Not exactly Paris but big enough to have life. Especially at 7pm on a balmy weekday evening
This is one of the main roads, in the centre, right now
They’ve all taken small boats to England.
I’ve found the tourist centre. Even here…
Provincial France feels notably “recessiony” to me
Perhaps they knew you were coming?
Hello Punter
What’s all this ‘he’s a terrible tipster” stuff I saw you posting about me?
Lol! I was thinking of certain suggestions concerning how well UKIP were going to do at one or two elections in the past. I'm afraid I followed you over the cliff a couple of times, and I tend to remember that kind of thing. But I take full responsibility myself, as all punters must, and I'm sure they were not at all typical of your prowess generally, so I apologise if I maligned you unfairly.
Good to see you back anyway.
I think any punter who knows his stuff would regard backing UKIP to get more than 10%,& to outpoll the Lib Dem’s in the 2015 GE, years before the election, taking money off half the site in the process to be a bit unlucky to back them in several constituencies only for them to poll 13% and only get one seat
Thurrock was the big bet at 16/1, it was 4/5 on election day and they lost by 300 votes. I wouldn’t want to be laying bets like that too often.
Don't tke it too seriously, Sam. I wouldn't have placed the bets if I hadn't thought they were value myself. They were, as you kind of indacate, great value losers. I don't really have a problem with that. And, if you've been lurking all these years, you will know that I have often pointed out the iniquitous way FPTP worked against the Kippers.
So, what you got in the locker these days? You heavy on Trump? Or Mordaunt maybe?
I don't bet serioosuly any more, so I don't give tips on here like I once did. It was always my policy never to tip anything I hadn't backed myself. My guess is you do likewise, in which case, respect.
I am also generally a moderate but I do think firing squads are a reasonable option for dealing with the management of train companies which cannot provide an internet service on a train in 2023. Nothing else has worked.
Typical namby-pamby mollycoddling. Vivisect the barstewards. Internal organs are too good for them. 😀😀😀
And just as you start to despair of Labour having any ambition at all they confirm they'll build the whole of HS2 and NPR (though I'll believe it when I see it).
I know "out of touch" is a cliche but the government really are coming across as very 1996/7 at the moment. Tired and out of ideas.
Their big opportunity in the near term is a poor Labour showing at the byelections. If the SNP keep Rutherglen and Tories retain Tamworth (quite possible) and Mid Beds (also quite possible) then we'll get a couple of weeks of Starmer in crisis to reset the media narrative. If Labour win 2 or 3 of those then it'll just pile on the pain. If Labour win Rutherglen and Tamworth and Lib Dems get Mid Beds with Labour second then the Tories will go into meltdown.
So that we know what to look out for - in what ways would the Tories in meltdown look different from what we are seeing now?
That's the brilliant psychological experiment that the mice are currently running.
Sunak looks like a loser. Different methodologies make it hard to compare, but he's doing about as badly as Major in '96. And he doesn't have the residual kudos for being an election winner in his own right. And Britain is not, as the slogan went, Booming, or showing any signs of preparing to boom.
Standard Operating Procedure here is change leader and hope. But for the reasons listed by @david_herdson upthread, that's not really an option. So all they can do is hang on and hope.
They clearly want to melt down, but they aren't allowed to. The sort of torture some people pay good money for. Apparently.
Meltdown to me means another 1922 committee palaver with the entire parliamentary party stabbing each other in the back. One thing they've sort of managed in the last year is a modicum of unity.
I think the final attempted regicide before the election is there, in the background. It may not happen or it may. A bit like the Prigozhin mutiny (and like that one, I think Sunak would see off the mutineers). Some of the early signs are there.
When it becomes clear that keeping him is more costly electorally than offing him, he'll go. His personal polling falling beneath that of the party would be a sign.
The trouble is there is no king or queen across the water. No Boris.
This is right. It isn't enough for Tory MPs to conclude that Sunak is a liability in that he slips to being less popular than his party (which isn't the case at the moment anyway on most polls).
They also need to think that the act of defenestration wouldn't in itself hurt them still further, and that the new leader they end up with would be better. The new leader has to be an MP, ruling out at least one person of note. Any vaguely capable contender would far rather be the shiny new Leader of the Opposition after an election than the hapless mug who got a shellacking after a handful of months at the helm so will be really hard to persuade to step up rather than wait a short time. That just leaves the howling mad and the terminally sh1t, who aren't an obvious improvement to say the least.
I just can't see it.
The only one is Penny. I'm a fan of the person, but not necessarily the policy agenda of Penny, but she's always been fairly cagey about that anyway.
I think Penny is the only one that Charles would have as PM without making an awful constitutional fuss. I can't see him happily installing Steve Barclay as PM, he'd demand a GE. Penny's sword carrying means he'd probably go with her as caretaker PM. I'd like Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda. I don't think the latter is guaranteed, possibly not even likely, but the very presence of a new leader would mean a shift in policy was demanded. Nobody wants a new leader to do a 'better' version of Sunakism.
Firstly, King Charles' views have absolutely nothing to do with it. He might or might not express a view in private audience with the new PM as to whether an election should be called promptly, but his constitutional duty is simply to appoint as PM whoever, due to being elected leader by the majority party, is the person able to command a majority in the House of Commons. If you think he'd do anything else, you're living in a fantasy world.
Secondly, Mordaunt is very unlikely to have any interest in being the sap who gets to be caretaker for a few months before a shellacking. I'm not 100% certain on this one as she sometimes makes eccentric moves (taking her bid against Sunak to the wire in leadership contest 2 for instance) but very unlikely.
Finally, "Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda" is just your own, personal fantasy and best left for you to enjoy in your private time.
I made quite clear that that was what I wanted rather than what I expected, not sure why the attempted 'zinger' was necessary.
I think Charles is more than capable of throwing a constitutional strop that derails a leadership takeover. He lacks QEII's propriety in that regard imo.
I am convinced Charles would have told Boris and Cummings he would not prorogue Parliament to try and get Brexit done, while the Queen was probably a Leaver, Charles would probably have been a Remainer had he been able to vote. See his first state visits as King were to Germany and France
And his son and daughter-in-law weren’t that welcome in the Caribbean Commonwealth not long before the Coronation.
Most of the Caribbean Commonwealth are now republics or heading that way anyway
Most of the whole Commonwealth are now republics.
All the commonwealth will be shortly - it's inevitable
No it isn't, certainly not in the white majority largely British Isles origin Australia, Canada and New Zealand, even if it is and largely already is in non white majority Commonwealth nations.
Indeed on current polls Australians may even reject a Voice for Aborigines to their Parliament in the referendum next month
It most certainly is especially with Charles looking uninspiring and frankly who cares
This isn't a blip. Look at the underlying numbers in both the Deltapoll and Ipsos polls today (helpfully summarised in the threads below). They're awful for the Tories.
At the risk of turning into @Heathener, the prospect of something close to a Tory wipe out is being underplayed.
Just because it's never happened (ignoring what happened to the Liberals) and just because they've existed for so long (so had the Liberals) doesn't mean it's never going to happen.
I’m pretty instinctively a Tory kind of guy. A Unionist through and through, proud to be British, a believer in capitalism and private enterprise, encouraging people to work hard to get on and rewarding ambition.
I really have no idea what this government is about anymore. It is high tax, low service, short sighted and, particularly anywhere near the Home Office, deeply unpleasant bordering on unBritish. I am in something approaching despair. What on earth happened to Cameron’s new Tories?
Short answer: they lost the referendum.
Long answer: Cameroonism didn't really have a good answer to the question "what are the Conservatives for?" The coalition was a bit of an "in office, not in power" experience and some sort of reaction against that was probably inevitable. I don't like the form that has taken any more than you, but I can sort of understand it. Add to that the change in the age graph; the Conservatives are a "waiting for God" party now in a way they weren't before. That has consequences.
As for the higher tax, lower services issue... I'm willing to cut Sunak some slack there, though I wish he'd be honest about it. The UK has been writing post-dated cheques for decades, and the electorate has rewarded governments for doing that. They were bound to be cashed eventually, and it's not entirely Sunak's fault that it's on his watch.
The medium answer: They lost the referendum, then didn’t stick around to honour the result.
Yes. It was essential to the Tory project in 2015/16 that Cameron, having given us the choice, remained as PM to see it through. If he had thought that a Leave result was undeliverable and was a resignation issue he should have said so in advance, as giving the people the choice was the manifesto commitment. He didn't.
That travesty was compounded by failing to appoint a genuine Brexiteer as PM in his place.
They have never recovered from those two disasters.
And yet, writing that down highlights quite what a mad gamble Cameron took.
There is no way he could plausibly remain PM after June 2016; he had recommended one course of action to the British population, and they voted against it. It wasn't technically a vote of confidence, but it had the same weight.
Besides, Cameron would (presumably) have negotiated an arrangement closer to the EU than May's or Johnson's. Given the buckets of shit poured on May, is it really plausible to think that Cameron negotiating something would have ended better?
I think so.
He shouldn’t have taken a prominent role in the referendum, so he could still have been PM no matter what. But even given the way it panned out, he should have hung around to make a deal as he said he would.
By the way, I hear Aklu Plaza is closing. They couldn’t get permission for the ‘banqueting suite/community space/wedding venue’ on the third floor in time, and the ‘shop’ downstairs was a rat infested front
Once upon a time it was a Debenhams, I remember mum and dad driving me and my brother there from Ilford every couple of weekends.
No commentary here on the Sunak U-turn on net-zero plans for cars and boilers? Looks like a serious attempt at a reset for the Tories - and one I like. Can Labour go along with it? Could be Zugzwang for them
I think pro net zero / green policies are more popular than you think. We can’t keep changing parameters because one option looks politically more advantageous.
If Germany isn't doing it, why would we commit economical suicide by doing it?
I thought all the EU have said 2035 but Germany is pushing for later than that
She has a point. Is it right to deprive someone of their entire livelihood on the basis of hearsay and anonymous allegations - made to the media not the police?
I suppose you could argue that Brand has the money to fight libel actions but it still doesn’t seem quite right
Maybe key word is 'suspends'?
@Cyclefree probably knows way more than us about this kind of corporate thing, but if there is some kind of allegation of a v serious nature in a workplace are people not sometimes 'suspended' pending an investigation?
Quite often, they are.
Tiger Woods lost zillions in sponsorships for behaviour which wasn’t on the level of Brands - cheating on his wife with various er… professionals, mainly.
And amateurs! Like the next door neighbour's daughter.
Yup.
So Brand has nothing to whine about. If you are in the entertainment business, your image can affect others. So it matters. “But it’s legal” doesn’t work for that.
Hang on. I get all this if Brand is found guilty of what he is being accused of. But Leon is right. At the moment he is being cancelled based on (very credible) accusations.
Suspending YouTube income if held for him to be repaid if he was shown not to be guilty seems okay. But scrubbing content from Channel 4 seems way out of line. And should we not give individuals the choice as to whether they want to spend money and time at his shows?
I think the man is a money-grabbing turd these days, but I think we play into the hands of those stoking a culture war by reacting this way.
It’s always been thus. When the scandal breaks, the sponsors run. And try and scrub their record clean.
Yeah I get that this is how it is, but the sponsors and/or show hosts should get shit for it, not ‘Brand has nothing to whine about’.
Plus on the free market argument it can work both ways. Performers can argue ‘I need this astronomical amount because I might get cancelled tomorrow’.
Though Leon misses the point a bit too about going to court, because rape conviction rates are so woefully low.
It’s how the game is played. There’s a reason for all those Moral Turpitude clauses in media contracts.
And just as you start to despair of Labour having any ambition at all they confirm they'll build the whole of HS2 and NPR (though I'll believe it when I see it).
I know "out of touch" is a cliche but the government really are coming across as very 1996/7 at the moment. Tired and out of ideas.
Their big opportunity in the near term is a poor Labour showing at the byelections. If the SNP keep Rutherglen and Tories retain Tamworth (quite possible) and Mid Beds (also quite possible) then we'll get a couple of weeks of Starmer in crisis to reset the media narrative. If Labour win 2 or 3 of those then it'll just pile on the pain. If Labour win Rutherglen and Tamworth and Lib Dems get Mid Beds with Labour second then the Tories will go into meltdown.
So that we know what to look out for - in what ways would the Tories in meltdown look different from what we are seeing now?
That's the brilliant psychological experiment that the mice are currently running.
Sunak looks like a loser. Different methodologies make it hard to compare, but he's doing about as badly as Major in '96. And he doesn't have the residual kudos for being an election winner in his own right. And Britain is not, as the slogan went, Booming, or showing any signs of preparing to boom.
