Ludlow it is! A foaming pint of virtual perry for @Carnyx and a faux thimble of Ludlow gin for @boulay
What a stunning little town
My hotel in the first pic is Dinham Weir House
Here’s my room in case anyone is scared that I’m suffering unduly on my Official Gazette Welsh Marches Road Trip
We were in Ludlow for a weekend a month ago. It's alright - nothing to write home about though.
It’s architecturally exquisite! A completely unharmed 13th-19th century English market town with the Shropshire hills at the end of every road
John Betjeman called it the “prettiest town in England”
However it definitely feels a lot poorer than somewhere like Hereford. Indeed, as I say, it reminds me of Hereford three decades ago - before it was gentrified
Have you seen the Ludlow ghost? A young girl in 1960s clothing crossing the road near the Feathers. What is remarkable is they traced this girl. She was still alive but clearly older. I think that is a fantastic (presumably trick of the light) ghost story!
I think I have some sympathy for Gillian Keegan. It isn't altogether her fault.
The DfE, none at all. If they hadn't made a botched reform to academy chains, grossly underfunded them and forced them to pursue expensive short term goals at the expense of longer term sustainability than we might not be in this mess to start with.
You can't tell somebody they're doing a good job and/or getting a grip on something when they're clearly not doing so.
I have just listened to Gillian Keegan at the dispatch box and frankly, her knowledge of the subject, and detail was very impressive
Indeed, while not excusing her off camera rant, anyone could see why she was so frustrated with so many who frankly do not have her grasp of the subject
It is the first time I have heard her and considering the pressure she is under her performance was very good
It wasn't much of a rant. I'd have preferred something like, 'ok so Labour are ahead in the polls, bully for them, but they still have to go to a general election and get something, and I tell you something, I'd luv it, luv it, if they fall short and lose. Again.'
Good comment but on Keegan, anyone listening to her detailed knowledge and individual responses to mps would have to accept that she was on top of her brief, and did answer questions honestly and following a question from Christine Jardine agreed with her that the Scottish government were not upto speed and that she was offering all the devolved governments help and assistance in addressing these serious issues
I've been observing events unfold today on my way up to Surrey with my jaw dropping further and further. That wasn't solely because passengers were gasping for air on a train devoid of air-conditioning.
It's the barely believable clusterf*ck unfolding over Britain's crumbling schools.
The current Conservative Party really are the gift to Labour that keeps on giving.
One day it will doubtless be the other way around, but this Government is beyond parody.
Olympic chiefs are set to give cricket the go-ahead this week to be included as a new sport for the 2028 Games in Los Angeles.
The International Olympic Committee’s executive board is to decide on additional sports for the LA Games on Friday and sources say that men’s and women’s T20 cricket will be included. Any decision will need to be ratified by the IOC’s session in Mumbai, India, next month.
Thomas Bach, the IOC’s president, is understood to be very keen to include cricket because of its appeal to the vast populations of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, which are traditionally not so engaged in Olympic sports as other parts of the world. An Olympic T20 tournament would be expected to attract enormous numbers of TV viewers.
LA 2028 organisers (LA28) are understood to be willing to accommodate cricket in return for “flag football” — a non-contact version of American football where players are tackled by having Velcro tags removed — being included as well.
Bach has been encouraging India to bid for the 2036 Olympics, which would be the first time it has hosted the Games, saying there is a “strong case” to take the multi-sport event there. Having cricket established as an Olympic sport would be a big boost towards that and would also be appropriate for the 2032 Games in Brisbane, Australia. It would also receive a positive reception in Mumbai during the IOC session on October 15-17.
It's not fair to blame GK for any of this. But since when has politics been fair?
A scape goat is going to need to be sacrificed soon, to take the heat off Rishi.
It will be bad news for Labour and the Opposition parties if Concrete Crisis brings down Rishi Sunak. A replacement as PM and HomeSec from moderate wing the party (Hunt PM, Penny HomSec) and 12 months talking about tackling unfair privilege in country today and being a government of aspiration and reform would save 50-100 Tory seats imo.
It’s funny how Concrete Crisis can work out so good for the Tories, if it helps them replace Sunak.
Remainer Hunt replacing Leaver Sunak as Tory leader and PM guarantees a doubling of the RefUK vote and risks near wipeout for the Tories
This one post from you sums up your whole mistake right now HY.
In this electoral situation you arguing Tories need to be Reform and Brexit fixated.
I am explained the exact opposite to you, a position you should adopt. Chasing Grey Wall, Brexit voter and Reform voter gets you 28% tops at next General Election. You are actively ushering in a political sea change by decimating your return of MPs.
50-100 MPs can be saved, a far better Proportion of vote by going in the opposite direction. So many leave voters want a sane, convincing safe pair of hands PM right now, reform minded voters want a Tory HomSec who can get a grip, and there are millions of voters you are just handing to Labour, who would be just as happy to keep in an aspirational Tory government intent on reform.
You are misreading the political mood of the country. The Tories can be in a much better place switching to aspiration and reform, rather than chase UKIP and Reform voters.
Hunt wouldn't win back any Labour or LD voters, he would however see further losses from the Tories to RefUK
@MoonRabbit is correct in her observations, not least your hopes that a move to the right will revitalise the conservative party
Far from it, it will marginalise them into as much as cult as are Corbyn followers
Yes and no.
There's a version of Conservatism which is a lot more centrist centre right than the current one, which I believe would be more popular.
But you can only get there by a big jump, of the sort Cameron did. And that sort of jump can only really be done in opposition.
If you try to do it by gentle shuffles, the first few steps make you less popular, not more. You lose GB News types before you gain centrist dads.
For now, Sunak is trapped on a local summit of a small hill. Every path starts downhill, even if there are better, higher peaks nearby.
It's not fair to blame GK for any of this. But since when has politics been fair?
A scape goat is going to need to be sacrificed soon, to take the heat off Rishi.
It will be bad news for Labour and the Opposition parties if Concrete Crisis brings down Rishi Sunak. A replacement as PM and HomeSec from moderate wing the party (Hunt PM, Penny HomSec) and 12 months talking about tackling unfair privilege in country today and being a government of aspiration and reform would save 50-100 Tory seats imo.
It’s funny how Concrete Crisis can work out so good for the Tories, if it helps them replace Sunak.
Remainer Hunt replacing Leaver Sunak as Tory leader and PM guarantees a doubling of the RefUK vote and risks near wipeout for the Tories
This one post from you sums up your whole mistake right now HY.
In this electoral situation you arguing Tories need to be Reform and Brexit fixated.
I am explained the exact opposite to you, a position you should adopt. Chasing Grey Wall, Brexit voter and Reform voter gets you 28% tops at next General Election. You are actively ushering in a political sea change by decimating your return of MPs.
50-100 MPs can be saved, a far better Proportion of vote by going in the opposite direction. So many leave voters want a sane, convincing safe pair of hands PM right now, reform minded voters want a Tory HomSec who can get a grip, and there are millions of voters you are just handing to Labour, who would be just as happy to keep in an aspirational Tory government intent on reform.
You are misreading the political mood of the country. The Tories can be in a much better place switching to aspiration and reform, rather than chase UKIP and Reform voters.
Hunt wouldn't win back any Labour or LD voters, he would however see further losses from the Tories to RefUK
@MoonRabbit is correct in her observations, not least your hopes that a move to the right will revitalise the conservative party
Far from it, it will marginalise them into as much as cult as are Corbyn followers
Yes and no.
There's a version of Conservatism which is a lot more centrist centre right than the current one, which I believe would be more popular.
But you can only get there by a big jump, of the sort Cameron did. And that sort of jump can only really be done in opposition.
If you try to do it by gentle shuffles, the first few steps make you less popular, not more. You lose GB News types before you gain centrist dads.
For now, Sunak is trapped on a local summit of a small hill. Every path starts downhill, even if there are better, higher peaks nearby.
Good summary of their predicament.
They're doomed. Just about everyone knows it. It's when, not if.
Ludlow it is! A foaming pint of virtual perry for @Carnyx and a faux thimble of Ludlow gin for @boulay
What a stunning little town
My hotel in the first pic is Dinham Weir House
Here’s my room in case anyone is scared that I’m suffering unduly on my Official Gazette Welsh Marches Road Trip
We were in Ludlow for a weekend a month ago. It's alright - nothing to write home about though.
No no no no no. Ludlow is a brilliant place. It is, as Jonathan Meades once commented back in the 1990s (and still true today) the closest you will get in Britain to provincial France. A town that people live in the centre of, with its own kind of food and drink autarchy, which inhabitants of the surrounding villages all visit to shop in the actual centre, where there's a more porous boundary between the classes, surrounded by unspoilt and really rather lovely scenery.
To me it's like a less-alternative, more inland version of Totnes which is another of my favourite 2 or 3 towns.
Exactly right. It’s like one of those ravishing but forgotten French towns deep in rural France. It is itself. It likes being forgotten - it seems to me
Somewhere like Mende in Lozere or the rougher bits of Lot
It is also easily as beautiful as any of them
It is bound to be gentrified (regentrified?) eventually
The middle classes are all down in the valley below the castle playing tennis. Or swimming in the weir
It's not fair to blame GK for any of this. But since when has politics been fair?
A scape goat is going to need to be sacrificed soon, to take the heat off Rishi.
It will be bad news for Labour and the Opposition parties if Concrete Crisis brings down Rishi Sunak. A replacement as PM and HomeSec from moderate wing the party (Hunt PM, Penny HomSec) and 12 months talking about tackling unfair privilege in country today and being a government of aspiration and reform would save 50-100 Tory seats imo.
It’s funny how Concrete Crisis can work out so good for the Tories, if it helps them replace Sunak.
Remainer Hunt replacing Leaver Sunak as Tory leader and PM guarantees a doubling of the RefUK vote and risks near wipeout for the Tories
This one post from you sums up your whole mistake right now HY.
In this electoral situation you arguing Tories need to be Reform and Brexit fixated.
I am explained the exact opposite to you, a position you should adopt. Chasing Grey Wall, Brexit voter and Reform voter gets you 28% tops at next General Election. You are actively ushering in a political sea change by decimating your return of MPs.
50-100 MPs can be saved, a far better Proportion of vote by going in the opposite direction. So many leave voters want a sane, convincing safe pair of hands PM right now, reform minded voters want a Tory HomSec who can get a grip, and there are millions of voters you are just handing to Labour, who would be just as happy to keep in an aspirational Tory government intent on reform.
You are misreading the political mood of the country. The Tories can be in a much better place switching to aspiration and reform, rather than chase UKIP and Reform voters.
Hunt wouldn't win back any Labour or LD voters, he would however see further losses from the Tories to RefUK
@MoonRabbit is correct in her observations, not least your hopes that a move to the right will revitalise the conservative party
Far from it, it will marginalise them into as much as cult as are Corbyn followers
Yes and no.
There's a version of Conservatism which is a lot more centrist centre right than the current one, which I believe would be more popular.
But you can only get there by a big jump, of the sort Cameron did. And that sort of jump can only really be done in opposition.
If you try to do it by gentle shuffles, the first few steps make you less popular, not more. You lose GB News types before you gain centrist dads.
For now, Sunak is trapped on a local summit of a small hill. Every path starts downhill, even if there are better, higher peaks nearby.
I have little doubt the conservatives will be in opposition but if the ERG and right take over than they will be on the margins
In case you've not been watching, we're at the start of what could potentially be a record breaking September heatwave. Record breaking not so much for its peak temperatures but the sheer relentlessness of unseasonably warm weather.
The latest model run from the American model (GFS) this evening is the warmest of the pack, so I'll admit to a bit of bias, but here are the maximum programmed temperatures for the UK for each day from today until the 20th of September, which are usually 1-2C below the actual max:
It's not fair to blame GK for any of this. But since when has politics been fair?
A scape goat is going to need to be sacrificed soon, to take the heat off Rishi.
It will be bad news for Labour and the Opposition parties if Concrete Crisis brings down Rishi Sunak. A replacement as PM and HomeSec from moderate wing the party (Hunt PM, Penny HomSec) and 12 months talking about tackling unfair privilege in country today and being a government of aspiration and reform would save 50-100 Tory seats imo.
It’s funny how Concrete Crisis can work out so good for the Tories, if it helps them replace Sunak.
Remainer Hunt replacing Leaver Sunak as Tory leader and PM guarantees a doubling of the RefUK vote and risks near wipeout for the Tories
This one post from you sums up your whole mistake right now HY.
In this electoral situation you arguing Tories need to be Reform and Brexit fixated.
I am explained the exact opposite to you, a position you should adopt. Chasing Grey Wall, Brexit voter and Reform voter gets you 28% tops at next General Election. You are actively ushering in a political sea change by decimating your return of MPs.
50-100 MPs can be saved, a far better Proportion of vote by going in the opposite direction. So many leave voters want a sane, convincing safe pair of hands PM right now, reform minded voters want a Tory HomSec who can get a grip, and there are millions of voters you are just handing to Labour, who would be just as happy to keep in an aspirational Tory government intent on reform.
You are misreading the political mood of the country. The Tories can be in a much better place switching to aspiration and reform, rather than chase UKIP and Reform voters.
Hunt wouldn't win back any Labour or LD voters, he would however see further losses from the Tories to RefUK
@MoonRabbit is correct in her observations, not least your hopes that a move to the right will revitalise the conservative party
Far from it, it will marginalise them into as much as cult as are Corbyn followers
Yes and no.
There's a version of Conservatism which is a lot more centrist centre right than the current one, which I believe would be more popular.
But you can only get there by a big jump, of the sort Cameron did. And that sort of jump can only really be done in opposition.
If you try to do it by gentle shuffles, the first few steps make you less popular, not more. You lose GB News types before you gain centrist dads.
For now, Sunak is trapped on a local summit of a small hill. Every path starts downhill, even if there are better, higher peaks nearby.
Good summary of their predicament.
They're doomed. Just about everyone knows it. It's when, not if.
The question is the margin of defeat, which could be anything from modest to severe
In case you've not been watching, we're at the start of what could potentially be a record breaking September heatwave. Record breaking not so much for its peak temperatures but the sheer relentlessness of unseasonably warm weather.
The latest model run from the American model (GFS) this evening is the warmest of the pack, so I'll admit to a bit of bias, but here are the maximum programmed temperatures for the UK for each day from today until the 20th of September, which are usually 1-2C below the actual max:
In case you've not been watching, we're at the start of what could potentially be a record breaking September heatwave. Record breaking not so much for its peak temperatures but the sheer relentlessness of unseasonably warm weather.
The latest model run from the American model (GFS) this evening is the warmest of the pack, so I'll admit to a bit of bias, but here are the maximum programmed temperatures for the UK for each day from today until the 20th of September, which are usually 1-2C below the actual max:
Off topic: Max Boot found a retired US general who thinks the slow progress the Ukrainians are making is the fault of the US: "Some U.S. military officials appear astonished that the Ukrainian counteroffensive has not made a rapid breakthrough — and, through anonymous quotes to the news media, they are laying the blame on the Ukrainian military. Retired U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Mark Arnold, by contrast, isn’t the least bit surprised at the slow pace of the advance — and he’s blaming the Americans, not the Ukrainians." source$: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/09/04/arnold-ukraine-counteroffensive-united-states-weapons/
Arnold believes we should be sending more equipment, particularly "tanks with antitank mine blades and heavy rollers". And that retired officers fromthe West should be helping with training inside Ukraine.
(The US is beginning to increase production of some weapons: "The U.S. Army expects that its output of 155mm artillery shells will increase from 24,000 a month this year to at least 80,000 a month next year.")
It's not fair to blame GK for any of this. But since when has politics been fair?
A scape goat is going to need to be sacrificed soon, to take the heat off Rishi.
