religious dogma - infinite growth is not possible and arguably not good (the only natural thing to grow like that are cancer cells).
That a percentage of people are not being "pragmatic" has more to do with your definition of "pragmatic" - if for you it is "we can only tinker at the edges" then sure, it makes no sense to vote Labour, if for you it starts with "we need a habitable planet to have any kind of society at all" then the "pragmatic" position is to vote only for parties that make promises for a future that includes a habitable planet.
If your claim was is the environmental movement more "ideological" or "single-issue", I may agree with you, but certainly not more a "religious" movement than a political one.
The invisible hand of the market has done more for the environment than every hairshirt zealot combined.
The key to solving climate change is not to go back to the stone age eliminating all consumption. It is to replace dirty technology with clean technologies. That requires R&D. It requires investment. And the market is good at channelling that. Companies like Tesla have done more for the environment than zealots like Just Stop Oil.
The state can help the invisible hand by giving it the right incentives. Tax externalities and the market prices for them and works to eliminate them.
Your belief in "finite resources" is a Malthusian fallacy too. We barely scratch the surface of resources of this planet and most resources if used with a good technology are actually renewable, so exponentially building up a supply of renewable resources and increasing them actually does allow exponential economic growth.
Re Sir Chris Bryant's sporty little gambit to ban non-attending parliamentarians, where does this leave Sinn Fein MPs?
One might argue "but that's different", but I think this is why we should steer well away from this sort of thing. The moment you create exceptions, it becomes very messy.
Where's the problem ? Suspend them for a sufficient period for a recall, and see if their constituents care enough to vote for one. We already know the answer.
It clearly demonstrates the measure isn't targeted at any individual, but rather provides a mechanism for the electorate to do something about an absentee MP, should they so wish.
You'd then see the unionist voters in their constituencies voting for recall elections. Which they (SF) would then win....
A huge explosion was reported in Zagorskiy Optical and Mechanical plant near Moscow
The factory had contracts with the Russian Ministry of Defense. It is part of Shvabe Holding, which is producing sights, thermal imagers, laser rangefinders, and other similar products. https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1689192323588947968
That’s damn careless. How many Russian military contractors is that, whose buildings “went on fire”?
On topic, sort of: Our Gracious Host reminds me of a question I have been wondering about, off and on, for decades:
Are some (many?) environmentalists members of what it is fair to consider more a religious movement than a political movement?
@Jim_Miller - Yes, you are on the right lines. You may find it useful to look at any or all of the following:
* Triodos Bank - start with what the word and symbol mean
* a sequence of "extinctions" - straight outta Blavatsky
* the word "organic" when applied only to some kinds of food - got a very clear origin for this one
* anything to do with "people, planet, and profit" - the idea that there should be some kind of triple goal of serving the interests of the people, the planet, and commercial business - sometimes appearing as "social, environmental, and economic"
* who started the Green party in Germany
As someone who has been in various Green movements over the past decade - this is the first time I've heard of Triodos Bank.
You do know that the use of three words is just a rhetorical devise that seems to (for some cultural reason) resonate in the English language?
As for the references to Blavatsky and organic food - are these supposed to be suggestions about how the green movement are linked to fascism? Because even if we take that connection seriously (which we shouldn't) - fascism is still a political movement and not a religious one! And is also somewhat contradicted by your then weird reference to the German Green Party - which seems to have originated out of the West German / socialist parties.
It would be useful to know what one sees as the difference between a religious movement and a political one - it seems pretty clear to me but that someone is making this claim kind of confuses me.
The beliefs of environmentalists are material - they are based in the physical world, the science and scientific method and on a materialistic understanding of cause and effect. Indeed, the idea that man made climate change is possible and that we can do something about it is very much a material and not religious / spiritual view of existence. I have never been religious and don't really understand spirituality outside of the occasional sense of awe I get looking at things that exist, but I also can look at the data and the opinions of experts and go "we are destroying the possibility of future human life on this planet and have the means to prevent it".
If the issue is the inelasticity of the vote of Greens that is easily explained - if you are a single issue voter, or a voter who bases your politics on the position that a lot of other things don't really matter if we don't secure the sustainability of human life on this planet, then it isn't "pragmatic" to vote Labour when they say things like "if the Tories give 100s of new drilling contracts, we'll uphold them, even though we know that would be disastrous for the planet".
Quite a bit of the Organic stuff strays from science into Earth Magic, though.
On topic, sort of: Our Gracious Host reminds me of a question I have been wondering about, off and on, for decades:
Are some (many?) environmentalists members of what it is fair to consider more a religious movement than a political movement?
No - I would argue the opposite. The evidence is pretty clear and has been clear for some time - the economic dependency on fossil fuels will change the climate of this Earth to such a degree as to destroy human civilisation as we know it. That is not a religious belief, that is a belief backed up by mountains and mountains of evidence. It is a fact based position.
The religious belief is that the invisible hand of the market, some divine force that is always all knowing and correct, will somehow help us overcome this rather than the dedicated work of individuals and nation states. The belief in infinite economic growth on a planet with finite resources is also a pretty religious dogma - infinite growth is not possible and arguably not good (the only natural thing to grow like that are cancer cells).
That a percentage of people are not being "pragmatic" has more to do with your definition of "pragmatic" - if for you it is "we can only tinker at the edges" then sure, it makes no sense to vote Labour, if for you it starts with "we need a habitable planet to have any kind of society at all" then the "pragmatic" position is to vote only for parties that make promises for a future that includes a habitable planet.
If your claim was is the environmental movement more "ideological" or "single-issue", I may agree with you, but certainly not more a "religious" movement than a political one.
Glad you mentioned the invisible hand. It's possible Adam Smith got the idea from the Islamic scholar Ibn Khaldun.
On topic, sort of: Our Gracious Host reminds me of a question I have been wondering about, off and on, for decades:
Are some (many?) environmentalists members of what it is fair to consider more a religious movement than a political movement?
@Jim_Miller - Yes, you are on the right lines. You may find it useful to look at any or all of the following:
* Triodos Bank - start with what the word and symbol mean
* a sequence of "extinctions" - straight outta Blavatsky
* the word "organic" when applied only to some kinds of food - got a very clear origin for this one
* anything to do with "people, planet, and profit" - the idea that there should be some kind of triple goal of serving the interests of the people, the planet, and commercial business - sometimes appearing as "social, environmental, and economic"
* who started the Green party in Germany
The Greens are not a religious movement, although I would happily concede that many of their supporters have a religious fervor. There is a difference between a religion and a fervently-held political position. If you will forgive me, I am also disquieted by the use of "religious movement" as a slur. As I keep in pointing out here, there s nothing wrong with religion.
I'm also puzzled why the Tory Party is not being adduced here. Nobody could accuse the Greens of trying to impose and retain a state religion on the (sort of) UK. But the Tories do.
I don't think that's a debate anyone can be arsed to have is it? The last HoL reformer, who could have thrown the bishops out but didn't, was not a tory. If Keir wants to bin them good for him (but they have a lot more business in there than Johnson's appointees).
FYI: If anyone is interested in what the Government actually spends money on, use COFOG data rather than department limits helps to cut through all the jargon. Social Protection - which includes benefits, state pension, social care - is enormous, but hasn't moved much since 2010.
For me, the biggest concern is the seemingly unstoppable rise in health spending, which is growing faster than our demographic profile would suggest. That might be a good thing, given it helps people have better lives, but much of that cost has been accrued from increases in obesity and inactivity.
The biggest COVID-19 failure was not taking the opportunity to sort that out, particularly given losing some weight was the easiest way you could improve your chances of not getting seriously ill.
Re Sir Chris Bryant's sporty little gambit to ban non-attending parliamentarians, where does this leave Sinn Fein MPs?
One might argue "but that's different", but I think this is why we should steer well away from this sort of thing. The moment you create exceptions, it becomes very messy.
Where's the problem ? Suspend them for a sufficient period for a recall, and see if their constituents care enough to vote for one. We already know the answer.
It clearly demonstrates the measure isn't targeted at any individual, but rather provides a mechanism for the electorate to do something about an absentee MP, should they so wish.
Just needs 10% to trigger a by-election. Might not come in every time, but we would be in a constant cycle of suspensions, recalls and, possibly, by-elections.
Deterring The Dragon: Listing Taiwanese Arms Acquisitions
https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2023/08/deterring-dragon-listing-taiwanese-arms.html ...Nonetheless, significant concerns loom over the readiness of the Taiwanese Armed Forces. Taiwan currently finds itself comparatively ill-prepared for a full-fledged war with its powerful neighbour. To address these challenges, Taipei has begun implementing several lessons learned from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, such as the importance of stockpiling munitions. These lessons have become crucial as China's rapid military expansion has eroded many of Taiwan's defensive advantages. Addressing these issues will be critical for Taiwan to bolster its defense capabilities and maintain its security in the face of evolving threats.
This article attempts to list (future) equipment acquisitions by the Republic of China's Army, Air Force, Navy and Coast Guard Administration. This list focuses on heavy weaponry and doesn't include ATGMs, MANPADS, radars and ammunition and vessels of less than 1000 tons. This is updated as new acquisitions are reported. Our list showing active Taiwanese fighting vehicles can be viewed here...
Re Sir Chris Bryant's sporty little gambit to ban non-attending parliamentarians, where does this leave Sinn Fein MPs?
One might argue "but that's different", but I think this is why we should steer well away from this sort of thing. The moment you create exceptions, it becomes very messy.
Sinn Fein MPs do constituency work, dont attend HoC and don't get paid a salary. Dorries does no constituency work, doesnt attend Hoc and gets paid a salary.
I am not sure how this comparison is supposed to work in her favour!
On topic, sort of: Our Gracious Host reminds me of a question I have been wondering about, off and on, for decades:
Are some (many?) environmentalists members of what it is fair to consider more a religious movement than a political movement?
@Jim_Miller - Yes, you are on the right lines. You may find it useful to look at any or all of the following:
* Triodos Bank - start with what the word and symbol mean
* a sequence of "extinctions" - straight outta Blavatsky
* the word "organic" when applied only to some kinds of food - got a very clear origin for this one
* anything to do with "people, planet, and profit" - the idea that there should be some kind of triple goal of serving the interests of the people, the planet, and commercial business - sometimes appearing as "social, environmental, and economic"
* who started the Green party in Germany
The Greens are not a religious movement, although I would happily concede that many of their supporters have a religious fervor. There is a difference between a religion and a fervently-held political position. If you will forgive me, I am also disquieted by the use of "religious movement" as a slur. As I keep in pointing out here, there s nothing wrong with religion.
I'm also puzzled why the Tory Party is not being adduced here. Nobody could accuse the Greens of trying to impose and retain a state religion on the (sort of) UK. But the Tories do.
I don't think that's a debate anyone can be arsed to have is it? The last HoL reformer, who could have thrown the bishops out but didn't, was not a tory. If Keir wants to bin them good for him (but they have a lot more business in there than Johnson's appointees).
Sure, but unfair to pick on the Greens (of whatever polity) without at least recognising the wider issue.
On topic, sort of: Our Gracious Host reminds me of a question I have been wondering about, off and on, for decades:
Are some (many?) environmentalists members of what it is fair to consider more a religious movement than a political movement?
No - I would argue the opposite. The evidence is pretty clear and has been clear for some time - the economic dependency on fossil fuels will change the climate of this Earth to such a degree as to destroy human civilisation as we know it. That is not a religious belief, that is a belief backed up by mountains and mountains of evidence. It is a fact based position.
The religious belief is that the invisible hand of the market, some divine force that is always all knowing and correct, will somehow help us overcome this rather than the dedicated work of individuals and nation states. The belief in infinite economic growth on a planet with finite resources is also a pretty religious dogma - infinite growth is not possible and arguably not good (the only natural thing to grow like that are cancer cells).
That a percentage of people are not being "pragmatic" has more to do with your definition of "pragmatic" - if for you it is "we can only tinker at the edges" then sure, it makes no sense to vote Labour, if for you it starts with "we need a habitable planet to have any kind of society at all" then the "pragmatic" position is to vote only for parties that make promises for a future that includes a habitable planet.
If your claim was is the environmental movement more "ideological" or "single-issue", I may agree with you, but certainly not more a "religious" movement than a political one.
The invisible hand of the market has done more for the environment than every hairshirt zealot combined.
The key to solving climate change is not to go back to the stone age eliminating all consumption. It is to replace dirty technology with clean technologies. That requires R&D. It requires investment. And the market is good at channelling that. Companies like Tesla have done more for the environment than zealots like Just Stop Oil.
The state can help the invisible hand by giving it the right incentives. Tax externalities and the market prices for them and works to eliminate them.
Your belief in "finite resources" is a Malthusian fallacy too. We barely scratch the surface of resources of this planet and most resources if used with a good technology are actually renewable, so exponentially building up a supply of renewable resources and increasing them actually does allow exponential economic growth.
Do you think the 2030 cutoff for new ICE cars helps stimulate that market response?
(Geniune question - I'm unsure about whether that deadline is important or not for the switch to EVs, which has some political implications if the Tories wish to weaponise it in the next year or so)
Hard to find anything to argue with in OGH's summary. At least for yours truly!
Morning all.
@MikeSmithson keeps taking GE2019 as the benchmark. Whilst this looks right on paper, it's an illusion and for punters it's an error. GE2019 was a one-off 'Get Brexit Done' election to unblock the jam created during the Remainer Parliament. Boris Johnson galvanised the voters against the unelectable trotskyite anti-semitic Jeremy Corbyn with the sole aim of Getting Brexit Done. Hence the December election. In many ways GE2019 was NOT a General Election.
The last proper General Election in the UK was June 2017, which resulted in a hung parliament. That's your benchmark.
Bet accordingly.
p.s. I'm personally very glad that Keir Starmer is no Tony Blair.
I think I understand the point you are making - whilst the 2019 election is the status quo, its artificial. Ordinarily the Labour task would be considered politically unlikely - as we all said in the aftermath.
But if we consider the 2019 result to be the aberration, then a revision to the norm can be expected to happen as the start of any new electoral move. There are swathes of red wall seats which endless polls have shows will not just revert to Labour but will deliver them 5 figure majorities.
If we bake that 2017 reversion in, the task facing Starmer is much smaller, and much more attainable. Then we look at the two other political low tides from 2015 likely to come back in:
The absence of unionist MPs in Scotland feels like a situation that can't be sustained - so expect 20-30 seats to switch from the motorhome party. The absence of yellow MPs in rural England is already a tide rushing back in. The focus is always on Labour, but as is clear it is the LibDems who will mop up disaffected sane voters in places where "Sink the Boats" makes people feel sick.
So, we reset the Red Wall. We drain out the SNP flood. We remove the dam from the LibDems. And suddenly a thumping Tory defeat is not just possible, it feels likely. To stay in power they need to preserve all three of these artificial positions. Which politically means they need to be Janus, a task they are spectacularly failing to pull off.
Yes, I think the Tories have snookered themselves. It is hard to see any of those 3 fronts being contained next GE. While Scotland is unique, the other 2 fronts play out across most E and W constituencies. They are sociological rather than geographical waves.
Tory unpopularity with the working age population is astonishing. I doubt there’s been anything like it in the history of two-party politics in this country.
What possible reason is there at the minute for someone who works for a living to support the Tories?
Sunak has made his bed and shown that working people only exist in his eyes to be taxed ever higher to provide welfare for those who don't work. That's something you can understand from Labour, but from the Tories?
The jack boots will be on next and barbed wire being put up to intern unemployed and pensioners. Give it a rest Adolf.
Hang on. Barty is an absolutist which often translates into absurdist straw man positions - the rant about 30mph zones a perfect example. But he has a point - the status quo is broken. We *are* paying vast amounts in taxes. Where he descends into the absurdist is the suggestion that the money is going into welfare. When our welfare system grudgingly gives people living poverty assuming it pays anything at all.
We're paying record taxes, true. But its going to spivs, not on services, not on infrastructure, not on welfare. We pay lots and get little. Where does all that money go? Even if you are as high Tory and say "inefficiency" that is literally my point. Inefficiency means money is being wasted. Spent on consultants. Advisers. Middlemen. Spivs...
The problem we have is that whilst "we pay taxes and get little back" is good analysis, nobody wants to go after why that is. And propose a solution because the problem is too big and our politicians too timid.
Your jackboots analogy is one solution. Hungary have done it. France wants to do it. Spain and Germany are toying with it...
The bit in bold: it goes on debt repayments.
We have a shit-ton of debt. We need to reflate the economy to lessen the debt burden over time via inflation. But the anti-inflationary reflexes we built up in the neoliberal era prevent us from doing this. So we have problems.
That isn't true with public services. We spend ever larger amounts on schools and hospitals despite front line service provision being catastrophically starved of money.
A basic problem is that everything has been marketised. Instead of driving market-led efficiency we have endless overlapping targets and contracts and regulations. The market is a vast business by itself.
How much money did we waste creating Clinical Commissioning Groups in the NHS? Then replacing them with Integrated Care Boards? How integrated are the dozens of "integrated" boards and how many contracts do they negotiate and manage and how much is spent on administration?
Thats our problem. A fat layer of middlemen who suck the cash out of the system.
This government *is* fiscally dry, however they’ve had to increase the number of civil servants due to Brexit and they continue to stuff gold down the throat of the client vote.
I think we're starting to identify the issues on this thread.
i) Frictional, beaurocratic & administrative cost increases due to putting up trade barriers between ourselves and our nearest neighbours. ii) A culture of gold plating & empire building prevalent in the civil service - driven (certainly in part) by unintended consequences of pseudo-marketisation & i) iii) Increasing debt costs.
Altogether it means we're collectively paying more than ever for less.
iv) demographics and an ageing population meaning costs for pensions/NHS are ever increasing
FYI: If anyone is interested in what the Government actually spends money on, use COFOG data rather than department limits helps to cut through all the jargon. Social Protection - which includes benefits, state pension, social care - is enormous, but hasn't moved much since 2010.
For me, the biggest concern is the seemingly unstoppable rise in health spending, which is growing faster than our demographic profile would suggest. That might be a good thing, given it helps people have better lives, but much of that cost has been accrued from increases in obesity and inactivity.
The biggest COVID-19 failure was not taking the opportunity to sort that out, particularly given losing some weight was the easiest way you could improve your chances of not getting seriously ill.
The sane approach is to consider future costs vs investing in technology to deal with that.
For example - looking at the cost of old age care, investment via a DARPA style project (Small amounts of money to the crazy ideas, more to the more mainstream etc, spread over a number of outfits) in treatment/cure for dementia would seem a good investment.