Standard Operating Procedure here is change leader and hope. But for the reasons listed by @david_herdson upthread, that's not really an option. So all they can do is hang on and hope.
They clearly want to melt down, but they aren't allowed to. The sort of torture some people pay good money for. Apparently.
Meltdown to me means another 1922 committee palaver with the entire parliamentary party stabbing each other in the back. One thing they've sort of managed in the last year is a modicum of unity.
I think the final attempted regicide before the election is there, in the background. It may not happen or it may. A bit like the Prigozhin mutiny (and like that one, I think Sunak would see off the mutineers). Some of the early signs are there.
When it becomes clear that keeping him is more costly electorally than offing him, he'll go. His personal polling falling beneath that of the party would be a sign.
The trouble is there is no king or queen across the water. No Boris.
This is right. It isn't enough for Tory MPs to conclude that Sunak is a liability in that he slips to being less popular than his party (which isn't the case at the moment anyway on most polls).
They also need to think that the act of defenestration wouldn't in itself hurt them still further, and that the new leader they end up with would be better. The new leader has to be an MP, ruling out at least one person of note. Any vaguely capable contender would far rather be the shiny new Leader of the Opposition after an election than the hapless mug who got a shellacking after a handful of months at the helm so will be really hard to persuade to step up rather than wait a short time. That just leaves the howling mad and the terminally sh1t, who aren't an obvious improvement to say the least.
I just can't see it.
The only one is Penny. I'm a fan of the person, but not necessarily the policy agenda of Penny, but she's always been fairly cagey about that anyway.
I think Penny is the only one that Charles would have as PM without making an awful constitutional fuss. I can't see him happily installing Steve Barclay as PM, he'd demand a GE. Penny's sword carrying means he'd probably go with her as caretaker PM. I'd like Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda. I don't think the latter is guaranteed, possibly not even likely, but the very presence of a new leader would mean a shift in policy was demanded. Nobody wants a new leader to do a 'better' version of Sunakism.
Firstly, King Charles' views have absolutely nothing to do with it. He might or might not express a view in private audience with the new PM as to whether an election should be called promptly, but his constitutional duty is simply to appoint as PM whoever, due to being elected leader by the majority party, is the person able to command a majority in the House of Commons. If you think he'd do anything else, you're living in a fantasy world.
Secondly, Mordaunt is very unlikely to have any interest in being the sap who gets to be caretaker for a few months before a shellacking. I'm not 100% certain on this one as she sometimes makes eccentric moves (taking her bid against Sunak to the wire in leadership contest 2 for instance) but very unlikely.
Finally, "Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda" is just your own, personal fantasy and best left for you to enjoy in your private time.
I made quite clear that that was what I wanted rather than what I expected, not sure why the attempted 'zinger' was necessary.
I think Charles is more than capable of throwing a constitutional strop that derails a leadership takeover. He lacks QEII's propriety in that regard imo.
I am convinced Charles would have told Boris and Cummings he would not prorogue Parliament to try and get Brexit done, while the Queen was probably a Leaver, Charles would probably have been a Remainer had he been able to vote. See his first state visits as King were to Germany and France
And his son and daughter-in-law weren’t that welcome in the Caribbean Commonwealth not long before the Coronation.
Most of the Caribbean Commonwealth are now republics or heading that way anyway
Most of the whole Commonwealth are now republics.
All the commonwealth will be shortly - it's inevitable
No it isn't, certainly not in the white majority largely British Isles origin Australia, Canada and New Zealand, even if it is and largely already is in non white majority Commonwealth nations.
Indeed on current polls Australians may even reject a Voice for Aborigines to their Parliament in the referendum next month
It most certainly is especially with Charles looking uninspiring and frankly who cares
Not exactly Paris but big enough to have life. Especially at 7pm on a balmy weekday evening
This is one of the main roads, in the centre, right now
They’ve all taken small boats to England.
I’ve found the tourist centre. Even here…
Provincial France feels notably “recessiony” to me
Certainly compared with Kent and Oxford which were both bouncing over the last fortnight, even with the schools back.
I was in Maidenhead today. Centre of the affluent blue wall.
Desolate.
MP the RtHon Theresa May IIRC
Not anymore. After the boundary changes it’s now part of Redwood’s Wokingham west apparently. Whatever personal vote she gets (she’s a fairly popular local MP) he won’t be getting.
She has a point. Is it right to deprive someone of their entire livelihood on the basis of hearsay and anonymous allegations - made to the media not the police?
I suppose you could argue that Brand has the money to fight libel actions but it still doesn’t seem quite right
Following the universal rule that social media is getting worse in the 2020s, YouTube has become even more capricious and arbitrary over the past year or two. I posted the other day how many military enthusiasts and historians have set up their own platform (armchairhistory.tv?) to bypass YouTubes habit of demonetizing those with violent content, in the same way as the film/media crowd set up Nebula to get around fair use violations. The future for Brand and his cohort is to set up their own hosting website, a GBNews/YouTube hybrid where they can pontificate to their heart's content.
Weirdly, because you spend most of your time on Twitter and I live on YouTube, this might be the only time ever where I am ahead of the curve zeitgeist. Does the Knappers Gazette need a YouTube correspondent?
I've been mildly amused by various writers I've been keeping an eye on youtube to see how they use ChatGPT go all ragequit when it's (and others) guardrails stop them writing a sex scene or a murder in a detective novel.
And just as you start to despair of Labour having any ambition at all they confirm they'll build the whole of HS2 and NPR (though I'll believe it when I see it).
I know "out of touch" is a cliche but the government really are coming across as very 1996/7 at the moment. Tired and out of ideas.
Their big opportunity in the near term is a poor Labour showing at the byelections. If the SNP keep Rutherglen and Tories retain Tamworth (quite possible) and Mid Beds (also quite possible) then we'll get a couple of weeks of Starmer in crisis to reset the media narrative. If Labour win 2 or 3 of those then it'll just pile on the pain. If Labour win Rutherglen and Tamworth and Lib Dems get Mid Beds with Labour second then the Tories will go into meltdown.
So that we know what to look out for - in what ways would the Tories in meltdown look different from what we are seeing now?
That's the brilliant psychological experiment that the mice are currently running.
Sunak looks like a loser. Different methodologies make it hard to compare, but he's doing about as badly as Major in '96. And he doesn't have the residual kudos for being an election winner in his own right. And Britain is not, as the slogan went, Booming, or showing any signs of preparing to boom.
Standard Operating Procedure here is change leader and hope. But for the reasons listed by @david_herdson upthread, that's not really an option. So all they can do is hang on and hope.
They clearly want to melt down, but they aren't allowed to. The sort of torture some people pay good money for. Apparently.
Meltdown to me means another 1922 committee palaver with the entire parliamentary party stabbing each other in the back. One thing they've sort of managed in the last year is a modicum of unity.
I think the final attempted regicide before the election is there, in the background. It may not happen or it may. A bit like the Prigozhin mutiny (and like that one, I think Sunak would see off the mutineers). Some of the early signs are there.
When it becomes clear that keeping him is more costly electorally than offing him, he'll go. His personal polling falling beneath that of the party would be a sign.
The trouble is there is no king or queen across the water. No Boris.
This is right. It isn't enough for Tory MPs to conclude that Sunak is a liability in that he slips to being less popular than his party (which isn't the case at the moment anyway on most polls).
They also need to think that the act of defenestration wouldn't in itself hurt them still further, and that the new leader they end up with would be better. The new leader has to be an MP, ruling out at least one person of note. Any vaguely capable contender would far rather be the shiny new Leader of the Opposition after an election than the hapless mug who got a shellacking after a handful of months at the helm so will be really hard to persuade to step up rather than wait a short time. That just leaves the howling mad and the terminally sh1t, who aren't an obvious improvement to say the least.
I just can't see it.
The only one is Penny. I'm a fan of the person, but not necessarily the policy agenda of Penny, but she's always been fairly cagey about that anyway.
I think Penny is the only one that Charles would have as PM without making an awful constitutional fuss. I can't see him happily installing Steve Barclay as PM, he'd demand a GE. Penny's sword carrying means he'd probably go with her as caretaker PM. I'd like Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda. I don't think the latter is guaranteed, possibly not even likely, but the very presence of a new leader would mean a shift in policy was demanded. Nobody wants a new leader to do a 'better' version of Sunakism.
Firstly, King Charles' views have absolutely nothing to do with it. He might or might not express a view in private audience with the new PM as to whether an election should be called promptly, but his constitutional duty is simply to appoint as PM whoever, due to being elected leader by the majority party, is the person able to command a majority in the House of Commons. If you think he'd do anything else, you're living in a fantasy world.
Secondly, Mordaunt is very unlikely to have any interest in being the sap who gets to be caretaker for a few months before a shellacking. I'm not 100% certain on this one as she sometimes makes eccentric moves (taking her bid against Sunak to the wire in leadership contest 2 for instance) but very unlikely.
Finally, "Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda" is just your own, personal fantasy and best left for you to enjoy in your private time.
I made quite clear that that was what I wanted rather than what I expected, not sure why the attempted 'zinger' was necessary.
I think Charles is more than capable of throwing a constitutional strop that derails a leadership takeover. He lacks QEII's propriety in that regard imo.
I am convinced Charles would have told Boris and Cummings he would not prorogue Parliament to try and get Brexit done, while the Queen was probably a Leaver, Charles would probably have been a Remainer had he been able to vote. See his first state visits as King were to Germany and France
And his son and daughter-in-law weren’t that welcome in the Caribbean Commonwealth not long before the Coronation.
Most of the Caribbean Commonwealth are now republics or heading that way anyway
Most of the whole Commonwealth are now republics.
All the commonwealth will be shortly - it's inevitable
No it isn't, certainly not in the white majority largely British Isles origin Australia, Canada and New Zealand, even if it is and largely already is in non white majority Commonwealth nations.
Indeed on current polls Australians may even reject a Voice for Aborigines to their Parliament in the referendum next month
It most certainly is especially with Charles looking uninspiring and frankly who cares
Uninspiring? What do you want, another Coronation? 😀😀😀
And just as you start to despair of Labour having any ambition at all they confirm they'll build the whole of HS2 and NPR (though I'll believe it when I see it).
I know "out of touch" is a cliche but the government really are coming across as very 1996/7 at the moment. Tired and out of ideas.
Their big opportunity in the near term is a poor Labour showing at the byelections. If the SNP keep Rutherglen and Tories retain Tamworth (quite possible) and Mid Beds (also quite possible) then we'll get a couple of weeks of Starmer in crisis to reset the media narrative. If Labour win 2 or 3 of those then it'll just pile on the pain. If Labour win Rutherglen and Tamworth and Lib Dems get Mid Beds with Labour second then the Tories will go into meltdown.
So that we know what to look out for - in what ways would the Tories in meltdown look different from what we are seeing now?
That's the brilliant psychological experiment that the mice are currently running.
Sunak looks like a loser. Different methodologies make it hard to compare, but he's doing about as badly as Major in '96. And he doesn't have the residual kudos for being an election winner in his own right. And Britain is not, as the slogan went, Booming, or showing any signs of preparing to boom.
Standard Operating Procedure here is change leader and hope. But for the reasons listed by @david_herdson upthread, that's not really an option. So all they can do is hang on and hope.
They clearly want to melt down, but they aren't allowed to. The sort of torture some people pay good money for. Apparently.
Meltdown to me means another 1922 committee palaver with the entire parliamentary party stabbing each other in the back. One thing they've sort of managed in the last year is a modicum of unity.
I think the final attempted regicide before the election is there, in the background. It may not happen or it may. A bit like the Prigozhin mutiny (and like that one, I think Sunak would see off the mutineers). Some of the early signs are there.
When it becomes clear that keeping him is more costly electorally than offing him, he'll go. His personal polling falling beneath that of the party would be a sign.
The trouble is there is no king or queen across the water. No Boris.
This is right. It isn't enough for Tory MPs to conclude that Sunak is a liability in that he slips to being less popular than his party (which isn't the case at the moment anyway on most polls).
They also need to think that the act of defenestration wouldn't in itself hurt them still further, and that the new leader they end up with would be better. The new leader has to be an MP, ruling out at least one person of note. Any vaguely capable contender would far rather be the shiny new Leader of the Opposition after an election than the hapless mug who got a shellacking after a handful of months at the helm so will be really hard to persuade to step up rather than wait a short time. That just leaves the howling mad and the terminally sh1t, who aren't an obvious improvement to say the least.