It will be bad news for Labour and the Opposition parties if Concrete Crisis brings down Rishi Sunak. A replacement as PM and HomeSec from moderate wing the party (Hunt PM, Penny HomSec) and 12 months talking about tackling unfair privilege in country today and being a government of aspiration and reform would save 50-100 Tory seats imo.
It’s funny how Concrete Crisis can work out so good for the Tories, if it helps them replace Sunak.
Remainer Hunt replacing Leaver Sunak as Tory leader and PM guarantees a doubling of the RefUK vote and risks near wipeout for the Tories
This one post from you sums up your whole mistake right now HY.
In this electoral situation you arguing Tories need to be Reform and Brexit fixated.
I am explained the exact opposite to you, a position you should adopt. Chasing Grey Wall, Brexit voter and Reform voter gets you 28% tops at next General Election. You are actively ushering in a political sea change by decimating your return of MPs.
50-100 MPs can be saved, a far better Proportion of vote by going in the opposite direction. So many leave voters want a sane, convincing safe pair of hands PM right now, reform minded voters want a Tory HomSec who can get a grip, and there are millions of voters you are just handing to Labour, who would be just as happy to keep in an aspirational Tory government intent on reform.
You are misreading the political mood of the country. The Tories can be in a much better place switching to aspiration and reform, rather than chase UKIP and Reform voters.
Hunt wouldn't win back any Labour or LD voters, he would however see further losses from the Tories to RefUK
@MoonRabbit is correct in her observations, not least your hopes that a move to the right will revitalise the conservative party
Far from it, it will marginalise them into as much as cult as are Corbyn followers
Yes and no.
There's a version of Conservatism which is a lot more centrist centre right than the current one, which I believe would be more popular.
But you can only get there by a big jump, of the sort Cameron did. And that sort of jump can only really be done in opposition.
If you try to do it by gentle shuffles, the first few steps make you less popular, not more. You lose GB News types before you gain centrist dads.
For now, Sunak is trapped on a local summit of a small hill. Every path starts downhill, even if there are better, higher peaks nearby.
You're good at analogies and that's a particularly nice one.
Ludlow it is! A foaming pint of virtual perry for @Carnyx and a faux thimble of Ludlow gin for @boulay
What a stunning little town
My hotel in the first pic is Dinham Weir House
Here’s my room in case anyone is scared that I’m suffering unduly on my Official Gazette Welsh Marches Road Trip
We were in Ludlow for a weekend a month ago. It's alright - nothing to write home about though.
It’s architecturally exquisite! A completely unharmed 13th-19th century English market town with the Shropshire hills at the end of every road
John Betjeman called it the “prettiest town in England”
However it definitely feels a lot poorer than somewhere like Hereford. Indeed, as I say, it reminds me of Hereford three decades ago - before it was gentrified
Have you seen the Ludlow ghost? A young girl in 1960s clothing crossing the road near the Feathers. What is remarkable is they traced this girl. She was still alive but clearly older. I think that is a fantastic (presumably trick of the light) ghost story!
The lads in their hundreds to Ludlow come in for the fair, There’s men from the barn and the forge and the mill and the fold, The lads for the girls and the lads for the liquor are there, And there with the rest are the lads that will never be old.
It looks like the Great House Price Slide is gathering pace. Today has seen quite a few of the houses at the top end of our budget all getting reduced on RightMove/Zoopla, some by 15%. We actually nearly put an offer on one of them last month that wasn't far off what it's up for now but it was just too close to a busy, noisy road. Glad we didn't now! It's made me even more convinced to wait a while longer. I feel like a vulture waiting for a wildebeest to kark it, but them's the breaks.
I'm glad to see house prices coming down. IMO we need about minus 20-25% over 3-4 years.
It's been a funny few years. Had a bungalow in mum's estate probate valued at £175k in Nov 2019.
Since then suggested values have gone up to 200k and down to £175k, and buyers have played hokey-cokey.
Finally completed on the sale today at £176k sale price with a buyer who has flubbing for about 18 months.
It's barmy. On the same street, you'll find a 2 bed semi detached bungalow on the market for more than a 3 bed detached bungalow on the next street on the same estate. Sellers are in a bit of denial, and still think house prices only ever go up but if they don't sell soon, they'll sell for a lot less next year. We viewed a bungalow today that has been on since February. Nothing wrong with it, just well over priced in this falling market. Spoke to the estate agent, said would they go for a 10% drop for cash. He said probably not, they're very rigid on whar they want. This is a probate house that a a pair of siblings are selling. It's free money for them, but just too greedy. I guess they don't need the money, but they could have had 240 grand split in their bank in a month or so.
I think I have some sympathy for Gillian Keegan. It isn't altogether her fault.
The DfE, none at all. If they hadn't made a botched reform to academy chains, grossly underfunded them and forced them to pursue expensive short term goals at the expense of longer term sustainability than we might not be in this mess to start with.
You can't tell somebody they're doing a good job and/or getting a grip on something when they're clearly not doing so.
I have just listened to Gillian Keegan at the dispatch box and frankly, her knowledge of the subject, and detail was very impressive
Indeed, while not excusing her off camera rant, anyone could see why she was so frustrated with so many who frankly do not have her grasp of the subject
It is the first time I have heard her and considering the pressure she is under her performance was very good
It wasn't much of a rant. I'd have preferred something like, 'ok so Labour are ahead in the polls, bully for them, but they still have to go to a general election and get something, and I tell you something, I'd luv it, luv it, if they fall short and lose. Again.'
Good comment but on Keegan, anyone listening to her detailed knowledge and individual responses to mps would have to accept that she was on top of her brief, and did answer questions honestly and following a question from Christine Jardine agreed with her that the Scottish government were not upto speed and that she was offering all the devolved governments help and assistance in addressing these serious issues
For a measurement that’s supposed to be hard for an opposition leader to do well on, 17% gap is looking quite commanding now. RW tend to poll higher % for Con too, compared to most other pollsters, even as Sunak is crashing personally in the fieldwork they still find yet another 28% for Con.
The momentum in which Sunak’s political stock is declining, as the electorate back away from him, has to be the main polling take from the last month.
Gillian Keegan is the MP for the neighbouring constituency. Soon after becoming an MP, she gave a talk to a local community group, which I attended. After describing her successful career in business, she said she was invited to enter politics as it needed more people from business. In order to prepare for the world of politics, she became a Chichester District Councillor. I felt she was very snooty about local government and described how her friends found it "hilarious" that she would be dealing with allotments and public conveniences. (In fact, those come under the Town (Parish) Council.)
If she does get sacked over crumbling schools, I feel somehow it is Karma for her seeing local government as somehow beneath her. (I realise schools come under the County Council but the principle is the same.)
Ludlow has at least five pubs dating from pre-16th century ie medieval. I know this coz I just walked past them
The pub I’m in now dates from 1102
1102!!!!
When this pub was built the fields and hovels all around would still have been full of Anglo Saxons staring murderously at the obnoxious new Normans in the shiny new castle. I sense some of them are still staring
It's not fair to blame GK for any of this. But since when has politics been fair?
A scape goat is going to need to be sacrificed soon, to take the heat off Rishi.
It will be bad news for Labour and the Opposition parties if Concrete Crisis brings down Rishi Sunak. A replacement as PM and HomeSec from moderate wing the party (Hunt PM, Penny HomSec) and 12 months talking about tackling unfair privilege in country today and being a government of aspiration and reform would save 50-100 Tory seats imo.
It’s funny how Concrete Crisis can work out so good for the Tories, if it helps them replace Sunak.
Remainer Hunt replacing Leaver Sunak as Tory leader and PM guarantees a doubling of the RefUK vote and risks near wipeout for the Tories
This one post from you sums up your whole mistake right now HY.
In this electoral situation you arguing Tories need to be Reform and Brexit fixated.
I am explained the exact opposite to you, a position you should adopt. Chasing Grey Wall, Brexit voter and Reform voter gets you 28% tops at next General Election. You are actively ushering in a political sea change by decimating your return of MPs.
50-100 MPs can be saved, a far better Proportion of vote by going in the opposite direction. So many leave voters want a sane, convincing safe pair of hands PM right now, reform minded voters want a Tory HomSec who can get a grip, and there are millions of voters you are just handing to Labour, who would be just as happy to keep in an aspirational Tory government intent on reform.
You are misreading the political mood of the country. The Tories can be in a much better place switching to aspiration and reform, rather than chase UKIP and Reform voters.
Hunt wouldn't win back any Labour or LD voters, he would however see further losses from the Tories to RefUK
@MoonRabbit is correct in her observations, not least your hopes that a move to the right will revitalise the conservative party
Far from it, it will marginalise them into as much as cult as are Corbyn followers
Yes and no.
There's a version of Conservatism which is a lot more centrist centre right than the current one, which I believe would be more popular.
But you can only get there by a big jump, of the sort Cameron did. And that sort of jump can only really be done in opposition.
If you try to do it by gentle shuffles, the first few steps make you less popular, not more. You lose GB News types before you gain centrist dads.
For now, Sunak is trapped on a local summit of a small hill. Every path starts downhill, even if there are better, higher peaks nearby.
You can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.
The Tories have reinvented themselves in office a couple of times already. That was done by taking those downhill steps, knowing that the uplands were available. Whether you like him or not, Boris was for instance prepared to sacrifice people like Grieve who were irreconcilable with the vision - and was rewarded with an overall majority for doing so.
But Brexit is done now. Trying to cling on to the Brexit vote is ridiculous and asinine when people are looking for the future.
If the Tories were prepared to reinvent themselves again, sacrifice those who are irreconcilable and move on to the higher hill then that could be rewarding.
But the biggest problem is not the initial downhill, its that the Tories have thrown in the towel. Game's over. They've given up.
Ludlow has at least five pubs dating from pre-16th century ie medieval. I know this coz I just walked past them
The pub I’m in now dates from 1102
1102!!!!
When this pub was built the fields and hovels all around would still have been full of Anglo Saxons staring murderously at the obnoxious new Normans in the shiny new castle. I sense some of them are still staring
Ludlow it is! A foaming pint of virtual perry for @Carnyx and a faux thimble of Ludlow gin for @boulay
What a stunning little town
My hotel in the first pic is Dinham Weir House
Here’s my room in case anyone is scared that I’m suffering unduly on my Official Gazette Welsh Marches Road Trip
We were in Ludlow for a weekend a month ago. It's alright - nothing to write home about though.
It’s architecturally exquisite! A completely unharmed 13th-19th century English market town with the Shropshire hills at the end of every road
John Betjeman called it the “prettiest town in England”
However it definitely feels a lot poorer than somewhere like Hereford. Indeed, as I say, it reminds me of Hereford three decades ago - before it was gentrified
I wouldn’t go that far, but the wealth (or lack thereof) is certainly different. Hereford is squaddies and urban families relocated from a bunch of cities including, bizarrely, Glasgow (metalworking basically). There’s a lot of light industry in the city, not least Bulmers/Heineken.
Ludlow however is proper Herefordshire rural with a smattering of expat gastro Londoners. It was also, believe it or not, the epicentre of the computer games magazine industry in the 1980s.
If you want rural poor, Craven Arms is just one stop up the railway line. Good locally owned supermarket, though.
It's not fair to blame GK for any of this. But since when has politics been fair?
A scape goat is going to need to be sacrificed soon, to take the heat off Rishi.
It will be bad news for Labour and the Opposition parties if Concrete Crisis brings down Rishi Sunak. A replacement as PM and HomeSec from moderate wing the party (Hunt PM, Penny HomSec) and 12 months talking about tackling unfair privilege in country today and being a government of aspiration and reform would save 50-100 Tory seats imo.
It’s funny how Concrete Crisis can work out so good for the Tories, if it helps them replace Sunak.
Remainer Hunt replacing Leaver Sunak as Tory leader and PM guarantees a doubling of the RefUK vote and risks near wipeout for the Tories
This one post from you sums up your whole mistake right now HY.
In this electoral situation you arguing Tories need to be Reform and Brexit fixated.
I am explained the exact opposite to you, a position you should adopt. Chasing Grey Wall, Brexit voter and Reform voter gets you 28% tops at next General Election. You are actively ushering in a political sea change by decimating your return of MPs.
50-100 MPs can be saved, a far better Proportion of vote by going in the opposite direction. So many leave voters want a sane, convincing safe pair of hands PM right now, reform minded voters want a Tory HomSec who can get a grip, and there are millions of voters you are just handing to Labour, who would be just as happy to keep in an aspirational Tory government intent on reform.
You are misreading the political mood of the country. The Tories can be in a much better place switching to aspiration and reform, rather than chase UKIP and Reform voters.
Hunt wouldn't win back any Labour or LD voters, he would however see further losses from the Tories to RefUK
@MoonRabbit is correct in her observations, not least your hopes that a move to the right will revitalise the conservative party
Far from it, it will marginalise them into as much as cult as are Corbyn followers
If Sunak got the 32% Corbyn got in 2019 or the 39% Corbyn got in 2017 or even the 32% Howard got in 2005 he would bite your hand off now.
At the moment the Tories are neither winning centrists, who are almost all voting Starmer Labour or LD, or holding the right, many of whom are DK or RefUK. Brown had the same problem in 2010 when Labour did even worse than Corbyn on just 29% having lost the centre to the Conservatives and LDs and much of the left to the Greens and LDs.
Ludlow has at least five pubs dating from pre-16th century ie medieval. I know this coz I just walked past them
The pub I’m in now dates from 1102
1102!!!!
When this pub was built the fields and hovels all around would still have been full of Anglo Saxons staring murderously at the obnoxious new Normans in the shiny new castle. I sense some of them are still staring
“Nothing to write home about”???
FFS
One of the best bits of Ludlow is the racecourse on the outskirts of town. You're a few weeks early for the first meeting but it's still a lovely country track - flat with good viewing.
They used to allow you on to the roof of the stand - that was the best especially on a fine winter's afternoon - not much fun in the wind and rain I'd imagine.
Less than a third of Gen Z polled think Royal family is good for Britain
YouGov poll reveals stark decline in support for the monarchy, with roughly a 50 per cent drop among young people in a decade
Only three in 10 young people think the Royal family is good for Britain, a new YouGov poll has revealed.
A majority of those aged 18-24 also said they held a negative opinion of the King as he approaches the first anniversary of his reign, with 52 per cent expressing disapproval.
The figures pose a significant problem for the monarchy, suggesting that attitudes among Generation Z have not improved in the last three years.
Younger Britons have been divided on whether or not to keep the monarchy since 2020, when the Duke of York’s friendship with convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein and Harry and Meghan’s fractious exit from royal life saw support plummet.
The latest survey suggests that just over a third of 18 to 24-year-olds want the UK to retain the monarchy, while 40 per cent would prefer an elected head of state.
In case you've not been watching, we're at the start of what could potentially be a record breaking September heatwave. Record breaking not so much for its peak temperatures but the sheer relentlessness of unseasonably warm weather.
The latest model run from the American model (GFS) this evening is the warmest of the pack, so I'll admit to a bit of bias, but here are the maximum programmed temperatures for the UK for each day from today until the 20th of September, which are usually 1-2C below the actual max:
Across much of northern and Central Europe it looks like scorchio until at least the middle of the month, perhaps breaking to storms later in the month.
It looks like the Great House Price Slide is gathering pace. Today has seen quite a few of the houses at the top end of our budget all getting reduced on RightMove/Zoopla, some by 15%. We actually nearly put an offer on one of them last month that wasn't far off what it's up for now but it was just too close to a busy, noisy road. Glad we didn't now! It's made me even more convinced to wait a while longer. I feel like a vulture waiting for a wildebeest to kark it, but them's the breaks.
I'm glad to see house prices coming down. IMO we need about minus 20-25% over 3-4 years.
It's been a funny few years. Had a bungalow in mum's estate probate valued at £175k in Nov 2019.