Re Sir Chris Bryant's sporty little gambit to ban non-attending parliamentarians, where does this leave Sinn Fein MPs?
One might argue "but that's different", but I think this is why we should steer well away from this sort of thing. The moment you create exceptions, it becomes very messy.
Sinn Fein MPs do constituency work, dont attend HoC and don't get paid a salary. Dorries does no constituency work, doesnt attend Hoc and gets paid a salary.
I am not sure how this comparison is supposed to work in her favour!
Sir Chris, who chairs the Commons standards committee, said the move had basis in a parliamentary rule from 1801 stating that "no member do presume to go out of town without leave of this House".
He told the BBC he wanted to see MPs held to the same standards as councillors, who automatically cease to be a councillor, triggering a by-election, if they fail to attend any meetings for six months without good reason.
"I just think this is bringing the whole system into disrepute," he said.
"Why should you be allowed to draw a salary and claim expenses for your staff and all that kind of stuff if you're not actually doing the job of turning up?"
"Turning up" being the key to this. It's not about constituency work, is about turning up to the HoC.
On topic, sort of: Our Gracious Host reminds me of a question I have been wondering about, off and on, for decades:
Are some (many?) environmentalists members of what it is fair to consider more a religious movement than a political movement?
No - I would argue the opposite. The evidence is pretty clear and has been clear for some time - the economic dependency on fossil fuels will change the climate of this Earth to such a degree as to destroy human civilisation as we know it. That is not a religious belief, that is a belief backed up by mountains and mountains of evidence. It is a fact based position.
The religious belief is that the invisible hand of the market, some divine force that is always all knowing and correct, will somehow help us overcome this rather than the dedicated work of individuals and nation states. The belief in infinite economic growth on a planet with finite resources is also a pretty religious dogma - infinite growth is not possible and arguably not good (the only natural thing to grow like that are cancer cells).
That a percentage of people are not being "pragmatic" has more to do with your definition of "pragmatic" - if for you it is "we can only tinker at the edges" then sure, it makes no sense to vote Labour, if for you it starts with "we need a habitable planet to have any kind of society at all" then the "pragmatic" position is to vote only for parties that make promises for a future that includes a habitable planet.
If your claim was is the environmental movement more "ideological" or "single-issue", I may agree with you, but certainly not more a "religious" movement than a political one.
I've seen plenty of religious belief grafted onto environmental beliefs.
For example, it is quite common to find green types who declare that "Electric cars are just as polluting as ICE" - when you actually try and pin them down on the details, they react as if you are challenging Writ. You must not Question, only Believe.
It is most amusing when things like 'gender equality' , 'equity' and 'tackling obesity' all get linked to the same project as tackling climate change.
Hard to find anything to argue with in OGH's summary. At least for yours truly!
Morning all.
@MikeSmithson keeps taking GE2019 as the benchmark. Whilst this looks right on paper, it's an illusion and for punters it's an error. GE2019 was a one-off 'Get Brexit Done' election to unblock the jam created during the Remainer Parliament. Boris Johnson galvanised the voters against the unelectable trotskyite anti-semitic Jeremy Corbyn with the sole aim of Getting Brexit Done. Hence the December election. In many ways GE2019 was NOT a General Election.
The last proper General Election in the UK was June 2017, which resulted in a hung parliament. That's your benchmark.
Bet accordingly.
p.s. I'm personally very glad that Keir Starmer is no Tony Blair.
I think I understand the point you are making - whilst the 2019 election is the status quo, its artificial. Ordinarily the Labour task would be considered politically unlikely - as we all said in the aftermath.
But if we consider the 2019 result to be the aberration, then a revision to the norm can be expected to happen as the start of any new electoral move. There are swathes of red wall seats which endless polls have shows will not just revert to Labour but will deliver them 5 figure majorities.
If we bake that 2017 reversion in, the task facing Starmer is much smaller, and much more attainable. Then we look at the two other political low tides from 2015 likely to come back in:
The absence of unionist MPs in Scotland feels like a situation that can't be sustained - so expect 20-30 seats to switch from the motorhome party. The absence of yellow MPs in rural England is already a tide rushing back in. The focus is always on Labour, but as is clear it is the LibDems who will mop up disaffected sane voters in places where "Sink the Boats" makes people feel sick.
So, we reset the Red Wall. We drain out the SNP flood. We remove the dam from the LibDems. And suddenly a thumping Tory defeat is not just possible, it feels likely. To stay in power they need to preserve all three of these artificial positions. Which politically means they need to be Janus, a task they are spectacularly failing to pull off.
Yes, I think the Tories have snookered themselves. It is hard to see any of those 3 fronts being contained next GE. While Scotland is unique, the other 2 fronts play out across most E and W constituencies. They are sociological rather than geographical waves.
Tory unpopularity with the working age population is astonishing. I doubt there’s been anything like it in the history of two-party politics in this country.
What possible reason is there at the minute for someone who works for a living to support the Tories?
Sunak has made his bed and shown that working people only exist in his eyes to be taxed ever higher to provide welfare for those who don't work. That's something you can understand from Labour, but from the Tories?
The jack boots will be on next and barbed wire being put up to intern unemployed and pensioners. Give it a rest Adolf.
Hang on. Barty is an absolutist which often translates into absurdist straw man positions - the rant about 30mph zones a perfect example. But he has a point - the status quo is broken. We *are* paying vast amounts in taxes. Where he descends into the absurdist is the suggestion that the money is going into welfare. When our welfare system grudgingly gives people living poverty assuming it pays anything at all.
We're paying record taxes, true. But its going to spivs, not on services, not on infrastructure, not on welfare. We pay lots and get little. Where does all that money go? Even if you are as high Tory and say "inefficiency" that is literally my point. Inefficiency means money is being wasted. Spent on consultants. Advisers. Middlemen. Spivs...
The problem we have is that whilst "we pay taxes and get little back" is good analysis, nobody wants to go after why that is. And propose a solution because the problem is too big and our politicians too timid.
Your jackboots analogy is one solution. Hungary have done it. France wants to do it. Spain and Germany are toying with it...
The bit in bold: it goes on debt repayments.
We have a shit-ton of debt. We need to reflate the economy to lessen the debt burden over time via inflation. But the anti-inflationary reflexes we built up in the neoliberal era prevent us from doing this. So we have problems.
That isn't true with public services. We spend ever larger amounts on schools and hospitals despite front line service provision being catastrophically starved of money.
A basic problem is that everything has been marketised. Instead of driving market-led efficiency we have endless overlapping targets and contracts and regulations. The market is a vast business by itself.
How much money did we waste creating Clinical Commissioning Groups in the NHS? Then replacing them with Integrated Care Boards? How integrated are the dozens of "integrated" boards and how many contracts do they negotiate and manage and how much is spent on administration?
Thats our problem. A fat layer of middlemen who suck the cash out of the system.
This government *is* fiscally dry, however they’ve had to increase the number of civil servants due to Brexit and they continue to stuff gold down the throat of the client vote.
I think we're starting to identify the issues on this thread.
i) Frictional, beaurocratic & administrative cost increases due to putting up trade barriers between ourselves and our nearest neighbours. ii) A culture of gold plating & empire building prevalent in the civil service - driven (certainly in part) by unintended consequences of pseudo-marketisation & i) iii) Increasing debt costs.
Altogether it means we're collectively paying more than ever for less.
iv) demographics and an ageing population meaning costs for pensions/NHS are ever increasing
Weirdly, demographics isn't the primary driver of health costs in the NHS (it doesn't help). There is something else going on - technology, chronic conditions, Baumol's cost disease perhaps.
The contrary view, put forward by American commentator Saagar Enjeti https://youtube.com/watch?v=ns_1EJkalx8 His view is that Russia and OPEC are still on the same page.
Was there agreement on the Ukrainian 1991 terms? The Guardian report says "A source from the Ukrainian delegation told the Al Arabiya and Al-Hadath news channels that the proposals were supported by several countries" which sounds a modest claim. But you know much more about what's happening to oil prices than I do.
The basic agreement as I understand it was that the war was a Bad Thing and talks at every available level should continue. Ukraine's allies want Russian withdrawal before talks, China wants a ceasefire before talks.
The agreement was to keep talking to work towards an agreement, rather than an explicit endorsement of the Ukraine plan at this stage. However, this was the first time that India, China, and Ukraine had been around the same table.
My theory is that the Saudis and their OPEC partners have had enough with Putin, that threatening the food supply to the Middle East was a red line crossed, especially after Russia had agreed to match the Saudi production cuts and then failed to do so.
The Russian oil trades at a significant discount to China and India, and ends up washed back into the global supply chains. If OPEC wanted to screw Putin’s balls to the wall, they’d turn on the taps and start pumping the oil price down.
We saw a similar standoff during the pandemic, with Russia not wanting oil below $50. The Saudis can live with $20 for a year or two, if it means that their citizens don’t run short of food. There’s also a rice export ban in India at the moment, following poor harvests, which is adding to the Middle East’s food concerns.
It's worth reminding readers that Lee Anderthal is not just a gobby MP, he is Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party. So when he tells 'moaning' asylum seekers to "fuck off back to France" his role as DC is relevant. No surprise that he said it and is standing by it. But his language has not been condemned by anybody in the party, including No. 10; rather, they all seem to have endorsed his comments.
It rather suggests to me that the Tory Party has given up, if they can't be bothered appealing to the vast majority of voters who have common decency.
If you know nothing about the country you are governing you make Lee Anderson one of your public faces. Lee is every out-of-touch metropolitan elitist's idea of what a salt of the earth, working class, northerner is like. That he is not even a northerner is only the start of the delusion.
Lee Anderson was a lifelong member of the Labour Party until 2018.
He might not represent all the working class, but he represents a strand of it that believes Labour abandoned them.
If they are lost again it's more likely to be because they think the Tories haven't delivered, than because they share Labour values.
Re Sir Chris Bryant's sporty little gambit to ban non-attending parliamentarians, where does this leave Sinn Fein MPs?
One might argue "but that's different", but I think this is why we should steer well away from this sort of thing. The moment you create exceptions, it becomes very messy.
It is very different. They haven't taken up their seats, they haven't signed up to any of the rules, they draw £0.00 salary (just 22k exes for constituency work). This isn't creating an exception, they are under no more obligation to attend HoC than you or I.
Phew, Letts retains his spotless record on ever raising a good question.
On topic, sort of: Our Gracious Host reminds me of a question I have been wondering about, off and on, for decades:
Are some (many?) environmentalists members of what it is fair to consider more a religious movement than a political movement?
No - I would argue the opposite. The evidence is pretty clear and has been clear for some time - the economic dependency on fossil fuels will change the climate of this Earth to such a degree as to destroy human civilisation as we know it. That is not a religious belief, that is a belief backed up by mountains and mountains of evidence. It is a fact based position.
The religious belief is that the invisible hand of the market, some divine force that is always all knowing and correct, will somehow help us overcome this rather than the dedicated work of individuals and nation states. The belief in infinite economic growth on a planet with finite resources is also a pretty religious dogma - infinite growth is not possible and arguably not good (the only natural thing to grow like that are cancer cells).
That a percentage of people are not being "pragmatic" has more to do with your definition of "pragmatic" - if for you it is "we can only tinker at the edges" then sure, it makes no sense to vote Labour, if for you it starts with "we need a habitable planet to have any kind of society at all" then the "pragmatic" position is to vote only for parties that make promises for a future that includes a habitable planet.
If your claim was is the environmental movement more "ideological" or "single-issue", I may agree with you, but certainly not more a "religious" movement than a political one.
I've seen plenty of religious belief grafted onto environmental beliefs.
For example, it is quite common to find green types who declare that "Electric cars are just as polluting as ICE" - when you actually try and pin them down on the details, they react as if you are challenging Writ. You must not Question, only Believe.
It is most amusing when things like 'gender equality' , 'equity' and 'tackling obesity' all get linked to the same project as tackling climate change.
“Green New Deal”, as the far-left Americans call it.
A stolen iPhone is indeed a brick without the passcode. Your £800 phone is still worth £50 in parts to some scrote though.
You may be right. I do not possess a smart mobile after handing back the company iphone on redundancy. But first of all, if, as is common, your phone is stolen by thieves on bikes/mopeds/scooters snatching it out of your hand while you are using it, then your phone is already unlocked. Indeed, the police endeavour to snatch villains' phones while in use for just this reason. (And this will give the baddies access to your email so they can change your passwords.)
Another scenario is your phone is stolen from your pocket or handbag. You do not notice until later when you try to use it, and you then waste hours tracing your steps back through bars and shops to see if it was handed in as lost property, and you wait till the morning in case you left it at work. Only after 12 hours have passed do you notify EE/3/Vodafone so they can blacklist it.
Or you have Find My Phone enabled, and once you get home you can use this to locate your phone, decide it must have been stolen, and wipe it remotely. Can you brick it, or just wipe your personal data? I'm not sure.
And from the linked Guardian article, we can see mobile phones can be re-registered to new users. I guess this is necessary at some level to enable the second-hand phone market.
Hard to find anything to argue with in OGH's summary. At least for yours truly!
Morning all.
@MikeSmithson keeps taking GE2019 as the benchmark. Whilst this looks right on paper, it's an illusion and for punters it's an error. GE2019 was a one-off 'Get Brexit Done' election to unblock the jam created during the Remainer Parliament. Boris Johnson galvanised the voters against the unelectable trotskyite anti-semitic Jeremy Corbyn with the sole aim of Getting Brexit Done. Hence the December election. In many ways GE2019 was NOT a General Election.
The last proper General Election in the UK was June 2017, which resulted in a hung parliament. That's your benchmark.
Bet accordingly.
p.s. I'm personally very glad that Keir Starmer is no Tony Blair.
I think I understand the point you are making - whilst the 2019 election is the status quo, its artificial. Ordinarily the Labour task would be considered politically unlikely - as we all said in the aftermath.
But if we consider the 2019 result to be the aberration, then a revision to the norm can be expected to happen as the start of any new electoral move. There are swathes of red wall seats which endless polls have shows will not just revert to Labour but will deliver them 5 figure majorities.
If we bake that 2017 reversion in, the task facing Starmer is much smaller, and much more attainable. Then we look at the two other political low tides from 2015 likely to come back in:
The absence of unionist MPs in Scotland feels like a situation that can't be sustained - so expect 20-30 seats to switch from the motorhome party. The absence of yellow MPs in rural England is already a tide rushing back in. The focus is always on Labour, but as is clear it is the LibDems who will mop up disaffected sane voters in places where "Sink the Boats" makes people feel sick.
So, we reset the Red Wall. We drain out the SNP flood. We remove the dam from the LibDems. And suddenly a thumping Tory defeat is not just possible, it feels likely. To stay in power they need to preserve all three of these artificial positions. Which politically means they need to be Janus, a task they are spectacularly failing to pull off.
Yes, I think the Tories have snookered themselves. It is hard to see any of those 3 fronts being contained next GE. While Scotland is unique, the other 2 fronts play out across most E and W constituencies. They are sociological rather than geographical waves.
Tory unpopularity with the working age population is astonishing. I doubt there’s been anything like it in the history of two-party politics in this country.
What possible reason is there at the minute for someone who works for a living to support the Tories?
Sunak has made his bed and shown that working people only exist in his eyes to be taxed ever higher to provide welfare for those who don't work. That's something you can understand from Labour, but from the Tories?
The jack boots will be on next and barbed wire being put up to intern unemployed and pensioners. Give it a rest Adolf.
Hang on. Barty is an absolutist which often translates into absurdist straw man positions - the rant about 30mph zones a perfect example. But he has a point - the status quo is broken. We *are* paying vast amounts in taxes. Where he descends into the absurdist is the suggestion that the money is going into welfare. When our welfare system grudgingly gives people living poverty assuming it pays anything at all.
We're paying record taxes, true. But its going to spivs, not on services, not on infrastructure, not on welfare. We pay lots and get little. Where does all that money go? Even if you are as high Tory and say "inefficiency" that is literally my point. Inefficiency means money is being wasted. Spent on consultants. Advisers. Middlemen. Spivs...
The problem we have is that whilst "we pay taxes and get little back" is good analysis, nobody wants to go after why that is. And propose a solution because the problem is too big and our politicians too timid.
Your jackboots analogy is one solution. Hungary have done it. France wants to do it. Spain and Germany are toying with it...
The bit in bold: it goes on debt repayments.
We have a shit-ton of debt. We need to reflate the economy to lessen the debt burden over time via inflation. But the anti-inflationary reflexes we built up in the neoliberal era prevent us from doing this. So we have problems.
That isn't true with public services. We spend ever larger amounts on schools and hospitals despite front line service provision being catastrophically starved of money.
A basic problem is that everything has been marketised. Instead of driving market-led efficiency we have endless overlapping targets and contracts and regulations. The market is a vast business by itself.
How much money did we waste creating Clinical Commissioning Groups in the NHS? Then replacing them with Integrated Care Boards? How integrated are the dozens of "integrated" boards and how many contracts do they negotiate and manage and how much is spent on administration?
Thats our problem. A fat layer of middlemen who suck the cash out of the system.
This government *is* fiscally dry, however they’ve had to increase the number of civil servants due to Brexit and they continue to stuff gold down the throat of the client vote.
I think we're starting to identify the issues on this thread.
i) Frictional, beaurocratic & administrative cost increases due to putting up trade barriers between ourselves and our nearest neighbours. ii) A culture of gold plating & empire building prevalent in the civil service - driven (certainly in part) by unintended consequences of pseudo-marketisation & i) iii) Increasing debt costs.
Altogether it means we're collectively paying more than ever for less.
iv) demographics and an ageing population meaning costs for pensions/NHS are ever increasing
It is quite noticeable that the phrase "Healthcare Inflation" gets used a lot.
Like "Aerospace Inflation" it is supposed to normalise the idea that everything in a sector needs a bigger slice of GDP % each year.
Vernon on Radio 2 just reminded me, bless him, that's it's 27 years ago since The Verve played their comeback gig, after two years away, at Sheffield Leadmill. Still the best gig I've ever been to. Blair had just got in, Diana was still alive, just, the Twin Towers stood and Fukuyama told us liberal democracy had won. I was still a few weeks away from going online for the first time, three years out from my first mobile and 13 years out from a smartphone.
Nostalgia, rose-tinted glasses and all that, but what a time to be young. A sense of renewal, optimism. The reactionaries had been beaten, things were going to get better. And they did, for a bit anyway. Seems a long time ago.