I just can't see it.
The only one is Penny. I'm a fan of the person, but not necessarily the policy agenda of Penny, but she's always been fairly cagey about that anyway.
I think Penny is the only one that Charles would have as PM without making an awful constitutional fuss. I can't see him happily installing Steve Barclay as PM, he'd demand a GE. Penny's sword carrying means he'd probably go with her as caretaker PM. I'd like Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda. I don't think the latter is guaranteed, possibly not even likely, but the very presence of a new leader would mean a shift in policy was demanded. Nobody wants a new leader to do a 'better' version of Sunakism.
Firstly, King Charles' views have absolutely nothing to do with it. He might or might not express a view in private audience with the new PM as to whether an election should be called promptly, but his constitutional duty is simply to appoint as PM whoever, due to being elected leader by the majority party, is the person able to command a majority in the House of Commons. If you think he'd do anything else, you're living in a fantasy world.
Secondly, Mordaunt is very unlikely to have any interest in being the sap who gets to be caretaker for a few months before a shellacking. I'm not 100% certain on this one as she sometimes makes eccentric moves (taking her bid against Sunak to the wire in leadership contest 2 for instance) but very unlikely.
Finally, "Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda" is just your own, personal fantasy and best left for you to enjoy in your private time.
I made quite clear that that was what I wanted rather than what I expected, not sure why the attempted 'zinger' was necessary.
I think Charles is more than capable of throwing a constitutional strop that derails a leadership takeover. He lacks QEII's propriety in that regard imo.
I am convinced Charles would have told Boris and Cummings he would not prorogue Parliament to try and get Brexit done, while the Queen was probably a Leaver, Charles would probably have been a Remainer had he been able to vote. See his first state visits as King were to Germany and France
And his son and daughter-in-law weren’t that welcome in the Caribbean Commonwealth not long before the Coronation.
Most of the Caribbean Commonwealth are now republics or heading that way anyway
Most of the whole Commonwealth are now republics.
All the commonwealth will be shortly - it's inevitable
No it isn't, certainly not in the white majority largely British Isles origin Australia, Canada and New Zealand, even if it is and largely already is in non white majority Commonwealth nations.
Indeed on current polls Australians may even reject a Voice for Aborigines to their Parliament in the referendum next month
It most certainly is especially with Charles looking uninspiring and frankly who cares
Not exactly Paris but big enough to have life. Especially at 7pm on a balmy weekday evening
This is one of the main roads, in the centre, right now
They’ve all taken small boats to England.
I’ve found the tourist centre. Even here…
Provincial France feels notably “recessiony” to me
Certainly compared with Kent and Oxford which were both bouncing over the last fortnight, even with the schools back.
I was in Maidenhead today. Centre of the affluent blue wall.
Desolate.
I used to rent a room there when I was working for a firm in the area. Very nice place, sympathetically redeveloped about a decade or two ago. One of those little jewels along the (I think) Thames Valley. At the time it was marginally affordable by ordinary people, but not any more. The only disfiguring issue is a gentlemen's club (in the Spearmint Rhino sense, not gay) near the station, but not as bad as say Tonbridge which has/had a sex shop opposite the station entrance. If Maidenhead is suffering things have got bad.
We had an interesting chat about it. The new bit near the river is still ok but it was a town that relied on people coming to work in the offices and eating out at lunch. Since Covid that’s just gone. Unlike where I work in Canary Wharf the offices there are still like ghost towns.
FFS. The Guardian's report on Sunak's Net Zero reverse ferret:
"He is also expected to rule out proposed recycling schemes with multiple bins."
It's gone full-on Cones Hotline, hasn't it? This is basically Government by Alan Partridge.
Don't most places already have multiple bins? That's the norm surely, and it has been the case for many years now.
I (and 1000s of others round here) have 'blue bins' and that's it. Once in a while they even get emptied. In between - everything gets chucked in the regular waste.
Our council leader backed reducing the recycling collections as people were ... recycling too much.
If this woman in LA says Brand raped her then she needs to accuse him in court
Likewise the 16 year old girlfriend. She claims sexual assault
SO GO TO THE POLICE
Enough of this anonymous denouncing. Even in court their identities will be disguised. So what are they afraid of? Brand is not gonna send the mafia after them
Not quite. These women are anonymous, and perhaps not wealthy. Who knows. BUT C4 and The Times have put themselves directly in line for a massive defamation action worth gazillions if they cannot get their story to stand up.
There are well known reasons why women often do not wish to go to criminal courts over sexual matters. Ask Cyclefree. But C4 and the Times have said 'publish and be damned'. Brand can sue them, just as those the DM described as the murderers of Stephen Lawrence can sue the DM for millions. We are still waiting. Let us wait and see on this one too.
And just as you start to despair of Labour having any ambition at all they confirm they'll build the whole of HS2 and NPR (though I'll believe it when I see it).
I know "out of touch" is a cliche but the government really are coming across as very 1996/7 at the moment. Tired and out of ideas.
Their big opportunity in the near term is a poor Labour showing at the byelections. If the SNP keep Rutherglen and Tories retain Tamworth (quite possible) and Mid Beds (also quite possible) then we'll get a couple of weeks of Starmer in crisis to reset the media narrative. If Labour win 2 or 3 of those then it'll just pile on the pain. If Labour win Rutherglen and Tamworth and Lib Dems get Mid Beds with Labour second then the Tories will go into meltdown.
So that we know what to look out for - in what ways would the Tories in meltdown look different from what we are seeing now?
That's the brilliant psychological experiment that the mice are currently running.
Sunak looks like a loser. Different methodologies make it hard to compare, but he's doing about as badly as Major in '96. And he doesn't have the residual kudos for being an election winner in his own right. And Britain is not, as the slogan went, Booming, or showing any signs of preparing to boom.
Standard Operating Procedure here is change leader and hope. But for the reasons listed by @david_herdson upthread, that's not really an option. So all they can do is hang on and hope.
They clearly want to melt down, but they aren't allowed to. The sort of torture some people pay good money for. Apparently.
Meltdown to me means another 1922 committee palaver with the entire parliamentary party stabbing each other in the back. One thing they've sort of managed in the last year is a modicum of unity.
I think the final attempted regicide before the election is there, in the background. It may not happen or it may. A bit like the Prigozhin mutiny (and like that one, I think Sunak would see off the mutineers). Some of the early signs are there.
When it becomes clear that keeping him is more costly electorally than offing him, he'll go. His personal polling falling beneath that of the party would be a sign.
The trouble is there is no king or queen across the water. No Boris.
This is right. It isn't enough for Tory MPs to conclude that Sunak is a liability in that he slips to being less popular than his party (which isn't the case at the moment anyway on most polls).
They also need to think that the act of defenestration wouldn't in itself hurt them still further, and that the new leader they end up with would be better. The new leader has to be an MP, ruling out at least one person of note. Any vaguely capable contender would far rather be the shiny new Leader of the Opposition after an election than the hapless mug who got a shellacking after a handful of months at the helm so will be really hard to persuade to step up rather than wait a short time. That just leaves the howling mad and the terminally sh1t, who aren't an obvious improvement to say the least.
I just can't see it.
The only one is Penny. I'm a fan of the person, but not necessarily the policy agenda of Penny, but she's always been fairly cagey about that anyway.
I think Penny is the only one that Charles would have as PM without making an awful constitutional fuss. I can't see him happily installing Steve Barclay as PM, he'd demand a GE. Penny's sword carrying means he'd probably go with her as caretaker PM. I'd like Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda. I don't think the latter is guaranteed, possibly not even likely, but the very presence of a new leader would mean a shift in policy was demanded. Nobody wants a new leader to do a 'better' version of Sunakism.
Firstly, King Charles' views have absolutely nothing to do with it. He might or might not express a view in private audience with the new PM as to whether an election should be called promptly, but his constitutional duty is simply to appoint as PM whoever, due to being elected leader by the majority party, is the person able to command a majority in the House of Commons. If you think he'd do anything else, you're living in a fantasy world.
Secondly, Mordaunt is very unlikely to have any interest in being the sap who gets to be caretaker for a few months before a shellacking. I'm not 100% certain on this one as she sometimes makes eccentric moves (taking her bid against Sunak to the wire in leadership contest 2 for instance) but very unlikely.
Finally, "Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda" is just your own, personal fantasy and best left for you to enjoy in your private time.
I made quite clear that that was what I wanted rather than what I expected, not sure why the attempted 'zinger' was necessary.
I think Charles is more than capable of throwing a constitutional strop that derails a leadership takeover. He lacks QEII's propriety in that regard imo.
The King would appoint as PM whoever the majority party elects as PM, unless many of the governing party say they would not support the new PM's government, in which case he would request a vote of confidence in it first.
We are at the point now none of the major Tory leadership contenders, Braverman, Badenoch, Mordaunt, Barclay, Tugendhat etc have much interest in taking over now. They will let Sunak and Hunt lose the next election and then put their stalls forward to be Leader of the Opposition
Charles should remember what happened to the first of his name who tried to impose his will on Parliament. There were a surprising number of reminders of this on show at Windsor if he wished to brush up on it.
She has a point. Is it right to deprive someone of their entire livelihood on the basis of hearsay and anonymous allegations - made to the media not the police?
I suppose you could argue that Brand has the money to fight libel actions but it still doesn’t seem quite right
Maybe key word is 'suspends'?
@Cyclefree probably knows way more than us about this kind of corporate thing, but if there is some kind of allegation of a v serious nature in a workplace are people not sometimes 'suspended' pending an investigation?
If fhere is no court case, and no prosecution, will YouTube “desuspend” him? I rather doubt it, but if so fair enough
If they don’t then this is tantamount to trial and conviction by media and anonymous allegation, with the punishment being: end of career
Without the courts even being involved. That makes me deeply uneasy
And I don’t even stan Brand. He wasn't funny and he got far too much sex for my liking
Tons of entertainers have lost their rides - and often for stuff that isn’t especially bad. See Tiger Woods, mentioned above.
What laws did Lance Armstrong actually break?
If you are in entertainment, you need to be better than “it’s all legal”. It needs to be “my reputation is not a negative for my sponsors.”
That’s a valid argument, on the face of it
And yet it is also an invitation to any malefactor to destroy a public figure they don’t like by merely gathering some “anonymous accounts” and splashing them all over the media
You never have to stand them up in court. You never have to prove anything. You can destroy someone by innuendo. smear and anonymous denunciation
Do we really want to applaud that?
They do have to prove it, in the libel courts, on the balance of probabilities. Brand has taken newspapers to court for libel in the past, so let's see if he does now. I'd suggest it's doubtful as the Dispatches piece was a serious piece of investigative journalism offering pretty damning evidence, so he'd be very likely to be humiliated and lose a hell of a lot of money. But he's not allergic to libel law - it's there for him to use as he's done in the past.
You, and others, fundamentally misunderstand what the presumption of innocence is and what it means for debate.
The presumption of innocence is a (perfectly reasonable) legal construct such that the state cannot impose punishment up to and including deprivation of liberty, without convincing an independent tribunal beyond reasonable doubt that a defined crime has been committed.
It does not, however, mean that someone cannot be publicly accused of a crime, or any other wrongdoing short of a crime, nor that people cannot believe the accuser rather than the accused (whether they believe it because of the quality of the investigative journalism, or simply because they always thought him a wrong'un). And, within the law, they can treat the accused accordingly.
The wrongly accused has options in those circumstances including issuing a denial and resorting to the laws of libel. But demanding people think better of them, and their accusers shut their mouths, simply because they haven't in fact been convicted in a criminal court isn't one of those options, and never has been.
And just as you start to despair of Labour having any ambition at all they confirm they'll build the whole of HS2 and NPR (though I'll believe it when I see it).
I know "out of touch" is a cliche but the government really are coming across as very 1996/7 at the moment. Tired and out of ideas.
Their big opportunity in the near term is a poor Labour showing at the byelections. If the SNP keep Rutherglen and Tories retain Tamworth (quite possible) and Mid Beds (also quite possible) then we'll get a couple of weeks of Starmer in crisis to reset the media narrative. If Labour win 2 or 3 of those then it'll just pile on the pain. If Labour win Rutherglen and Tamworth and Lib Dems get Mid Beds with Labour second then the Tories will go into meltdown.
So that we know what to look out for - in what ways would the Tories in meltdown look different from what we are seeing now?
That's the brilliant psychological experiment that the mice are currently running.