Since then suggested values have gone up to 200k and down to £175k, and buyers have played hokey-cokey.
Finally completed on the sale today at £176k sale price with a buyer who has flubbing for about 18 months.
It's barmy. On the same street, you'll find a 2 bed semi detached bungalow on the market for more than a 3 bed detached bungalow on the next street on the same estate. Sellers are in a bit of denial, and still think house prices only ever go up but if they don't sell soon, they'll sell for a lot less next year. We viewed a bungalow today that has been on since February. Nothing wrong with it, just well over priced in this falling market. Spoke to the estate agent, said would they go for a 10% drop for cash. He said probably not, they're very rigid on whar they want. This is a probate house that a a pair of siblings are selling. It's free money for them, but just too greedy. I guess they don't need the money, but they could have had 240 grand split in their bank in a month or so.
At first volumes take the strain because unless they truly need to sell vendors refuse to recognize the new (much lower) price levels that simply must transpire when yields (long and short term) triple. So although I foresee a 20% peak to trough fall (absolute terms) I reckon it will take a couple of years to work through.
For a measurement that’s supposed to be hard for an opposition leader to do well on, 17% gap is looking quite commanding now. RW tend to poll higher % for Con too, compared to most other pollsters, even as Sunak is crashing personally in the fieldwork they still find yet another 28% for Con.
The momentum in which Sunak’s political stock is declining, as the electorate back away from him, has to be the main polling take from the last month.
The England sub sample breaks 44-30-16 (the highest LD number for a while). A 13 point Conservative lead in December 2019 is now a 14 point Labour lead so the swing is 13.5%. The Conservatives were 32 points ahead of the LDs in 2019, the gap now is 14 so that's a 9% swing.
We also have the conundrum of tactical voting and where that might take us.
Ludlow it is! A foaming pint of virtual perry for @Carnyx and a faux thimble of Ludlow gin for @boulay
What a stunning little town
My hotel in the first pic is Dinham Weir House
Here’s my room in case anyone is scared that I’m suffering unduly on my Official Gazette Welsh Marches Road Trip
We were in Ludlow for a weekend a month ago. It's alright - nothing to write home about though.
It’s architecturally exquisite! A completely unharmed 13th-19th century English market town with the Shropshire hills at the end of every road
John Betjeman called it the “prettiest town in England”
However it definitely feels a lot poorer than somewhere like Hereford. Indeed, as I say, it reminds me of Hereford three decades ago - before it was gentrified
I wouldn’t go that far, but the wealth (or lack thereof) is certainly different. Hereford is squaddies and urban families relocated from a bunch of cities including, bizarrely, Glasgow (metalworking basically). There’s a lot of light industry in the city, not least Bulmers/Heineken.
Ludlow however is proper Herefordshire rural with a smattering of expat gastro Londoners. It was also, believe it or not, the epicentre of the computer games magazine industry in the 1980s.
If you want rural poor, Craven Arms is just one stop up the railway line. Good locally owned supermarket, though.
I went back to Hereford recently and it was proper posh compared to what I knew as a lad. I grew up there - I had Scottish friends and friends with SAS dads for the reasons you state
Every night there was a good chance of a major fight. They were guaranteed at weekends
Now it’s all sushi bars and gastro pubs and gleaming vinoteks
And for a good reason. It’s a handsome, safe, largely unspoiled cathedral city surrounded by magnificent countryside. A fine place to live. Not that I appreciated this age 17 and bored witless
A "fragrant" woman saying "fuck" gives certain Tory gentlemen the horn.
And that's why she said it.
What seems more likely is she forgot the first rule of politics - always assume every microphone is live. It was amateurish and while she may have been having sleepless nights over RAAC, I'm sure she's not the only one. I know a lot of local authority property managers who have been working through the summer trying to mitigate RAAC in school and non school buildings.
Ludlow has at least five pubs dating from pre-16th century ie medieval. I know this coz I just walked past them
The pub I’m in now dates from 1102
1102!!!!
When this pub was built the fields and hovels all around would still have been full of Anglo Saxons staring murderously at the obnoxious new Normans in the shiny new castle. I sense some of them are still staring
“Nothing to write home about”???
FFS
In Ludlow you had better visit St Lawrence Church - a Simon Jenkins *****.
This is one of their ~14C misericord carvings, of a cellar-manager in a monastery.
For those who don’t know what a passbook is here is mine from 1985 which my mother found the other week in some of my late old man’s belongings as an illustration.
And this is what we are expecting banks to maintain?
I've heard it all now.
What the hell is the frigging point of one of those in this day and age?
Seems even more pointless than chequebooks.
Never had one.
Its an age and wealth thing.
None of my kids carry cash, I carry cash and cards. They slag me off for carrying cash, bur very so often they get caught short and I dont.
The better off are likely to use e payment, the less well off less so.
Cash will probably have its day but until we have covered access to all I see no reason to accelerate it,
Do parents these days give their teenage kids pocket money as a bank transfer?
Any money my son earns through doing work around the house gets paid by bank transfer. He has even asked gifts to be paid by BACS (from relatives etc) as cash just burns a hole in his pocket. He's found saving much easier since we abolished cash entirely.
That's interesting, I always assumed that the problem is the otherway round. You have much less of a feeling how much you are spending when paying with a card or an app, which i would have thought easily leads to overspending. I was in the UK last month and it was annoying how many barstaff would hold the card reader with the amount being charged facing them, so I had to stand on tiptoes, lean over and read the price upside down.
I guess the reality is some people have more of a problem overspending with cash in the pocket and others more of a problem overspending with cashless payment.
I think my kids are a similar age to OLB's - and their issue with cash is keeping it in one place. Inevitably some of the abrogate the responsibility and hand their money over to me to keep in my wallet until they want to spend some of it, which inevitably gets muddled with my money, and I have to keep a running mental tally of how much of each daughter's money is mine. And that's without all the money scattered around their room in various piggy banks, money boxes etc which they have acquired over the years. It was a great relief when they started using cards.
Another big problem with cash, right there. It really is a deeply flawed mode of tender.
Cash isn't 'deeply flawed', just as a notepad and pen isn't deeply flawed despite the presence of word processing software. Cash, cards, phones (I guess) - all have their advantages and drawbacks. Despite the inconveniences above, I'm not going to be giving my 8 year old a bank card, because she will lose it.
It is deeply flawed, that's why lots of people simply stopped using it many years ago and have never looked back.
Electronic payments: The buyer taps his phone, the money goes straight into the retailer's account.
Cash: The buyer takes his card to a machine, converting perfectly functional, electronic money into slips of paper and shards of metal that he now has to carry about his person. These odd scraps of material are then offered to a retailer who has to find more scraps of material to give back to the buyer as change. If the retailer lacks the correct composition of material, the transaction fails. Assuming he has the correct composition, the retailer now has to store these scraps of material in a secure place, at cost and risk to himself, before finding additional time in his working week to transport said scraps of material to a place, probably several miles away, so he can given them to a lady in a pin-striped skirt who doesn't want them either. Said lady has to them put them in a secure place, at cost and risk to her own business, so they can be transported at even more cost to her business to an even more secure place, at which point she is able to convert them back into electronic money for the retailer, who could have just been paid directly in electronic money in the first place.
Electronic payments: reliant on thr tech working. Cash: not reliant on the tech working.
Fake news.
I was left high and dry in Southeast Europe recently because the only ATM in the resort I was staying in had conked out, and the restaurant I was eating in took only cash (like lots of the places there, it was a real step back in time). It was a right palaver, which required me to ask a taxi to park illegally at the next resort while I literally legged it in 30c heat to another cashpoint. Cash is an antiquated system that – ironically – relies far too heavily on machines.
You want to ban cash based retail when the business and their customers are happy with those restrictions?
Er, nope.
I have said on here several times, probably dozens of time, I wouldn’t ban cash nor cash based retail.
Ludlow has at least five pubs dating from pre-16th century ie medieval. I know this coz I just walked past them
The pub I’m in now dates from 1102
1102!!!!
When this pub was built the fields and hovels all around would still have been full of Anglo Saxons staring murderously at the obnoxious new Normans in the shiny new castle. I sense some of them are still staring
“Nothing to write home about”???
FFS
In Ludlow you had better visit St Lawrence Church - a Simon Jenkins *****.
This is one of their ~14C misericord carvings, of a cellar-manager in a monastery.
It's not fair to blame GK for any of this. But since when has politics been fair?
A scape goat is going to need to be sacrificed soon, to take the heat off Rishi.
It will be bad news for Labour and the Opposition parties if Concrete Crisis brings down Rishi Sunak. A replacement as PM and HomeSec from moderate wing the party (Hunt PM, Penny HomSec) and 12 months talking about tackling unfair privilege in country today and being a government of aspiration and reform would save 50-100 Tory seats imo.
It’s funny how Concrete Crisis can work out so good for the Tories, if it helps them replace Sunak.
Remainer Hunt replacing Leaver Sunak as Tory leader and PM guarantees a doubling of the RefUK vote and risks near wipeout for the Tories
This one post from you sums up your whole mistake right now HY.
In this electoral situation you arguing Tories need to be Reform and Brexit fixated.
I am explained the exact opposite to you, a position you should adopt. Chasing Grey Wall, Brexit voter and Reform voter gets you 28% tops at next General Election. You are actively ushering in a political sea change by decimating your return of MPs.
50-100 MPs can be saved, a far better Proportion of vote by going in the opposite direction. So many leave voters want a sane, convincing safe pair of hands PM right now, reform minded voters want a Tory HomSec who can get a grip, and there are millions of voters you are just handing to Labour, who would be just as happy to keep in an aspirational Tory government intent on reform.
You are misreading the political mood of the country. The Tories can be in a much better place switching to aspiration and reform, rather than chase UKIP and Reform voters.
Hunt wouldn't win back any Labour or LD voters, he would however see further losses from the Tories to RefUK
@MoonRabbit is correct in her observations, not least your hopes that a move to the right will revitalise the conservative party
Far from it, it will marginalise them into as much as cult as are Corbyn followers
Yes and no.
There's a version of Conservatism which is a lot more centrist centre right than the current one, which I believe would be more popular.
But you can only get there by a big jump, of the sort Cameron did. And that sort of jump can only really be done in opposition.
If you try to do it by gentle shuffles, the first few steps make you less popular, not more. You lose GB News types before you gain centrist dads.
For now, Sunak is trapped on a local summit of a small hill. Every path starts downhill, even if there are better, higher peaks nearby.
Good summary of their predicament.
They're doomed. Just about everyone knows it. It's when, not if.
I disagree with you and Stuart’s summary. In my discussion with HY I am not claiming Tories will retain government, but if they limit losses they can remain relevant, deny Starmer a majority government, and with a smaller hill for the tories climb in comeback to government.
But the route to any recovery and limiting seat losses is not the route Sunak is on, the party now blithely defending privilege is the opposite of what Margaret Thatcher built 4 election wins on (including 92). If the Tories replaced the dry right wing messengers Sunak & Braverman for moderates, and switched their concern from ULEZ type issues to cost of rents, costs of mortgage, shortness in housing, they will win so many voters back from the centre before the next election than those they lose rightwards (Stu and HY both wrong on this) and will defend an awful lot more seats at the next general election that look very much lost today.
Making such a move is pointless after an election reducing them to 150 seats. It’s about knowing what the electorate want to hear right now in order to better defend every seat. In other words, the fight for relevance and electoral position begins right now, today. It’s important Conservatives realise this urgency, and not just drift into a general election shellacking.
In case you've not been watching, we're at the start of what could potentially be a record breaking September heatwave. Record breaking not so much for its peak temperatures but the sheer relentlessness of unseasonably warm weather.
The latest model run from the American model (GFS) this evening is the warmest of the pack, so I'll admit to a bit of bias, but here are the maximum programmed temperatures for the UK for each day from today until the 20th of September, which are usually 1-2C below the actual max:
Across much of northern and Central Europe it looks like scorchio until at least the middle of the month, perhaps breaking to storms later in the month.
I'm off to Biarritz, and then San Sebastian, for a fortnight tomorrow. In search of heat. Temperatures look very similar to here. Oh well. The food should be good.
For a measurement that’s supposed to be hard for an opposition leader to do well on, 17% gap is looking quite commanding now. RW tend to poll higher % for Con too, compared to most other pollsters, even as Sunak is crashing personally in the fieldwork they still find yet another 28% for Con.
The momentum in which Sunak’s political stock is declining, as the electorate back away from him, has to be the main polling take from the last month.
The England sub sample breaks 44-30-16 (the highest LD number for a while). A 13 point Conservative lead in December 2019 is now a 14 point Labour lead so the swing is 13.5%. The Conservatives were 32 points ahead of the LDs in 2019, the gap now is 14 so that's a 9% swing.
We also have the conundrum of tactical voting and where that might take us.
The subsample isn’t weighted is it? Therefore it’s meaningless, yet you seem to quote meaningless subsamples almost daily.
I think I have some sympathy for Gillian Keegan. It isn't altogether her fault.
The DfE, none at all. If they hadn't made a botched reform to academy chains, grossly underfunded them and forced them to pursue expensive short term goals at the expense of longer term sustainability than we might not be in this mess to start with.
You can't tell somebody they're doing a good job and/or getting a grip on something when they're clearly not doing so.
I have just listened to Gillian Keegan at the dispatch box and frankly, her knowledge of the subject, and detail was very impressive
Indeed, while not excusing her off camera rant, anyone could see why she was so frustrated with so many who frankly do not have her grasp of the subject
It is the first time I have heard her and considering the pressure she is under her performance was very good
It wasn't much of a rant. I'd have preferred something like, 'ok so Labour are ahead in the polls, bully for them, but they still have to go to a general election and get something, and I tell you something, I'd luv it, luv it, if they fall short and lose. Again.'
Good comment but on Keegan, anyone listening to her detailed knowledge and individual responses to mps would have to accept that she was on top of her brief, and did answer questions honestly and following a question from Christine Jardine agreed with her that the Scottish government were not upto speed and that she was offering all the devolved governments help and assistance in addressing these serious issues
The UK government's problem, and ultimately Keegan's problem, is that there is cause and effect on the government's decision to cut maintenance on schools, despite being advised to increase it, and school buildings collapsing, potentially with fatal consequences.
Keegan can argue the decision wasn't her fault because she's the nth English Education Minister in the last three years and hasn't been around long enough to do anything. But it doesn't help her, when it was her boss amongst others who cut the maintenance budget.
For those who don’t know what a passbook is here is mine from 1985 which my mother found the other week in some of my late old man’s belongings as an illustration.
And this is what we are expecting banks to maintain?
I've heard it all now.
What the hell is the frigging point of one of those in this day and age?
Seems even more pointless than chequebooks.
Never had one.
Its an age and wealth thing.
None of my kids carry cash, I carry cash and cards. They slag me off for carrying cash, bur very so often they get caught short and I dont.
The better off are likely to use e payment, the less well off less so.
Cash will probably have its day but until we have covered access to all I see no reason to accelerate it,
Do parents these days give their teenage kids pocket money as a bank transfer?
Any money my son earns through doing work around the house gets paid by bank transfer. He has even asked gifts to be paid by BACS (from relatives etc) as cash just burns a hole in his pocket. He's found saving much easier since we abolished cash entirely.
That's interesting, I always assumed that the problem is the otherway round. You have much less of a feeling how much you are spending when paying with a card or an app, which i would have thought easily leads to overspending. I was in the UK last month and it was annoying how many barstaff would hold the card reader with the amount being charged facing them, so I had to stand on tiptoes, lean over and read the price upside down.
I guess the reality is some people have more of a problem overspending with cash in the pocket and others more of a problem overspending with cashless payment.