My nephew's just turned 18 and I wouldn't swap places. Not for a gold pig.
On topic, sort of: Our Gracious Host reminds me of a question I have been wondering about, off and on, for decades:
Are some (many?) environmentalists members of what it is fair to consider more a religious movement than a political movement?
No - I would argue the opposite. The evidence is pretty clear and has been clear for some time - the economic dependency on fossil fuels will change the climate of this Earth to such a degree as to destroy human civilisation as we know it. That is not a religious belief, that is a belief backed up by mountains and mountains of evidence. It is a fact based position.
The religious belief is that the invisible hand of the market, some divine force that is always all knowing and correct, will somehow help us overcome this rather than the dedicated work of individuals and nation states. The belief in infinite economic growth on a planet with finite resources is also a pretty religious dogma - infinite growth is not possible and arguably not good (the only natural thing to grow like that are cancer cells).
That a percentage of people are not being "pragmatic" has more to do with your definition of "pragmatic" - if for you it is "we can only tinker at the edges" then sure, it makes no sense to vote Labour, if for you it starts with "we need a habitable planet to have any kind of society at all" then the "pragmatic" position is to vote only for parties that make promises for a future that includes a habitable planet.
If your claim was is the environmental movement more "ideological" or "single-issue", I may agree with you, but certainly not more a "religious" movement than a political one.
The invisible hand of the market has done more for the environment than every hairshirt zealot combined.
The key to solving climate change is not to go back to the stone age eliminating all consumption. It is to replace dirty technology with clean technologies. That requires R&D. It requires investment. And the market is good at channelling that. Companies like Tesla have done more for the environment than zealots like Just Stop Oil.
The state can help the invisible hand by giving it the right incentives. Tax externalities and the market prices for them and works to eliminate them.
Your belief in "finite resources" is a Malthusian fallacy too. We barely scratch the surface of resources of this planet and most resources if used with a good technology are actually renewable, so exponentially building up a supply of renewable resources and increasing them actually does allow exponential economic growth.
That's religion pure and simple, that is. R&D in clean technology might work just fine, or not. The unsupported believe that it WILL work if the rituals are done just right, is voodoo. As is the apparent exemption we get in the final paragraph from the second law of thermodynamics.
On topic, sort of: Our Gracious Host reminds me of a question I have been wondering about, off and on, for decades:
Are some (many?) environmentalists members of what it is fair to consider more a religious movement than a political movement?
No - I would argue the opposite. The evidence is pretty clear and has been clear for some time - the economic dependency on fossil fuels will change the climate of this Earth to such a degree as to destroy human civilisation as we know it. That is not a religious belief, that is a belief backed up by mountains and mountains of evidence. It is a fact based position.
The religious belief is that the invisible hand of the market, some divine force that is always all knowing and correct, will somehow help us overcome this rather than the dedicated work of individuals and nation states. The belief in infinite economic growth on a planet with finite resources is also a pretty religious dogma - infinite growth is not possible and arguably not good (the only natural thing to grow like that are cancer cells).
That a percentage of people are not being "pragmatic" has more to do with your definition of "pragmatic" - if for you it is "we can only tinker at the edges" then sure, it makes no sense to vote Labour, if for you it starts with "we need a habitable planet to have any kind of society at all" then the "pragmatic" position is to vote only for parties that make promises for a future that includes a habitable planet.
If your claim was is the environmental movement more "ideological" or "single-issue", I may agree with you, but certainly not more a "religious" movement than a political one.
The invisible hand of the market has done more for the environment than every hairshirt zealot combined.
The key to solving climate change is not to go back to the stone age eliminating all consumption. It is to replace dirty technology with clean technologies. That requires R&D. It requires investment. And the market is good at channelling that. Companies like Tesla have done more for the environment than zealots like Just Stop Oil.
The state can help the invisible hand by giving it the right incentives. Tax externalities and the market prices for them and works to eliminate them.
Your belief in "finite resources" is a Malthusian fallacy too. We barely scratch the surface of resources of this planet and most resources if used with a good technology are actually renewable, so exponentially building up a supply of renewable resources and increasing them actually does allow exponential economic growth.
Do you think the 2030 cutoff for new ICE cars helps stimulate that market response?
(Geniune question - I'm unsure about whether that deadline is important or not for the switch to EVs, which has some political implications if the Tories wish to weaponise it in the next year or so)
Yes, absolutely it does.
Raising standards is something that is within the purview of responsible government. Not picking winners, just setting standards then letting the market achieve those standards.
Whether the cutoff should be 2030 or 2035 as the EU have set is a different question. Personally I'd rather the sooner British date than the European date, but I'm concerned about the lack of charging infrastructure for those who can't charge at home. A lot can change in seven years, but it wouldn't surprise me if that date slips.
Still I think its better to aim for 2030 and have it slip to 2035, than to have it at 2035 and slip to 2040.
Re Sir Chris Bryant's sporty little gambit to ban non-attending parliamentarians, where does this leave Sinn Fein MPs?
One might argue "but that's different", but I think this is why we should steer well away from this sort of thing. The moment you create exceptions, it becomes very messy.
Sinn Fein MPs do constituency work, dont attend HoC and don't get paid a salary. Dorries does no constituency work, doesnt attend Hoc and gets paid a salary.
I am not sure how this comparison is supposed to work in her favour!
Sir Chris, who chairs the Commons standards committee, said the move had basis in a parliamentary rule from 1801 stating that "no member do presume to go out of town without leave of this House".
He told the BBC he wanted to see MPs held to the same standards as councillors, who automatically cease to be a councillor, triggering a by-election, if they fail to attend any meetings for six months without good reason.
"I just think this is bringing the whole system into disrepute," he said.
"Why should you be allowed to draw a salary and claim expenses for your staff and all that kind of stuff if you're not actually doing the job of turning up?"
"Turning up" being the key to this. It's not about constituency work, is about turning up to the HoC.
Nah, that just happens to be the words used. If Dorries was working even 20 hours a week in her constituency nobody would be in the slightest interested.
Re Sir Chris Bryant's sporty little gambit to ban non-attending parliamentarians, where does this leave Sinn Fein MPs?
One might argue "but that's different", but I think this is why we should steer well away from this sort of thing. The moment you create exceptions, it becomes very messy.
Sinn Fein MPs do constituency work, dont attend HoC and don't get paid a salary. Dorries does no constituency work, doesnt attend Hoc and gets paid a salary.
I am not sure how this comparison is supposed to work in her favour!
Sir Chris, who chairs the Commons standards committee, said the move had basis in a parliamentary rule from 1801 stating that "no member do presume to go out of town without leave of this House".
He told the BBC he wanted to see MPs held to the same standards as councillors, who automatically cease to be a councillor, triggering a by-election, if they fail to attend any meetings for six months without good reason.
"I just think this is bringing the whole system into disrepute," he said.
"Why should you be allowed to draw a salary and claim expenses for your staff and all that kind of stuff if you're not actually doing the job of turning up?"
"Turning up" being the key to this. It's not about constituency work, is about turning up to the HoC.
Nah, that just happens to be the words used. If Dorries was working even 20 hours a week in her constituency nobody would be in the slightest interested.
And even if it was about turning up, the Sinn Fein precedent is clear. Dont turn up, dont get paid.
@Jim_Miller : "Are some (many?) environmentalists members of what it is fair to consider more a religious movement than a political movement?"
Certainly political, and often religious these days when expounded by those who are humanists - implicit in which is the belief that humans are special.
You can always twig the fake environmentalists when they quickly express their concerns in human terms; regarding nature in terms of instrumental value (value to humans) rather than intrinsic value (value in itself).
The language is usually that of concern for human civilisation rather than concern for everything that is not human - an obnoxious position. For example, environmentalists who purely bang on about climate change (because they are concerned about the effect on humans (alongside making a left-wing political point)) rather than, say, gross human over-population and tragic loss of biodiversity and natural beauty and deforestation are not environmentalists. Real environmentalists feel a constant punch in the gut over these things and have largely given up it seems to me.
Hard to find anything to argue with in OGH's summary. At least for yours truly!
Morning all.
@MikeSmithson keeps taking GE2019 as the benchmark. Whilst this looks right on paper, it's an illusion and for punters it's an error. GE2019 was a one-off 'Get Brexit Done' election to unblock the jam created during the Remainer Parliament. Boris Johnson galvanised the voters against the unelectable trotskyite anti-semitic Jeremy Corbyn with the sole aim of Getting Brexit Done. Hence the December election. In many ways GE2019 was NOT a General Election.
The last proper General Election in the UK was June 2017, which resulted in a hung parliament. That's your benchmark.
Bet accordingly.
p.s. I'm personally very glad that Keir Starmer is no Tony Blair.
I think I understand the point you are making - whilst the 2019 election is the status quo, its artificial. Ordinarily the Labour task would be considered politically unlikely - as we all said in the aftermath.
But if we consider the 2019 result to be the aberration, then a revision to the norm can be expected to happen as the start of any new electoral move. There are swathes of red wall seats which endless polls have shows will not just revert to Labour but will deliver them 5 figure majorities.
If we bake that 2017 reversion in, the task facing Starmer is much smaller, and much more attainable. Then we look at the two other political low tides from 2015 likely to come back in:
The absence of unionist MPs in Scotland feels like a situation that can't be sustained - so expect 20-30 seats to switch from the motorhome party. The absence of yellow MPs in rural England is already a tide rushing back in. The focus is always on Labour, but as is clear it is the LibDems who will mop up disaffected sane voters in places where "Sink the Boats" makes people feel sick.
So, we reset the Red Wall. We drain out the SNP flood. We remove the dam from the LibDems. And suddenly a thumping Tory defeat is not just possible, it feels likely. To stay in power they need to preserve all three of these artificial positions. Which politically means they need to be Janus, a task they are spectacularly failing to pull off.
Yes, I think the Tories have snookered themselves. It is hard to see any of those 3 fronts being contained next GE. While Scotland is unique, the other 2 fronts play out across most E and W constituencies. They are sociological rather than geographical waves.
Tory unpopularity with the working age population is astonishing. I doubt there’s been anything like it in the history of two-party politics in this country.
What possible reason is there at the minute for someone who works for a living to support the Tories?
Sunak has made his bed and shown that working people only exist in his eyes to be taxed ever higher to provide welfare for those who don't work. That's something you can understand from Labour, but from the Tories?
The jack boots will be on next and barbed wire being put up to intern unemployed and pensioners. Give it a rest Adolf.
Hang on. Barty is an absolutist which often translates into absurdist straw man positions - the rant about 30mph zones a perfect example. But he has a point - the status quo is broken. We *are* paying vast amounts in taxes. Where he descends into the absurdist is the suggestion that the money is going into welfare. When our welfare system grudgingly gives people living poverty assuming it pays anything at all.
We're paying record taxes, true. But its going to spivs, not on services, not on infrastructure, not on welfare. We pay lots and get little. Where does all that money go? Even if you are as high Tory and say "inefficiency" that is literally my point. Inefficiency means money is being wasted. Spent on consultants. Advisers. Middlemen. Spivs...
The problem we have is that whilst "we pay taxes and get little back" is good analysis, nobody wants to go after why that is. And propose a solution because the problem is too big and our politicians too timid.
Your jackboots analogy is one solution. Hungary have done it. France wants to do it. Spain and Germany are toying with it...
The bit in bold: it goes on debt repayments.
We have a shit-ton of debt. We need to reflate the economy to lessen the debt burden over time via inflation. But the anti-inflationary reflexes we built up in the neoliberal era prevent us from doing this. So we have problems.
That isn't true with public services. We spend ever larger amounts on schools and hospitals despite front line service provision being catastrophically starved of money.
A basic problem is that everything has been marketised. Instead of driving market-led efficiency we have endless overlapping targets and contracts and regulations. The market is a vast business by itself.
How much money did we waste creating Clinical Commissioning Groups in the NHS? Then replacing them with Integrated Care Boards? How integrated are the dozens of "integrated" boards and how many contracts do they negotiate and manage and how much is spent on administration?
Thats our problem. A fat layer of middlemen who suck the cash out of the system.
This government *is* fiscally dry, however they’ve had to increase the number of civil servants due to Brexit and they continue to stuff gold down the throat of the client vote.
I think we're starting to identify the issues on this thread.
i) Frictional, beaurocratic & administrative cost increases due to putting up trade barriers between ourselves and our nearest neighbours. ii) A culture of gold plating & empire building prevalent in the civil service - driven (certainly in part) by unintended consequences of pseudo-marketisation & i) iii) Increasing debt costs.
Altogether it means we're collectively paying more than ever for less.
iv) demographics and an ageing population meaning costs for pensions/NHS are ever increasing
It is quite noticeable that the phrase "Healthcare Inflation" gets used a lot.
Like "Aerospace Inflation" it is supposed to normalise the idea that everything in a sector needs a bigger slice of GDP % each year.
Only a bigger slice of GDP if the additional "healthcare Inflation" over and above general inflation exceeds growth [given we have had none of the latter in recent years we have the issue].
Re Sir Chris Bryant's sporty little gambit to ban non-attending parliamentarians, where does this leave Sinn Fein MPs?
One might argue "but that's different", but I think this is why we should steer well away from this sort of thing. The moment you create exceptions, it becomes very messy.
Where's the problem ? Suspend them for a sufficient period for a recall, and see if their constituents care enough to vote for one. We already know the answer.
It clearly demonstrates the measure isn't targeted at any individual, but rather provides a mechanism for the electorate to do something about an absentee MP, should they so wish.
Just needs 10% to trigger a by-election. Might not come in every time, but we would be in a constant cycle of suspensions, recalls and, possibly, by-elections.
I think sparking by-elections in the Sinn Fein constituencies would be considered incendiary so I doubt anyone in the house would go there, and if they did a Commons vote probably wouldn't pass. If they did it would be a sort of 1986 on the nationalist side, and I expect the SF vote would go up (Proportionately ofc) so I think most would be easy wins for the shinners (Presumably with their still whipped candidate being the candidate in the BE) though Belfast North, South Down and particularly F&ST would be very interesting.
On topic, sort of: Our Gracious Host reminds me of a question I have been wondering about, off and on, for decades:
Are some (many?) environmentalists members of what it is fair to consider more a religious movement than a political movement?
@Jim_Miller - Yes, you are on the right lines. You may find it useful to look at any or all of the following:
* Triodos Bank - start with what the word and symbol mean
* a sequence of "extinctions" - straight outta Blavatsky
* the word "organic" when applied only to some kinds of food - got a very clear origin for this one
* anything to do with "people, planet, and profit" - the idea that there should be some kind of triple goal of serving the interests of the people, the planet, and commercial business - sometimes appearing as "social, environmental, and economic"
* who started the Green party in Germany
The Greens are not a religious movement, although I would happily concede that many of their supporters have a religious fervor. There is a difference between a religion and a fervently-held political position. If you will forgive me, I am also disquieted by the use of "religious movement" as a slur. As I keep in pointing out here, there s nothing wrong with religion.
Yes there is. Ask (to choose a safely non-topical example) Thomas Cranmer, Nicholas Ridley, or Hugh Latimer. If they agree with you, that only makes my point the stronger. A metaphysical debate in which there is widespread agreement that burning the other party alive is a permitted and winning move.
The evil actions of the religious does not disqualify the concept of a religion. God exists regardless of the actions of the religious.
As for "burning the other party alive is a permitted and winning move", that was something the British (and other countries) did routinely during bombing runs. During Dresden some people seeking shelter in water tanks were boiled alive. Similar abhorrences occured in Coventry, Tokyo, and Hiroshima. But we do not dismiss the concept of a sovereign state.
Vernon on Radio 2 just reminded me, bless him, that's it's 27 years ago since The Verve played their comeback gig, after two years away, at Sheffield Leadmill. Still the best gig I've ever been to. Blair had just got in, Diana was still alive, just, the Twin Towers stood and Fukuyama told us liberal democracy had won. I was still a few weeks away from going online for the first time, three years out from my first mobile and 13 years out from a smartphone.
Nostalgia, rose-tinted glasses and all that, but what a time to be young. A sense of renewal, optimism. The reactionaries had been beaten, things were going to get better. And they did, for a bit anyway. Seems a long time ago.
My nephew's just turned 18 and I wouldn't swap places. Not for a gold pig.
On topic, sort of: Our Gracious Host reminds me of a question I have been wondering about, off and on, for decades:
Are some (many?) environmentalists members of what it is fair to consider more a religious movement than a political movement?
@Jim_Miller - Yes, you are on the right lines. You may find it useful to look at any or all of the following:
* Triodos Bank - start with what the word and symbol mean
* a sequence of "extinctions" - straight outta Blavatsky
* the word "organic" when applied only to some kinds of food - got a very clear origin for this one
* anything to do with "people, planet, and profit" - the idea that there should be some kind of triple goal of serving the interests of the people, the planet, and commercial business - sometimes appearing as "social, environmental, and economic"
* who started the Green party in Germany
As someone who has been in various Green movements over the past decade - this is the first time I've heard of Triodos Bank.
You do know that the use of three words is just a rhetorical devise that seems to (for some cultural reason) resonate in the English language?
As for the references to Blavatsky and organic food - are these supposed to be suggestions about how the green movement are linked to fascism? Because even if we take that connection seriously (which we shouldn't) - fascism is still a political movement and not a religious one! And is also somewhat contradicted by your then weird reference to the German Green Party - which seems to have originated out of the West German / socialist parties.
It would be useful to know what one sees as the difference between a religious movement and a political one - it seems pretty clear to me but that someone is making this claim kind of confuses me.
The beliefs of environmentalists are material - they are based in the physical world, the science and scientific method and on a materialistic understanding of cause and effect. Indeed, the idea that man made climate change is possible and that we can do something about it is very much a material and not religious / spiritual view of existence. I have never been religious and don't really understand spirituality outside of the occasional sense of awe I get looking at things that exist, but I also can look at the data and the opinions of experts and go "we are destroying the possibility of future human life on this planet and have the means to prevent it".
If the issue is the inelasticity of the vote of Greens that is easily explained - if you are a single issue voter, or a voter who bases your politics on the position that a lot of other things don't really matter if we don't secure the sustainability of human life on this planet, then it isn't "pragmatic" to vote Labour when they say things like "if the Tories give 100s of new drilling contracts, we'll uphold them, even though we know that would be disastrous for the planet".
If you haven't looked at Triodos Bank before, I suggest you look at it now then.
Yes I know about the rhetorical law of threes. The point is those specific three words and ideas. "Social threefolding". Anthroposophy all the way.