Sunak looks like a loser. Different methodologies make it hard to compare, but he's doing about as badly as Major in '96. And he doesn't have the residual kudos for being an election winner in his own right. And Britain is not, as the slogan went, Booming, or showing any signs of preparing to boom.
Standard Operating Procedure here is change leader and hope. But for the reasons listed by @david_herdson upthread, that's not really an option. So all they can do is hang on and hope.
They clearly want to melt down, but they aren't allowed to. The sort of torture some people pay good money for. Apparently.
Meltdown to me means another 1922 committee palaver with the entire parliamentary party stabbing each other in the back. One thing they've sort of managed in the last year is a modicum of unity.
I think the final attempted regicide before the election is there, in the background. It may not happen or it may. A bit like the Prigozhin mutiny (and like that one, I think Sunak would see off the mutineers). Some of the early signs are there.
When it becomes clear that keeping him is more costly electorally than offing him, he'll go. His personal polling falling beneath that of the party would be a sign.
The trouble is there is no king or queen across the water. No Boris.
This is right. It isn't enough for Tory MPs to conclude that Sunak is a liability in that he slips to being less popular than his party (which isn't the case at the moment anyway on most polls).
They also need to think that the act of defenestration wouldn't in itself hurt them still further, and that the new leader they end up with would be better. The new leader has to be an MP, ruling out at least one person of note. Any vaguely capable contender would far rather be the shiny new Leader of the Opposition after an election than the hapless mug who got a shellacking after a handful of months at the helm so will be really hard to persuade to step up rather than wait a short time. That just leaves the howling mad and the terminally sh1t, who aren't an obvious improvement to say the least.
I just can't see it.
The only one is Penny. I'm a fan of the person, but not necessarily the policy agenda of Penny, but she's always been fairly cagey about that anyway.
I think Penny is the only one that Charles would have as PM without making an awful constitutional fuss. I can't see him happily installing Steve Barclay as PM, he'd demand a GE. Penny's sword carrying means he'd probably go with her as caretaker PM. I'd like Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda. I don't think the latter is guaranteed, possibly not even likely, but the very presence of a new leader would mean a shift in policy was demanded. Nobody wants a new leader to do a 'better' version of Sunakism.
Firstly, King Charles' views have absolutely nothing to do with it. He might or might not express a view in private audience with the new PM as to whether an election should be called promptly, but his constitutional duty is simply to appoint as PM whoever, due to being elected leader by the majority party, is the person able to command a majority in the House of Commons. If you think he'd do anything else, you're living in a fantasy world.
Secondly, Mordaunt is very unlikely to have any interest in being the sap who gets to be caretaker for a few months before a shellacking. I'm not 100% certain on this one as she sometimes makes eccentric moves (taking her bid against Sunak to the wire in leadership contest 2 for instance) but very unlikely.
Finally, "Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda" is just your own, personal fantasy and best left for you to enjoy in your private time.
I made quite clear that that was what I wanted rather than what I expected, not sure why the attempted 'zinger' was necessary.
I think Charles is more than capable of throwing a constitutional strop that derails a leadership takeover. He lacks QEII's propriety in that regard imo.
I am convinced Charles would have told Boris and Cummings he would not prorogue Parliament to try and get Brexit done, while the Queen was probably a Leaver, Charles would probably have been a Remainer had he been able to vote. See his first state visits as King were to Germany and France
And his son and daughter-in-law weren’t that welcome in the Caribbean Commonwealth not long before the Coronation.
Most of the Caribbean Commonwealth are now republics or heading that way anyway
Most of the whole Commonwealth are now republics.
All the commonwealth will be shortly - it's inevitable
No it isn't, certainly not in the white majority largely British Isles origin Australia, Canada and New Zealand, even if it is and largely already is in non white majority Commonwealth nations.
Indeed on current polls Australians may even reject a Voice for Aborigines to their Parliament in the referendum next month
It most certainly is especially with Charles looking uninspiring and frankly who cares
Uninspiring? What do you want, another Coronation? 😀😀😀
And just as you start to despair of Labour having any ambition at all they confirm they'll build the whole of HS2 and NPR (though I'll believe it when I see it).
I know "out of touch" is a cliche but the government really are coming across as very 1996/7 at the moment. Tired and out of ideas.
Their big opportunity in the near term is a poor Labour showing at the byelections. If the SNP keep Rutherglen and Tories retain Tamworth (quite possible) and Mid Beds (also quite possible) then we'll get a couple of weeks of Starmer in crisis to reset the media narrative. If Labour win 2 or 3 of those then it'll just pile on the pain. If Labour win Rutherglen and Tamworth and Lib Dems get Mid Beds with Labour second then the Tories will go into meltdown.
So that we know what to look out for - in what ways would the Tories in meltdown look different from what we are seeing now?
That's the brilliant psychological experiment that the mice are currently running.
Sunak looks like a loser. Different methodologies make it hard to compare, but he's doing about as badly as Major in '96. And he doesn't have the residual kudos for being an election winner in his own right. And Britain is not, as the slogan went, Booming, or showing any signs of preparing to boom.
Standard Operating Procedure here is change leader and hope. But for the reasons listed by @david_herdson upthread, that's not really an option. So all they can do is hang on and hope.
They clearly want to melt down, but they aren't allowed to. The sort of torture some people pay good money for. Apparently.
Meltdown to me means another 1922 committee palaver with the entire parliamentary party stabbing each other in the back. One thing they've sort of managed in the last year is a modicum of unity.
I think the final attempted regicide before the election is there, in the background. It may not happen or it may. A bit like the Prigozhin mutiny (and like that one, I think Sunak would see off the mutineers). Some of the early signs are there.
When it becomes clear that keeping him is more costly electorally than offing him, he'll go. His personal polling falling beneath that of the party would be a sign.
The trouble is there is no king or queen across the water. No Boris.
This is right. It isn't enough for Tory MPs to conclude that Sunak is a liability in that he slips to being less popular than his party (which isn't the case at the moment anyway on most polls).
They also need to think that the act of defenestration wouldn't in itself hurt them still further, and that the new leader they end up with would be better. The new leader has to be an MP, ruling out at least one person of note. Any vaguely capable contender would far rather be the shiny new Leader of the Opposition after an election than the hapless mug who got a shellacking after a handful of months at the helm so will be really hard to persuade to step up rather than wait a short time. That just leaves the howling mad and the terminally sh1t, who aren't an obvious improvement to say the least.
I just can't see it.
The only one is Penny. I'm a fan of the person, but not necessarily the policy agenda of Penny, but she's always been fairly cagey about that anyway.
I think Penny is the only one that Charles would have as PM without making an awful constitutional fuss. I can't see him happily installing Steve Barclay as PM, he'd demand a GE. Penny's sword carrying means he'd probably go with her as caretaker PM. I'd like Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda. I don't think the latter is guaranteed, possibly not even likely, but the very presence of a new leader would mean a shift in policy was demanded. Nobody wants a new leader to do a 'better' version of Sunakism.
Firstly, King Charles' views have absolutely nothing to do with it. He might or might not express a view in private audience with the new PM as to whether an election should be called promptly, but his constitutional duty is simply to appoint as PM whoever, due to being elected leader by the majority party, is the person able to command a majority in the House of Commons. If you think he'd do anything else, you're living in a fantasy world.
Secondly, Mordaunt is very unlikely to have any interest in being the sap who gets to be caretaker for a few months before a shellacking. I'm not 100% certain on this one as she sometimes makes eccentric moves (taking her bid against Sunak to the wire in leadership contest 2 for instance) but very unlikely.
Finally, "Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda" is just your own, personal fantasy and best left for you to enjoy in your private time.
I made quite clear that that was what I wanted rather than what I expected, not sure why the attempted 'zinger' was necessary.
I think Charles is more than capable of throwing a constitutional strop that derails a leadership takeover. He lacks QEII's propriety in that regard imo.
I am convinced Charles would have told Boris and Cummings he would not prorogue Parliament to try and get Brexit done, while the Queen was probably a Leaver, Charles would probably have been a Remainer had he been able to vote. See his first state visits as King were to Germany and France
And his son and daughter-in-law weren’t that welcome in the Caribbean Commonwealth not long before the Coronation.
Most of the Caribbean Commonwealth are now republics or heading that way anyway
Most of the whole Commonwealth are now republics.
All the commonwealth will be shortly - it's inevitable
No it isn't, certainly not in the white majority largely British Isles origin Australia, Canada and New Zealand, even if it is and largely already is in non white majority Commonwealth nations.
Indeed on current polls Australians may even reject a Voice for Aborigines to their Parliament in the referendum next month
It most certainly is especially with Charles looking uninspiring and frankly who cares
She has a point. Is it right to deprive someone of their entire livelihood on the basis of hearsay and anonymous allegations - made to the media not the police?
I suppose you could argue that Brand has the money to fight libel actions but it still doesn’t seem quite right
Following the universal rule that social media is getting worse in the 2020s, YouTube has become even more capricious and arbitrary over the past year or two. I posted the other day how many military enthusiasts and historians have set up their own platform (armchairhistory.tv?) to bypass YouTubes habit of demonetizing those with violent content, in the same way as the film/media crowd set up Nebula to get around fair use violations. The future for Brand and his cohort is to set up their own hosting website, a GBNews/YouTube hybrid where they can pontificate to their heart's content.
Weirdly, because you spend most of your time on Twitter and I live on YouTube, this might be the only time ever where I am ahead of the curve zeitgeist. Does the Knappers Gazette need a YouTube correspondent?
I've been mildly amused by various writers I've been keeping an eye on youtube to see how they use ChatGPT go all ragequit when it's (and others) guardrails stop them writing a sex scene or a murder in a detective novel.
Interesting times (for this observer at least).
Thank you for the response but I could not follow it. Were there some omitted commas and full stops?
And just as you start to despair of Labour having any ambition at all they confirm they'll build the whole of HS2 and NPR (though I'll believe it when I see it).
I know "out of touch" is a cliche but the government really are coming across as very 1996/7 at the moment. Tired and out of ideas.
Their big opportunity in the near term is a poor Labour showing at the byelections. If the SNP keep Rutherglen and Tories retain Tamworth (quite possible) and Mid Beds (also quite possible) then we'll get a couple of weeks of Starmer in crisis to reset the media narrative. If Labour win 2 or 3 of those then it'll just pile on the pain. If Labour win Rutherglen and Tamworth and Lib Dems get Mid Beds with Labour second then the Tories will go into meltdown.
So that we know what to look out for - in what ways would the Tories in meltdown look different from what we are seeing now?
That's the brilliant psychological experiment that the mice are currently running.
Sunak looks like a loser. Different methodologies make it hard to compare, but he's doing about as badly as Major in '96. And he doesn't have the residual kudos for being an election winner in his own right. And Britain is not, as the slogan went, Booming, or showing any signs of preparing to boom.
Standard Operating Procedure here is change leader and hope. But for the reasons listed by @david_herdson upthread, that's not really an option. So all they can do is hang on and hope.
They clearly want to melt down, but they aren't allowed to. The sort of torture some people pay good money for. Apparently.
Meltdown to me means another 1922 committee palaver with the entire parliamentary party stabbing each other in the back. One thing they've sort of managed in the last year is a modicum of unity.
I think the final attempted regicide before the election is there, in the background. It may not happen or it may. A bit like the Prigozhin mutiny (and like that one, I think Sunak would see off the mutineers). Some of the early signs are there.
When it becomes clear that keeping him is more costly electorally than offing him, he'll go. His personal polling falling beneath that of the party would be a sign.
The trouble is there is no king or queen across the water. No Boris.
This is right. It isn't enough for Tory MPs to conclude that Sunak is a liability in that he slips to being less popular than his party (which isn't the case at the moment anyway on most polls).
They also need to think that the act of defenestration wouldn't in itself hurt them still further, and that the new leader they end up with would be better. The new leader has to be an MP, ruling out at least one person of note. Any vaguely capable contender would far rather be the shiny new Leader of the Opposition after an election than the hapless mug who got a shellacking after a handful of months at the helm so will be really hard to persuade to step up rather than wait a short time. That just leaves the howling mad and the terminally sh1t, who aren't an obvious improvement to say the least.
I just can't see it.
The only one is Penny. I'm a fan of the person, but not necessarily the policy agenda of Penny, but she's always been fairly cagey about that anyway.
I think Penny is the only one that Charles would have as PM without making an awful constitutional fuss. I can't see him happily installing Steve Barclay as PM, he'd demand a GE. Penny's sword carrying means he'd probably go with her as caretaker PM. I'd like Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda. I don't think the latter is guaranteed, possibly not even likely, but the very presence of a new leader would mean a shift in policy was demanded. Nobody wants a new leader to do a 'better' version of Sunakism.