I think my kids are a similar age to OLB's - and their issue with cash is keeping it in one place. Inevitably some of the abrogate the responsibility and hand their money over to me to keep in my wallet until they want to spend some of it, which inevitably gets muddled with my money, and I have to keep a running mental tally of how much of each daughter's money is mine. And that's without all the money scattered around their room in various piggy banks, money boxes etc which they have acquired over the years. It was a great relief when they started using cards.
Another big problem with cash, right there. It really is a deeply flawed mode of tender.
Cash isn't 'deeply flawed', just as a notepad and pen isn't deeply flawed despite the presence of word processing software. Cash, cards, phones (I guess) - all have their advantages and drawbacks. Despite the inconveniences above, I'm not going to be giving my 8 year old a bank card, because she will lose it.
It is deeply flawed, that's why lots of people simply stopped using it many years ago and have never looked back.
Electronic payments: The buyer taps his phone, the money goes straight into the retailer's account.
Cash: The buyer takes his card to a machine, converting perfectly functional, electronic money into slips of paper and shards of metal that he now has to carry about his person. These odd scraps of material are then offered to a retailer who has to find more scraps of material to give back to the buyer as change. If the retailer lacks the correct composition of material, the transaction fails. Assuming he has the correct composition, the retailer now has to store these scraps of material in a secure place, at cost and risk to himself, before finding additional time in his working week to transport said scraps of material to a place, probably several miles away, so he can given them to a lady in a pin-striped skirt who doesn't want them either. Said lady has to them put them in a secure place, at cost and risk to her own business, so they can be transported at even more cost to her business to an even more secure place, at which point she is able to convert them back into electronic money for the retailer, who could have just been paid directly in electronic money in the first place.
Electronic payments: reliant on thr tech working. Cash: not reliant on the tech working.
Fake news.
I was left high and dry in Southeast Europe recently because the only ATM in the resort I was staying in had conked out, and the restaurant I was eating in took only cash (like lots of the places there, it was a real step back in time). It was a right palaver, which required me to ask a taxi to park illegally at the next resort while I literally legged it in 30c heat to another cashpoint. Cash is an antiquated system that – ironically – relies far too heavily on machines.
You want to ban cash based retail when the business and their customers are happy with those restrictions?
Er, nope.
I have said on here several times, probably dozens of time, I wouldn’t ban cash nor cash based retail.
Do I need to say it yet again FFS?
I'm afraid people get pigeoned here. I want to ban private schools. You want to ban cash. It's like a family in this respect. No point fighting it. Eg according to my family I'm allergic to pineapple. It brings me out in a rash. It doesn't in fact and I'm not. It's not my fave but I can eat it fine. Whatever, it's been repeated so often it's become true despite not being true. Kuntibula is allergic to pineapple.
For a measurement that’s supposed to be hard for an opposition leader to do well on, 17% gap is looking quite commanding now. RW tend to poll higher % for Con too, compared to most other pollsters, even as Sunak is crashing personally in the fieldwork they still find yet another 28% for Con.
The momentum in which Sunak’s political stock is declining, as the electorate back away from him, has to be the main polling take from the last month.
The England sub sample breaks 44-30-16 (the highest LD number for a while). A 13 point Conservative lead in December 2019 is now a 14 point Labour lead so the swing is 13.5%. The Conservatives were 32 points ahead of the LDs in 2019, the gap now is 14 so that's a 9% swing.
We also have the conundrum of tactical voting and where that might take us.
The subsample isn’t weighted is it? Therefore it’s meaningless, yet you seem to quote meaningless subsamples almost daily.
In general I agree that subsamples are a mug's game, but the England subsample of a GB poll should be such a large proportion that I expect it's pretty meaningful.
It's not fair to blame GK for any of this. But since when has politics been fair?
A scape goat is going to need to be sacrificed soon, to take the heat off Rishi.
It will be bad news for Labour and the Opposition parties if Concrete Crisis brings down Rishi Sunak. A replacement as PM and HomeSec from moderate wing the party (Hunt PM, Penny HomSec) and 12 months talking about tackling unfair privilege in country today and being a government of aspiration and reform would save 50-100 Tory seats imo.
It’s funny how Concrete Crisis can work out so good for the Tories, if it helps them replace Sunak.
Remainer Hunt replacing Leaver Sunak as Tory leader and PM guarantees a doubling of the RefUK vote and risks near wipeout for the Tories
This one post from you sums up your whole mistake right now HY.
In this electoral situation you arguing Tories need to be Reform and Brexit fixated.
I am explained the exact opposite to you, a position you should adopt. Chasing Grey Wall, Brexit voter and Reform voter gets you 28% tops at next General Election. You are actively ushering in a political sea change by decimating your return of MPs.
50-100 MPs can be saved, a far better Proportion of vote by going in the opposite direction. So many leave voters want a sane, convincing safe pair of hands PM right now, reform minded voters want a Tory HomSec who can get a grip, and there are millions of voters you are just handing to Labour, who would be just as happy to keep in an aspirational Tory government intent on reform.
You are misreading the political mood of the country. The Tories can be in a much better place switching to aspiration and reform, rather than chase UKIP and Reform voters.
Hunt wouldn't win back any Labour or LD voters, he would however see further losses from the Tories to RefUK
@MoonRabbit is correct in her observations, not least your hopes that a move to the right will revitalise the conservative party
Far from it, it will marginalise them into as much as cult as are Corbyn followers
Yes and no.
There's a version of Conservatism which is a lot more centrist centre right than the current one, which I believe would be more popular.
But you can only get there by a big jump, of the sort Cameron did. And that sort of jump can only really be done in opposition.
If you try to do it by gentle shuffles, the first few steps make you less popular, not more. You lose GB News types before you gain centrist dads.
For now, Sunak is trapped on a local summit of a small hill. Every path starts downhill, even if there are better, higher peaks nearby.
You can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.
The Tories have reinvented themselves in office a couple of times already. That was done by taking those downhill steps, knowing that the uplands were available. Whether you like him or not, Boris was for instance prepared to sacrifice people like Grieve who were irreconcilable with the vision - and was rewarded with an overall majority for doing so.
But Brexit is done now. Trying to cling on to the Brexit vote is ridiculous and asinine when people are looking for the future.
If the Tories were prepared to reinvent themselves again, sacrifice those who are irreconcilable and move on to the higher hill then that could be rewarding.
But the biggest problem is not the initial downhill, its that the Tories have thrown in the towel. Game's over. They've given up.
Two problems with that.
One is that the other changes of personnel were justified as responses to disasters- Dave's defeat in the referendum, May's defeats in the Brexit votes, Johnson's moral collapse and Truss's... everything.
The problem with Sunak is much more a slow puncture than a car crash. And a party that just dumps leaders on that basis ends up.looking frivolous and self indulgent.
More importantly, the Conservatives simply don't have the bodies to run a government that might pique the interest of the centre right centrists (like me) who might be turnable. For whatever reason, a lot of them left in 2019. Sunak and his cabinet, mediocre at best though they are, is roughly as good as it gets.
It's fixable, but it needs the time and obscurity of opposition to happen. And it will probably take two terms at least.
Common consensus amongst colleagues today - the DfE school saga is terminal for the gov. Feeds the narrative of under funded public services and short term decisions made with 0 foresight
At least the DfE aren’t pedantic and overbearing on all other aspects. Oh
Ludlow it is! A foaming pint of virtual perry for @Carnyx and a faux thimble of Ludlow gin for @boulay
What a stunning little town
My hotel in the first pic is Dinham Weir House
Here’s my room in case anyone is scared that I’m suffering unduly on my Official Gazette Welsh Marches Road Trip
We were in Ludlow for a weekend a month ago. It's alright - nothing to write home about though.
It’s architecturally exquisite! A completely unharmed 13th-19th century English market town with the Shropshire hills at the end of every road
John Betjeman called it the “prettiest town in England”
However it definitely feels a lot poorer than somewhere like Hereford. Indeed, as I say, it reminds me of Hereford three decades ago - before it was gentrified
I wouldn’t go that far, but the wealth (or lack thereof) is certainly different. Hereford is squaddies and urban families relocated from a bunch of cities including, bizarrely, Glasgow (metalworking basically). There’s a lot of light industry in the city, not least Bulmers/Heineken.
Ludlow however is proper Herefordshire rural with a smattering of expat gastro Londoners. It was also, believe it or not, the epicentre of the computer games magazine industry in the 1980s.
If you want rural poor, Craven Arms is just one stop up the railway line. Good locally owned supermarket, though.
I went back to Hereford recently and it was proper posh compared to what I knew as a lad. I grew up there - I had Scottish friends and friends with SAS dads for the reasons you state
Every night there was a good chance of a major fight. They were guaranteed at weekends
Now it’s all sushi bars and gastro pubs and gleaming vinoteks
And for a good reason. It’s a handsome, safe, largely unspoiled cathedral city surrounded by magnificent countryside. A fine place to live. Not that I appreciated this age 17 and bored witless
A town of two halves. I thought the Widemarsh St. end of HighTown looked good, walking down to the newish food court shopping centre (where the Cattle Market used to be) is great. The other end, Maylords Orchard and the street that used to house Chadds, whose name escapes me, looks tired. Commercial Street down to the Hospital is the same as it ever was.
Ross, by the way is much improved. Much better kept than Ledbury and Newent.
You won't like Leominster or Bromyard as they are Eastern European conclaves.
For those who don’t know what a passbook is here is mine from 1985 which my mother found the other week in some of my late old man’s belongings as an illustration.
And this is what we are expecting banks to maintain?
I've heard it all now.
What the hell is the frigging point of one of those in this day and age?
Seems even more pointless than chequebooks.
Never had one.
Its an age and wealth thing.
None of my kids carry cash, I carry cash and cards. They slag me off for carrying cash, bur very so often they get caught short and I dont.
The better off are likely to use e payment, the less well off less so.
Cash will probably have its day but until we have covered access to all I see no reason to accelerate it,
Do parents these days give their teenage kids pocket money as a bank transfer?
Any money my son earns through doing work around the house gets paid by bank transfer. He has even asked gifts to be paid by BACS (from relatives etc) as cash just burns a hole in his pocket. He's found saving much easier since we abolished cash entirely.
That's interesting, I always assumed that the problem is the otherway round. You have much less of a feeling how much you are spending when paying with a card or an app, which i would have thought easily leads to overspending. I was in the UK last month and it was annoying how many barstaff would hold the card reader with the amount being charged facing them, so I had to stand on tiptoes, lean over and read the price upside down.
I guess the reality is some people have more of a problem overspending with cash in the pocket and others more of a problem overspending with cashless payment.
I think my kids are a similar age to OLB's - and their issue with cash is keeping it in one place. Inevitably some of the abrogate the responsibility and hand their money over to me to keep in my wallet until they want to spend some of it, which inevitably gets muddled with my money, and I have to keep a running mental tally of how much of each daughter's money is mine. And that's without all the money scattered around their room in various piggy banks, money boxes etc which they have acquired over the years. It was a great relief when they started using cards.
Another big problem with cash, right there. It really is a deeply flawed mode of tender.
Cash isn't 'deeply flawed', just as a notepad and pen isn't deeply flawed despite the presence of word processing software. Cash, cards, phones (I guess) - all have their advantages and drawbacks. Despite the inconveniences above, I'm not going to be giving my 8 year old a bank card, because she will lose it.
It is deeply flawed, that's why lots of people simply stopped using it many years ago and have never looked back.
Electronic payments: The buyer taps his phone, the money goes straight into the retailer's account.
Cash: The buyer takes his card to a machine, converting perfectly functional, electronic money into slips of paper and shards of metal that he now has to carry about his person. These odd scraps of material are then offered to a retailer who has to find more scraps of material to give back to the buyer as change. If the retailer lacks the correct composition of material, the transaction fails. Assuming he has the correct composition, the retailer now has to store these scraps of material in a secure place, at cost and risk to himself, before finding additional time in his working week to transport said scraps of material to a place, probably several miles away, so he can given them to a lady in a pin-striped skirt who doesn't want them either. Said lady has to them put them in a secure place, at cost and risk to her own business, so they can be transported at even more cost to her business to an even more secure place, at which point she is able to convert them back into electronic money for the retailer, who could have just been paid directly in electronic money in the first place.
Electronic payments: reliant on thr tech working. Cash: not reliant on the tech working.
Fake news.
I was left high and dry in Southeast Europe recently because the only ATM in the resort I was staying in had conked out, and the restaurant I was eating in took only cash (like lots of the places there, it was a real step back in time). It was a right palaver, which required me to ask a taxi to park illegally at the next resort while I literally legged it in 30c heat to another cashpoint. Cash is an antiquated system that – ironically – relies far too heavily on machines.
You want to ban cash based retail when the business and their customers are happy with those restrictions?
Er, nope.
I have said on here several times, probably dozens of time, I wouldn’t ban cash nor cash based retail.
Do I need to say it yet again FFS?
Ban was your word not mine. But you are happy to "restrict", as you said above.
For a measurement that’s supposed to be hard for an opposition leader to do well on, 17% gap is looking quite commanding now. RW tend to poll higher % for Con too, compared to most other pollsters, even as Sunak is crashing personally in the fieldwork they still find yet another 28% for Con.
The momentum in which Sunak’s political stock is declining, as the electorate back away from him, has to be the main polling take from the last month.
The England sub sample breaks 44-30-16 (the highest LD number for a while). A 13 point Conservative lead in December 2019 is now a 14 point Labour lead so the swing is 13.5%. The Conservatives were 32 points ahead of the LDs in 2019, the gap now is 14 so that's a 9% swing.
We also have the conundrum of tactical voting and where that might take us.
The subsample isn’t weighted is it? Therefore it’s meaningless, yet you seem to quote meaningless subsamples almost daily.
It is weighted according to the data tables - don't bother about the apology.
Less than a third of Gen Z polled think Royal family is good for Britain
YouGov poll reveals stark decline in support for the monarchy, with roughly a 50 per cent drop among young people in a decade
Only three in 10 young people think the Royal family is good for Britain, a new YouGov poll has revealed.
A majority of those aged 18-24 also said they held a negative opinion of the King as he approaches the first anniversary of his reign, with 52 per cent expressing disapproval.
The figures pose a significant problem for the monarchy, suggesting that attitudes among Generation Z have not improved in the last three years.
Younger Britons have been divided on whether or not to keep the monarchy since 2020, when the Duke of York’s friendship with convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein and Harry and Meghan’s fractious exit from royal life saw support plummet.
The latest survey suggests that just over a third of 18 to 24-year-olds want the UK to retain the monarchy, while 40 per cent would prefer an elected head of state.
Ludlow it is! A foaming pint of virtual perry for @Carnyx and a faux thimble of Ludlow gin for @boulay
What a stunning little town
My hotel in the first pic is Dinham Weir House
Here’s my room in case anyone is scared that I’m suffering unduly on my Official Gazette Welsh Marches Road Trip
We were in Ludlow for a weekend a month ago. It's alright - nothing to write home about though.
It’s architecturally exquisite! A completely unharmed 13th-19th century English market town with the Shropshire hills at the end of every road
John Betjeman called it the “prettiest town in England”
However it definitely feels a lot poorer than somewhere like Hereford. Indeed, as I say, it reminds me of Hereford three decades ago - before it was gentrified
I wouldn’t go that far, but the wealth (or lack thereof) is certainly different. Hereford is squaddies and urban families relocated from a bunch of cities including, bizarrely, Glasgow (metalworking basically). There’s a lot of light industry in the city, not least Bulmers/Heineken.
Ludlow however is proper Herefordshire rural with a smattering of expat gastro Londoners. It was also, believe it or not, the epicentre of the computer games magazine industry in the 1980s.
If you want rural poor, Craven Arms is just one stop up the railway line. Good locally owned supermarket, though.