"Organic" comes straight from Rudolf Steiner too. Check out the Betteshanger conference. In reality, all food is organic!
Nazism had many religious aspects. So did Ustashism. As for Italian fascism, well we might start with how it Nazified during the last two years of WW2 and the role that anthroposophists played in that process.
No the German Green party did not originate from the SPD. Have a look at Werner Vogel and Baldur Springmann. In your long involvement in various green movements did you ever take a look at Richard Walther Darré?
Then there's the idea of "transition towns". It really does NOT mean something cuddly, as many assume.
Hard to find anything to argue with in OGH's summary. At least for yours truly!
Morning all.
@MikeSmithson keeps taking GE2019 as the benchmark. Whilst this looks right on paper, it's an illusion and for punters it's an error. GE2019 was a one-off 'Get Brexit Done' election to unblock the jam created during the Remainer Parliament. Boris Johnson galvanised the voters against the unelectable trotskyite anti-semitic Jeremy Corbyn with the sole aim of Getting Brexit Done. Hence the December election. In many ways GE2019 was NOT a General Election.
The last proper General Election in the UK was June 2017, which resulted in a hung parliament. That's your benchmark.
Bet accordingly.
p.s. I'm personally very glad that Keir Starmer is no Tony Blair.
I think I understand the point you are making - whilst the 2019 election is the status quo, its artificial. Ordinarily the Labour task would be considered politically unlikely - as we all said in the aftermath.
But if we consider the 2019 result to be the aberration, then a revision to the norm can be expected to happen as the start of any new electoral move. There are swathes of red wall seats which endless polls have shows will not just revert to Labour but will deliver them 5 figure majorities.
If we bake that 2017 reversion in, the task facing Starmer is much smaller, and much more attainable. Then we look at the two other political low tides from 2015 likely to come back in:
The absence of unionist MPs in Scotland feels like a situation that can't be sustained - so expect 20-30 seats to switch from the motorhome party. The absence of yellow MPs in rural England is already a tide rushing back in. The focus is always on Labour, but as is clear it is the LibDems who will mop up disaffected sane voters in places where "Sink the Boats" makes people feel sick.
So, we reset the Red Wall. We drain out the SNP flood. We remove the dam from the LibDems. And suddenly a thumping Tory defeat is not just possible, it feels likely. To stay in power they need to preserve all three of these artificial positions. Which politically means they need to be Janus, a task they are spectacularly failing to pull off.
Yes, I think the Tories have snookered themselves. It is hard to see any of those 3 fronts being contained next GE. While Scotland is unique, the other 2 fronts play out across most E and W constituencies. They are sociological rather than geographical waves.
Tory unpopularity with the working age population is astonishing. I doubt there’s been anything like it in the history of two-party politics in this country.
What possible reason is there at the minute for someone who works for a living to support the Tories?
Sunak has made his bed and shown that working people only exist in his eyes to be taxed ever higher to provide welfare for those who don't work. That's something you can understand from Labour, but from the Tories?
The jack boots will be on next and barbed wire being put up to intern unemployed and pensioners. Give it a rest Adolf.
Hang on. Barty is an absolutist which often translates into absurdist straw man positions - the rant about 30mph zones a perfect example. But he has a point - the status quo is broken. We *are* paying vast amounts in taxes. Where he descends into the absurdist is the suggestion that the money is going into welfare. When our welfare system grudgingly gives people living poverty assuming it pays anything at all.
We're paying record taxes, true. But its going to spivs, not on services, not on infrastructure, not on welfare. We pay lots and get little. Where does all that money go? Even if you are as high Tory and say "inefficiency" that is literally my point. Inefficiency means money is being wasted. Spent on consultants. Advisers. Middlemen. Spivs...
The problem we have is that whilst "we pay taxes and get little back" is good analysis, nobody wants to go after why that is. And propose a solution because the problem is too big and our politicians too timid.
Your jackboots analogy is one solution. Hungary have done it. France wants to do it. Spain and Germany are toying with it...
The bit in bold: it goes on debt repayments.
We have a shit-ton of debt. We need to reflate the economy to lessen the debt burden over time via inflation. But the anti-inflationary reflexes we built up in the neoliberal era prevent us from doing this. So we have problems.
That isn't true with public services. We spend ever larger amounts on schools and hospitals despite front line service provision being catastrophically starved of money.
A basic problem is that everything has been marketised. Instead of driving market-led efficiency we have endless overlapping targets and contracts and regulations. The market is a vast business by itself.
How much money did we waste creating Clinical Commissioning Groups in the NHS? Then replacing them with Integrated Care Boards? How integrated are the dozens of "integrated" boards and how many contracts do they negotiate and manage and how much is spent on administration?
Thats our problem. A fat layer of middlemen who suck the cash out of the system.
This government *is* fiscally dry, however they’ve had to increase the number of civil servants due to Brexit and they continue to stuff gold down the throat of the client vote.
I think we're starting to identify the issues on this thread.
i) Frictional, beaurocratic & administrative cost increases due to putting up trade barriers between ourselves and our nearest neighbours. ii) A culture of gold plating & empire building prevalent in the civil service - driven (certainly in part) by unintended consequences of pseudo-marketisation & i) iii) Increasing debt costs.
Altogether it means we're collectively paying more than ever for less.
The problem is more that any organisation that exists over a period of time accretes bureaucracy.
Read the "Mitrokhin Archive" - it demythologises the KGB. In 1919 the predecessor organisation(s) were lean and mean and could get things done.
1976 The KGB was x100K people in multiple tower block offices. Where meetings to decide the budget for the proposal for the meeting to discuss a KGB officer in Vienna hiring a local thug to break Rudolf Nureyev's legs... faded into nothing.
In the private sector, eventually, such organisation are reformed or swept away. In the aftermath of 2008, CITI Bank fired whole floors of people - we joked (contractors) that the tower in Canary Wharf was getting shorter.
The other problem in the public sector (apart from permanency) is isolation from modern best practise. So we have industrial relations from the 1950s. Lots of people is shit jobs (no automation) doing mind numbing reparative tasks. etc etc
You might be right about the public sector. I've spent the last several decades in the private sector and can assure you that bureaucracy and rubbish jobs abound there. Ask Elon Musk.
On topic, sort of: Our Gracious Host reminds me of a question I have been wondering about, off and on, for decades:
Are some (many?) environmentalists members of what it is fair to consider more a religious movement than a political movement?
No - I would argue the opposite. The evidence is pretty clear and has been clear for some time - the economic dependency on fossil fuels will change the climate of this Earth to such a degree as to destroy human civilisation as we know it. That is not a religious belief, that is a belief backed up by mountains and mountains of evidence. It is a fact based position.
The religious belief is that the invisible hand of the market, some divine force that is always all knowing and correct, will somehow help us overcome this rather than the dedicated work of individuals and nation states. The belief in infinite economic growth on a planet with finite resources is also a pretty religious dogma - infinite growth is not possible and arguably not good (the only natural thing to grow like that are cancer cells).
That a percentage of people are not being "pragmatic" has more to do with your definition of "pragmatic" - if for you it is "we can only tinker at the edges" then sure, it makes no sense to vote Labour, if for you it starts with "we need a habitable planet to have any kind of society at all" then the "pragmatic" position is to vote only for parties that make promises for a future that includes a habitable planet.
If your claim was is the environmental movement more "ideological" or "single-issue", I may agree with you, but certainly not more a "religious" movement than a political one.
The invisible hand of the market has done more for the environment than every hairshirt zealot combined.
The key to solving climate change is not to go back to the stone age eliminating all consumption. It is to replace dirty technology with clean technologies. That requires R&D. It requires investment. And the market is good at channelling that. Companies like Tesla have done more for the environment than zealots like Just Stop Oil.
The state can help the invisible hand by giving it the right incentives. Tax externalities and the market prices for them and works to eliminate them.
Your belief in "finite resources" is a Malthusian fallacy too. We barely scratch the surface of resources of this planet and most resources if used with a good technology are actually renewable, so exponentially building up a supply of renewable resources and increasing them actually does allow exponential economic growth.
That's religion pure and simple, that is. R&D in clean technology might work just fine, or not. The unsupported believe that it WILL work if the rituals are done just right, is voodoo. As is the apparent exemption we get in the final paragraph from the second law of thermodynamics.
If you're going to quote things like the second law of thermodynamics, it might help if you actually understand what the hell it is.
Renewable growth does not violate any laws of physics. Nor does exponential growth.
That R&D will work is not unsupported, it is supported by plenty of evidence. It is also the only thing that can work.
On topic, sort of: Our Gracious Host reminds me of a question I have been wondering about, off and on, for decades:
Are some (many?) environmentalists members of what it is fair to consider more a religious movement than a political movement?
No - I would argue the opposite. The evidence is pretty clear and has been clear for some time - the economic dependency on fossil fuels will change the climate of this Earth to such a degree as to destroy human civilisation as we know it. That is not a religious belief, that is a belief backed up by mountains and mountains of evidence. It is a fact based position.
The religious belief is that the invisible hand of the market, some divine force that is always all knowing and correct, will somehow help us overcome this rather than the dedicated work of individuals and nation states. The belief in infinite economic growth on a planet with finite resources is also a pretty religious dogma - infinite growth is not possible and arguably not good (the only natural thing to grow like that are cancer cells).
That a percentage of people are not being "pragmatic" has more to do with your definition of "pragmatic" - if for you it is "we can only tinker at the edges" then sure, it makes no sense to vote Labour, if for you it starts with "we need a habitable planet to have any kind of society at all" then the "pragmatic" position is to vote only for parties that make promises for a future that includes a habitable planet.
If your claim was is the environmental movement more "ideological" or "single-issue", I may agree with you, but certainly not more a "religious" movement than a political one.
"destroy human civilisation as we know it" goes beyond the evidence. Greatly alter it for the worse.
The current evidence points to mass global famine, the destruction of current infrastructure, the mass migration of between 10%-20% of the planet, huge swathes of Africa and India becoming uninhabitable alongside a reduction in fresh water and the mass extinctions of various organisms and the ecosystems they live in. There is a point where global temperatures rise to such a point where stratocumulus clouds stop forming, as they have done in previous periods of the Earths history. And that's just the material natural effects - not the human reaction to those things - water wars and fortress states, rationing and mass deaths due to famine, drought and heatstroke. Already scientists are looking at the data from this year and saying some impacts are occurring faster than they predicted, and could have unseen outcomes.
We are starting to see some of these things happening now - Sicilian electrical cables are melting underground due to heat, this year 70% of those displaced come from the most climate vulnerable countries; US, Canadian, Chinese and Indian wheat crops have all suffered due to climate change. We see 100s of thousands of fish dying because the ocean is warming, with the Atlantic reaching ridiculous temperatures this year. And fossil fuel production is still increasing.
Human civilisation as we know it - the abundance, the technology, the infrastructure, the nature of trade and capital - will not survive that. Maybe it can survive my lifetime, but even in a 2.5 degree above industrial average world we're looking at 10% of the planet displaced - a humanitarian crisis beyond anything we have ever seen.
On topic, sort of: Our Gracious Host reminds me of a question I have been wondering about, off and on, for decades:
Are some (many?) environmentalists members of what it is fair to consider more a religious movement than a political movement?
No - I would argue the opposite. The evidence is pretty clear and has been clear for some time - the economic dependency on fossil fuels will change the climate of this Earth to such a degree as to destroy human civilisation as we know it. That is not a religious belief, that is a belief backed up by mountains and mountains of evidence. It is a fact based position.
The religious belief is that the invisible hand of the market, some divine force that is always all knowing and correct, will somehow help us overcome this rather than the dedicated work of individuals and nation states. The belief in infinite economic growth on a planet with finite resources is also a pretty religious dogma - infinite growth is not possible and arguably not good (the only natural thing to grow like that are cancer cells).
That a percentage of people are not being "pragmatic" has more to do with your definition of "pragmatic" - if for you it is "we can only tinker at the edges" then sure, it makes no sense to vote Labour, if for you it starts with "we need a habitable planet to have any kind of society at all" then the "pragmatic" position is to vote only for parties that make promises for a future that includes a habitable planet.
If your claim was is the environmental movement more "ideological" or "single-issue", I may agree with you, but certainly not more a "religious" movement than a political one.
I've seen plenty of religious belief grafted onto environmental beliefs.
For example, it is quite common to find green types who declare that "Electric cars are just as polluting as ICE" - when you actually try and pin them down on the details, they react as if you are challenging Writ. You must not Question, only Believe.
It is most amusing when things like 'gender equality' , 'equity' and 'tackling obesity' all get linked to the same project as tackling climate change.
A big problem is that people take a really good idea and try and package it up as part of their mad lefty green party manifesto, putting off "normal people" who would otherwise be fully supportive.
Otoh, there is actually a nascent campaign againt cycle2work, because it's regressive (it is!). But honestly, talk about idealogy over outcomes. Deeply frustrating.
A huge explosion was reported in Zagorskiy Optical and Mechanical plant near Moscow
The factory had contracts with the Russian Ministry of Defense. It is part of Shvabe Holding, which is producing sights, thermal imagers, laser rangefinders, and other similar products. https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1689192323588947968
That’s damn careless. How many Russian military contractors is that, whose buildings “went on fire”?
Quite large. Also reports of 152mm shells found lying around, burnt out. The Russians are claiming an accident set off fireworks stored beside the plant. The Russians appear to be lying.
Re Sir Chris Bryant's sporty little gambit to ban non-attending parliamentarians, where does this leave Sinn Fein MPs?
One might argue "but that's different", but I think this is why we should steer well away from this sort of thing. The moment you create exceptions, it becomes very messy.
Sinn Fein MPs do constituency work, dont attend HoC and don't get paid a salary. Dorries does no constituency work, doesnt attend Hoc and gets paid a salary.
I am not sure how this comparison is supposed to work in her favour!
Sir Chris, who chairs the Commons standards committee, said the move had basis in a parliamentary rule from 1801 stating that "no member do presume to go out of town without leave of this House".
He told the BBC he wanted to see MPs held to the same standards as councillors, who automatically cease to be a councillor, triggering a by-election, if they fail to attend any meetings for six months without good reason.
"I just think this is bringing the whole system into disrepute," he said.
"Why should you be allowed to draw a salary and claim expenses for your staff and all that kind of stuff if you're not actually doing the job of turning up?"
"Turning up" being the key to this. It's not about constituency work, is about turning up to the HoC.
Nah, that just happens to be the words used. If Dorries was working even 20 hours a week in her constituency nobody would be in the slightest interested.
We're told that this is not about Dorries, but your comment shows that this is precisely about Dorries.
"Every police officer in Northern Ireland has data compromised in 'monumental' breach due to human error
The PSNI Assistant Chief Constable admitted the breach was made in "human error" and apologised to colleagues whose data was made public for two and a half to three hours."
Amazingly, some dangerous idiots still want the government to have yet more of our intimate personal data, even though it's obvious they can't keep it safe. Last year Labour were advocating ID cards to control illegal immigration.
... I would regard id cards as a sensible and proportionate measure...
UK 2020s politics is a long stream of illiberal measures designed to burden law-abiding citizens with whatever the fashionable nostrums of the day are. ID cards is a thing that keeps popping up, and it gets knocked down every time.
Not very effectively knocked down then. It's about 1% as scary to me as the surveillance by facial/numberplate recognition/cell phone which goes on 24/7 so if it has any practical value let's do it.
Again, coercing the individual. The question is not whether it is a good idea, but whether it is moral to fine/jail somebody for refusing to carry one. That would be state overkill.
When I lived in Switzerland i was legally obliged to carry my ID card/foreigner permit (carte des etrangers) at all times and if it was requested by the police or an official and I didn’t have it then I was liable to a fine. There was not one second where I felt that it was oppression by the state or an intrusion into my civil liberties.
In fact it was actually great to have one as with it so many activities were quicker - opening a bank account, collecting a parcel, registering with a gov department re tax or similar - because it was an official compulsory ID card that no functionary would refuse to accept as ID.
Sigh.
For the nth time. The problem isn’t the ID card. The problem isn’t the unique identifying code on it. The problem isn’t even the potential use of that unique code as a key on databases.
The problem is that every single time ID cards have been proposed (and he time that they were, briefly, actually implemented), they come with an attempt to link all our personal information together. And link it to biometric data - finger prints, face recognition. etc. and the make it accessible to everyone.
In the last such scheme, they were going to make everything the NHS had on you (for instance) available to council officials investigating fly tipping. When asked why, the response was that segregating data would be difficult and slow things down.
So if your finger print day was stolen, you’d just have to get new finger prints, eh?
It should be noted that personal for Important People (Politicians, senior civil servants, famous people who the government liked) *was* to be segregated. #NU10K
The only saving grace was that such an insane breach of every concept of data security would have gone the way of all such government projects. Collapsed after spending billions. Though in this case it would have got to the data leaking stage
Time to repost this admittedly brilliant analysis from a couple of years ago:
I’ve always said I’m in favour of ID cards, if the following conditions are met:
1) They’re issued for free
2) You don’t have to carry them at all times
3) You can use them chip and pin to access all government services - so they would replace passports and driving licences, not augment them
4) That you had the power to access all information the government holds on you, and amend it where it is wrong
5) That civil servants who access your data are logged, and you can see who they are and why they accessed it
6) That if somebody has accessed your data inappropriately you have the right to take legal action against them, funded by the government.
And numbers 4-6 will not happen while any civil servant breathes air.
Civil Servants are only human, and humans are nosy, so the more information you make available to government officials the more information they will see.
If you think that if you had free access to a super-government database that you wouldn't be looking at your neighbour's income then you are kidding yourself. The best that can be hoped for is that you would have the good sense not to tell anyone that you had done so and keep the information to yourself.
Meanwhile in Estonia, all of those qualifiers apply, and the Estonian X-road (google) decentralizes the stores of data and provides a sentry programme for greater security, so there is no central store of data that can be so compromised.
The benefits in terms of efficiency are truly staggering, especially in health care, but the ability to verify your identity in a secure online environment saves a fortune in things like tax collection and financial transactions too.
Eventually Britain will need to adopt at least some part of these systems (and in the DVLA and the Passport Office it did use advice from Estonia)., the problem is that it involves understanding the issues involved and the UK political system is missing leaders with that kind of understanding.
I’ve actually spoken with civil servants on this issue.
The problem is that they are hard wired to believe in the Big Central Database. Access controls are seen as Impeding Good Government.
So all the briefing papers reflect this.
You would need to fire the top five ranks of the Home Office, en masse.
As an ex civil servant, I only wish that we had a tenth of the power that you attribute to us. We didn't.