Firstly, King Charles' views have absolutely nothing to do with it. He might or might not express a view in private audience with the new PM as to whether an election should be called promptly, but his constitutional duty is simply to appoint as PM whoever, due to being elected leader by the majority party, is the person able to command a majority in the House of Commons. If you think he'd do anything else, you're living in a fantasy world.
Secondly, Mordaunt is very unlikely to have any interest in being the sap who gets to be caretaker for a few months before a shellacking. I'm not 100% certain on this one as she sometimes makes eccentric moves (taking her bid against Sunak to the wire in leadership contest 2 for instance) but very unlikely.
Finally, "Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda" is just your own, personal fantasy and best left for you to enjoy in your private time.
I made quite clear that that was what I wanted rather than what I expected, not sure why the attempted 'zinger' was necessary.
I think Charles is more than capable of throwing a constitutional strop that derails a leadership takeover. He lacks QEII's propriety in that regard imo.
I am convinced Charles would have told Boris and Cummings he would not prorogue Parliament to try and get Brexit done, while the Queen was probably a Leaver, Charles would probably have been a Remainer had he been able to vote. See his first state visits as King were to Germany and France
And his son and daughter-in-law weren’t that welcome in the Caribbean Commonwealth not long before the Coronation.
Most of the Caribbean Commonwealth are now republics or heading that way anyway
Most of the whole Commonwealth are now republics.
All the commonwealth will be shortly - it's inevitable
No it isn't, certainly not in the white majority largely British Isles origin Australia, Canada and New Zealand, even if it is and largely already is in non white majority Commonwealth nations.
Indeed on current polls Australians may even reject a Voice for Aborigines to their Parliament in the referendum next month
It most certainly is especially with Charles looking uninspiring and frankly who cares
And just as you start to despair of Labour having any ambition at all they confirm they'll build the whole of HS2 and NPR (though I'll believe it when I see it).
I know "out of touch" is a cliche but the government really are coming across as very 1996/7 at the moment. Tired and out of ideas.
Their big opportunity in the near term is a poor Labour showing at the byelections. If the SNP keep Rutherglen and Tories retain Tamworth (quite possible) and Mid Beds (also quite possible) then we'll get a couple of weeks of Starmer in crisis to reset the media narrative. If Labour win 2 or 3 of those then it'll just pile on the pain. If Labour win Rutherglen and Tamworth and Lib Dems get Mid Beds with Labour second then the Tories will go into meltdown.
So that we know what to look out for - in what ways would the Tories in meltdown look different from what we are seeing now?
That's the brilliant psychological experiment that the mice are currently running.
Sunak looks like a loser. Different methodologies make it hard to compare, but he's doing about as badly as Major in '96. And he doesn't have the residual kudos for being an election winner in his own right. And Britain is not, as the slogan went, Booming, or showing any signs of preparing to boom.
Standard Operating Procedure here is change leader and hope. But for the reasons listed by @david_herdson upthread, that's not really an option. So all they can do is hang on and hope.
They clearly want to melt down, but they aren't allowed to. The sort of torture some people pay good money for. Apparently.
Meltdown to me means another 1922 committee palaver with the entire parliamentary party stabbing each other in the back. One thing they've sort of managed in the last year is a modicum of unity.
I think the final attempted regicide before the election is there, in the background. It may not happen or it may. A bit like the Prigozhin mutiny (and like that one, I think Sunak would see off the mutineers). Some of the early signs are there.
When it becomes clear that keeping him is more costly electorally than offing him, he'll go. His personal polling falling beneath that of the party would be a sign.
The trouble is there is no king or queen across the water. No Boris.
This is right. It isn't enough for Tory MPs to conclude that Sunak is a liability in that he slips to being less popular than his party (which isn't the case at the moment anyway on most polls).
They also need to think that the act of defenestration wouldn't in itself hurt them still further, and that the new leader they end up with would be better. The new leader has to be an MP, ruling out at least one person of note. Any vaguely capable contender would far rather be the shiny new Leader of the Opposition after an election than the hapless mug who got a shellacking after a handful of months at the helm so will be really hard to persuade to step up rather than wait a short time. That just leaves the howling mad and the terminally sh1t, who aren't an obvious improvement to say the least.
I just can't see it.
The only one is Penny. I'm a fan of the person, but not necessarily the policy agenda of Penny, but she's always been fairly cagey about that anyway.
I think Penny is the only one that Charles would have as PM without making an awful constitutional fuss. I can't see him happily installing Steve Barclay as PM, he'd demand a GE. Penny's sword carrying means he'd probably go with her as caretaker PM. I'd like Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda. I don't think the latter is guaranteed, possibly not even likely, but the very presence of a new leader would mean a shift in policy was demanded. Nobody wants a new leader to do a 'better' version of Sunakism.
Firstly, King Charles' views have absolutely nothing to do with it. He might or might not express a view in private audience with the new PM as to whether an election should be called promptly, but his constitutional duty is simply to appoint as PM whoever, due to being elected leader by the majority party, is the person able to command a majority in the House of Commons. If you think he'd do anything else, you're living in a fantasy world.
Secondly, Mordaunt is very unlikely to have any interest in being the sap who gets to be caretaker for a few months before a shellacking. I'm not 100% certain on this one as she sometimes makes eccentric moves (taking her bid against Sunak to the wire in leadership contest 2 for instance) but very unlikely.
Finally, "Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda" is just your own, personal fantasy and best left for you to enjoy in your private time.
I made quite clear that that was what I wanted rather than what I expected, not sure why the attempted 'zinger' was necessary.
I think Charles is more than capable of throwing a constitutional strop that derails a leadership takeover. He lacks QEII's propriety in that regard imo.
I am convinced Charles would have told Boris and Cummings he would not prorogue Parliament to try and get Brexit done, while the Queen was probably a Leaver, Charles would probably have been a Remainer had he been able to vote. See his first state visits as King were to Germany and France
And his son and daughter-in-law weren’t that welcome in the Caribbean Commonwealth not long before the Coronation.
Most of the Caribbean Commonwealth are now republics or heading that way anyway
Most of the whole Commonwealth are now republics.
All the commonwealth will be shortly - it's inevitable
No it isn't, certainly not in the white majority largely British Isles origin Australia, Canada and New Zealand, even if it is and largely already is in non white majority Commonwealth nations.
Indeed on current polls Australians may even reject a Voice for Aborigines to their Parliament in the referendum next month
It most certainly is especially with Charles looking uninspiring and frankly who cares
Not exactly Paris but big enough to have life. Especially at 7pm on a balmy weekday evening
This is one of the main roads, in the centre, right now
They’ve all taken small boats to England.
I’ve found the tourist centre. Even here…
Provincial France feels notably “recessiony” to me
Certainly compared with Kent and Oxford which were both bouncing over the last fortnight, even with the schools back.
I was in Maidenhead today. Centre of the affluent blue wall.
Desolate.
I used to rent a room there when I was working for a firm in the area. Very nice place, sympathetically redeveloped about a decade or two ago. One of those little jewels along the (I think) Thames Valley. At the time it was marginally affordable by ordinary people, but not any more. The only disfiguring issue is a gentlemen's club (in the Spearmint Rhino sense, not gay) near the station, but not as bad as say Tonbridge which has/had a sex shop opposite the station entrance. If Maidenhead is suffering things have got bad.
We had an interesting chat about it. The new bit near the river is still ok but it was a town that relied on people coming to work in the offices and eating out at lunch. Since Covid that’s just gone. Unlike where I work in Canary Wharf the offices there are still like ghost towns.
I'm genuinely sorry to hear that. I bought a copy of "Hannibal" and read it piece by piece in a local pub in the city centre. That was when I was still buying hardbacks. A nice place and some happy memories. I hope it improves.
No commentary here on the Sunak U-turn on net-zero plans for cars and boilers? Looks like a serious attempt at a reset for the Tories - and one I like. Can Labour go along with it? Could be Zugzwang for them
I think pro net zero / green policies are more popular than you think. We can’t keep changing parameters because one option looks politically more advantageous.
No they are not; and yes we can. Apart from those two points you are quite correct.
You are right on point one until it is costly or inconvenient; you are right on point two except that nearly all politics is talk, and the parameters of talk can change by the minute.
She has a point. Is it right to deprive someone of their entire livelihood on the basis of hearsay and anonymous allegations - made to the media not the police?
I suppose you could argue that Brand has the money to fight libel actions but it still doesn’t seem quite right
Following the universal rule that social media is getting worse in the 2020s, YouTube has become even more capricious and arbitrary over the past year or two. I posted the other day how many military enthusiasts and historians have set up their own platform (armchairhistory.tv?) to bypass YouTubes habit of demonetizing those with violent content, in the same way as the film/media crowd set up Nebula to get around fair use violations. The future for Brand and his cohort is to set up their own hosting website, a GBNews/YouTube hybrid where they can pontificate to their heart's content.
Weirdly, because you spend most of your time on Twitter and I live on YouTube, this might be the only time ever where I am ahead of the curve zeitgeist. Does the Knappers Gazette need a YouTube correspondent?
I've been mildly amused by various writers I've been keeping an eye on youtube to see how they use ChatGPT go all ragequit when it's (and others) guardrails stop them writing a sex scene or a murder in a detective novel.
Interesting times (for this observer at least).
Thank you for the response but I could not follow it. Were there some omitted commas and full stops?
It was (between ChatGPT and Claude) much more like "I feel uncomfortable discussing this subject. Why don't we talk about unicorns and flowers instead?"
Seems there is a growing market for non-guardrailled "GPT's" which will happily do a "there's been a murder!" chats.
Which obviously leads to non-guardrailled "GPT's" which will chat about "How do I make a deadly bioweapon?".
FFS. The Guardian's report on Sunak's Net Zero reverse ferret:
"He is also expected to rule out proposed recycling schemes with multiple bins."
It's gone full-on Cones Hotline, hasn't it? This is basically Government by Alan Partridge.
Don't most places already have multiple bins? That's the norm surely, and it has been the case for many years now.
I (and 1000s of others round here) have 'blue bins' and that's it. Once in a while they even get emptied. In between - everything gets chucked in the regular waste.
Our council leader backed reducing the recycling collections as people were ... recycling too much.
That doesn't sound very good, but I can't see why anyone would want to rule out multiple bin schemes, it surely makes sense to get households to sort their waste first?
And just as you start to despair of Labour having any ambition at all they confirm they'll build the whole of HS2 and NPR (though I'll believe it when I see it).
I know "out of touch" is a cliche but the government really are coming across as very 1996/7 at the moment. Tired and out of ideas.
Their big opportunity in the near term is a poor Labour showing at the byelections. If the SNP keep Rutherglen and Tories retain Tamworth (quite possible) and Mid Beds (also quite possible) then we'll get a couple of weeks of Starmer in crisis to reset the media narrative. If Labour win 2 or 3 of those then it'll just pile on the pain. If Labour win Rutherglen and Tamworth and Lib Dems get Mid Beds with Labour second then the Tories will go into meltdown.
So that we know what to look out for - in what ways would the Tories in meltdown look different from what we are seeing now?
That's the brilliant psychological experiment that the mice are currently running.
Sunak looks like a loser. Different methodologies make it hard to compare, but he's doing about as badly as Major in '96. And he doesn't have the residual kudos for being an election winner in his own right. And Britain is not, as the slogan went, Booming, or showing any signs of preparing to boom.
Standard Operating Procedure here is change leader and hope. But for the reasons listed by @david_herdson upthread, that's not really an option. So all they can do is hang on and hope.
They clearly want to melt down, but they aren't allowed to. The sort of torture some people pay good money for. Apparently.
Meltdown to me means another 1922 committee palaver with the entire parliamentary party stabbing each other in the back. One thing they've sort of managed in the last year is a modicum of unity.
I think the final attempted regicide before the election is there, in the background. It may not happen or it may. A bit like the Prigozhin mutiny (and like that one, I think Sunak would see off the mutineers). Some of the early signs are there.
When it becomes clear that keeping him is more costly electorally than offing him, he'll go. His personal polling falling beneath that of the party would be a sign.
The trouble is there is no king or queen across the water. No Boris.
This is right. It isn't enough for Tory MPs to conclude that Sunak is a liability in that he slips to being less popular than his party (which isn't the case at the moment anyway on most polls).