I went back to Hereford recently and it was proper posh compared to what I knew as a lad. I grew up there - I had Scottish friends and friends with SAS dads for the reasons you state
Every night there was a good chance of a major fight. They were guaranteed at weekends
Now it’s all sushi bars and gastro pubs and gleaming vinoteks
And for a good reason. It’s a handsome, safe, largely unspoiled cathedral city surrounded by magnificent countryside. A fine place to live. Not that I appreciated this age 17 and bored witless
A town of two halves. I thought the Widemarsh St. end of HighTown looked good, walking down to the newish food court shopping centre (where the Cattle Market used to be) is great. The other end, Maylords Orchard and the street that used to house Chadds, whose name escapes me, looks tired. Commercial Street down to the Hospital is the same as it ever was.
Ross, by the way is much improved. Much better kept than Ledbury and Newent.
You won't like Leominster or Bromyard as they are Eastern European conclaves.
That’s good. I’d heard sad things about Ross so yay
Leominster was lovely in my memory (possibly faulty); Bromyard was always basically Birmingham
Ludlow it is! A foaming pint of virtual perry for @Carnyx and a faux thimble of Ludlow gin for @boulay
What a stunning little town
My hotel in the first pic is Dinham Weir House
Here’s my room in case anyone is scared that I’m suffering unduly on my Official Gazette Welsh Marches Road Trip
We were in Ludlow for a weekend a month ago. It's alright - nothing to write home about though.
It’s architecturally exquisite! A completely unharmed 13th-19th century English market town with the Shropshire hills at the end of every road
John Betjeman called it the “prettiest town in England”
However it definitely feels a lot poorer than somewhere like Hereford. Indeed, as I say, it reminds me of Hereford three decades ago - before it was gentrified
I wouldn’t go that far, but the wealth (or lack thereof) is certainly different. Hereford is squaddies and urban families relocated from a bunch of cities including, bizarrely, Glasgow (metalworking basically). There’s a lot of light industry in the city, not least Bulmers/Heineken.
Ludlow however is proper Herefordshire rural with a smattering of expat gastro Londoners. It was also, believe it or not, the epicentre of the computer games magazine industry in the 1980s.
If you want rural poor, Craven Arms is just one stop up the railway line. Good locally owned supermarket, though.
I went back to Hereford recently and it was proper posh compared to what I knew as a lad. I grew up there - I had Scottish friends and friends with SAS dads for the reasons you state
Every night there was a good chance of a major fight. They were guaranteed at weekends
Now it’s all sushi bars and gastro pubs and gleaming vinoteks
And for a good reason. It’s a handsome, safe, largely unspoiled cathedral city surrounded by magnificent countryside. A fine place to live. Not that I appreciated this age 17 and bored witless
I'd say *everywhere* has got less violent since you and I were growing up. A fight was just part of a night out. You'd get a bit of a kicking and then your assailant would catch up with you afterwards to give you back the wallet you'd dropped. I genuinely think this has changed - it's not just that I'm no longer frequenting fighty pubs. Some put this down to the removal of lead from petrol. I'm not convinced, but I like the theory.
Less than a third of Gen Z polled think Royal family is good for Britain
YouGov poll reveals stark decline in support for the monarchy, with roughly a 50 per cent drop among young people in a decade
Only three in 10 young people think the Royal family is good for Britain, a new YouGov poll has revealed.
A majority of those aged 18-24 also said they held a negative opinion of the King as he approaches the first anniversary of his reign, with 52 per cent expressing disapproval.
The figures pose a significant problem for the monarchy, suggesting that attitudes among Generation Z have not improved in the last three years.
Younger Britons have been divided on whether or not to keep the monarchy since 2020, when the Duke of York’s friendship with convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein and Harry and Meghan’s fractious exit from royal life saw support plummet.
The latest survey suggests that just over a third of 18 to 24-year-olds want the UK to retain the monarchy, while 40 per cent would prefer an elected head of state.
For those who don’t know what a passbook is here is mine from 1985 which my mother found the other week in some of my late old man’s belongings as an illustration.
And this is what we are expecting banks to maintain?
I've heard it all now.
What the hell is the frigging point of one of those in this day and age?
Seems even more pointless than chequebooks.
Never had one.
Its an age and wealth thing.
None of my kids carry cash, I carry cash and cards. They slag me off for carrying cash, bur very so often they get caught short and I dont.
The better off are likely to use e payment, the less well off less so.
Cash will probably have its day but until we have covered access to all I see no reason to accelerate it,
Do parents these days give their teenage kids pocket money as a bank transfer?
Any money my son earns through doing work around the house gets paid by bank transfer. He has even asked gifts to be paid by BACS (from relatives etc) as cash just burns a hole in his pocket. He's found saving much easier since we abolished cash entirely.
That's interesting, I always assumed that the problem is the otherway round. You have much less of a feeling how much you are spending when paying with a card or an app, which i would have thought easily leads to overspending. I was in the UK last month and it was annoying how many barstaff would hold the card reader with the amount being charged facing them, so I had to stand on tiptoes, lean over and read the price upside down.
I guess the reality is some people have more of a problem overspending with cash in the pocket and others more of a problem overspending with cashless payment.
I think my kids are a similar age to OLB's - and their issue with cash is keeping it in one place. Inevitably some of the abrogate the responsibility and hand their money over to me to keep in my wallet until they want to spend some of it, which inevitably gets muddled with my money, and I have to keep a running mental tally of how much of each daughter's money is mine. And that's without all the money scattered around their room in various piggy banks, money boxes etc which they have acquired over the years. It was a great relief when they started using cards.
Another big problem with cash, right there. It really is a deeply flawed mode of tender.
Cash isn't 'deeply flawed', just as a notepad and pen isn't deeply flawed despite the presence of word processing software. Cash, cards, phones (I guess) - all have their advantages and drawbacks. Despite the inconveniences above, I'm not going to be giving my 8 year old a bank card, because she will lose it.
It is deeply flawed, that's why lots of people simply stopped using it many years ago and have never looked back.
Electronic payments: The buyer taps his phone, the money goes straight into the retailer's account.
Cash: The buyer takes his card to a machine, converting perfectly functional, electronic money into slips of paper and shards of metal that he now has to carry about his person. These odd scraps of material are then offered to a retailer who has to find more scraps of material to give back to the buyer as change. If the retailer lacks the correct composition of material, the transaction fails. Assuming he has the correct composition, the retailer now has to store these scraps of material in a secure place, at cost and risk to himself, before finding additional time in his working week to transport said scraps of material to a place, probably several miles away, so he can given them to a lady in a pin-striped skirt who doesn't want them either. Said lady has to them put them in a secure place, at cost and risk to her own business, so they can be transported at even more cost to her business to an even more secure place, at which point she is able to convert them back into electronic money for the retailer, who could have just been paid directly in electronic money in the first place.
Electronic payments: reliant on thr tech working. Cash: not reliant on the tech working.
Fake news.
I was left high and dry in Southeast Europe recently because the only ATM in the resort I was staying in had conked out, and the restaurant I was eating in took only cash (like lots of the places there, it was a real step back in time). It was a right palaver, which required me to ask a taxi to park illegally at the next resort while I literally legged it in 30c heat to another cashpoint. Cash is an antiquated system that – ironically – relies far too heavily on machines.
You want to ban cash based retail when the business and their customers are happy with those restrictions?
Er, nope.
I have said on here several times, probably dozens of time, I wouldn’t ban cash nor cash based retail.
Do I need to say it yet again FFS?
Ban was your word not mine. But you are happy to "restrict", as you said above.
The reason cash should be enforced as an option is the unbanked are generally the poor. If shops gradually move to cashless only we run the risk of the unbanked having few places to shop which might be miles from where they live. Cash accepting shops as they get fewer will also be able to jack up prices as they become the only place the unbanked can shop, a captive audience.
This also before we get into enabling a surveillance state where the government can monitor everything you spend
Less than a third of Gen Z polled think Royal family is good for Britain
YouGov poll reveals stark decline in support for the monarchy, with roughly a 50 per cent drop among young people in a decade
Only three in 10 young people think the Royal family is good for Britain, a new YouGov poll has revealed.
A majority of those aged 18-24 also said they held a negative opinion of the King as he approaches the first anniversary of his reign, with 52 per cent expressing disapproval.
The figures pose a significant problem for the monarchy, suggesting that attitudes among Generation Z have not improved in the last three years.
Younger Britons have been divided on whether or not to keep the monarchy since 2020, when the Duke of York’s friendship with convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein and Harry and Meghan’s fractious exit from royal life saw support plummet.
The latest survey suggests that just over a third of 18 to 24-year-olds want the UK to retain the monarchy, while 40 per cent would prefer an elected head of state.
Ludlow it is! A foaming pint of virtual perry for @Carnyx and a faux thimble of Ludlow gin for @boulay
What a stunning little town
My hotel in the first pic is Dinham Weir House
Here’s my room in case anyone is scared that I’m suffering unduly on my Official Gazette Welsh Marches Road Trip
We were in Ludlow for a weekend a month ago. It's alright - nothing to write home about though.
It’s architecturally exquisite! A completely unharmed 13th-19th century English market town with the Shropshire hills at the end of every road
John Betjeman called it the “prettiest town in England”
However it definitely feels a lot poorer than somewhere like Hereford. Indeed, as I say, it reminds me of Hereford three decades ago - before it was gentrified
I wouldn’t go that far, but the wealth (or lack thereof) is certainly different. Hereford is squaddies and urban families relocated from a bunch of cities including, bizarrely, Glasgow (metalworking basically). There’s a lot of light industry in the city, not least Bulmers/Heineken.
Ludlow however is proper Herefordshire rural with a smattering of expat gastro Londoners. It was also, believe it or not, the epicentre of the computer games magazine industry in the 1980s.
If you want rural poor, Craven Arms is just one stop up the railway line. Good locally owned supermarket, though.
I went back to Hereford recently and it was proper posh compared to what I knew as a lad. I grew up there - I had Scottish friends and friends with SAS dads for the reasons you state
Every night there was a good chance of a major fight. They were guaranteed at weekends
Now it’s all sushi bars and gastro pubs and gleaming vinoteks
And for a good reason. It’s a handsome, safe, largely unspoiled cathedral city surrounded by magnificent countryside. A fine place to live. Not that I appreciated this age 17 and bored witless
A town of two halves. I thought the Widemarsh St. end of HighTown looked good, walking down to the newish food court shopping centre (where the Cattle Market used to be) is great. The other end, Maylords Orchard and the street that used to house Chadds, whose name escapes me, looks tired. Commercial Street down to the Hospital is the same as it ever was.
Ross, by the way is much improved. Much better kept than Ledbury and Newent.
You won't like Leominster or Bromyard as they are Eastern European conclaves.
That’s good. I’d heard sad things about Ross so yay
Leominster was lovely in my memory (possibly faulty); Bromyard was always basically Birmingham
Leominster is fine. Lots of antique shops.
In Ross, there is a really nice little deli/cake shop/cafe if you turn right at the market house coming up from Oveross. I think it is called something like the Secret Garden. If you have a vehicle, the Moody Cow at Upton Bishop is a decent place to eat.
Gillian Keegan's husband, Michael Keegan, is a crown representative to the Cabinet Office, managing cross-government relationships with BAE Systems as a strategic supplier to the Government.
He was also for 12 years from 2006 a senior executive at Fujitsu, ending up as CEO and Head of Technology Product Business, having previously spent some time working at the Post Office.
Perhaps it's just me but a senior executive from a company intimately involved in the worst miscarriage of justice in English history and one of the biggest IT fuck-ups ever would not be on my short list of persons seeking to manage relationships with anyone, let alone a strategic defence supplier.
Why Fujitsu is still getting government contracts is a mystery…
I thin the paragraphs preceding that last sentence go some way to providing the solution to that mystery.
And is it a chummy spivocracy, or a spivvy chumocracy ? Or just a plain spivocracy.
I have read that Blair put pressure on the Post Office to continue with Horizon even when its faults were first noticed.
Arthur Andersen were kicked out of government work because of the De Lorean fiasco. But here Fujitsu fuck up so badly that people commit suicide and yet they sail merrily on.
The Post Office offers an 18% bonus to lawyers joining it to work on the Horizon inquiry despite previously publicly saying that no bonuses would be paid for inquiry work.
The bare faced lying is bad enough. The gigantic fuck you to the rest of us is even worse.
Why aren't people angry about this? I have recently tackled 2 Tory MPs who I met (they were out meeting voters) about precisely this just so that they know that someone is bothered about this stuff, even though none of this affects me personally.
Arthur Anderson were back the moment the government changed.
Various actors in the permanent structure of government write memos decrying the "short sightedness" of not using them.
In a completely, utterly and totally unrelated mater there was a story about a consultancy, {redacted for OGH} that was caught running a ledger of people who had handled contract competitions with them. Those who had granted them the contracts got pluses, those who award to others got minuses.
The ledger was used to give people with lots of pluses really, really nice jobs with said consultancy. We are talking high 6 figures + bonus + stuff.
Gillian Keegan's husband, Michael Keegan, is a crown representative to the Cabinet Office, managing cross-government relationships with BAE Systems as a strategic supplier to the Government.
He was also for 12 years from 2006 a senior executive at Fujitsu, ending up as CEO and Head of Technology Product Business, having previously spent some time working at the Post Office.
Perhaps it's just me but a senior executive from a company intimately involved in the worst miscarriage of justice in English history and one of the biggest IT fuck-ups ever would not be on my short list of persons seeking to manage relationships with anyone, let alone a strategic defence supplier.
Why Fujitsu is still getting government contracts is a mystery…
I thin the paragraphs preceding that last sentence go some way to providing the solution to that mystery.
And is it a chummy spivocracy, or a spivvy chumocracy ? Or just a plain spivocracy.
I have read that Blair put pressure on the Post Office to continue with Horizon even when its faults were first noticed.
Arthur Andersen were kicked out of government work because of the De Lorean fiasco. But here Fujitsu fuck up so badly that people commit suicide and yet they sail merrily on.
The Post Office offers an 18% bonus to lawyers joining it to work on the Horizon inquiry despite previously publicly saying that no bonuses would be paid for inquiry work.
The bare faced lying is bad enough. The gigantic fuck you to the rest of us is even worse.
Why aren't people angry about this? I have recently tackled 2 Tory MPs who I met (they were out meeting voters) about precisely this just so that they know that someone is bothered about this stuff, even though none of this affects me personally.
I suspect the reason why the Post Office is offering bonus to lawyers willing to defend them is because even lawyers have some moral standards and can't defend the completely indefensible...
I can understand that. But then they shouldn't have made a statement saying that they would not be paying bonuses. It's the lying - they simply cannot help themselves.
Less than a third of Gen Z polled think Royal family is good for Britain
YouGov poll reveals stark decline in support for the monarchy, with roughly a 50 per cent drop among young people in a decade
Only three in 10 young people think the Royal family is good for Britain, a new YouGov poll has revealed.
A majority of those aged 18-24 also said they held a negative opinion of the King as he approaches the first anniversary of his reign, with 52 per cent expressing disapproval.
The figures pose a significant problem for the monarchy, suggesting that attitudes among Generation Z have not improved in the last three years.
Younger Britons have been divided on whether or not to keep the monarchy since 2020, when the Duke of York’s friendship with convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein and Harry and Meghan’s fractious exit from royal life saw support plummet.
The latest survey suggests that just over a third of 18 to 24-year-olds want the UK to retain the monarchy, while 40 per cent would prefer an elected head of state.
It's not fair to blame GK for any of this. But since when has politics been fair?
A scape goat is going to need to be sacrificed soon, to take the heat off Rishi.