And, in reference to an earlier comment of yours, the idea that under a previously-floated ID scheme council workers investigating fly-tipping would have had full access to people's NHS medical records is palpably absurd. They wouldn't.
We know this is true because Dominic Cummings repeatedly complained that government data sources were not linked except where his team did so unofficially and possibly illegally.
Hard to find anything to argue with in OGH's summary. At least for yours truly!
Morning all.
@MikeSmithson keeps taking GE2019 as the benchmark. Whilst this looks right on paper, it's an illusion and for punters it's an error. GE2019 was a one-off 'Get Brexit Done' election to unblock the jam created during the Remainer Parliament. Boris Johnson galvanised the voters against the unelectable trotskyite anti-semitic Jeremy Corbyn with the sole aim of Getting Brexit Done. Hence the December election. In many ways GE2019 was NOT a General Election.
The last proper General Election in the UK was June 2017, which resulted in a hung parliament. That's your benchmark.
Bet accordingly.
p.s. I'm personally very glad that Keir Starmer is no Tony Blair.
I think I understand the point you are making - whilst the 2019 election is the status quo, its artificial. Ordinarily the Labour task would be considered politically unlikely - as we all said in the aftermath.
But if we consider the 2019 result to be the aberration, then a revision to the norm can be expected to happen as the start of any new electoral move. There are swathes of red wall seats which endless polls have shows will not just revert to Labour but will deliver them 5 figure majorities.
If we bake that 2017 reversion in, the task facing Starmer is much smaller, and much more attainable. Then we look at the two other political low tides from 2015 likely to come back in:
The absence of unionist MPs in Scotland feels like a situation that can't be sustained - so expect 20-30 seats to switch from the motorhome party. The absence of yellow MPs in rural England is already a tide rushing back in. The focus is always on Labour, but as is clear it is the LibDems who will mop up disaffected sane voters in places where "Sink the Boats" makes people feel sick.
So, we reset the Red Wall. We drain out the SNP flood. We remove the dam from the LibDems. And suddenly a thumping Tory defeat is not just possible, it feels likely. To stay in power they need to preserve all three of these artificial positions. Which politically means they need to be Janus, a task they are spectacularly failing to pull off.
Yes, I think the Tories have snookered themselves. It is hard to see any of those 3 fronts being contained next GE. While Scotland is unique, the other 2 fronts play out across most E and W constituencies. They are sociological rather than geographical waves.
Tory unpopularity with the working age population is astonishing. I doubt there’s been anything like it in the history of two-party politics in this country.
What possible reason is there at the minute for someone who works for a living to support the Tories?
Sunak has made his bed and shown that working people only exist in his eyes to be taxed ever higher to provide welfare for those who don't work. That's something you can understand from Labour, but from the Tories?
The jack boots will be on next and barbed wire being put up to intern unemployed and pensioners. Give it a rest Adolf.
Hang on. Barty is an absolutist which often translates into absurdist straw man positions - the rant about 30mph zones a perfect example. But he has a point - the status quo is broken. We *are* paying vast amounts in taxes. Where he descends into the absurdist is the suggestion that the money is going into welfare. When our welfare system grudgingly gives people living poverty assuming it pays anything at all.
We're paying record taxes, true. But its going to spivs, not on services, not on infrastructure, not on welfare. We pay lots and get little. Where does all that money go? Even if you are as high Tory and say "inefficiency" that is literally my point. Inefficiency means money is being wasted. Spent on consultants. Advisers. Middlemen. Spivs...
The problem we have is that whilst "we pay taxes and get little back" is good analysis, nobody wants to go after why that is. And propose a solution because the problem is too big and our politicians too timid.
Your jackboots analogy is one solution. Hungary have done it. France wants to do it. Spain and Germany are toying with it...
The bit in bold: it goes on debt repayments.
We have a shit-ton of debt. We need to reflate the economy to lessen the debt burden over time via inflation. But the anti-inflationary reflexes we built up in the neoliberal era prevent us from doing this. So we have problems.
That isn't true with public services. We spend ever larger amounts on schools and hospitals despite front line service provision being catastrophically starved of money.
A basic problem is that everything has been marketised. Instead of driving market-led efficiency we have endless overlapping targets and contracts and regulations. The market is a vast business by itself.
How much money did we waste creating Clinical Commissioning Groups in the NHS? Then replacing them with Integrated Care Boards? How integrated are the dozens of "integrated" boards and how many contracts do they negotiate and manage and how much is spent on administration?
Thats our problem. A fat layer of middlemen who suck the cash out of the system.
This government *is* fiscally dry, however they’ve had to increase the number of civil servants due to Brexit and they continue to stuff gold down the throat of the client vote.
I think we're starting to identify the issues on this thread.
i) Frictional, beaurocratic & administrative cost increases due to putting up trade barriers between ourselves and our nearest neighbours. ii) A culture of gold plating & empire building prevalent in the civil service - driven (certainly in part) by unintended consequences of pseudo-marketisation & i) iii) Increasing debt costs.
Altogether it means we're collectively paying more than ever for less.
iv) demographics and an ageing population meaning costs for pensions/NHS are ever increasing
Weirdly, demographics isn't the primary driver of health costs in the NHS (it doesn't help). There is something else going on - technology, chronic conditions, Baumol's cost disease perhaps.
I do think 'something must be done' about obesity.
I don't think the answer is nannying. But 2/3rds of the population being fat is ridiculous and with Deliveroo etc. serving up pizzas and burgers all the time (I get several leaflets through the door weekly) it's only going to get worse. Smartphone idleness on top doesn't help.
We need to eat less fat, salt, sugar, MSG and more real food. I'd like less hectoring and more home economics, diet guidelines, nudges and tasty/easy recipes (incl. ready meal options) that allow people to do this.
A stolen iPhone is indeed a brick without the passcode. Your £800 phone is still worth £50 in parts to some scrote though.
You may be right. I do not possess a smart mobile after handing back the company iphone on redundancy. But first of all, if, as is common, your phone is stolen by thieves on bikes/mopeds/scooters snatching it out of your hand while you are using it, then your phone is already unlocked. Indeed, the police endeavour to snatch villains' phones while in use for just this reason. (And this will give the baddies access to your email so they can change your passwords.)
Another scenario is your phone is stolen from your pocket or handbag. You do not notice until later when you try to use it, and you then waste hours tracing your steps back through bars and shops to see if it was handed in as lost property, and you wait till the morning in case you left it at work. Only after 12 hours have passed do you notify EE/3/Vodafone so they can blacklist it.
Or you have Find My Phone enabled, and once you get home you can use this to locate your phone, decide it must have been stolen, and wipe it remotely. Can you brick it, or just wipe your personal data? I'm not sure.
And from the linked Guardian article, we can see mobile phones can be re-registered to new users. I guess this is necessary at some level to enable the second-hand phone market.
The latest iOS allow you to remotely wipe the device, without losing the ability to track it, or keep it locked to you.
A huge explosion was reported in Zagorskiy Optical and Mechanical plant near Moscow
The factory had contracts with the Russian Ministry of Defense. It is part of Shvabe Holding, which is producing sights, thermal imagers, laser rangefinders, and other similar products. https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1689192323588947968
That’s damn careless. How many Russian military contractors is that, whose buildings “went on fire”?
Quite large. Also reports of 152mm shells found lying around, burnt out. The Russians are claiming an accident set off fireworks stored beside the plant. The Russians appear to be lying.
I'm not sure they actually know how to tell the truth.
Hard to find anything to argue with in OGH's summary. At least for yours truly!
Morning all.
@MikeSmithson keeps taking GE2019 as the benchmark. Whilst this looks right on paper, it's an illusion and for punters it's an error. GE2019 was a one-off 'Get Brexit Done' election to unblock the jam created during the Remainer Parliament. Boris Johnson galvanised the voters against the unelectable trotskyite anti-semitic Jeremy Corbyn with the sole aim of Getting Brexit Done. Hence the December election. In many ways GE2019 was NOT a General Election.
The last proper General Election in the UK was June 2017, which resulted in a hung parliament. That's your benchmark.
Bet accordingly.
p.s. I'm personally very glad that Keir Starmer is no Tony Blair.
I think I understand the point you are making - whilst the 2019 election is the status quo, its artificial. Ordinarily the Labour task would be considered politically unlikely - as we all said in the aftermath.
But if we consider the 2019 result to be the aberration, then a revision to the norm can be expected to happen as the start of any new electoral move. There are swathes of red wall seats which endless polls have shows will not just revert to Labour but will deliver them 5 figure majorities.
If we bake that 2017 reversion in, the task facing Starmer is much smaller, and much more attainable. Then we look at the two other political low tides from 2015 likely to come back in:
The absence of unionist MPs in Scotland feels like a situation that can't be sustained - so expect 20-30 seats to switch from the motorhome party. The absence of yellow MPs in rural England is already a tide rushing back in. The focus is always on Labour, but as is clear it is the LibDems who will mop up disaffected sane voters in places where "Sink the Boats" makes people feel sick.
So, we reset the Red Wall. We drain out the SNP flood. We remove the dam from the LibDems. And suddenly a thumping Tory defeat is not just possible, it feels likely. To stay in power they need to preserve all three of these artificial positions. Which politically means they need to be Janus, a task they are spectacularly failing to pull off.
Yes, I think the Tories have snookered themselves. It is hard to see any of those 3 fronts being contained next GE. While Scotland is unique, the other 2 fronts play out across most E and W constituencies. They are sociological rather than geographical waves.
Tory unpopularity with the working age population is astonishing. I doubt there’s been anything like it in the history of two-party politics in this country.
Yes, it is deeply concerning.
The only people they seem to look after (and protect from policy) is the retired and they've dug a hole so deep there I struggle to see how they get out now.
Opposition will do a lot of the work.
Labour, in government, will be unlikely to resist the temptation to try to buy pensioner votes. I think some of the bias of the old to the Tories is in fact a bias of the old to the incumbent government.
Things could change quite rapidly, at least in terms of rhetoric and polling. But would a new Tory government, after a Starmer interregnum, be able to resist the temptation to buy pensioner votes? I have my doubts. (Well, okay, not many doubts, I'm fairly confident that governments of both sides will follow the path of least resistance and genuflect to the pensioner vote.)
OTOH, many pensioners will still vote Tory regardless, so why should SKS bother going all out Tory? Or (as remarked to me yesterday) so cowardly in his approach to Brexit etc. that he might as well be Tory. And ditto with baby starving, Scottish referendum, and so on and so forth.
The Tories have gone so far (as already remarked in the thread) it's probably impossible to rebalance things and make a fairer balance with the people actually doing the work without upsetting the pensioner vote irreparably (for instance, by imposing NI on all, or merging it with income tax, or cutting IHT allowances or converting them to CGT).
My argument is mainly grounded on what happened under the previous Labour government, rather than on hypotheticals about the future.
Under the Labour government of 1997-2010* we saw several moves that increased spending on pensioners. We had the first pension lock, to ensure there wasn't a repeat of low inflation leading to a tiny increase in the state pension. We had various freebies given to pensioners - TV licenses, bus passes, fuel allowances.
The consequence of this was seen in election results. In the 2010 GE the bias of the old to vote Tories was at its lowest since 1992.
Expect to see the same again. I'd be gobsmacked if pensioners were not reassured by Labour budgets, and I'd expect votes to change as they did before.
The attraction of buying the votes of pensioners is that it is really simple. The government only has to keep the money flowing. Sorting out the problems for younger voters, such as the housing crisis, might sound simple - just build more houses! - but runs into all sorts of other issues - Who will build them? Will there be enough building materials at a low enough price? Where? - which make them practically more difficult, and even in a best case scenario will take years to deliver tangible results.
* Actually, probably more correctly in the period 2001-2010. I'd have to dig out the details of when the various reforms were made. But the very small pension increase happened in the first Parliament, 1997-2001, and Labour consequently fell further behind with the pensioner vote at the 2001 GE. They learnt their lesson then and I don't think they will be looking for a refresher.
House building needs to be increased.
All of the problem you list are fixable over time.
When it was proposed to hire x,000 more police officers, some said it was actually impossible.
The current block is the hoarding of planning permission. Which is logical for various actors.
Imagine you are a big developer. You have the permission to build an estate of 5,000 homes. If you try and build 5,000 homes now
1) the local house prices will crash 2) the local council will find the strain on infrastructure intolerable 3) the NIMBYs will riot 4) finding the builders may be a problem
So, instead, you build 250 a year. That makes the council mellow. The NIMBYs will get bored with the inevitable. The house prices won’t crash. The building companies and suppliers you contract with will love a steady 20 years of work….
How many years have people been speaking about increasing housebuilding in Britain? Years and years and years and years. It took seven years to increase the number of completions in the UK from the 2012 nadir of 133k to 210k in the pre-pandemic year of 2019.
So to take housebuilding up to 300k a year, and sustain it at that level for long enough to bring house prices down, is going to take more than one electoral cycle. To win the next-next election any government is going to need to keep pensioners on side.
House building is easy. Have land. Grant permission. Build.
The reason we aren't building houses is that the Build bit isn't happening. And what they are building is designed to generate the highest profit, not solve the local housing issue.
The solution? Cut the private sector out of the decision-making process. Contract them in to build housing as directed by the council, the housing association, a regional housing board, whatever. But build the houses that people need in the places they need them. And rent them at a price they can afford.
Re Sir Chris Bryant's sporty little gambit to ban non-attending parliamentarians, where does this leave Sinn Fein MPs?
One might argue "but that's different", but I think this is why we should steer well away from this sort of thing. The moment you create exceptions, it becomes very messy.
Sinn Fein MPs do constituency work, dont attend HoC and don't get paid a salary. Dorries does no constituency work, doesnt attend Hoc and gets paid a salary.
I am not sure how this comparison is supposed to work in her favour!
Sir Chris, who chairs the Commons standards committee, said the move had basis in a parliamentary rule from 1801 stating that "no member do presume to go out of town without leave of this House".
He told the BBC he wanted to see MPs held to the same standards as councillors, who automatically cease to be a councillor, triggering a by-election, if they fail to attend any meetings for six months without good reason.
"I just think this is bringing the whole system into disrepute," he said.
"Why should you be allowed to draw a salary and claim expenses for your staff and all that kind of stuff if you're not actually doing the job of turning up?"
"Turning up" being the key to this. It's not about constituency work, is about turning up to the HoC.
Nah, that just happens to be the words used. If Dorries was working even 20 hours a week in her constituency nobody would be in the slightest interested.
We're told that this is not about Dorries, but your comment shows that this is precisely about Dorries.
It is about claiming our taxpayer money for doing zilch. Tories seem very exercised when that is done by almost anyone bar Dorries.
@Jim_Miller : "Are some (many?) environmentalists members of what it is fair to consider more a religious movement than a political movement?"
Certainly political, and often religious these days when expounded by those who are humanists - implicit in which is the belief that humans are special.
You can always twig the fake environmentalists when they quickly express their concerns in human terms; regarding nature in terms of instrumental value (value to humans) rather than intrinsic value (value in itself).
The language is usually that of concern for human civilisation rather than concern for everything that is not human - an obnoxious position. For example, environmentalists who purely bang on about climate change (because they are concerned about the effect on humans (alongside making a left-wing political point)) rather than, say, gross human over-population and tragic loss of biodiversity and natural beauty and deforestation are not environmentalists. Real environmentalists feel a constant punch in the gut over these things and have largely given up it seems to me.
" For example, environmentalists who purely bang on about climate change (because they are concerned about the effect on humans (alongside making a left-wing political point)) rather than, say, gross human over-population and tragic loss of biodiversity and natural beauty and deforestation are not environmentalists. Real environmentalists feel a constant punch in the gut over these things and have largely given up it seems to me."
You can do both. And the reason many "bang on" about climate change's impact on humans is because so many people (typically on the right) either outright deny it is happening, or that it will be bad for people when it does happen, or that we can do anything to stop it! We're constantly being told that people will only care about environmental issues when it "hits them" and yet when we mention how it will "hit them" we're moaned at for not making an argument about nature in pure form... Political environmentalism cannot seem to win.
A stolen iPhone is indeed a brick without the passcode. Your £800 phone is still worth £50 in parts to some scrote though.
You may be right. I do not possess a smart mobile after handing back the company iphone on redundancy. But first of all, if, as is common, your phone is stolen by thieves on bikes/mopeds/scooters snatching it out of your hand while you are using it, then your phone is already unlocked. Indeed, the police endeavour to snatch villains' phones while in use for just this reason. (And this will give the baddies access to your email so they can change your passwords.)
Another scenario is your phone is stolen from your pocket or handbag. You do not notice until later when you try to use it, and you then waste hours tracing your steps back through bars and shops to see if it was handed in as lost property, and you wait till the morning in case you left it at work. Only after 12 hours have passed do you notify EE/3/Vodafone so they can blacklist it.
Or you have Find My Phone enabled, and once you get home you can use this to locate your phone, decide it must have been stolen, and wipe it remotely. Can you brick it, or just wipe your personal data? I'm not sure.
And from the linked Guardian article, we can see mobile phones can be re-registered to new users. I guess this is necessary at some level to enable the second-hand phone market.
From the iPhone perspective, even if it’s unlocked as the thieves pick it up, you can’t log out of it without either the passcode or the Apple ID password associated with it.
If you wipe it remotely from Find My, it can’t be assigned to another user, still requires your Apple ID.
To sell it 2nd hand requires a process that involves both the phone passcode AND the Apple ID password, in order to disable the Find My functionality and wipe the phone.
So a stolen iPhone is worth only scrap value for a few parts.
The police wanting an unlocked phone is for a different reason, they want to be able to look at the messages on it as they can’t force the suspect to enter a password. (They can force him to use a fingerprint or Face ID though, so the scrotes all have that disabled).
Re Sir Chris Bryant's sporty little gambit to ban non-attending parliamentarians, where does this leave Sinn Fein MPs?
One might argue "but that's different", but I think this is why we should steer well away from this sort of thing. The moment you create exceptions, it becomes very messy.
Sinn Fein MPs do constituency work, dont attend HoC and don't get paid a salary. Dorries does no constituency work, doesnt attend Hoc and gets paid a salary.
I am not sure how this comparison is supposed to work in her favour!
Sir Chris, who chairs the Commons standards committee, said the move had basis in a parliamentary rule from 1801 stating that "no member do presume to go out of town without leave of this House".
He told the BBC he wanted to see MPs held to the same standards as councillors, who automatically cease to be a councillor, triggering a by-election, if they fail to attend any meetings for six months without good reason.