They also need to think that the act of defenestration wouldn't in itself hurt them still further, and that the new leader they end up with would be better. The new leader has to be an MP, ruling out at least one person of note. Any vaguely capable contender would far rather be the shiny new Leader of the Opposition after an election than the hapless mug who got a shellacking after a handful of months at the helm so will be really hard to persuade to step up rather than wait a short time. That just leaves the howling mad and the terminally sh1t, who aren't an obvious improvement to say the least.
I just can't see it.
The only one is Penny. I'm a fan of the person, but not necessarily the policy agenda of Penny, but she's always been fairly cagey about that anyway.
I think Penny is the only one that Charles would have as PM without making an awful constitutional fuss. I can't see him happily installing Steve Barclay as PM, he'd demand a GE. Penny's sword carrying means he'd probably go with her as caretaker PM. I'd like Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda. I don't think the latter is guaranteed, possibly not even likely, but the very presence of a new leader would mean a shift in policy was demanded. Nobody wants a new leader to do a 'better' version of Sunakism.
Firstly, King Charles' views have absolutely nothing to do with it. He might or might not express a view in private audience with the new PM as to whether an election should be called promptly, but his constitutional duty is simply to appoint as PM whoever, due to being elected leader by the majority party, is the person able to command a majority in the House of Commons. If you think he'd do anything else, you're living in a fantasy world.
Secondly, Mordaunt is very unlikely to have any interest in being the sap who gets to be caretaker for a few months before a shellacking. I'm not 100% certain on this one as she sometimes makes eccentric moves (taking her bid against Sunak to the wire in leadership contest 2 for instance) but very unlikely.
Finally, "Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda" is just your own, personal fantasy and best left for you to enjoy in your private time.
I made quite clear that that was what I wanted rather than what I expected, not sure why the attempted 'zinger' was necessary.
I think Charles is more than capable of throwing a constitutional strop that derails a leadership takeover. He lacks QEII's propriety in that regard imo.
The King would appoint as PM whoever the majority party elects as PM, unless many of the governing party say they would not support the new PM's government, in which case he would request a vote of confidence in it first.
We are at the point now none of the major Tory leadership contenders, Braverman, Badenoch, Mordaunt, Barclay, Tugendhat etc have much interest in taking over now. They will let Sunak and Hunt lose the next election and then put their stalls forward to be Leader of the Opposition
Charles should remember what happened to the first of his name who tried to impose his will on Parliament. There were a surprising number of reminders of this on show at Windsor if he wished to brush up on it.
What has that got to do with what I said? If he asks a new PM to be confirmed by Parliament as the governing party is divided and if he had refused to prorogue Parliament that is exactly the opposite of imposing his will on Parliament
And just as you start to despair of Labour having any ambition at all they confirm they'll build the whole of HS2 and NPR (though I'll believe it when I see it).
I know "out of touch" is a cliche but the government really are coming across as very 1996/7 at the moment. Tired and out of ideas.
Their big opportunity in the near term is a poor Labour showing at the byelections. If the SNP keep Rutherglen and Tories retain Tamworth (quite possible) and Mid Beds (also quite possible) then we'll get a couple of weeks of Starmer in crisis to reset the media narrative. If Labour win 2 or 3 of those then it'll just pile on the pain. If Labour win Rutherglen and Tamworth and Lib Dems get Mid Beds with Labour second then the Tories will go into meltdown.
So that we know what to look out for - in what ways would the Tories in meltdown look different from what we are seeing now?
That's the brilliant psychological experiment that the mice are currently running.
Sunak looks like a loser. Different methodologies make it hard to compare, but he's doing about as badly as Major in '96. And he doesn't have the residual kudos for being an election winner in his own right. And Britain is not, as the slogan went, Booming, or showing any signs of preparing to boom.
Standard Operating Procedure here is change leader and hope. But for the reasons listed by @david_herdson upthread, that's not really an option. So all they can do is hang on and hope.
They clearly want to melt down, but they aren't allowed to. The sort of torture some people pay good money for. Apparently.
Meltdown to me means another 1922 committee palaver with the entire parliamentary party stabbing each other in the back. One thing they've sort of managed in the last year is a modicum of unity.
I think the final attempted regicide before the election is there, in the background. It may not happen or it may. A bit like the Prigozhin mutiny (and like that one, I think Sunak would see off the mutineers). Some of the early signs are there.
When it becomes clear that keeping him is more costly electorally than offing him, he'll go. His personal polling falling beneath that of the party would be a sign.
The trouble is there is no king or queen across the water. No Boris.
This is right. It isn't enough for Tory MPs to conclude that Sunak is a liability in that he slips to being less popular than his party (which isn't the case at the moment anyway on most polls).
They also need to think that the act of defenestration wouldn't in itself hurt them still further, and that the new leader they end up with would be better. The new leader has to be an MP, ruling out at least one person of note. Any vaguely capable contender would far rather be the shiny new Leader of the Opposition after an election than the hapless mug who got a shellacking after a handful of months at the helm so will be really hard to persuade to step up rather than wait a short time. That just leaves the howling mad and the terminally sh1t, who aren't an obvious improvement to say the least.
I just can't see it.
The only one is Penny. I'm a fan of the person, but not necessarily the policy agenda of Penny, but she's always been fairly cagey about that anyway.
I think Penny is the only one that Charles would have as PM without making an awful constitutional fuss. I can't see him happily installing Steve Barclay as PM, he'd demand a GE. Penny's sword carrying means he'd probably go with her as caretaker PM. I'd like Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda. I don't think the latter is guaranteed, possibly not even likely, but the very presence of a new leader would mean a shift in policy was demanded. Nobody wants a new leader to do a 'better' version of Sunakism.
Firstly, King Charles' views have absolutely nothing to do with it. He might or might not express a view in private audience with the new PM as to whether an election should be called promptly, but his constitutional duty is simply to appoint as PM whoever, due to being elected leader by the majority party, is the person able to command a majority in the House of Commons. If you think he'd do anything else, you're living in a fantasy world.
Secondly, Mordaunt is very unlikely to have any interest in being the sap who gets to be caretaker for a few months before a shellacking. I'm not 100% certain on this one as she sometimes makes eccentric moves (taking her bid against Sunak to the wire in leadership contest 2 for instance) but very unlikely.
Finally, "Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda" is just your own, personal fantasy and best left for you to enjoy in your private time.
I made quite clear that that was what I wanted rather than what I expected, not sure why the attempted 'zinger' was necessary.
I think Charles is more than capable of throwing a constitutional strop that derails a leadership takeover. He lacks QEII's propriety in that regard imo.
I am convinced Charles would have told Boris and Cummings he would not prorogue Parliament to try and get Brexit done, while the Queen was probably a Leaver, Charles would probably have been a Remainer had he been able to vote. See his first state visits as King were to Germany and France
And his son and daughter-in-law weren’t that welcome in the Caribbean Commonwealth not long before the Coronation.
Most of the Caribbean Commonwealth are now republics or heading that way anyway
Most of the whole Commonwealth are now republics.
All the commonwealth will be shortly - it's inevitable
No it isn't, certainly not in the white majority largely British Isles origin Australia, Canada and New Zealand, even if it is and largely already is in non white majority Commonwealth nations.
Indeed on current polls Australians may even reject a Voice for Aborigines to their Parliament in the referendum next month
It most certainly is especially with Charles looking uninspiring and frankly who cares
FFS. The Guardian's report on Sunak's Net Zero reverse ferret:
"He is also expected to rule out proposed recycling schemes with multiple bins."
It's gone full-on Cones Hotline, hasn't it? This is basically Government by Alan Partridge.
Don't most places already have multiple bins? That's the norm surely, and it has been the case for many years now.
I (and 1000s of others round here) have 'blue bins' and that's it. Once in a while they even get emptied. In between - everything gets chucked in the regular waste.
Our council leader backed reducing the recycling collections as people were ... recycling too much.
That doesn't sound very good, but I can't see why anyone would want to rule out multiple bin schemes, it surely makes sense to get households to sort their waste first?
We used to have segregated 'back courts'. Then they were decided to be a fire hazard - so were flattened into one big space across the city. Then were given various bins, which some people entirely ignored. Which led to complaints. Which led to removing the various bins.
Simplified - but that's the general downward spiral.
Not helped by scummy landlords who would just dump the contents of a whole flat over the top of the bins. But that's a rant for another day.
And just as you start to despair of Labour having any ambition at all they confirm they'll build the whole of HS2 and NPR (though I'll believe it when I see it).
I know "out of touch" is a cliche but the government really are coming across as very 1996/7 at the moment. Tired and out of ideas.
Their big opportunity in the near term is a poor Labour showing at the byelections. If the SNP keep Rutherglen and Tories retain Tamworth (quite possible) and Mid Beds (also quite possible) then we'll get a couple of weeks of Starmer in crisis to reset the media narrative. If Labour win 2 or 3 of those then it'll just pile on the pain. If Labour win Rutherglen and Tamworth and Lib Dems get Mid Beds with Labour second then the Tories will go into meltdown.
So that we know what to look out for - in what ways would the Tories in meltdown look different from what we are seeing now?
That's the brilliant psychological experiment that the mice are currently running.
Sunak looks like a loser. Different methodologies make it hard to compare, but he's doing about as badly as Major in '96. And he doesn't have the residual kudos for being an election winner in his own right. And Britain is not, as the slogan went, Booming, or showing any signs of preparing to boom.
Standard Operating Procedure here is change leader and hope. But for the reasons listed by @david_herdson upthread, that's not really an option. So all they can do is hang on and hope.
They clearly want to melt down, but they aren't allowed to. The sort of torture some people pay good money for. Apparently.
Meltdown to me means another 1922 committee palaver with the entire parliamentary party stabbing each other in the back. One thing they've sort of managed in the last year is a modicum of unity.
I think the final attempted regicide before the election is there, in the background. It may not happen or it may. A bit like the Prigozhin mutiny (and like that one, I think Sunak would see off the mutineers). Some of the early signs are there.
When it becomes clear that keeping him is more costly electorally than offing him, he'll go. His personal polling falling beneath that of the party would be a sign.
The trouble is there is no king or queen across the water. No Boris.
This is right. It isn't enough for Tory MPs to conclude that Sunak is a liability in that he slips to being less popular than his party (which isn't the case at the moment anyway on most polls).
They also need to think that the act of defenestration wouldn't in itself hurt them still further, and that the new leader they end up with would be better. The new leader has to be an MP, ruling out at least one person of note. Any vaguely capable contender would far rather be the shiny new Leader of the Opposition after an election than the hapless mug who got a shellacking after a handful of months at the helm so will be really hard to persuade to step up rather than wait a short time. That just leaves the howling mad and the terminally sh1t, who aren't an obvious improvement to say the least.
I just can't see it.
The only one is Penny. I'm a fan of the person, but not necessarily the policy agenda of Penny, but she's always been fairly cagey about that anyway.
I think Penny is the only one that Charles would have as PM without making an awful constitutional fuss. I can't see him happily installing Steve Barclay as PM, he'd demand a GE. Penny's sword carrying means he'd probably go with her as caretaker PM. I'd like Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda. I don't think the latter is guaranteed, possibly not even likely, but the very presence of a new leader would mean a shift in policy was demanded. Nobody wants a new leader to do a 'better' version of Sunakism.
Firstly, King Charles' views have absolutely nothing to do with it. He might or might not express a view in private audience with the new PM as to whether an election should be called promptly, but his constitutional duty is simply to appoint as PM whoever, due to being elected leader by the majority party, is the person able to command a majority in the House of Commons. If you think he'd do anything else, you're living in a fantasy world.
Secondly, Mordaunt is very unlikely to have any interest in being the sap who gets to be caretaker for a few months before a shellacking. I'm not 100% certain on this one as she sometimes makes eccentric moves (taking her bid against Sunak to the wire in leadership contest 2 for instance) but very unlikely.
Finally, "Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda" is just your own, personal fantasy and best left for you to enjoy in your private time.
I made quite clear that that was what I wanted rather than what I expected, not sure why the attempted 'zinger' was necessary.
I think Charles is more than capable of throwing a constitutional strop that derails a leadership takeover. He lacks QEII's propriety in that regard imo.
The King would appoint as PM whoever the majority party elects as PM, unless many of the governing party say they would not support the new PM's government, in which case he would request a vote of confidence in it first.
We are at the point now none of the major Tory leadership contenders, Braverman, Badenoch, Mordaunt, Barclay, Tugendhat etc have much interest in taking over now. They will let Sunak and Hunt lose the next election and then put their stalls forward to be Leader of the Opposition
Charles should remember what happened to the first of his name who tried to impose his will on Parliament. There were a surprising number of reminders of this on show at Windsor if he wished to brush up on it.