It will be bad news for Labour and the Opposition parties if Concrete Crisis brings down Rishi Sunak. A replacement as PM and HomeSec from moderate wing the party (Hunt PM, Penny HomSec) and 12 months talking about tackling unfair privilege in country today and being a government of aspiration and reform would save 50-100 Tory seats imo.
It’s funny how Concrete Crisis can work out so good for the Tories, if it helps them replace Sunak.
Remainer Hunt replacing Leaver Sunak as Tory leader and PM guarantees a doubling of the RefUK vote and risks near wipeout for the Tories
This one post from you sums up your whole mistake right now HY.
In this electoral situation you arguing Tories need to be Reform and Brexit fixated.
I am explained the exact opposite to you, a position you should adopt. Chasing Grey Wall, Brexit voter and Reform voter gets you 28% tops at next General Election. You are actively ushering in a political sea change by decimating your return of MPs.
50-100 MPs can be saved, a far better Proportion of vote by going in the opposite direction. So many leave voters want a sane, convincing safe pair of hands PM right now, reform minded voters want a Tory HomSec who can get a grip, and there are millions of voters you are just handing to Labour, who would be just as happy to keep in an aspirational Tory government intent on reform.
You are misreading the political mood of the country. The Tories can be in a much better place switching to aspiration and reform, rather than chase UKIP and Reform voters.
Hunt wouldn't win back any Labour or LD voters, he would however see further losses from the Tories to RefUK
@MoonRabbit is correct in her observations, not least your hopes that a move to the right will revitalise the conservative party
Far from it, it will marginalise them into as much as cult as are Corbyn followers
She is completely off her rocker. Hunt is probably the only politician with an even shittier rep than Sunak. He's also Sunak's best opportunity for a re-set - fire Hunt and blame the crappy economy-destroying economic policy on him. It wouldn't work, but it is the best chance.
I think I have some sympathy for Gillian Keegan. It isn't altogether her fault.
The DfE, none at all. If they hadn't made a botched reform to academy chains, grossly underfunded them and forced them to pursue expensive short term goals at the expense of longer term sustainability than we might not be in this mess to start with.
You can't tell somebody they're doing a good job and/or getting a grip on something when they're clearly not doing so.
Eh? What have academy chains got to do with it? The problem is Sunak slashing the capital maintenance budget.
Less than a third of Gen Z polled think Royal family is good for Britain
YouGov poll reveals stark decline in support for the monarchy, with roughly a 50 per cent drop among young people in a decade
Only three in 10 young people think the Royal family is good for Britain, a new YouGov poll has revealed.
A majority of those aged 18-24 also said they held a negative opinion of the King as he approaches the first anniversary of his reign, with 52 per cent expressing disapproval.
The figures pose a significant problem for the monarchy, suggesting that attitudes among Generation Z have not improved in the last three years.
Younger Britons have been divided on whether or not to keep the monarchy since 2020, when the Duke of York’s friendship with convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein and Harry and Meghan’s fractious exit from royal life saw support plummet.
The latest survey suggests that just over a third of 18 to 24-year-olds want the UK to retain the monarchy, while 40 per cent would prefer an elected head of state.
The judo move for the Tories would be to bring back Theresa May, reinstate a few of the defenstratred Brexit rebels, and position themselves to the left of Starmer.
The judo move for the Tories would be to bring back Theresa May, reinstate a few of the defenstratred Brexit rebels, and position themselves to the left of Starmer.
I think I have some sympathy for Gillian Keegan. It isn't altogether her fault.
The DfE, none at all. If they hadn't made a botched reform to academy chains, grossly underfunded them and forced them to pursue expensive short term goals at the expense of longer term sustainability than we might not be in this mess to start with.
You can't tell somebody they're doing a good job and/or getting a grip on something when they're clearly not doing so.
Eh? What have academy chains got to do with it? The problem is Sunak slashing the capital maintenance budget.
That didn't help. However, in moving to academy chains we not only set up a much more expensive form of running schools but also lost the planning oversight of local authorities who had built the schools to start with.
Not, to be fair, that they had ever been much good at maintaining the fabric, but academy chains don't seem to have even tried. Partly I think because many of them were quietly promised new buildings as part of the conversion process...
I think I have some sympathy for Gillian Keegan. It isn't altogether her fault.
The DfE, none at all. If they hadn't made a botched reform to academy chains, grossly underfunded them and forced them to pursue expensive short term goals at the expense of longer term sustainability than we might not be in this mess to start with.
You can't tell somebody they're doing a good job and/or getting a grip on something when they're clearly not doing so.
Eh? What have academy chains got to do with it? The problem is Sunak slashing the capital maintenance budget.
That's part of it, though even the unslashed budget was a long way from the necessary.
But academisation didn't help. LEAs had sufficient scale to have in-house access to people who knew about buildings. Standalone academies, and most chains, simply don't.
The evolution of the academy model over the last decade has been to recreate undersized, geographically incoherent LEAs, generally with a more expensive executive layer.
(And heads who liked, and thrived, running their own show have been forced into expanding into turning around difficult schools, even when that's not their skill set.)
Ludlow it is! A foaming pint of virtual perry for @Carnyx and a faux thimble of Ludlow gin for @boulay
What a stunning little town
My hotel in the first pic is Dinham Weir House
Here’s my room in case anyone is scared that I’m suffering unduly on my Official Gazette Welsh Marches Road Trip
We were in Ludlow for a weekend a month ago. It's alright - nothing to write home about though.
It’s architecturally exquisite! A completely unharmed 13th-19th century English market town with the Shropshire hills at the end of every road
John Betjeman called it the “prettiest town in England”
However it definitely feels a lot poorer than somewhere like Hereford. Indeed, as I say, it reminds me of Hereford three decades ago - before it was gentrified
I wouldn’t go that far, but the wealth (or lack thereof) is certainly different. Hereford is squaddies and urban families relocated from a bunch of cities including, bizarrely, Glasgow (metalworking basically). There’s a lot of light industry in the city, not least Bulmers/Heineken.
Ludlow however is proper Herefordshire rural with a smattering of expat gastro Londoners. It was also, believe it or not, the epicentre of the computer games magazine industry in the 1980s.
If you want rural poor, Craven Arms is just one stop up the railway line. Good locally owned supermarket, though.
I went back to Hereford recently and it was proper posh compared to what I knew as a lad. I grew up there - I had Scottish friends and friends with SAS dads for the reasons you state
Every night there was a good chance of a major fight. They were guaranteed at weekends
Now it’s all sushi bars and gastro pubs and gleaming vinoteks
And for a good reason. It’s a handsome, safe, largely unspoiled cathedral city surrounded by magnificent countryside. A fine place to live. Not that I appreciated this age 17 and bored witless
A town of two halves. I thought the Widemarsh St. end of HighTown looked good, walking down to the newish food court shopping centre (where the Cattle Market used to be) is great. The other end, Maylords Orchard and the street that used to house Chadds, whose name escapes me, looks tired. Commercial Street down to the Hospital is the same as it ever was.
Ross, by the way is much improved. Much better kept than Ledbury and Newent.
You won't like Leominster or Bromyard as they are Eastern European conclaves.
That’s good. I’d heard sad things about Ross so yay
Leominster was lovely in my memory (possibly faulty); Bromyard was always basically Birmingham
Leominster is fine. Lots of antique shops.
In Ross, there is a really nice little deli/cake shop/cafe if you turn right at the market house coming up from Oveross. I think it is called something like the Secret Garden. If you have a vehicle, the Moody Cow at Upton Bishop is a decent place to eat.
The Southern Marches seem to get towns right. Alongside Herefordshire's Ledbury, Leominster and Ross there is much to be recommended in Monmouth, Abergavenny, Crickhowell, Hay, and of course Ludlow.
They also as others have noted sit somewhat outside the normal English and Welsh cultures and social fabric. They are sui generis.
I think I have some sympathy for Gillian Keegan. It isn't altogether her fault.
The DfE, none at all. If they hadn't made a botched reform to academy chains, grossly underfunded them and forced them to pursue expensive short term goals at the expense of longer term sustainability than we might not be in this mess to start with.
You can't tell somebody they're doing a good job and/or getting a grip on something when they're clearly not doing so.
Eh? What have academy chains got to do with it? The problem is Sunak slashing the capital maintenance budget.
That's part of it, though even the unslashed budget was a long way from the necessary.
But academisation didn't help. LEAs had sufficient scale to have in-house access to people who knew about buildings. Standalone academies, and most chains, simply don't.
The evolution of the academy model over the last decade has been to recreate undersized, geographically incoherent LEAs, generally with a more expensive executive layer.
(And heads who liked, and thrived, running their own show have been forced into expanding into turning around difficult schools, even when that's not their skill set.)
Most academies aren't standalones though. Most will run many schools and have as much access to buildings maintenance as alocal authority.
Less than a third of Gen Z polled think Royal family is good for Britain
YouGov poll reveals stark decline in support for the monarchy, with roughly a 50 per cent drop among young people in a decade
Only three in 10 young people think the Royal family is good for Britain, a new YouGov poll has revealed.
A majority of those aged 18-24 also said they held a negative opinion of the King as he approaches the first anniversary of his reign, with 52 per cent expressing disapproval.
The figures pose a significant problem for the monarchy, suggesting that attitudes among Generation Z have not improved in the last three years.
Younger Britons have been divided on whether or not to keep the monarchy since 2020, when the Duke of York’s friendship with convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein and Harry and Meghan’s fractious exit from royal life saw support plummet.
The latest survey suggests that just over a third of 18 to 24-year-olds want the UK to retain the monarchy, while 40 per cent would prefer an elected head of state.
We need to go all Chairman Mao on secondary school teachers.
They've been feeding students a diet of malignant Wokery for the last 8 years.
Must be galling for young people who are struggling to buy a house sees the Royals with all those palaces and other properties.
I wasn't being entirely serious by the way.
But the meme that's been pumped out for at least the last five years is that royalty, imperialism, white supremacy and racism are all intrinsically connected and complicit, which simply isn't true. And at that age you do tend to lap it all up.
The judo move for the Tories would be to bring back Theresa May, reinstate a few of the defenstratred Brexit rebels, and position themselves to the left of Starmer.
Ludlow it is! A foaming pint of virtual perry for @Carnyx and a faux thimble of Ludlow gin for @boulay
What a stunning little town
My hotel in the first pic is Dinham Weir House
Here’s my room in case anyone is scared that I’m suffering unduly on my Official Gazette Welsh Marches Road Trip
We were in Ludlow for a weekend a month ago. It's alright - nothing to write home about though.
It’s architecturally exquisite! A completely unharmed 13th-19th century English market town with the Shropshire hills at the end of every road
John Betjeman called it the “prettiest town in England”
However it definitely feels a lot poorer than somewhere like Hereford. Indeed, as I say, it reminds me of Hereford three decades ago - before it was gentrified
I wouldn’t go that far, but the wealth (or lack thereof) is certainly different. Hereford is squaddies and urban families relocated from a bunch of cities including, bizarrely, Glasgow (metalworking basically). There’s a lot of light industry in the city, not least Bulmers/Heineken.
Ludlow however is proper Herefordshire rural with a smattering of expat gastro Londoners. It was also, believe it or not, the epicentre of the computer games magazine industry in the 1980s.
If you want rural poor, Craven Arms is just one stop up the railway line. Good locally owned supermarket, though.
I went back to Hereford recently and it was proper posh compared to what I knew as a lad. I grew up there - I had Scottish friends and friends with SAS dads for the reasons you state
Every night there was a good chance of a major fight. They were guaranteed at weekends
Now it’s all sushi bars and gastro pubs and gleaming vinoteks
And for a good reason. It’s a handsome, safe, largely unspoiled cathedral city surrounded by magnificent countryside. A fine place to live. Not that I appreciated this age 17 and bored witless
A town of two halves. I thought the Widemarsh St. end of HighTown looked good, walking down to the newish food court shopping centre (where the Cattle Market used to be) is great. The other end, Maylords Orchard and the street that used to house Chadds, whose name escapes me, looks tired. Commercial Street down to the Hospital is the same as it ever was.
Ross, by the way is much improved. Much better kept than Ledbury and Newent.
You won't like Leominster or Bromyard as they are Eastern European conclaves.
That’s good. I’d heard sad things about Ross so yay
Leominster was lovely in my memory (possibly faulty); Bromyard was always basically Birmingham
Leominster is fine. Lots of antique shops.
In Ross, there is a really nice little deli/cake shop/cafe if you turn right at the market house coming up from Oveross. I think it is called something like the Secret Garden. If you have a vehicle, the Moody Cow at Upton Bishop is a decent place to eat.
The Southern Marches seem to get towns right. Alongside Herefordshire's Ledbury, Leominster and Ross there is much to be recommended in Monmouth, Abergavenny, Crickhowell, Hay, and of course Ludlow.
They also as others have noted sit somewhat outside the normal English and Welsh cultures and social fabric. They are sui generis.
I think I have some sympathy for Gillian Keegan. It isn't altogether her fault.
The DfE, none at all. If they hadn't made a botched reform to academy chains, grossly underfunded them and forced them to pursue expensive short term goals at the expense of longer term sustainability than we might not be in this mess to start with.
You can't tell somebody they're doing a good job and/or getting a grip on something when they're clearly not doing so.
Eh? What have academy chains got to do with it? The problem is Sunak slashing the capital maintenance budget.
That's part of it, though even the unslashed budget was a long way from the necessary.
But academisation didn't help. LEAs had sufficient scale to have in-house access to people who knew about buildings. Standalone academies, and most chains, simply don't.
The evolution of the academy model over the last decade has been to recreate undersized, geographically incoherent LEAs, generally with a more expensive executive layer.
(And heads who liked, and thrived, running their own show have been forced into expanding into turning around difficult schools, even when that's not their skill set.)
Thanks for explanation. But regardless... if you don't have the money - you can't fix the school... whether you are an academy or not. I think this one is on Treasury more than DfE.
Gillian Keegan's husband, Michael Keegan, is a crown representative to the Cabinet Office, managing cross-government relationships with BAE Systems as a strategic supplier to the Government.
He was also for 12 years from 2006 a senior executive at Fujitsu, ending up as CEO and Head of Technology Product Business, having previously spent some time working at the Post Office.
Perhaps it's just me but a senior executive from a company intimately involved in the worst miscarriage of justice in English history and one of the biggest IT fuck-ups ever would not be on my short list of persons seeking to manage relationships with anyone, let alone a strategic defence supplier.
Why Fujitsu is still getting government contracts is a mystery…
I thin the paragraphs preceding that last sentence go some way to providing the solution to that mystery.
And is it a chummy spivocracy, or a spivvy chumocracy ? Or just a plain spivocracy.
I have read that Blair put pressure on the Post Office to continue with Horizon even when its faults were first noticed.
Arthur Andersen were kicked out of government work because of the De Lorean fiasco. But here Fujitsu fuck up so badly that people commit suicide and yet they sail merrily on.
The Post Office offers an 18% bonus to lawyers joining it to work on the Horizon inquiry despite previously publicly saying that no bonuses would be paid for inquiry work.
The bare faced lying is bad enough. The gigantic fuck you to the rest of us is even worse.
Why aren't people angry about this? I have recently tackled 2 Tory MPs who I met (they were out meeting voters) about precisely this just so that they know that someone is bothered about this stuff, even though none of this affects me personally.
Arthur Anderson were back the moment the government changed.
Various actors in the permanent structure of government write memos decrying the "short sightedness" of not using them.
In a completely, utterly and totally unrelated mater there was a story about a consultancy, {redacted for OGH} that was caught running a ledger of people who had handled contract competitions with them. Those who had granted them the contracts got pluses, those who award to others got minuses.
The ledger was used to give people with lots of pluses really, really nice jobs with said consultancy. We are talking high 6 figures + bonus + stuff.
Gillian Keegan's husband, Michael Keegan, is a crown representative to the Cabinet Office, managing cross-government relationships with BAE Systems as a strategic supplier to the Government.