"I just think this is bringing the whole system into disrepute," he said.
"Why should you be allowed to draw a salary and claim expenses for your staff and all that kind of stuff if you're not actually doing the job of turning up?"
"Turning up" being the key to this. It's not about constituency work, is about turning up to the HoC.
Nah, that just happens to be the words used. If Dorries was working even 20 hours a week in her constituency nobody would be in the slightest interested.
We're told that this is not about Dorries, but your comment shows that this is precisely about Dorries.
It is about claiming our taxpayer money for doing zilch. Tories seem very exercised when that is done by almost anyone bar Dorries.
I didn't give a shit about Jared O'mara (he won me £75 fwiw) and I couldn't give a shit about Nadine Dorries. In the not too distant future, there shall be a general election when the voters can make their choice once again.
It's worth reminding readers that Lee Anderthal is not just a gobby MP, he is Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party. So when he tells 'moaning' asylum seekers to "fuck off back to France" his role as DC is relevant. No surprise that he said it and is standing by it. But his language has not been condemned by anybody in the party, including No. 10; rather, they all seem to have endorsed his comments.
It rather suggests to me that the Tory Party has given up, if they can't be bothered appealing to the vast majority of voters who have common decency.
If you know nothing about the country you are governing you make Lee Anderson one of your public faces. Lee is every out-of-touch metropolitan elitist's idea of what a salt of the earth, working class, northerner is like. That he is not even a northerner is only the start of the delusion.
Lee Anderson was a lifelong member of the Labour Party until 2018.
He might not represent all the working class, but he represents a strand of it that believes Labour abandoned them.
If they are lost again it's more likely to be because they think the Tories haven't delivered, than because they share Labour values.
These voters have been let down by the Labour Party for a century. Labour Party corruption at a local level. I am thinking T. Dan Smith. The focus on metropolitan London policy, Corbynista concern for Palestine rather than Penistone and Moscow rather than Middlesbrough. Labour authorities turning a blind eye to the behaviour of Rotherham taxi drivers. Brexit and working class hero Boris Johnson were ways of registering their disdain. The trouble is Johnson soiled the bed, Brexit bonuses appear as thin gruel and T. Dan Smith style "practices" appear to be alive and well in Teeside.
I don't believe many Nottinghamshire miners ever shared Labour values, many were hangers and floggers back in the day. Different in Wales where the miners sang in close harmony unison with Paul Robeson.
Hard to find anything to argue with in OGH's summary. At least for yours truly!
Morning all.
@MikeSmithson keeps taking GE2019 as the benchmark. Whilst this looks right on paper, it's an illusion and for punters it's an error. GE2019 was a one-off 'Get Brexit Done' election to unblock the jam created during the Remainer Parliament. Boris Johnson galvanised the voters against the unelectable trotskyite anti-semitic Jeremy Corbyn with the sole aim of Getting Brexit Done. Hence the December election. In many ways GE2019 was NOT a General Election.
The last proper General Election in the UK was June 2017, which resulted in a hung parliament. That's your benchmark.
Bet accordingly.
p.s. I'm personally very glad that Keir Starmer is no Tony Blair.
I think I understand the point you are making - whilst the 2019 election is the status quo, its artificial. Ordinarily the Labour task would be considered politically unlikely - as we all said in the aftermath.
But if we consider the 2019 result to be the aberration, then a revision to the norm can be expected to happen as the start of any new electoral move. There are swathes of red wall seats which endless polls have shows will not just revert to Labour but will deliver them 5 figure majorities.
If we bake that 2017 reversion in, the task facing Starmer is much smaller, and much more attainable. Then we look at the two other political low tides from 2015 likely to come back in:
The absence of unionist MPs in Scotland feels like a situation that can't be sustained - so expect 20-30 seats to switch from the motorhome party. The absence of yellow MPs in rural England is already a tide rushing back in. The focus is always on Labour, but as is clear it is the LibDems who will mop up disaffected sane voters in places where "Sink the Boats" makes people feel sick.
So, we reset the Red Wall. We drain out the SNP flood. We remove the dam from the LibDems. And suddenly a thumping Tory defeat is not just possible, it feels likely. To stay in power they need to preserve all three of these artificial positions. Which politically means they need to be Janus, a task they are spectacularly failing to pull off.
Yes, I think the Tories have snookered themselves. It is hard to see any of those 3 fronts being contained next GE. While Scotland is unique, the other 2 fronts play out across most E and W constituencies. They are sociological rather than geographical waves.
Tory unpopularity with the working age population is astonishing. I doubt there’s been anything like it in the history of two-party politics in this country.
What possible reason is there at the minute for someone who works for a living to support the Tories?
Sunak has made his bed and shown that working people only exist in his eyes to be taxed ever higher to provide welfare for those who don't work. That's something you can understand from Labour, but from the Tories?
The jack boots will be on next and barbed wire being put up to intern unemployed and pensioners. Give it a rest Adolf.
Hang on. Barty is an absolutist which often translates into absurdist straw man positions - the rant about 30mph zones a perfect example. But he has a point - the status quo is broken. We *are* paying vast amounts in taxes. Where he descends into the absurdist is the suggestion that the money is going into welfare. When our welfare system grudgingly gives people living poverty assuming it pays anything at all.
We're paying record taxes, true. But its going to spivs, not on services, not on infrastructure, not on welfare. We pay lots and get little. Where does all that money go? Even if you are as high Tory and say "inefficiency" that is literally my point. Inefficiency means money is being wasted. Spent on consultants. Advisers. Middlemen. Spivs...
The problem we have is that whilst "we pay taxes and get little back" is good analysis, nobody wants to go after why that is. And propose a solution because the problem is too big and our politicians too timid.
Your jackboots analogy is one solution. Hungary have done it. France wants to do it. Spain and Germany are toying with it...
The bit in bold: it goes on debt repayments.
We have a shit-ton of debt. We need to reflate the economy to lessen the debt burden over time via inflation. But the anti-inflationary reflexes we built up in the neoliberal era prevent us from doing this. So we have problems.
That isn't true with public services. We spend ever larger amounts on schools and hospitals despite front line service provision being catastrophically starved of money.
A basic problem is that everything has been marketised. Instead of driving market-led efficiency we have endless overlapping targets and contracts and regulations. The market is a vast business by itself.
How much money did we waste creating Clinical Commissioning Groups in the NHS? Then replacing them with Integrated Care Boards? How integrated are the dozens of "integrated" boards and how many contracts do they negotiate and manage and how much is spent on administration?
Thats our problem. A fat layer of middlemen who suck the cash out of the system.
This government *is* fiscally dry, however they’ve had to increase the number of civil servants due to Brexit and they continue to stuff gold down the throat of the client vote.
I think we're starting to identify the issues on this thread.
i) Frictional, beaurocratic & administrative cost increases due to putting up trade barriers between ourselves and our nearest neighbours. ii) A culture of gold plating & empire building prevalent in the civil service - driven (certainly in part) by unintended consequences of pseudo-marketisation & i) iii) Increasing debt costs.
Altogether it means we're collectively paying more than ever for less.
iv) demographics and an ageing population meaning costs for pensions/NHS are ever increasing
Weirdly, demographics isn't the primary driver of health costs in the NHS (it doesn't help). There is something else going on - technology, chronic conditions, Baumol's cost disease perhaps.
I do think 'something must be done' about obesity.
I don't think the answer is nannying. But 2/3rds of the population being fat is ridiculous and with Deliveroo etc. serving up pizzas and burgers all the time (I get several leaflets through the door weekly) it's only going to get worse. Smartphone idleness on top doesn't help.
We need to eat less fat, salt, sugar, MSG and more real food. I'd like less hectoring and more home economics, diet guidelines, nudges and tasty/easy recipes (incl. ready meal options) that allow people to do this.
Obesity is not the cause of healthcare spending going up, though it absolutely doesn't help.
The simple thing is that increasing spending on healthcare is like running faster on a treadmill. No matter how much you do it, you're still at the same point and need to keep doing so just to stand still.
As people age they get more chronic conditions. The more you treat chronic conditions, the more they develop, the more they need to be treated.
Walking to work or cycling to work is neither here nor there, since very little of healthcare expenditure goes on people of working age - especially excluding pregnancy-related healthcare.
I don't think much thinking was ever really done in opposition other than to ape Blair and steal his crown. The bulk of the grassroots wanted the EU question resolved and their patience had run out by the time of the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty in 2009.
How the political landscape had shifted under their feet totally took Osborne/Cameron by surprise. Subsequent leaders then boxed themselves into a demographic corner by digging deeper and deeper into the retired vote, and today, there ain't much left in the tank.
The Conservatives needs a fundamental rethink on making Britain strong, fit, lean, well-balanced and prosperous for the 21stC. How to create the business owners, home owners and thriving families of the future. How to appeal to all age groups and all parts of the UK. A refocus on core values, and a root and branch review on policy is required that needs to be both comprehensive and sincere (far too many are still obsessed by the EU, on both sides, and want to re-fight old wars) and focused on realism and pragmatism that puts the national interest first.
A huge explosion was reported in Zagorskiy Optical and Mechanical plant near Moscow
The factory had contracts with the Russian Ministry of Defense. It is part of Shvabe Holding, which is producing sights, thermal imagers, laser rangefinders, and other similar products. https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1689192323588947968
That’s damn careless. How many Russian military contractors is that, whose buildings “went on fire”?
Quite large. Also reports of 152mm shells found lying around, burnt out. The Russians are claiming an accident set off fireworks stored beside the plant. The Russians appear to be lying.
I'm not sure they actually know how to tell the truth.
I won't be giving you a psywar job then.
"The enemy blasted us last night. Well we're far cleverer than them, and far more honest, so we'd better make sure everything we say about the blast is true."
Russian weakness in the fifth domain of warfare has been somewhat surprising. NATO presumably has improved its capability since Estonia 2007.
Hard to find anything to argue with in OGH's summary. At least for yours truly!
Morning all.
@MikeSmithson keeps taking GE2019 as the benchmark. Whilst this looks right on paper, it's an illusion and for punters it's an error. GE2019 was a one-off 'Get Brexit Done' election to unblock the jam created during the Remainer Parliament. Boris Johnson galvanised the voters against the unelectable trotskyite anti-semitic Jeremy Corbyn with the sole aim of Getting Brexit Done. Hence the December election. In many ways GE2019 was NOT a General Election.
The last proper General Election in the UK was June 2017, which resulted in a hung parliament. That's your benchmark.
Bet accordingly.
p.s. I'm personally very glad that Keir Starmer is no Tony Blair.
I think I understand the point you are making - whilst the 2019 election is the status quo, its artificial. Ordinarily the Labour task would be considered politically unlikely - as we all said in the aftermath.
But if we consider the 2019 result to be the aberration, then a revision to the norm can be expected to happen as the start of any new electoral move. There are swathes of red wall seats which endless polls have shows will not just revert to Labour but will deliver them 5 figure majorities.
If we bake that 2017 reversion in, the task facing Starmer is much smaller, and much more attainable. Then we look at the two other political low tides from 2015 likely to come back in:
The absence of unionist MPs in Scotland feels like a situation that can't be sustained - so expect 20-30 seats to switch from the motorhome party. The absence of yellow MPs in rural England is already a tide rushing back in. The focus is always on Labour, but as is clear it is the LibDems who will mop up disaffected sane voters in places where "Sink the Boats" makes people feel sick.
So, we reset the Red Wall. We drain out the SNP flood. We remove the dam from the LibDems. And suddenly a thumping Tory defeat is not just possible, it feels likely. To stay in power they need to preserve all three of these artificial positions. Which politically means they need to be Janus, a task they are spectacularly failing to pull off.
Yes, I think the Tories have snookered themselves. It is hard to see any of those 3 fronts being contained next GE. While Scotland is unique, the other 2 fronts play out across most E and W constituencies. They are sociological rather than geographical waves.
Tory unpopularity with the working age population is astonishing. I doubt there’s been anything like it in the history of two-party politics in this country.
Yes, it is deeply concerning.
The only people they seem to look after (and protect from policy) is the retired and they've dug a hole so deep there I struggle to see how they get out now.
Opposition will do a lot of the work.
Labour, in government, will be unlikely to resist the temptation to try to buy pensioner votes. I think some of the bias of the old to the Tories is in fact a bias of the old to the incumbent government.
Things could change quite rapidly, at least in terms of rhetoric and polling. But would a new Tory government, after a Starmer interregnum, be able to resist the temptation to buy pensioner votes? I have my doubts. (Well, okay, not many doubts, I'm fairly confident that governments of both sides will follow the path of least resistance and genuflect to the pensioner vote.)
OTOH, many pensioners will still vote Tory regardless, so why should SKS bother going all out Tory? Or (as remarked to me yesterday) so cowardly in his approach to Brexit etc. that he might as well be Tory. And ditto with baby starving, Scottish referendum, and so on and so forth.
The Tories have gone so far (as already remarked in the thread) it's probably impossible to rebalance things and make a fairer balance with the people actually doing the work without upsetting the pensioner vote irreparably (for instance, by imposing NI on all, or merging it with income tax, or cutting IHT allowances or converting them to CGT).
My argument is mainly grounded on what happened under the previous Labour government, rather than on hypotheticals about the future.
Under the Labour government of 1997-2010* we saw several moves that increased spending on pensioners. We had the first pension lock, to ensure there wasn't a repeat of low inflation leading to a tiny increase in the state pension. We had various freebies given to pensioners - TV licenses, bus passes, fuel allowances.
The consequence of this was seen in election results. In the 2010 GE the bias of the old to vote Tories was at its lowest since 1992.
Expect to see the same again. I'd be gobsmacked if pensioners were not reassured by Labour budgets, and I'd expect votes to change as they did before.
The attraction of buying the votes of pensioners is that it is really simple. The government only has to keep the money flowing. Sorting out the problems for younger voters, such as the housing crisis, might sound simple - just build more houses! - but runs into all sorts of other issues - Who will build them? Will there be enough building materials at a low enough price? Where? - which make them practically more difficult, and even in a best case scenario will take years to deliver tangible results.
* Actually, probably more correctly in the period 2001-2010. I'd have to dig out the details of when the various reforms were made. But the very small pension increase happened in the first Parliament, 1997-2001, and Labour consequently fell further behind with the pensioner vote at the 2001 GE. They learnt their lesson then and I don't think they will be looking for a refresher.
House building needs to be increased.
All of the problem you list are fixable over time.
When it was proposed to hire x,000 more police officers, some said it was actually impossible.
The current block is the hoarding of planning permission. Which is logical for various actors.
Imagine you are a big developer. You have the permission to build an estate of 5,000 homes. If you try and build 5,000 homes now
1) the local house prices will crash 2) the local council will find the strain on infrastructure intolerable 3) the NIMBYs will riot 4) finding the builders may be a problem
So, instead, you build 250 a year. That makes the council mellow. The NIMBYs will get bored with the inevitable. The house prices won’t crash. The building companies and suppliers you contract with will love a steady 20 years of work….
How many years have people been speaking about increasing housebuilding in Britain? Years and years and years and years. It took seven years to increase the number of completions in the UK from the 2012 nadir of 133k to 210k in the pre-pandemic year of 2019.
So to take housebuilding up to 300k a year, and sustain it at that level for long enough to bring house prices down, is going to take more than one electoral cycle. To win the next-next election any government is going to need to keep pensioners on side.
House building is easy. Have land. Grant permission. Build.
The reason we aren't building houses is that the Build bit isn't happening. And what they are building is designed to generate the highest profit, not solve the local housing issue.
The solution? Cut the private sector out of the decision-making process. Contract them in to build housing as directed by the council, the housing association, a regional housing board, whatever. But build the houses that people need in the places they need them. And rent them at a price they can afford.
The reason we aren't building houses is that the permission bit isn't happening, and where it is happening its happening in blocs to an oligopoly of developers.
Cut out the oligopoly. No need for any single Council, HA, board or anything else.
Planning permission, if its to be kept, should be guaranteed and easily obtainable within a matter of days not months or years, one house at a time. Not one development at a time.
"Every police officer in Northern Ireland has data compromised in 'monumental' breach due to human error
The PSNI Assistant Chief Constable admitted the breach was made in "human error" and apologised to colleagues whose data was made public for two and a half to three hours."
Amazingly, some dangerous idiots still want the government to have yet more of our intimate personal data, even though it's obvious they can't keep it safe. Last year Labour were advocating ID cards to control illegal immigration.
... I would regard id cards as a sensible and proportionate measure...
UK 2020s politics is a long stream of illiberal measures designed to burden law-abiding citizens with whatever the fashionable nostrums of the day are. ID cards is a thing that keeps popping up, and it gets knocked down every time.
Not very effectively knocked down then. It's about 1% as scary to me as the surveillance by facial/numberplate recognition/cell phone which goes on 24/7 so if it has any practical value let's do it.
Again, coercing the individual. The question is not whether it is a good idea, but whether it is moral to fine/jail somebody for refusing to carry one. That would be state overkill.
When I lived in Switzerland i was legally obliged to carry my ID card/foreigner permit (carte des etrangers) at all times and if it was requested by the police or an official and I didn’t have it then I was liable to a fine. There was not one second where I felt that it was oppression by the state or an intrusion into my civil liberties.
In fact it was actually great to have one as with it so many activities were quicker - opening a bank account, collecting a parcel, registering with a gov department re tax or similar - because it was an official compulsory ID card that no functionary would refuse to accept as ID.
Sigh.
For the nth time. The problem isn’t the ID card. The problem isn’t the unique identifying code on it. The problem isn’t even the potential use of that unique code as a key on databases.
The problem is that every single time ID cards have been proposed (and he time that they were, briefly, actually implemented), they come with an attempt to link all our personal information together. And link it to biometric data - finger prints, face recognition. etc. and the make it accessible to everyone.
In the last such scheme, they were going to make everything the NHS had on you (for instance) available to council officials investigating fly tipping. When asked why, the response was that segregating data would be difficult and slow things down.
So if your finger print day was stolen, you’d just have to get new finger prints, eh?
It should be noted that personal for Important People (Politicians, senior civil servants, famous people who the government liked) *was* to be segregated. #NU10K
The only saving grace was that such an insane breach of every concept of data security would have gone the way of all such government projects. Collapsed after spending billions. Though in this case it would have got to the data leaking stage
Time to repost this admittedly brilliant analysis from a couple of years ago:
I’ve always said I’m in favour of ID cards, if the following conditions are met:
1) They’re issued for free
2) You don’t have to carry them at all times
3) You can use them chip and pin to access all government services - so they would replace passports and driving licences, not augment them
4) That you had the power to access all information the government holds on you, and amend it where it is wrong
5) That civil servants who access your data are logged, and you can see who they are and why they accessed it
6) That if somebody has accessed your data inappropriately you have the right to take legal action against them, funded by the government.