What has that got to do with what I said? If he asks a new PM to be confirmed by Parliament as the governing party is divided and if he had refused to prorogue Parliament that is exactly the opposite of imposing his will on Parliament
It was more the comment that you were responding to than your own which set out the constitutional position entirely correctly. No offence meant!
And just as you start to despair of Labour having any ambition at all they confirm they'll build the whole of HS2 and NPR (though I'll believe it when I see it).
I know "out of touch" is a cliche but the government really are coming across as very 1996/7 at the moment. Tired and out of ideas.
Their big opportunity in the near term is a poor Labour showing at the byelections. If the SNP keep Rutherglen and Tories retain Tamworth (quite possible) and Mid Beds (also quite possible) then we'll get a couple of weeks of Starmer in crisis to reset the media narrative. If Labour win 2 or 3 of those then it'll just pile on the pain. If Labour win Rutherglen and Tamworth and Lib Dems get Mid Beds with Labour second then the Tories will go into meltdown.
So that we know what to look out for - in what ways would the Tories in meltdown look different from what we are seeing now?
That's the brilliant psychological experiment that the mice are currently running.
Sunak looks like a loser. Different methodologies make it hard to compare, but he's doing about as badly as Major in '96. And he doesn't have the residual kudos for being an election winner in his own right. And Britain is not, as the slogan went, Booming, or showing any signs of preparing to boom.
Standard Operating Procedure here is change leader and hope. But for the reasons listed by @david_herdson upthread, that's not really an option. So all they can do is hang on and hope.
They clearly want to melt down, but they aren't allowed to. The sort of torture some people pay good money for. Apparently.
Meltdown to me means another 1922 committee palaver with the entire parliamentary party stabbing each other in the back. One thing they've sort of managed in the last year is a modicum of unity.
I think the final attempted regicide before the election is there, in the background. It may not happen or it may. A bit like the Prigozhin mutiny (and like that one, I think Sunak would see off the mutineers). Some of the early signs are there.
When it becomes clear that keeping him is more costly electorally than offing him, he'll go. His personal polling falling beneath that of the party would be a sign.
The trouble is there is no king or queen across the water. No Boris.
This is right. It isn't enough for Tory MPs to conclude that Sunak is a liability in that he slips to being less popular than his party (which isn't the case at the moment anyway on most polls).
They also need to think that the act of defenestration wouldn't in itself hurt them still further, and that the new leader they end up with would be better. The new leader has to be an MP, ruling out at least one person of note. Any vaguely capable contender would far rather be the shiny new Leader of the Opposition after an election than the hapless mug who got a shellacking after a handful of months at the helm so will be really hard to persuade to step up rather than wait a short time. That just leaves the howling mad and the terminally sh1t, who aren't an obvious improvement to say the least.
I just can't see it.
The only one is Penny. I'm a fan of the person, but not necessarily the policy agenda of Penny, but she's always been fairly cagey about that anyway.
I think Penny is the only one that Charles would have as PM without making an awful constitutional fuss. I can't see him happily installing Steve Barclay as PM, he'd demand a GE. Penny's sword carrying means he'd probably go with her as caretaker PM. I'd like Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda. I don't think the latter is guaranteed, possibly not even likely, but the very presence of a new leader would mean a shift in policy was demanded. Nobody wants a new leader to do a 'better' version of Sunakism.
Firstly, King Charles' views have absolutely nothing to do with it. He might or might not express a view in private audience with the new PM as to whether an election should be called promptly, but his constitutional duty is simply to appoint as PM whoever, due to being elected leader by the majority party, is the person able to command a majority in the House of Commons. If you think he'd do anything else, you're living in a fantasy world.
Secondly, Mordaunt is very unlikely to have any interest in being the sap who gets to be caretaker for a few months before a shellacking. I'm not 100% certain on this one as she sometimes makes eccentric moves (taking her bid against Sunak to the wire in leadership contest 2 for instance) but very unlikely.
Finally, "Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda" is just your own, personal fantasy and best left for you to enjoy in your private time.
I made quite clear that that was what I wanted rather than what I expected, not sure why the attempted 'zinger' was necessary.
I think Charles is more than capable of throwing a constitutional strop that derails a leadership takeover. He lacks QEII's propriety in that regard imo.
The King would appoint as PM whoever the majority party elects as PM, unless many of the governing party say they would not support the new PM's government, in which case he would request a vote of confidence in it first.
We are at the point now none of the major Tory leadership contenders, Braverman, Badenoch, Mordaunt, Barclay, Tugendhat etc have much interest in taking over now. They will let Sunak and Hunt lose the next election and then put their stalls forward to be Leader of the Opposition
Charles should remember what happened to the first of his name who tried to impose his will on Parliament. There were a surprising number of reminders of this on show at Windsor if he wished to brush up on it.
What has that got to do with what I said? If he asks a new PM to be confirmed by Parliament as the governing party is divided and if he had refused to prorogue Parliament that is exactly the opposite of imposing his will on Parliament
By the way, surely Tommy 'compromised by China' Tugend is out of the leadership picture now?
And just as you start to despair of Labour having any ambition at all they confirm they'll build the whole of HS2 and NPR (though I'll believe it when I see it).
I know "out of touch" is a cliche but the government really are coming across as very 1996/7 at the moment. Tired and out of ideas.
Their big opportunity in the near term is a poor Labour showing at the byelections. If the SNP keep Rutherglen and Tories retain Tamworth (quite possible) and Mid Beds (also quite possible) then we'll get a couple of weeks of Starmer in crisis to reset the media narrative. If Labour win 2 or 3 of those then it'll just pile on the pain. If Labour win Rutherglen and Tamworth and Lib Dems get Mid Beds with Labour second then the Tories will go into meltdown.
So that we know what to look out for - in what ways would the Tories in meltdown look different from what we are seeing now?
That's the brilliant psychological experiment that the mice are currently running.
Sunak looks like a loser. Different methodologies make it hard to compare, but he's doing about as badly as Major in '96. And he doesn't have the residual kudos for being an election winner in his own right. And Britain is not, as the slogan went, Booming, or showing any signs of preparing to boom.
Standard Operating Procedure here is change leader and hope. But for the reasons listed by @david_herdson upthread, that's not really an option. So all they can do is hang on and hope.
They clearly want to melt down, but they aren't allowed to. The sort of torture some people pay good money for. Apparently.
Meltdown to me means another 1922 committee palaver with the entire parliamentary party stabbing each other in the back. One thing they've sort of managed in the last year is a modicum of unity.
I think the final attempted regicide before the election is there, in the background. It may not happen or it may. A bit like the Prigozhin mutiny (and like that one, I think Sunak would see off the mutineers). Some of the early signs are there.
When it becomes clear that keeping him is more costly electorally than offing him, he'll go. His personal polling falling beneath that of the party would be a sign.
The trouble is there is no king or queen across the water. No Boris.
This is right. It isn't enough for Tory MPs to conclude that Sunak is a liability in that he slips to being less popular than his party (which isn't the case at the moment anyway on most polls).
They also need to think that the act of defenestration wouldn't in itself hurt them still further, and that the new leader they end up with would be better. The new leader has to be an MP, ruling out at least one person of note. Any vaguely capable contender would far rather be the shiny new Leader of the Opposition after an election than the hapless mug who got a shellacking after a handful of months at the helm so will be really hard to persuade to step up rather than wait a short time. That just leaves the howling mad and the terminally sh1t, who aren't an obvious improvement to say the least.
I just can't see it.
The only one is Penny. I'm a fan of the person, but not necessarily the policy agenda of Penny, but she's always been fairly cagey about that anyway.
I think Penny is the only one that Charles would have as PM without making an awful constitutional fuss. I can't see him happily installing Steve Barclay as PM, he'd demand a GE. Penny's sword carrying means he'd probably go with her as caretaker PM. I'd like Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda. I don't think the latter is guaranteed, possibly not even likely, but the very presence of a new leader would mean a shift in policy was demanded. Nobody wants a new leader to do a 'better' version of Sunakism.
Firstly, King Charles' views have absolutely nothing to do with it. He might or might not express a view in private audience with the new PM as to whether an election should be called promptly, but his constitutional duty is simply to appoint as PM whoever, due to being elected leader by the majority party, is the person able to command a majority in the House of Commons. If you think he'd do anything else, you're living in a fantasy world.
Secondly, Mordaunt is very unlikely to have any interest in being the sap who gets to be caretaker for a few months before a shellacking. I'm not 100% certain on this one as she sometimes makes eccentric moves (taking her bid against Sunak to the wire in leadership contest 2 for instance) but very unlikely.
Finally, "Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda" is just your own, personal fantasy and best left for you to enjoy in your private time.
I made quite clear that that was what I wanted rather than what I expected, not sure why the attempted 'zinger' was necessary.
I think Charles is more than capable of throwing a constitutional strop that derails a leadership takeover. He lacks QEII's propriety in that regard imo.
The King would appoint as PM whoever the majority party elects as PM, unless many of the governing party say they would not support the new PM's government, in which case he would request a vote of confidence in it first.
We are at the point now none of the major Tory leadership contenders, Braverman, Badenoch, Mordaunt, Barclay, Tugendhat etc have much interest in taking over now. They will let Sunak and Hunt lose the next election and then put their stalls forward to be Leader of the Opposition
Charles should remember what happened to the first of his name who tried to impose his will on Parliament. There were a surprising number of reminders of this on show at Windsor if he wished to brush up on it.
What has that got to do with what I said? If he asks a new PM to be confirmed by Parliament as the governing party is divided and if he had refused to prorogue Parliament that is exactly the opposite of imposing his will on Parliament
By the way, surely Tommy 'compromised by China' Tugend is out of the leadership picture now?
And just as you start to despair of Labour having any ambition at all they confirm they'll build the whole of HS2 and NPR (though I'll believe it when I see it).
I know "out of touch" is a cliche but the government really are coming across as very 1996/7 at the moment. Tired and out of ideas.
Their big opportunity in the near term is a poor Labour showing at the byelections. If the SNP keep Rutherglen and Tories retain Tamworth (quite possible) and Mid Beds (also quite possible) then we'll get a couple of weeks of Starmer in crisis to reset the media narrative. If Labour win 2 or 3 of those then it'll just pile on the pain. If Labour win Rutherglen and Tamworth and Lib Dems get Mid Beds with Labour second then the Tories will go into meltdown.
So that we know what to look out for - in what ways would the Tories in meltdown look different from what we are seeing now?
That's the brilliant psychological experiment that the mice are currently running.
Sunak looks like a loser. Different methodologies make it hard to compare, but he's doing about as badly as Major in '96. And he doesn't have the residual kudos for being an election winner in his own right. And Britain is not, as the slogan went, Booming, or showing any signs of preparing to boom.
Standard Operating Procedure here is change leader and hope. But for the reasons listed by @david_herdson upthread, that's not really an option. So all they can do is hang on and hope.
They clearly want to melt down, but they aren't allowed to. The sort of torture some people pay good money for. Apparently.
Meltdown to me means another 1922 committee palaver with the entire parliamentary party stabbing each other in the back. One thing they've sort of managed in the last year is a modicum of unity.
I think the final attempted regicide before the election is there, in the background. It may not happen or it may. A bit like the Prigozhin mutiny (and like that one, I think Sunak would see off the mutineers). Some of the early signs are there.
When it becomes clear that keeping him is more costly electorally than offing him, he'll go. His personal polling falling beneath that of the party would be a sign.
The trouble is there is no king or queen across the water. No Boris.
This is right. It isn't enough for Tory MPs to conclude that Sunak is a liability in that he slips to being less popular than his party (which isn't the case at the moment anyway on most polls).
They also need to think that the act of defenestration wouldn't in itself hurt them still further, and that the new leader they end up with would be better. The new leader has to be an MP, ruling out at least one person of note. Any vaguely capable contender would far rather be the shiny new Leader of the Opposition after an election than the hapless mug who got a shellacking after a handful of months at the helm so will be really hard to persuade to step up rather than wait a short time. That just leaves the howling mad and the terminally sh1t, who aren't an obvious improvement to say the least.
I just can't see it.
The only one is Penny. I'm a fan of the person, but not necessarily the policy agenda of Penny, but she's always been fairly cagey about that anyway.