He was also for 12 years from 2006 a senior executive at Fujitsu, ending up as CEO and Head of Technology Product Business, having previously spent some time working at the Post Office.
Perhaps it's just me but a senior executive from a company intimately involved in the worst miscarriage of justice in English history and one of the biggest IT fuck-ups ever would not be on my short list of persons seeking to manage relationships with anyone, let alone a strategic defence supplier.
Why Fujitsu is still getting government contracts is a mystery…
I thin the paragraphs preceding that last sentence go some way to providing the solution to that mystery.
And is it a chummy spivocracy, or a spivvy chumocracy ? Or just a plain spivocracy.
I have read that Blair put pressure on the Post Office to continue with Horizon even when its faults were first noticed.
Arthur Andersen were kicked out of government work because of the De Lorean fiasco. But here Fujitsu fuck up so badly that people commit suicide and yet they sail merrily on.
The Post Office offers an 18% bonus to lawyers joining it to work on the Horizon inquiry despite previously publicly saying that no bonuses would be paid for inquiry work.
The bare faced lying is bad enough. The gigantic fuck you to the rest of us is even worse.
Why aren't people angry about this? I have recently tackled 2 Tory MPs who I met (they were out meeting voters) about precisely this just so that they know that someone is bothered about this stuff, even though none of this affects me personally.
I suspect the reason why the Post Office is offering bonus to lawyers willing to defend them is because even lawyers have some moral standards and can't defend the completely indefensible...
I can understand that. But then they shouldn't have made a statement saying that they would not be paying bonuses. It's the lying - they simply cannot help themselves.
Jesus. Fujitsu.
I worked on a confidential project looking into their performance on a government contract (which I can't discuss) ten years ago - doubt anything was ever done about it.
I reckon there are a lot more public buildings with dangerously unsafe concrete than the government is letting on. Have you ever noticed how every time a member of the Cabinet goes anywhere they're wearing a hard hat? They obviously know something we don't.
The judo move for the Tories would be to bring back Theresa May, reinstate a few of the defenstratred Brexit rebels, and position themselves to the left of Starmer.
Go full Rejoin. That's where the votes are.
Yes, the same hubris when Cameron looked at how well ahead Remain were in the polls when he called the referendum.
Referendum polling is more unpredictable and unstable than virtually anything else, and highly vulnerable to campaign framing.
The judo move for the Tories would be to bring back Theresa May, reinstate a few of the defenstratred Brexit rebels, and position themselves to the left of Starmer.
... jettison the nutcases and change the party name for a landslide.
The judo move for the Tories would be to bring back Theresa May, reinstate a few of the defenstratred Brexit rebels, and position themselves to the left of Starmer.
Go full Rejoin. That's where the votes are.
Starmer doesn't seem to think so.
It doesn't matter. In your narrative he's going to lose to Tezzy May's Nice Party.
For those who don’t know what a passbook is here is mine from 1985 which my mother found the other week in some of my late old man’s belongings as an illustration.
And this is what we are expecting banks to maintain?
I've heard it all now.
What the hell is the frigging point of one of those in this day and age?
Seems even more pointless than chequebooks.
Never had one.
Its an age and wealth thing.
None of my kids carry cash, I carry cash and cards. They slag me off for carrying cash, bur very so often they get caught short and I dont.
The better off are likely to use e payment, the less well off less so.
Cash will probably have its day but until we have covered access to all I see no reason to accelerate it,
Do parents these days give their teenage kids pocket money as a bank transfer?
Any money my son earns through doing work around the house gets paid by bank transfer. He has even asked gifts to be paid by BACS (from relatives etc) as cash just burns a hole in his pocket. He's found saving much easier since we abolished cash entirely.
That's interesting, I always assumed that the problem is the otherway round. You have much less of a feeling how much you are spending when paying with a card or an app, which i would have thought easily leads to overspending. I was in the UK last month and it was annoying how many barstaff would hold the card reader with the amount being charged facing them, so I had to stand on tiptoes, lean over and read the price upside down.
I guess the reality is some people have more of a problem overspending with cash in the pocket and others more of a problem overspending with cashless payment.
I think my kids are a similar age to OLB's - and their issue with cash is keeping it in one place. Inevitably some of the abrogate the responsibility and hand their money over to me to keep in my wallet until they want to spend some of it, which inevitably gets muddled with my money, and I have to keep a running mental tally of how much of each daughter's money is mine. And that's without all the money scattered around their room in various piggy banks, money boxes etc which they have acquired over the years. It was a great relief when they started using cards.
Another big problem with cash, right there. It really is a deeply flawed mode of tender.
Cash isn't 'deeply flawed', just as a notepad and pen isn't deeply flawed despite the presence of word processing software. Cash, cards, phones (I guess) - all have their advantages and drawbacks. Despite the inconveniences above, I'm not going to be giving my 8 year old a bank card, because she will lose it.
It is deeply flawed, that's why lots of people simply stopped using it many years ago and have never looked back.
Electronic payments: The buyer taps his phone, the money goes straight into the retailer's account.
Cash: The buyer takes his card to a machine, converting perfectly functional, electronic money into slips of paper and shards of metal that he now has to carry about his person. These odd scraps of material are then offered to a retailer who has to find more scraps of material to give back to the buyer as change. If the retailer lacks the correct composition of material, the transaction fails. Assuming he has the correct composition, the retailer now has to store these scraps of material in a secure place, at cost and risk to himself, before finding additional time in his working week to transport said scraps of material to a place, probably several miles away, so he can given them to a lady in a pin-striped skirt who doesn't want them either. Said lady has to them put them in a secure place, at cost and risk to her own business, so they can be transported at even more cost to her business to an even more secure place, at which point she is able to convert them back into electronic money for the retailer, who could have just been paid directly in electronic money in the first place.
Electronic payments: reliant on thr tech working. Cash: not reliant on the tech working.
Fake news.
I was left high and dry in Southeast Europe recently because the only ATM in the resort I was staying in had conked out, and the restaurant I was eating in took only cash (like lots of the places there, it was a real step back in time). It was a right palaver, which required me to ask a taxi to park illegally at the next resort while I literally legged it in 30c heat to another cashpoint. Cash is an antiquated system that – ironically – relies far too heavily on machines.
You want to ban cash based retail when the business and their customers are happy with those restrictions?
Er, nope.
I have said on here several times, probably dozens of time, I wouldn’t ban cash nor cash based retail.
Do I need to say it yet again FFS?
Ban was your word not mine. But you are happy to "restrict", as you said above.
The reason cash should be enforced as an option is the unbanked are generally the poor. If shops gradually move to cashless only we run the risk of the unbanked having few places to shop which might be miles from where they live. Cash accepting shops as they get fewer will also be able to jack up prices as they become the only place the unbanked can shop, a captive audience.
This also before we get into enabling a surveillance state where the government can monitor everything you spend
Not having the means to spend cash is actually a bigger problem than the related problem of not having access to bank accounts (the Nigel Farage campaign). Neither problem affects huge numbers of people but they do affect vulnerable people disproportionately.
I think I have some sympathy for Gillian Keegan. It isn't altogether her fault.
The DfE, none at all. If they hadn't made a botched reform to academy chains, grossly underfunded them and forced them to pursue expensive short term goals at the expense of longer term sustainability than we might not be in this mess to start with.
You can't tell somebody they're doing a good job and/or getting a grip on something when they're clearly not doing so.
Eh? What have academy chains got to do with it? The problem is Sunak slashing the capital maintenance budget.
That's part of it, though even the unslashed budget was a long way from the necessary.
But academisation didn't help. LEAs had sufficient scale to have in-house access to people who knew about buildings. Standalone academies, and most chains, simply don't.
The evolution of the academy model over the last decade has been to recreate undersized, geographically incoherent LEAs, generally with a more expensive executive layer.
(And heads who liked, and thrived, running their own show have been forced into expanding into turning around difficult schools, even when that's not their skill set.)
Most academies aren't standalones though. Most will run many schools and have as much access to buildings maintenance as alocal authority.
Most academies are in multi academy trusts, but there are still more standalone academies (1251) than multi academy trusts (1188).
And a lot of those MATs aren't very multi; 921 of those have fewer than ten schools, and the average MAT size across the sector is 7.5. There's all sorts of stuff involved in running schools that doesn't scale that small. So schools either buy a service in or improvise locally, even when that's not a good idea.
For those who don’t know what a passbook is here is mine from 1985 which my mother found the other week in some of my late old man’s belongings as an illustration.
And this is what we are expecting banks to maintain?
I've heard it all now.
What the hell is the frigging point of one of those in this day and age?
Seems even more pointless than chequebooks.
Never had one.
Its an age and wealth thing.
None of my kids carry cash, I carry cash and cards. They slag me off for carrying cash, bur very so often they get caught short and I dont.
The better off are likely to use e payment, the less well off less so.
Cash will probably have its day but until we have covered access to all I see no reason to accelerate it,
Do parents these days give their teenage kids pocket money as a bank transfer?
Any money my son earns through doing work around the house gets paid by bank transfer. He has even asked gifts to be paid by BACS (from relatives etc) as cash just burns a hole in his pocket. He's found saving much easier since we abolished cash entirely.
That's interesting, I always assumed that the problem is the otherway round. You have much less of a feeling how much you are spending when paying with a card or an app, which i would have thought easily leads to overspending. I was in the UK last month and it was annoying how many barstaff would hold the card reader with the amount being charged facing them, so I had to stand on tiptoes, lean over and read the price upside down.
I guess the reality is some people have more of a problem overspending with cash in the pocket and others more of a problem overspending with cashless payment.
I think my kids are a similar age to OLB's - and their issue with cash is keeping it in one place. Inevitably some of the abrogate the responsibility and hand their money over to me to keep in my wallet until they want to spend some of it, which inevitably gets muddled with my money, and I have to keep a running mental tally of how much of each daughter's money is mine. And that's without all the money scattered around their room in various piggy banks, money boxes etc which they have acquired over the years. It was a great relief when they started using cards.
Another big problem with cash, right there. It really is a deeply flawed mode of tender.
Cash isn't 'deeply flawed', just as a notepad and pen isn't deeply flawed despite the presence of word processing software. Cash, cards, phones (I guess) - all have their advantages and drawbacks. Despite the inconveniences above, I'm not going to be giving my 8 year old a bank card, because she will lose it.
It is deeply flawed, that's why lots of people simply stopped using it many years ago and have never looked back.
Electronic payments: The buyer taps his phone, the money goes straight into the retailer's account.
Cash: The buyer takes his card to a machine, converting perfectly functional, electronic money into slips of paper and shards of metal that he now has to carry about his person. These odd scraps of material are then offered to a retailer who has to find more scraps of material to give back to the buyer as change. If the retailer lacks the correct composition of material, the transaction fails. Assuming he has the correct composition, the retailer now has to store these scraps of material in a secure place, at cost and risk to himself, before finding additional time in his working week to transport said scraps of material to a place, probably several miles away, so he can given them to a lady in a pin-striped skirt who doesn't want them either. Said lady has to them put them in a secure place, at cost and risk to her own business, so they can be transported at even more cost to her business to an even more secure place, at which point she is able to convert them back into electronic money for the retailer, who could have just been paid directly in electronic money in the first place.
Electronic payments: reliant on thr tech working. Cash: not reliant on the tech working.
Fake news.
I was left high and dry in Southeast Europe recently because the only ATM in the resort I was staying in had conked out, and the restaurant I was eating in took only cash (like lots of the places there, it was a real step back in time). It was a right palaver, which required me to ask a taxi to park illegally at the next resort while I literally legged it in 30c heat to another cashpoint. Cash is an antiquated system that – ironically – relies far too heavily on machines.
You want to ban cash based retail when the business and their customers are happy with those restrictions?
Er, nope.
I have said on here several times, probably dozens of time, I wouldn’t ban cash nor cash based retail.
Do I need to say it yet again FFS?
Ban was your word not mine. But you are happy to "restrict", as you said above.
The reason cash should be enforced as an option is the unbanked are generally the poor. If shops gradually move to cashless only we run the risk of the unbanked having few places to shop which might be miles from where they live. Cash accepting shops as they get fewer will also be able to jack up prices as they become the only place the unbanked can shop, a captive audience.
This also before we get into enabling a surveillance state where the government can monitor everything you spend
Not having the means to spend cash is actually a bigger problem than the related problem of not having access to bank accounts (the Nigel Farage campaign). Neither problem affects huge numbers of people but they do affect vulnerable people disproportionately.
Yes not having money to spend is a bigger problem, however also having some cash then having to go far afield to spend it because you dont have a card does not help.
Ludlow it is! A foaming pint of virtual perry for @Carnyx and a faux thimble of Ludlow gin for @boulay
What a stunning little town
My hotel in the first pic is Dinham Weir House
Here’s my room in case anyone is scared that I’m suffering unduly on my Official Gazette Welsh Marches Road Trip
We were in Ludlow for a weekend a month ago. It's alright - nothing to write home about though.
It’s architecturally exquisite! A completely unharmed 13th-19th century English market town with the Shropshire hills at the end of every road
John Betjeman called it the “prettiest town in England”
However it definitely feels a lot poorer than somewhere like Hereford. Indeed, as I say, it reminds me of Hereford three decades ago - before it was gentrified
I wouldn’t go that far, but the wealth (or lack thereof) is certainly different. Hereford is squaddies and urban families relocated from a bunch of cities including, bizarrely, Glasgow (metalworking basically). There’s a lot of light industry in the city, not least Bulmers/Heineken.
Ludlow however is proper Herefordshire rural with a smattering of expat gastro Londoners. It was also, believe it or not, the epicentre of the computer games magazine industry in the 1980s.
If you want rural poor, Craven Arms is just one stop up the railway line. Good locally owned supermarket, though.
I went back to Hereford recently and it was proper posh compared to what I knew as a lad. I grew up there - I had Scottish friends and friends with SAS dads for the reasons you state
Every night there was a good chance of a major fight. They were guaranteed at weekends
Now it’s all sushi bars and gastro pubs and gleaming vinoteks
And for a good reason. It’s a handsome, safe, largely unspoiled cathedral city surrounded by magnificent countryside. A fine place to live. Not that I appreciated this age 17 and bored witless
A town of two halves. I thought the Widemarsh St. end of HighTown looked good, walking down to the newish food court shopping centre (where the Cattle Market used to be) is great. The other end, Maylords Orchard and the street that used to house Chadds, whose name escapes me, looks tired. Commercial Street down to the Hospital is the same as it ever was.
Ross, by the way is much improved. Much better kept than Ledbury and Newent.
You won't like Leominster or Bromyard as they are Eastern European conclaves.
That’s good. I’d heard sad things about Ross so yay
Leominster was lovely in my memory (possibly faulty); Bromyard was always basically Birmingham
Leominster is fine. Lots of antique shops.
In Ross, there is a really nice little deli/cake shop/cafe if you turn right at the market house coming up from Oveross. I think it is called something like the Secret Garden. If you have a vehicle, the Moody Cow at Upton Bishop is a decent place to eat.
The Southern Marches seem to get towns right. Alongside Herefordshire's Ledbury, Leominster and Ross there is much to be recommended in Monmouth, Abergavenny, Crickhowell, Hay, and of course Ludlow.
They also as others have noted sit somewhat outside the normal English and Welsh cultures and social fabric. They are sui generis.
Bradford-upon-Avon looks nice
A bit full of traffic; but adjacent to the parish church a long neglected and refound (19th century) Anglo Saxon church. Absolutely unmissable; there is nothing quite like it.
For a measurement that’s supposed to be hard for an opposition leader to do well on, 17% gap is looking quite commanding now. RW tend to poll higher % for Con too, compared to most other pollsters, even as Sunak is crashing personally in the fieldwork they still find yet another 28% for Con.