And numbers 4-6 will not happen while any civil servant breathes air.
Civil Servants are only human, and humans are nosy, so the more information you make available to government officials the more information they will see.
If you think that if you had free access to a super-government database that you wouldn't be looking at your neighbour's income then you are kidding yourself. The best that can be hoped for is that you would have the good sense not to tell anyone that you had done so and keep the information to yourself.
Meanwhile in Estonia, all of those qualifiers apply, and the Estonian X-road (google) decentralizes the stores of data and provides a sentry programme for greater security, so there is no central store of data that can be so compromised.
The benefits in terms of efficiency are truly staggering, especially in health care, but the ability to verify your identity in a secure online environment saves a fortune in things like tax collection and financial transactions too.
Eventually Britain will need to adopt at least some part of these systems (and in the DVLA and the Passport Office it did use advice from Estonia)., the problem is that it involves understanding the issues involved and the UK political system is missing leaders with that kind of understanding.
I’ve actually spoken with civil servants on this issue.
The problem is that they are hard wired to believe in the Big Central Database. Access controls are seen as Impeding Good Government.
So all the briefing papers reflect this.
You would need to fire the top five ranks of the Home Office, en masse.
As an ex civil servant, I only wish that we had a tenth of the power that you attribute to us. We didn't.
And, in reference to an earlier comment of yours, the idea that under a previously-floated ID scheme council workers investigating fly-tipping would have had full access to people's NHS medical records is palpably absurd. They wouldn't.
We know this is true because Dominic Cummings repeatedly complained that government data sources were not linked except where his team did so unofficially and possibly illegally.
Which is why the Home Office wants ID cards and has done for decades, they’re not as interested in the cards themselves, as they are in the massive database of people that goes behind it.
Cummings was right about data available to decision-makers in government. Each department has various systems that report on their activities, none of which talk to each other, and much of the data is outdated by the time it’s compiled and sent to ministers. In a situation such as a pandemic, that speed and accuracy of data was vital to the decision-making process.
Re Sir Chris Bryant's sporty little gambit to ban non-attending parliamentarians, where does this leave Sinn Fein MPs?
One might argue "but that's different", but I think this is why we should steer well away from this sort of thing. The moment you create exceptions, it becomes very messy.
Sinn Fein MPs do constituency work, dont attend HoC and don't get paid a salary. Dorries does no constituency work, doesnt attend Hoc and gets paid a salary.
I am not sure how this comparison is supposed to work in her favour!
Sir Chris, who chairs the Commons standards committee, said the move had basis in a parliamentary rule from 1801 stating that "no member do presume to go out of town without leave of this House".
He told the BBC he wanted to see MPs held to the same standards as councillors, who automatically cease to be a councillor, triggering a by-election, if they fail to attend any meetings for six months without good reason.
"I just think this is bringing the whole system into disrepute," he said.
"Why should you be allowed to draw a salary and claim expenses for your staff and all that kind of stuff if you're not actually doing the job of turning up?"
"Turning up" being the key to this. It's not about constituency work, is about turning up to the HoC.
Nah, that just happens to be the words used. If Dorries was working even 20 hours a week in her constituency nobody would be in the slightest interested.
We're told that this is not about Dorries, but your comment shows that this is precisely about Dorries.
It is about claiming our taxpayer money for doing zilch. Tories seem very exercised when that is done by almost anyone bar Dorries.
I didn't give a shit about Jared O'mara (he won me £75 fwiw) and I couldn't give a shit about Nadine Dorries. In the not too distant future, there shall be a general election when the voters can make their choice once again.
You clearly do to some extent, as you've commented several times on the issue.
Re Sir Chris Bryant's sporty little gambit to ban non-attending parliamentarians, where does this leave Sinn Fein MPs?
One might argue "but that's different", but I think this is why we should steer well away from this sort of thing. The moment you create exceptions, it becomes very messy.
Sinn Fein MPs do constituency work, dont attend HoC and don't get paid a salary. Dorries does no constituency work, doesnt attend Hoc and gets paid a salary.
I am not sure how this comparison is supposed to work in her favour!
Sir Chris, who chairs the Commons standards committee, said the move had basis in a parliamentary rule from 1801 stating that "no member do presume to go out of town without leave of this House".
He told the BBC he wanted to see MPs held to the same standards as councillors, who automatically cease to be a councillor, triggering a by-election, if they fail to attend any meetings for six months without good reason.
"I just think this is bringing the whole system into disrepute," he said.
"Why should you be allowed to draw a salary and claim expenses for your staff and all that kind of stuff if you're not actually doing the job of turning up?"
"Turning up" being the key to this. It's not about constituency work, is about turning up to the HoC.
Nah, that just happens to be the words used. If Dorries was working even 20 hours a week in her constituency nobody would be in the slightest interested.
We're told that this is not about Dorries, but your comment shows that this is precisely about Dorries.
It is about claiming our taxpayer money for doing zilch. Tories seem very exercised when that is done by almost anyone bar Dorries.
I didn't give a shit about Jared O'mara (he won me £75 fwiw) and I couldn't give a shit about Nadine Dorries. In the not too distant future, there shall be a general election when the voters can make their choice once again.
You clearly do to some extent, as you've commented several times on the issue.
A huge explosion was reported in Zagorskiy Optical and Mechanical plant near Moscow
The factory had contracts with the Russian Ministry of Defense. It is part of Shvabe Holding, which is producing sights, thermal imagers, laser rangefinders, and other similar products. https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1689192323588947968
That’s damn careless. How many Russian military contractors is that, whose buildings “went on fire”?
Quite large. Also reports of 152mm shells found lying around, burnt out. The Russians are claiming an accident set off fireworks stored beside the plant. The Russians appear to be lying.
Oh, so a factory producing optics and imagers, just happened to be full of 152mm shells. Interesting…
Deterring The Dragon: Listing Taiwanese Arms Acquisitions
https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2023/08/deterring-dragon-listing-taiwanese-arms.html ...Nonetheless, significant concerns loom over the readiness of the Taiwanese Armed Forces. Taiwan currently finds itself comparatively ill-prepared for a full-fledged war with its powerful neighbour. To address these challenges, Taipei has begun implementing several lessons learned from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, such as the importance of stockpiling munitions. These lessons have become crucial as China's rapid military expansion has eroded many of Taiwan's defensive advantages. Addressing these issues will be critical for Taiwan to bolster its defense capabilities and maintain its security in the face of evolving threats.
This article attempts to list (future) equipment acquisitions by the Republic of China's Army, Air Force, Navy and Coast Guard Administration. This list focuses on heavy weaponry and doesn't include ATGMs, MANPADS, radars and ammunition and vessels of less than 1000 tons. This is updated as new acquisitions are reported. Our list showing active Taiwanese fighting vehicles can be viewed here...
The Taiwanese should build a high altitude reconnaissance version of this, which they could then call the F-CK-U2.
Re Sir Chris Bryant's sporty little gambit to ban non-attending parliamentarians, where does this leave Sinn Fein MPs?
One might argue "but that's different", but I think this is why we should steer well away from this sort of thing. The moment you create exceptions, it becomes very messy.
Discussed days ago on this very pb, and in that old chestnut: hard cases make bad law.
Hard to find anything to argue with in OGH's summary. At least for yours truly!
Morning all.
@MikeSmithson keeps taking GE2019 as the benchmark. Whilst this looks right on paper, it's an illusion and for punters it's an error. GE2019 was a one-off 'Get Brexit Done' election to unblock the jam created during the Remainer Parliament. Boris Johnson galvanised the voters against the unelectable trotskyite anti-semitic Jeremy Corbyn with the sole aim of Getting Brexit Done. Hence the December election. In many ways GE2019 was NOT a General Election.
The last proper General Election in the UK was June 2017, which resulted in a hung parliament. That's your benchmark.
Bet accordingly.
p.s. I'm personally very glad that Keir Starmer is no Tony Blair.
I think I understand the point you are making - whilst the 2019 election is the status quo, its artificial. Ordinarily the Labour task would be considered politically unlikely - as we all said in the aftermath.
But if we consider the 2019 result to be the aberration, then a revision to the norm can be expected to happen as the start of any new electoral move. There are swathes of red wall seats which endless polls have shows will not just revert to Labour but will deliver them 5 figure majorities.
If we bake that 2017 reversion in, the task facing Starmer is much smaller, and much more attainable. Then we look at the two other political low tides from 2015 likely to come back in:
The absence of unionist MPs in Scotland feels like a situation that can't be sustained - so expect 20-30 seats to switch from the motorhome party. The absence of yellow MPs in rural England is already a tide rushing back in. The focus is always on Labour, but as is clear it is the LibDems who will mop up disaffected sane voters in places where "Sink the Boats" makes people feel sick.
So, we reset the Red Wall. We drain out the SNP flood. We remove the dam from the LibDems. And suddenly a thumping Tory defeat is not just possible, it feels likely. To stay in power they need to preserve all three of these artificial positions. Which politically means they need to be Janus, a task they are spectacularly failing to pull off.
Yes, I think the Tories have snookered themselves. It is hard to see any of those 3 fronts being contained next GE. While Scotland is unique, the other 2 fronts play out across most E and W constituencies. They are sociological rather than geographical waves.
Tory unpopularity with the working age population is astonishing. I doubt there’s been anything like it in the history of two-party politics in this country.
What possible reason is there at the minute for someone who works for a living to support the Tories?
Sunak has made his bed and shown that working people only exist in his eyes to be taxed ever higher to provide welfare for those who don't work. That's something you can understand from Labour, but from the Tories?
The jack boots will be on next and barbed wire being put up to intern unemployed and pensioners. Give it a rest Adolf.
Hang on. Barty is an absolutist which often translates into absurdist straw man positions - the rant about 30mph zones a perfect example. But he has a point - the status quo is broken. We *are* paying vast amounts in taxes. Where he descends into the absurdist is the suggestion that the money is going into welfare. When our welfare system grudgingly gives people living poverty assuming it pays anything at all.
We're paying record taxes, true. But its going to spivs, not on services, not on infrastructure, not on welfare. We pay lots and get little. Where does all that money go? Even if you are as high Tory and say "inefficiency" that is literally my point. Inefficiency means money is being wasted. Spent on consultants. Advisers. Middlemen. Spivs...
The problem we have is that whilst "we pay taxes and get little back" is good analysis, nobody wants to go after why that is. And propose a solution because the problem is too big and our politicians too timid.
Your jackboots analogy is one solution. Hungary have done it. France wants to do it. Spain and Germany are toying with it...
The bit in bold: it goes on debt repayments.
We have a shit-ton of debt. We need to reflate the economy to lessen the debt burden over time via inflation. But the anti-inflationary reflexes we built up in the neoliberal era prevent us from doing this. So we have problems.
That isn't true with public services. We spend ever larger amounts on schools and hospitals despite front line service provision being catastrophically starved of money.
A basic problem is that everything has been marketised. Instead of driving market-led efficiency we have endless overlapping targets and contracts and regulations. The market is a vast business by itself.
How much money did we waste creating Clinical Commissioning Groups in the NHS? Then replacing them with Integrated Care Boards? How integrated are the dozens of "integrated" boards and how many contracts do they negotiate and manage and how much is spent on administration?
Thats our problem. A fat layer of middlemen who suck the cash out of the system.
This government *is* fiscally dry, however they’ve had to increase the number of civil servants due to Brexit and they continue to stuff gold down the throat of the client vote.
I think we're starting to identify the issues on this thread.
i) Frictional, beaurocratic & administrative cost increases due to putting up trade barriers between ourselves and our nearest neighbours. ii) A culture of gold plating & empire building prevalent in the civil service - driven (certainly in part) by unintended consequences of pseudo-marketisation & i) iii) Increasing debt costs.
Altogether it means we're collectively paying more than ever for less.
iv) demographics and an ageing population meaning costs for pensions/NHS are ever increasing
Weirdly, demographics isn't the primary driver of health costs in the NHS (it doesn't help). There is something else going on - technology, chronic conditions, Baumol's cost disease perhaps.
I do think 'something must be done' about obesity.
I don't think the answer is nannying. But 2/3rds of the population being fat is ridiculous and with Deliveroo etc. serving up pizzas and burgers all the time (I get several leaflets through the door weekly) it's only going to get worse. Smartphone idleness on top doesn't help.
We need to eat less fat, salt, sugar, MSG and more real food. I'd like less hectoring and more home economics, diet guidelines, nudges and tasty/easy recipes (incl. ready meal options) that allow people to do this.
Obesity is not the cause of healthcare spending going up, though it absolutely doesn't help.
The simple thing is that increasing spending on healthcare is like running faster on a treadmill. No matter how much you do it, you're still at the same point and need to keep doing so just to stand still.
As people age they get more chronic conditions. The more you treat chronic conditions, the more they develop, the more they need to be treated.
Walking to work or cycling to work is neither here nor there, since very little of healthcare expenditure goes on people of working age - especially excluding pregnancy-related healthcare.
This is something I know quite a bit about.
1) Obesity is widely recognised a contributory factor for the increased prevalence of a number of costly diseases. It has other costs too, particularly on productivity. 2) Technological innovation is a good thing and improves outcomes. Unlike in other parts of the economy, such advances are cost escalating. 3) The increase in chronic conditions is not explained solely by demographic change
I don't really understand your point on keeping fit and healthy - that applies to older people just as much as younger people. And child obesity is linked to increases in the rates of type 2 diabetes in younger people, a hugely costly disease.
@Nigelb - to be fair, at least you acknowledge that Sinn Fein MPs would be liable to be held to the same standard. Perhaps a few more by-elections would be fun for us betting wise, but I'd be interested to hear Chris Bryant's view on this issue.
It's worth reminding readers that Lee Anderthal is not just a gobby MP, he is Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party. So when he tells 'moaning' asylum seekers to "fuck off back to France" his role as DC is relevant. No surprise that he said it and is standing by it. But his language has not been condemned by anybody in the party, including No. 10; rather, they all seem to have endorsed his comments.
It rather suggests to me that the Tory Party has given up, if they can't be bothered appealing to the vast majority of voters who have common decency.
If you know nothing about the country you are governing you make Lee Anderson one of your public faces. Lee is every out-of-touch metropolitan elitist's idea of what a salt of the earth, working class, northerner is like. That he is not even a northerner is only the start of the delusion.
Lee Anderson was a lifelong member of the Labour Party until 2018.
He might not represent all the working class, but he represents a strand of it that believes Labour abandoned them.
If they are lost again it's more likely to be because they think the Tories haven't delivered, than because they share Labour values.
One of my linguistic bugbears is misuse of the word "lifelong". Anderson was a member of the Labour Party until 2018. The fact he no longer is means, by definition, he was not a lifelong member of the Labour Party.
I'm reminded of my parents getting into a conversation with an elderly local gentleman in a Devon village (I forget which - let's say Newton Poppleford as I like the name). "Have you lived in Newton Poppleford all your life?" they asked. He thought for a moment and sagely replied, "Not yet."
Vernon on Radio 2 just reminded me, bless him, that's it's 27 years ago since The Verve played their comeback gig, after two years away, at Sheffield Leadmill. Still the best gig I've ever been to. Blair had just got in, Diana was still alive, just, the Twin Towers stood and Fukuyama told us liberal democracy had won. I was still a few weeks away from going online for the first time, three years out from my first mobile and 13 years out from a smartphone.
Nostalgia, rose-tinted glasses and all that, but what a time to be young. A sense of renewal, optimism. The reactionaries had been beaten, things were going to get better. And they did, for a bit anyway. Seems a long time ago.
My nephew's just turned 18 and I wouldn't swap places. Not for a gold pig.
Comments
https://twitter.com/SaulStaniforth/status/1687342954581557248?t=IUTVS65dnZRjKAriqBH34A&s=19
It's why I am deeply suspicious of Wes Streeting's plans. Its a quick fix that worsens things long term.
Putative new PM has to assure HM that he commands a majority in the HoC. If the 30 just tell the whips informally that they are looking at their options, PNPM cannot give that assurance. I am guessing you regard Johnson's lying to the monarch, breaking international treaties etc as signs of strength and integrity, but I don't see it happening twice. And if it did it would leak that it did, and the electoral vengeance on the tories would be awesome to behold
Read the "Mitrokhin Archive" - it demythologises the KGB. In 1919 the predecessor organisation(s) were lean and mean and could get things done.
1976 The KGB was x100K people in multiple tower block offices. Where meetings to decide the budget for the proposal for the meeting to discuss a KGB officer in Vienna hiring a local thug to break Rudolf Nureyev's legs... faded into nothing.
In the private sector, eventually, such organisation are reformed or swept away. In the aftermath of 2008, CITI Bank fired whole floors of people - we joked (contractors) that the tower in Canary Wharf was getting shorter.
The other problem in the public sector (apart from permanency) is isolation from modern best practise. So we have industrial relations from the 1950s. Lots of people is shit jobs (no automation) doing mind numbing reparative tasks. etc etc
Informally telling the whips that they are looking at their options is neither here nor there. Resigning the whip is, but nobody is going to do that.
Parties can change leader during a Parliament, that is not a problem. If the Tories change their leader, and the Tories control a majority of the Commons, then convention is to send for the new Tory leader to become Prime Minister.
Informal complaints about looking at their options aren't relevant.
I answered your point re the equal spending of £2 by a "worker" or your interpretation of a "sponger".
Someone unemployed or retired spending £2 is the same benefit to the economy as someone working spending £2. Your dumb theory only works if those working are spending more than £2 and so is a false argument.
How many people abroad get pensions , guaranteed it is a small fraction of overall pensions and ZERO on benefits, another one shot down and eth amount sent to tax havens by Tory spivs, tax evaders etc dwarves it by many many times.
I will offer you 50/1 if you like that HM accedes to RS's first request to dissolve parliament.
https://tractebel-engie.com/en/news/2023/tractebel-supports-first-light-fusion-in-making-inertial-fusion-a-reality
This is the situation that pertains in Ireland now. Independent builders won't provide quotes for projects because they don't know what the materials will cost. The question is whether the government can maintain the increased demand for building materials despite this (and so provide the demand that will lead to increased supply and lower prices in the future) and make any targeted interventions that might decrease building materials costs, or if house building numbers will fall back as a reaction to the increase in building costs.