The momentum in which Sunak’s political stock is declining, as the electorate back away from him, has to be the main polling take from the last month.
The England sub sample breaks 44-30-16 (the highest LD number for a while). A 13 point Conservative lead in December 2019 is now a 14 point Labour lead so the swing is 13.5%. The Conservatives were 32 points ahead of the LDs in 2019, the gap now is 14 so that's a 9% swing.
We also have the conundrum of tactical voting and where that might take us.
The subsample isn’t weighted is it? Therefore it’s meaningless, yet you seem to quote meaningless subsamples almost daily.
It is weighted according to the data tables - don't bother about the apology.
Well apologies in this case.
However, you frequently ‘analyse’ unweighted subsamples and disappear whenever challenged on the practice.
For those who don’t know what a passbook is here is mine from 1985 which my mother found the other week in some of my late old man’s belongings as an illustration.
And this is what we are expecting banks to maintain?
I've heard it all now.
What the hell is the frigging point of one of those in this day and age?
Seems even more pointless than chequebooks.
Never had one.
Its an age and wealth thing.
None of my kids carry cash, I carry cash and cards. They slag me off for carrying cash, bur very so often they get caught short and I dont.
The better off are likely to use e payment, the less well off less so.
Cash will probably have its day but until we have covered access to all I see no reason to accelerate it,
Do parents these days give their teenage kids pocket money as a bank transfer?
Any money my son earns through doing work around the house gets paid by bank transfer. He has even asked gifts to be paid by BACS (from relatives etc) as cash just burns a hole in his pocket. He's found saving much easier since we abolished cash entirely.
That's interesting, I always assumed that the problem is the otherway round. You have much less of a feeling how much you are spending when paying with a card or an app, which i would have thought easily leads to overspending. I was in the UK last month and it was annoying how many barstaff would hold the card reader with the amount being charged facing them, so I had to stand on tiptoes, lean over and read the price upside down.
I guess the reality is some people have more of a problem overspending with cash in the pocket and others more of a problem overspending with cashless payment.
I think my kids are a similar age to OLB's - and their issue with cash is keeping it in one place. Inevitably some of the abrogate the responsibility and hand their money over to me to keep in my wallet until they want to spend some of it, which inevitably gets muddled with my money, and I have to keep a running mental tally of how much of each daughter's money is mine. And that's without all the money scattered around their room in various piggy banks, money boxes etc which they have acquired over the years. It was a great relief when they started using cards.
Another big problem with cash, right there. It really is a deeply flawed mode of tender.
Cash isn't 'deeply flawed', just as a notepad and pen isn't deeply flawed despite the presence of word processing software. Cash, cards, phones (I guess) - all have their advantages and drawbacks. Despite the inconveniences above, I'm not going to be giving my 8 year old a bank card, because she will lose it.
It is deeply flawed, that's why lots of people simply stopped using it many years ago and have never looked back.
Electronic payments: The buyer taps his phone, the money goes straight into the retailer's account.
Cash: The buyer takes his card to a machine, converting perfectly functional, electronic money into slips of paper and shards of metal that he now has to carry about his person. These odd scraps of material are then offered to a retailer who has to find more scraps of material to give back to the buyer as change. If the retailer lacks the correct composition of material, the transaction fails. Assuming he has the correct composition, the retailer now has to store these scraps of material in a secure place, at cost and risk to himself, before finding additional time in his working week to transport said scraps of material to a place, probably several miles away, so he can given them to a lady in a pin-striped skirt who doesn't want them either. Said lady has to them put them in a secure place, at cost and risk to her own business, so they can be transported at even more cost to her business to an even more secure place, at which point she is able to convert them back into electronic money for the retailer, who could have just been paid directly in electronic money in the first place.
Electronic payments: reliant on thr tech working. Cash: not reliant on the tech working.
Fake news.
I was left high and dry in Southeast Europe recently because the only ATM in the resort I was staying in had conked out, and the restaurant I was eating in took only cash (like lots of the places there, it was a real step back in time). It was a right palaver, which required me to ask a taxi to park illegally at the next resort while I literally legged it in 30c heat to another cashpoint. Cash is an antiquated system that – ironically – relies far too heavily on machines.
You want to ban cash based retail when the business and their customers are happy with those restrictions?
Er, nope.
I have said on here several times, probably dozens of time, I wouldn’t ban cash nor cash based retail.
Do I need to say it yet again FFS?
Ban was your word not mine. But you are happy to "restrict", as you said above.
Wrong. You said I wanted to ban cash - a lie. I have said repeatedly otherwise.
Comments
(Including the cases where the vehicles are exempt from the charge)
https://twitter.com/AdamBronkhorst/status/1698582416657437124
It's the barely believable clusterf*ck unfolding over Britain's crumbling schools.
The current Conservative Party really are the gift to Labour that keeps on giving.
One day it will doubtless be the other way around, but this Government is beyond parody.
The International Olympic Committee’s executive board is to decide on additional sports for the LA Games on Friday and sources say that men’s and women’s T20 cricket will be included. Any decision will need to be ratified by the IOC’s session in Mumbai, India, next month.
Thomas Bach, the IOC’s president, is understood to be very keen to include cricket because of its appeal to the vast populations of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, which are traditionally not so engaged in Olympic sports as other parts of the world. An Olympic T20 tournament would be expected to attract enormous numbers of TV viewers.
LA 2028 organisers (LA28) are understood to be willing to accommodate cricket in return for “flag football” — a non-contact version of American football where players are tackled by having Velcro tags removed — being included as well.
Bach has been encouraging India to bid for the 2036 Olympics, which would be the first time it has hosted the Games, saying there is a “strong case” to take the multi-sport event there. Having cricket established as an Olympic sport would be a big boost towards that and would also be appropriate for the 2032 Games in Brisbane, Australia. It would also receive a positive reception in Mumbai during the IOC session on October 15-17.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/efd640be-4b31-11ee-ae1a-79bb7c14d872?shareToken=aa80bd5e81aecd32d373b95e670bb470
There's a version of Conservatism which is a lot more centrist centre right than the current one, which I believe would be more popular.
But you can only get there by a big jump, of the sort Cameron did. And that sort of jump can only really be done in opposition.
If you try to do it by gentle shuffles, the first few steps make you less popular, not more. You lose GB News types before you gain centrist dads.
For now, Sunak is trapped on a local summit of a small hill. Every path starts downhill, even if there are better, higher peaks nearby.
They're doomed. Just about everyone knows it. It's when, not if.
Somewhere like Mende in Lozere or the rougher bits of Lot
It is also easily as beautiful as any of them
It is bound to be gentrified (regentrified?) eventually
The middle classes are all down in the valley below the castle playing tennis. Or swimming in the weir
Always look on the bright side of life.
"Some U.S. military officials appear astonished that the Ukrainian counteroffensive has not made a rapid breakthrough — and, through anonymous quotes to the news media, they are laying the blame on the Ukrainian military. Retired U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Mark Arnold, by contrast, isn’t the least bit surprised at the slow pace of the advance — and he’s blaming the Americans, not the Ukrainians."
source$: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/09/04/arnold-ukraine-counteroffensive-united-states-weapons/
Arnold believes we should be sending more equipment, particularly "tanks with antitank mine blades and heavy rollers". And that retired officers fromthe West should be helping with training inside Ukraine.
(The US is beginning to increase production of some weapons: "The U.S. Army expects that its output of 155mm artillery shells will increase from 24,000 a month this year to at least 80,000 a month next year.")
There’s men from the barn and the forge and the mill and the fold,
The lads for the girls and the lads for the liquor are there,
And there with the rest are the lads that will never be old.
The momentum in which Sunak’s political stock is declining, as the electorate back away from him, has to be the main polling take from the last month.
If she does get sacked over crumbling schools, I feel somehow it is Karma for her seeing local government as somehow beneath her. (I realise schools come under the County Council but the principle is the same.)
The pub I’m in now dates from 1102
1102!!!!
When this pub was built the fields and hovels all around would still have been full of Anglo Saxons staring murderously at the obnoxious new Normans in the shiny new castle. I sense some of them are still staring
“Nothing to write home about”???
FFS
The Tories have reinvented themselves in office a couple of times already. That was done by taking those downhill steps, knowing that the uplands were available. Whether you like him or not, Boris was for instance prepared to sacrifice people like Grieve who were irreconcilable with the vision - and was rewarded with an overall majority for doing so.
But Brexit is done now. Trying to cling on to the Brexit vote is ridiculous and asinine when people are looking for the future.
If the Tories were prepared to reinvent themselves again, sacrifice those who are irreconcilable and move on to the higher hill then that could be rewarding.
But the biggest problem is not the initial downhill, its that the Tories have thrown in the towel. Game's over. They've given up.
https://twitter.com/tillythorpe/status/1698613376862040289?t=aTrU_3PnP0S5CF6kZ8rygg&s=19
Ludlow however is proper Herefordshire rural with a smattering of expat gastro Londoners. It was also, believe it or not, the epicentre of the computer games magazine industry in the 1980s.
If you want rural poor, Craven Arms is just one stop up the railway line. Good locally owned supermarket, though.
At the moment the Tories are neither winning centrists, who are almost all voting Starmer Labour or LD, or holding the right, many of whom are DK or RefUK. Brown had the same problem in 2010 when Labour did even worse than Corbyn on just 29% having lost the centre to the Conservatives and LDs and much of the left to the Greens and LDs.
Truss was even worse
They used to allow you on to the roof of the stand - that was the best especially on a fine winter's afternoon - not much fun in the wind and rain I'd imagine.
YouGov poll reveals stark decline in support for the monarchy, with roughly a 50 per cent drop among young people in a decade
Only three in 10 young people think the Royal family is good for Britain, a new YouGov poll has revealed.
A majority of those aged 18-24 also said they held a negative opinion of the King as he approaches the first anniversary of his reign, with 52 per cent expressing disapproval.
The figures pose a significant problem for the monarchy, suggesting that attitudes among Generation Z have not improved in the last three years.
Younger Britons have been divided on whether or not to keep the monarchy since 2020, when the Duke of York’s friendship with convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein and Harry and Meghan’s fractious exit from royal life saw support plummet.
The latest survey suggests that just over a third of 18 to 24-year-olds want the UK to retain the monarchy, while 40 per cent would prefer an elected head of state.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/royal-family/2023/09/04/yougov-poll-young-people-monarchy-royal-family-bad-britain/
A "fragrant" woman saying "fuck" gives certain Tory gentlemen the horn.
And that's why she said it.
We also have the conundrum of tactical voting and where that might take us.
Every night there was a good chance of a major fight. They were guaranteed at weekends
Now it’s all sushi bars and gastro pubs and gleaming vinoteks
And for a good reason. It’s a handsome, safe, largely unspoiled cathedral city surrounded by magnificent countryside. A fine place to live. Not that I appreciated this age 17 and bored witless
This is one of their ~14C misericord carvings, of a cellar-manager in a monastery.
https://www.greatenglishchurches.co.uk/html/ludlow.html
I have said on here several times, probably dozens of time, I wouldn’t ban cash nor cash based retail.
Do I need to say it yet again FFS?
On the case
Fortunately this is my week off at home, while next week we'll be in the south of Spain where 30ishC is anticipated.
Been glorious today, sitting in the garden reading and dipping in to PB. Still out here now with a Bottle of Dog to quenchmy thirst.
But the route to any recovery and limiting seat losses is not the route Sunak is on, the party now blithely defending privilege is the opposite of what Margaret Thatcher built 4 election wins on (including 92). If the Tories replaced the dry right wing messengers Sunak & Braverman for moderates, and switched their concern from ULEZ type issues to cost of rents, costs of mortgage, shortness in housing, they will win so many voters back from the centre before the next election than those they lose rightwards (Stu and HY both wrong on this) and will defend an awful lot more seats at the next general election that look very much lost today.
Making such a move is pointless after an election reducing them to 150 seats. It’s about knowing what the electorate want to hear right now in order to better defend every seat. In other words, the fight for relevance and electoral position begins right now, today. It’s important Conservatives realise this urgency, and not just drift into a general election shellacking.
Keegan can argue the decision wasn't her fault because she's the nth English Education Minister in the last three years and hasn't been around long enough to do anything. But it doesn't help her, when it was her boss amongst others who cut the maintenance budget.
One is that the other changes of personnel were justified as responses to disasters- Dave's defeat in the referendum, May's defeats in the Brexit votes, Johnson's moral collapse and Truss's... everything.
The problem with Sunak is much more a slow puncture than a car crash. And a party that just dumps leaders on that basis ends up.looking frivolous and self indulgent.
More importantly, the Conservatives simply don't have the bodies to run a government that might pique the interest of the centre right centrists (like me) who might be turnable. For whatever reason, a lot of them left in 2019. Sunak and his cabinet, mediocre at best though they are, is roughly as good as it gets.
It's fixable, but it needs the time and obscurity of opposition to happen. And it will probably take two terms at least.
At least the DfE aren’t pedantic and overbearing on all other aspects. Oh
One way to fund all the necessary building works.
"Sorry there's no money left and everything is falling apart at the seams"?
I recall aspects such like capital investment in areas like the NHS are appealing at a national level.
We should have invested in capital and infrastructure like mad back when the government could borrow at negative 1-2% real yields.
It's going to be a lot more costly to fix things now.
Ross, by the way is much improved. Much better kept than Ledbury and Newent.
You won't like Leominster or Bromyard as they are Eastern European conclaves.
They've been feeding students a diet of malignant Wokery for the last 8 years.
Leominster was lovely in my memory (possibly faulty); Bromyard was always basically Birmingham
Some put this down to the removal of lead from petrol. I'm not convinced, but I like the theory.
This also before we get into enabling a surveillance state where the government can monitor everything you spend
In Ross, there is a really nice little deli/cake shop/cafe if you turn right at the market house coming up from Oveross. I think it is called something like the Secret Garden. If you have a vehicle, the Moody Cow at Upton Bishop is a decent place to eat.
Not, to be fair, that they had ever been much good at maintaining the fabric, but academy chains don't seem to have even tried. Partly I think because many of them were quietly promised new buildings as part of the conversion process...
But academisation didn't help. LEAs had sufficient scale to have in-house access to people who knew about buildings. Standalone academies, and most chains, simply don't.
The evolution of the academy model over the last decade has been to recreate undersized, geographically incoherent LEAs, generally with a more expensive executive layer.
(And heads who liked, and thrived, running their own show have been forced into expanding into turning around difficult schools, even when that's not their skill set.)
They also as others have noted sit somewhat outside the normal English and Welsh cultures and social fabric. They are sui generis.
But the meme that's been pumped out for at least the last five years is that royalty, imperialism, white supremacy and racism are all intrinsically connected and complicit, which simply isn't true. And at that age you do tend to lap it all up.
But regardless... if you don't have the money - you can't fix the school... whether you are an academy or not. I think this one is on Treasury more than DfE.
I worked on a confidential project looking into their performance on a government contract (which I can't discuss) ten years ago - doubt anything was ever done about it.
Referendum polling is more unpredictable and unstable than virtually anything else, and highly vulnerable to campaign framing.
It's amazing how many stories their news website derives from it.
Never get a thank you.
https://ffteducationdatalab.org.uk/2023/04/are-mats-getting-bigger/
Most academies are in multi academy trusts, but there are still more standalone academies (1251) than multi academy trusts (1188).
And a lot of those MATs aren't very multi; 921 of those have fewer than ten schools, and the average MAT size across the sector is 7.5. There's all sorts of stuff involved in running schools that doesn't scale that small. So schools either buy a service in or improvise locally, even when that's not a good idea.
However, you frequently ‘analyse’ unweighted subsamples and disappear whenever challenged on the practice.
Tory anti-woke = good