It's a bit early to tell, and the government reporting of the building numbers is wildly inconsistent, but the signs aren't good.
How many years have people been speaking about increasing housebuilding in Britain? Years and years and years and years. It took seven years to increase the number of completions in the UK from the 2012 nadir of 133k to 210k in the pre-pandemic year of 2019.
So to take housebuilding up to 300k a year, and sustain it at that level for long enough to bring house prices down, is going to take more than one electoral cycle. To win the next-next election any government is going to need to keep pensioners on side.
* Triodos Bank - start with what the word and symbol mean
* a sequence of "extinctions" - straight outta Blavatsky
* the word "organic" when applied only to some kinds of food - got a very clear origin for this one
* anything to do with "people, planet, and profit" - the idea that there should be some kind of triple goal of serving the interests of the people, the planet, and commercial business - sometimes appearing as "social, environmental, and economic"
* who started the Green party in Germany
Those working for expenditure is not the same benefit to the economy as those not working for a higher share of expenditure since its not just the amount of they spend that the economy benefits from, but more importantly the amount of work achieved that the economy benefits from too. Which unsurprisingly is more for those working, than not working.
Giving taxpayers money to those who are well off, have a property portfolio and are making a decent and untaxed income not from working but from letting out their properties and calling that "welfare" while those who are working poor get less and less wages does nothing for either alleviating poverty or boosting productivity.
People think that because those in poverty get so little from welfare, that we can't be spending too much on welfare. Well the truth is worse than that, we spend a fortune on welfare, more than we do on all workers combined, yet very little of it goes to those who need it.
https://twitter.com/ariehkovler/status/1689208943841554432
If fact, progress has been made. We have got the planning system producing more planning permissions than are used. So next, we need to get the building bottleneck sorted.
Don't create local monopolies. In the case of a big development, sell one side of the street to one developer, then the other to the next guy. If you have 10 developers competing in the 5K housing development (above), then the winning move is not to be last.
The religious belief is that the invisible hand of the market, some divine force that is always all knowing and correct, will somehow help us overcome this rather than the dedicated work of individuals and nation states. The belief in infinite economic growth on a planet with finite resources is also a pretty religious dogma - infinite growth is not possible and arguably not good (the only natural thing to grow like that are cancer cells).
That a percentage of people are not being "pragmatic" has more to do with your definition of "pragmatic" - if for you it is "we can only tinker at the edges" then sure, it makes no sense to vote Labour, if for you it starts with "we need a habitable planet to have any kind of society at all" then the "pragmatic" position is to vote only for parties that make promises for a future that includes a habitable planet.
If your claim was is the environmental movement more "ideological" or "single-issue", I may agree with you, but certainly not more a "religious" movement than a political one.
https://twitter.com/thequentinletts/status/1689206927287349248
Re Sir Chris Bryant's sporty little gambit to ban non-attending parliamentarians, where does this leave Sinn Fein MPs?
One might argue "but that's different", but I think this is why we should steer well away from this sort of thing. The moment you create exceptions, it becomes very messy.
At a factory that makes goggles for the military??
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/613807
For example, it is quite common to find green types who declare that "Electric cars are just as polluting as ICE" - when you actually try and pin them down on the details, they react as if you are challenging Writ. You must not Question, only Believe.
About 99% of our planning permission goes to large developments.
In other countries developments get built one house at a time. Do that and you have 5000 developers competing for a 5k development, nobody has any reason to be last.
Suspend them for a sufficient period for a recall, and see if their constituents care enough to vote for one. We already know the answer.
It clearly demonstrates the measure isn't targeted at any individual, but rather provides a mechanism for the electorate to do something about an absentee MP, should they so wish.
You do know that the use of three words is just a rhetorical devise that seems to (for some cultural reason) resonate in the English language?
As for the references to Blavatsky and organic food - are these supposed to be suggestions about how the green movement are linked to fascism? Because even if we take that connection seriously (which we shouldn't) - fascism is still a political movement and not a religious one! And is also somewhat contradicted by your then weird reference to the German Green Party - which seems to have originated out of the West German / socialist parties.
It would be useful to know what one sees as the difference between a religious movement and a political one - it seems pretty clear to me but that someone is making this claim kind of confuses me.
The beliefs of environmentalists are material - they are based in the physical world, the science and scientific method and on a materialistic understanding of cause and effect. Indeed, the idea that man made climate change is possible and that we can do something about it is very much a material and not religious / spiritual view of existence. I have never been religious and don't really understand spirituality outside of the occasional sense of awe I get looking at things that exist, but I also can look at the data and the opinions of experts and go "we are destroying the possibility of future human life on this planet and have the means to prevent it".
If the issue is the inelasticity of the vote of Greens that is easily explained - if you are a single issue voter, or a voter who bases your politics on the position that a lot of other things don't really matter if we don't secure the sustainability of human life on this planet, then it isn't "pragmatic" to vote Labour when they say things like "if the Tories give 100s of new drilling contracts, we'll uphold them, even though we know that would be disastrous for the planet".
I am not criticising either religion or politics in general here. I am saying the motivation and ideas of those who created and steer the green movement both in its political-party and in its stunt-action forms are absolutely not what they say they are.
That's the whole point about the debate about addressing global warming. It's always been about the balance of risks and costs.
Replacing fossil fuels with renewables is not, in global economic terms, particularly expensive over the course of two to three decades.
The key to solving climate change is not to go back to the stone age eliminating all consumption. It is to replace dirty technology with clean technologies. That requires R&D. It requires investment. And the market is good at channelling that. Companies like Tesla have done more for the environment than zealots like Just Stop Oil.
The state can help the invisible hand by giving it the right incentives. Tax externalities and the market prices for them and works to eliminate them.
Your belief in "finite resources" is a Malthusian fallacy too. We barely scratch the surface of resources of this planet and most resources if used with a good technology are actually renewable, so exponentially building up a supply of renewable resources and increasing them actually does allow exponential economic growth.
For me, the biggest concern is the seemingly unstoppable rise in health spending, which is growing faster than our demographic profile would suggest. That might be a good thing, given it helps people have better lives, but much of that cost has been accrued from increases in obesity and inactivity.
The biggest COVID-19 failure was not taking the opportunity to sort that out, particularly given losing some weight was the easiest way you could improve your chances of not getting seriously ill.
Deterring The Dragon: Listing Taiwanese Arms Acquisitions
https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2023/08/deterring-dragon-listing-taiwanese-arms.html
...Nonetheless, significant concerns loom over the readiness of the Taiwanese Armed Forces. Taiwan currently finds itself comparatively ill-prepared for a full-fledged war with its powerful neighbour. To address these challenges, Taipei has begun implementing several lessons learned from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, such as the importance of stockpiling munitions. These lessons have become crucial as China's rapid military expansion has eroded many of Taiwan's defensive advantages. Addressing these issues will be critical for Taiwan to bolster its defense capabilities and maintain its security in the face of evolving threats.
This article attempts to list (future) equipment acquisitions by the Republic of China's Army, Air Force, Navy and Coast Guard Administration. This list focuses on heavy weaponry and doesn't include ATGMs, MANPADS, radars and ammunition and vessels of less than 1000 tons. This is updated as new acquisitions are reported. Our list showing active Taiwanese fighting vehicles can be viewed here...
Dorries does no constituency work, doesnt attend Hoc and gets paid a salary.
I am not sure how this comparison is supposed to work in her favour!
(Geniune question - I'm unsure about whether that deadline is important or not for the switch to EVs, which has some political implications if the Tories wish to weaponise it in the next year or so)
For example - looking at the cost of old age care, investment via a DARPA style project (Small amounts of money to the crazy ideas, more to the more mainstream etc, spread over a number of outfits) in treatment/cure for dementia would seem a good investment.
Sir Chris, who chairs the Commons standards committee, said the move had basis in a parliamentary rule from 1801 stating that "no member do presume to go out of town without leave of this House".
He told the BBC he wanted to see MPs held to the same standards as councillors, who automatically cease to be a councillor, triggering a by-election, if they fail to attend any meetings for six months without good reason.
"I just think this is bringing the whole system into disrepute," he said.
"Why should you be allowed to draw a salary and claim expenses for your staff and all that kind of stuff if you're not actually doing the job of turning up?"
"Turning up" being the key to this. It's not about constituency work, is about turning up to the HoC.
My theory is that the Saudis and their OPEC partners have had enough with Putin, that threatening the food supply to the Middle East was a red line crossed, especially after Russia had agreed to match the Saudi production cuts and then failed to do so.
The Russian oil trades at a significant discount to China and India, and ends up washed back into the global supply chains. If OPEC wanted to screw Putin’s balls to the wall, they’d turn on the taps and start pumping the oil price down.
We saw a similar standoff during the pandemic, with Russia not wanting oil below $50. The Saudis can live with $20 for a year or two, if it means that their citizens don’t run short of food. There’s also a rice export ban in India at the moment, following poor harvests, which is adding to the Middle East’s food concerns.
He might not represent all the working class, but he represents a strand of it that believes Labour abandoned them.
If they are lost again it's more likely to be because they think the Tories haven't delivered, than because they share Labour values.
Another scenario is your phone is stolen from your pocket or handbag. You do not notice until later when you try to use it, and you then waste hours tracing your steps back through bars and shops to see if it was handed in as lost property, and you wait till the morning in case you left it at work. Only after 12 hours have passed do you notify EE/3/Vodafone so they can blacklist it.
Or you have Find My Phone enabled, and once you get home you can use this to locate your phone, decide it must have been stolen, and wipe it remotely. Can you brick it, or just wipe your personal data? I'm not sure.
And from the linked Guardian article, we can see mobile phones can be re-registered to new users. I guess this is necessary at some level to enable the second-hand phone market.
Like "Aerospace Inflation" it is supposed to normalise the idea that everything in a sector needs a bigger slice of GDP % each year.
Nostalgia, rose-tinted glasses and all that, but what a time to be young. A sense of renewal, optimism. The reactionaries had been beaten, things were going to get better. And they did, for a bit anyway. Seems a long time ago.
My nephew's just turned 18 and I wouldn't swap places. Not for a gold pig.
Raising standards is something that is within the purview of responsible government. Not picking winners, just setting standards then letting the market achieve those standards.
Whether the cutoff should be 2030 or 2035 as the EU have set is a different question. Personally I'd rather the sooner British date than the European date, but I'm concerned about the lack of charging infrastructure for those who can't charge at home. A lot can change in seven years, but it wouldn't surprise me if that date slips.
Still I think its better to aim for 2030 and have it slip to 2035, than to have it at 2035 and slip to 2040.
Certainly political, and often religious these days when expounded by those who are humanists - implicit in which is the belief that humans are special.
You can always twig the fake environmentalists when they quickly express their concerns in human terms; regarding nature in terms of instrumental value (value to humans) rather than intrinsic value (value in itself).
The language is usually that of concern for human civilisation rather than concern for everything that is not human - an obnoxious position. For example, environmentalists who purely bang on about climate change (because they are concerned about the effect on humans (alongside making a left-wing political point)) rather than, say, gross human over-population and tragic loss of biodiversity and natural beauty and deforestation are not environmentalists. Real environmentalists feel a constant punch in the gut over these things and have largely given up it seems to me.
As for "burning the other party alive is a permitted and winning move", that was something the British (and other countries) did routinely during bombing runs. During Dresden some people seeking shelter in water tanks were boiled alive. Similar abhorrences occured in Coventry, Tokyo, and Hiroshima. But we do not dismiss the concept of a sovereign state.
Yes I know about the rhetorical law of threes. The point is those specific three words and ideas. "Social threefolding". Anthroposophy all the way.
"Organic" comes straight from Rudolf Steiner too. Check out the Betteshanger conference. In reality, all food is organic!
Nazism had many religious aspects. So did Ustashism. As for Italian fascism, well we might start with how it Nazified during the last two years of WW2 and the role that anthroposophists played in that process.
No the German Green party did not originate from the SPD. Have a look at Werner Vogel and Baldur Springmann. In your long involvement in various green movements did you ever take a look at Richard Walther Darré?
Then there's the idea of "transition towns". It really does NOT mean something cuddly, as many assume.
Recommended: writings by Peter Staudenmeier.
Renewable growth does not violate any laws of physics. Nor does exponential growth.
That R&D will work is not unsupported, it is supported by plenty of evidence. It is also the only thing that can work.
We are starting to see some of these things happening now - Sicilian electrical cables are melting underground due to heat, this year 70% of those displaced come from the most climate vulnerable countries; US, Canadian, Chinese and Indian wheat crops have all suffered due to climate change. We see 100s of thousands of fish dying because the ocean is warming, with the Atlantic reaching ridiculous temperatures this year. And fossil fuel production is still increasing.
Human civilisation as we know it - the abundance, the technology, the infrastructure, the nature of trade and capital - will not survive that. Maybe it can survive my lifetime, but even in a 2.5 degree above industrial average world we're looking at 10% of the planet displaced - a humanitarian crisis beyond anything we have ever seen.
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/1/19/16908402/global-warming-2-degrees-climate-change
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/27/world-close-to-irreversible-climate-breakdown-warn-major-studies
https://www.zurich.com/en/media/magazine/2022/there-could-be-1-2-billion-climate-refugees-by-2050-here-s-what-you-need-to-know
https://www.sciencealert.com/high-levels-of-co2-could-stop-these-cooling-clouds-from-forming-warn-scientists
https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/weather-woes-russia-upend-outlook-global-wheat-suppliers-2023-08-02/
https://climate.copernicus.eu/record-breaking-north-atlantic-ocean-temperatures-contribute-extreme-marine-heatwaves
Otoh, there is actually a nascent campaign againt cycle2work, because it's regressive (it is!). But honestly, talk about idealogy over outcomes. Deeply frustrating.
https://twitter.com/KyivPost/status/1689197178692988929
Quite large. Also reports of 152mm shells found lying around, burnt out. The Russians are claiming an accident set off fireworks stored beside the plant. The Russians appear to be lying.
I don't think the answer is nannying. But 2/3rds of the population being fat is ridiculous and with Deliveroo etc. serving up pizzas and burgers all the time (I get several leaflets through the door weekly) it's only going to get worse. Smartphone idleness on top doesn't help.
We need to eat less fat, salt, sugar, MSG and more real food. I'd like less hectoring and more home economics, diet guidelines, nudges and tasty/easy recipes (incl. ready meal options) that allow people to do this.
The reason we aren't building houses is that the Build bit isn't happening. And what they are building is designed to generate the highest profit, not solve the local housing issue.
The solution? Cut the private sector out of the decision-making process. Contract them in to build housing as directed by the council, the housing association, a regional housing board, whatever. But build the houses that people need in the places they need them. And rent them at a price they can afford.
Don't say it can't be done or that its socialist. Harold MacMillan did it... https://conservativehome.com/2013/10/17/how-macmillan-built-300000-houses-a-year/
You can do both. And the reason many "bang on" about climate change's impact on humans is because so many people (typically on the right) either outright deny it is happening, or that it will be bad for people when it does happen, or that we can do anything to stop it! We're constantly being told that people will only care about environmental issues when it "hits them" and yet when we mention how it will "hit them" we're moaned at for not making an argument about nature in pure form... Political environmentalism cannot seem to win.
If you wipe it remotely from Find My, it can’t be assigned to another user, still requires your Apple ID.
To sell it 2nd hand requires a process that involves both the phone passcode AND the Apple ID password, in order to disable the Find My functionality and wipe the phone.
So a stolen iPhone is worth only scrap value for a few parts.
The police wanting an unlocked phone is for a different reason, they want to be able to look at the messages on it as they can’t force the suspect to enter a password. (They can force him to use a fingerprint or Face ID though, so the scrotes all have that disabled).
I don't believe many Nottinghamshire miners ever shared Labour values, many were hangers and floggers back in the day. Different in Wales where the miners sang in close harmony unison with Paul Robeson.
The simple thing is that increasing spending on healthcare is like running faster on a treadmill. No matter how much you do it, you're still at the same point and need to keep doing so just to stand still.
As people age they get more chronic conditions. The more you treat chronic conditions, the more they develop, the more they need to be treated.
Walking to work or cycling to work is neither here nor there, since very little of healthcare expenditure goes on people of working age - especially excluding pregnancy-related healthcare.
I don't think much thinking was ever really done in opposition other than to ape Blair and steal his crown. The bulk of the grassroots wanted the EU question resolved and their patience had run out by the time of the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty in 2009.
How the political landscape had shifted under their feet totally took Osborne/Cameron by surprise. Subsequent leaders then boxed themselves into a demographic corner by digging deeper and deeper into the retired vote, and today, there ain't much left in the tank.
The Conservatives needs a fundamental rethink on making Britain strong, fit, lean, well-balanced and prosperous for the 21stC. How to create the business owners, home owners and thriving families of the future. How to appeal to all age groups and all parts of the UK. A refocus on core values, and a root and branch review on policy is required that needs to be both comprehensive and sincere (far too many are still obsessed by the EU, on both sides, and want to re-fight old wars) and focused on realism and pragmatism that puts the national interest first.
Will they achieve it?
I'm not sure. But they need to try.
"The enemy blasted us last night. Well we're far cleverer than them, and far more honest, so we'd better make sure everything we say about the blast is true."
Russian weakness in the fifth domain of warfare has been somewhat surprising. NATO presumably has improved its capability since Estonia 2007.
Cut out the oligopoly. No need for any single Council, HA, board or anything else.
Planning permission, if its to be kept, should be guaranteed and easily obtainable within a matter of days not months or years, one house at a time. Not one development at a time.
Cummings was right about data available to decision-makers in government. Each department has various systems that report on their activities, none of which talk to each other, and much of the data is outdated by the time it’s compiled and sent to ministers. In a situation such as a pandemic, that speed and accuracy of data was vital to the decision-making process.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDC_F-CK-1_Ching-kuo#Operators
1) Obesity is widely recognised a contributory factor for the increased prevalence of a number of costly diseases. It has other costs too, particularly on productivity.
2) Technological innovation is a good thing and improves outcomes. Unlike in other parts of the economy, such advances are cost escalating.
3) The increase in chronic conditions is not explained solely by demographic change
I don't really understand your point on keeping fit and healthy - that applies to older people just as much as younger people. And child obesity is linked to increases in the rates of type 2 diabetes in younger people, a hugely costly disease.
I'm reminded of my parents getting into a conversation with an elderly local gentleman in a Devon village (I forget which - let's say Newton Poppleford as I like the name). "Have you lived in Newton Poppleford all your life?" they asked. He thought for a moment and sagely replied, "Not yet."