I think Penny is the only one that Charles would have as PM without making an awful constitutional fuss. I can't see him happily installing Steve Barclay as PM, he'd demand a GE. Penny's sword carrying means he'd probably go with her as caretaker PM. I'd like Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda. I don't think the latter is guaranteed, possibly not even likely, but the very presence of a new leader would mean a shift in policy was demanded. Nobody wants a new leader to do a 'better' version of Sunakism.
Firstly, King Charles' views have absolutely nothing to do with it. He might or might not express a view in private audience with the new PM as to whether an election should be called promptly, but his constitutional duty is simply to appoint as PM whoever, due to being elected leader by the majority party, is the person able to command a majority in the House of Commons. If you think he'd do anything else, you're living in a fantasy world.
Secondly, Mordaunt is very unlikely to have any interest in being the sap who gets to be caretaker for a few months before a shellacking. I'm not 100% certain on this one as she sometimes makes eccentric moves (taking her bid against Sunak to the wire in leadership contest 2 for instance) but very unlikely.
Finally, "Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda" is just your own, personal fantasy and best left for you to enjoy in your private time.
I made quite clear that that was what I wanted rather than what I expected, not sure why the attempted 'zinger' was necessary.
I think Charles is more than capable of throwing a constitutional strop that derails a leadership takeover. He lacks QEII's propriety in that regard imo.
I am convinced Charles would have told Boris and Cummings he would not prorogue Parliament to try and get Brexit done, while the Queen was probably a Leaver, Charles would probably have been a Remainer had he been able to vote. See his first state visits as King were to Germany and France
And his son and daughter-in-law weren’t that welcome in the Caribbean Commonwealth not long before the Coronation.
Most of the Caribbean Commonwealth are now republics or heading that way anyway
Most of the whole Commonwealth are now republics.
All the commonwealth will be shortly - it's inevitable
No it isn't, certainly not in the white majority largely British Isles origin Australia, Canada and New Zealand, even if it is and largely already is in non white majority Commonwealth nations.
Indeed on current polls Australians may even reject a Voice for Aborigines to their Parliament in the referendum next month
It most certainly is especially with Charles looking uninspiring and frankly who cares
It is possible the commonwealth itself falls apart over the coming years
I doubt it, especially as William has sensibly said he may not even head it symbolically when he becomes King.
The best route longer term would be to rotate the Head of the Commonwealth amongst Commonwealth heads of state
To what purpose? They are an ineffectual talking shop that gives well paid employment to a lot of do gooders and guilt merchants. I really don’t see the point.
And just as you start to despair of Labour having any ambition at all they confirm they'll build the whole of HS2 and NPR (though I'll believe it when I see it).
I know "out of touch" is a cliche but the government really are coming across as very 1996/7 at the moment. Tired and out of ideas.
Their big opportunity in the near term is a poor Labour showing at the byelections. If the SNP keep Rutherglen and Tories retain Tamworth (quite possible) and Mid Beds (also quite possible) then we'll get a couple of weeks of Starmer in crisis to reset the media narrative. If Labour win 2 or 3 of those then it'll just pile on the pain. If Labour win Rutherglen and Tamworth and Lib Dems get Mid Beds with Labour second then the Tories will go into meltdown.
So that we know what to look out for - in what ways would the Tories in meltdown look different from what we are seeing now?
That's the brilliant psychological experiment that the mice are currently running.
Sunak looks like a loser. Different methodologies make it hard to compare, but he's doing about as badly as Major in '96. And he doesn't have the residual kudos for being an election winner in his own right. And Britain is not, as the slogan went, Booming, or showing any signs of preparing to boom.
Standard Operating Procedure here is change leader and hope. But for the reasons listed by @david_herdson upthread, that's not really an option. So all they can do is hang on and hope.
They clearly want to melt down, but they aren't allowed to. The sort of torture some people pay good money for. Apparently.
Meltdown to me means another 1922 committee palaver with the entire parliamentary party stabbing each other in the back. One thing they've sort of managed in the last year is a modicum of unity.
I think the final attempted regicide before the election is there, in the background. It may not happen or it may. A bit like the Prigozhin mutiny (and like that one, I think Sunak would see off the mutineers). Some of the early signs are there.
When it becomes clear that keeping him is more costly electorally than offing him, he'll go. His personal polling falling beneath that of the party would be a sign.
The trouble is there is no king or queen across the water. No Boris.
This is right. It isn't enough for Tory MPs to conclude that Sunak is a liability in that he slips to being less popular than his party (which isn't the case at the moment anyway on most polls).
They also need to think that the act of defenestration wouldn't in itself hurt them still further, and that the new leader they end up with would be better. The new leader has to be an MP, ruling out at least one person of note. Any vaguely capable contender would far rather be the shiny new Leader of the Opposition after an election than the hapless mug who got a shellacking after a handful of months at the helm so will be really hard to persuade to step up rather than wait a short time. That just leaves the howling mad and the terminally sh1t, who aren't an obvious improvement to say the least.
I just can't see it.
The only one is Penny. I'm a fan of the person, but not necessarily the policy agenda of Penny, but she's always been fairly cagey about that anyway.
I think Penny is the only one that Charles would have as PM without making an awful constitutional fuss. I can't see him happily installing Steve Barclay as PM, he'd demand a GE. Penny's sword carrying means he'd probably go with her as caretaker PM. I'd like Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda. I don't think the latter is guaranteed, possibly not even likely, but the very presence of a new leader would mean a shift in policy was demanded. Nobody wants a new leader to do a 'better' version of Sunakism.
Firstly, King Charles' views have absolutely nothing to do with it. He might or might not express a view in private audience with the new PM as to whether an election should be called promptly, but his constitutional duty is simply to appoint as PM whoever, due to being elected leader by the majority party, is the person able to command a majority in the House of Commons. If you think he'd do anything else, you're living in a fantasy world.
Secondly, Mordaunt is very unlikely to have any interest in being the sap who gets to be caretaker for a few months before a shellacking. I'm not 100% certain on this one as she sometimes makes eccentric moves (taking her bid against Sunak to the wire in leadership contest 2 for instance) but very unlikely.
Finally, "Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda" is just your own, personal fantasy and best left for you to enjoy in your private time.
I made quite clear that that was what I wanted rather than what I expected, not sure why the attempted 'zinger' was necessary.
I think Charles is more than capable of throwing a constitutional strop that derails a leadership takeover. He lacks QEII's propriety in that regard imo.
The King would appoint as PM whoever the majority party elects as PM, unless many of the governing party say they would not support the new PM's government, in which case he would request a vote of confidence in it first.
We are at the point now none of the major Tory leadership contenders, Braverman, Badenoch, Mordaunt, Barclay, Tugendhat etc have much interest in taking over now. They will let Sunak and Hunt lose the next election and then put their stalls forward to be Leader of the Opposition
Charles should remember what happened to the first of his name who tried to impose his will on Parliament. There were a surprising number of reminders of this on show at Windsor if he wished to brush up on it.
What has that got to do with what I said? If he asks a new PM to be confirmed by Parliament as the governing party is divided and if he had refused to prorogue Parliament that is exactly the opposite of imposing his will on Parliament
By the way, surely Tommy 'compromised by China' Tugend is out of the leadership picture now?
She has a point. Is it right to deprive someone of their entire livelihood on the basis of hearsay and anonymous allegations - made to the media not the police?
I suppose you could argue that Brand has the money to fight libel actions but it still doesn’t seem quite right
Following the universal rule that social media is getting worse in the 2020s, YouTube has become even more capricious and arbitrary over the past year or two. I posted the other day how many military enthusiasts and historians have set up their own platform (armchairhistory.tv?) to bypass YouTubes habit of demonetizing those with violent content, in the same way as the film/media crowd set up Nebula to get around fair use violations. The future for Brand and his cohort is to set up their own hosting website, a GBNews/YouTube hybrid where they can pontificate to their heart's content.
Weirdly, because you spend most of your time on Twitter and I live on YouTube, this might be the only time ever where I am ahead of the curve zeitgeist. Does the Knappers Gazette need a YouTube correspondent?
There are two problems here:
(1) Google monetizes better than anyone else, because they know everything about you.
(2) Google has a financial incentive to demonetize videos. Because you are still seeing adverts (at a rate of x per hour viewed), even if the creators aren't being rewarded for it.
It seems like the correct answer here is to allow advertisers to choose not to avoid controversial videos. Because competition to be shown alongside a video of a Bully XL ripping a human being to bits is going to be lower than for a Taylor Swift video, revenues would be more modest for those who produced controversial content. But it would also avoid people being "cut off at the knees".
I would suggest this is one of these times when Competition Authorities need to encourage behaviour change.
Why this animus against the Commonwealth? It's a voluntary club. Don't be a member if you don't want to. But interesting that Francophone nations have chosen to join it. I wonder why?
FFS. The Guardian's report on Sunak's Net Zero reverse ferret:
"He is also expected to rule out proposed recycling schemes with multiple bins."
It's gone full-on Cones Hotline, hasn't it? This is basically Government by Alan Partridge.
Don't most places already have multiple bins? That's the norm surely, and it has been the case for many years now.
I (and 1000s of others round here) have 'blue bins' and that's it. Once in a while they even get emptied. In between - everything gets chucked in the regular waste.
Our council leader backed reducing the recycling collections as people were ... recycling too much.
That doesn't sound very good, but I can't see why anyone would want to rule out multiple bin schemes, it surely makes sense to get households to sort their waste first?
Assuming you can rely on them to do it right, of course -- too much of the wrong kind of recycling in the wrong bin and you need to separate it post-collection, and might as well have saved everybody the effort. But this kind of decision should be down to local government choice, not imposed by central government chasing headlines.
The place I used to live in Japan asks you to sort into: burnable garbage; non-burnable garbage; recyclable paper and card; PET bottles; other recyclable plastics; empty cans; refillable bottles; other empty bottles; all with their own correct type of rubbish bag or container. But Japanese local governments can rely on social pressure and local residential organisation to ensure that people put the right things in the right binbags on the right days...
Why this animus against the Commonwealth? It's a voluntary club. Don't be a member if you don't want to. But interesting that Francophone nations have chosen to join it. I wonder why?
It's had its day and the fact nobody is willing to hold the Commonwealth games anymore is symptomatic of a wider problem
Why this animus against the Commonwealth? It's a voluntary club. Don't be a member if you don't want to. But interesting that Francophone nations have chosen to join it. I wonder why?
It's all about taking back control from their unelected rulers.
Just imagine if the EU sacked a UK Prime Minister in the way the Queen, via her Governor-General did with Gough Whitlam in Australia, something King Charles endorsed.
Maybe the French have finally realised their food is unutterable shit and they are all at home learning to make new British cuisine and Singapore laksa
Au contraire (that’s French, mamma), at home they’re probably cooking pretty decent food. If they were replicating British home cooking they’d be microwaving ready meals while worshipping the star of a tv insurance advert strutting his culinary stuff.
Not exactly Paris but big enough to have life. Especially at 7pm on a balmy weekday evening
This is one of the main roads, in the centre, right now
They’ve all taken small boats to England.
I’ve found the tourist centre. Even here…
Provincial France feels notably “recessiony” to me
Perhaps they knew you were coming?
Hello Punter
What’s all this ‘he’s a terrible tipster” stuff I saw you posting about me?
Lol! I was thinking of certain suggestions concerning how well UKIP were going to do at one or two elections in the past. I'm afraid I followed you over the cliff a couple of times, and I tend to remember that kind of thing. But I take full responsibility myself, as all punters must, and I'm sure they were not at all typical of your prowess generally, so I apologise if I maligned you unfairly.
Good to see you back anyway.
I think any punter who knows his stuff would regard backing UKIP to get more than 10%,& to outpoll the Lib Dem’s in the 2015 GE, years before the election, taking money off half the site in the process to be a bit unlucky to back them in several constituencies only for them to poll 13% and only get one seat
Thurrock was the big bet at 16/1, it was 4/5 on election day and they lost by 300 votes. I wouldn’t want to be laying bets like that too often.
Don't tke it too seriously, Sam. I wouldn't have placed the bets if I hadn't thought they were value myself. They were, as you kind of indacate, great value losers. I don't really have a problem with that. And, if you've been lurking all these years, you will know that I have often pointed out the iniquitous way FPTP worked against the Kippers.
So, what you got in the locker these days? You heavy on Trump? Or Mordaunt maybe?
I don't bet serioosuly any more, so I don't give tips on here like I once did. It was always my policy never to tip anything I hadn't backed myself. My guess is you do likewise, in which case, respect.
Sorry I was a bit stern there, I was just surprised to read it
The only political bet I’ve had in the last 18 months really was to get out of the Tory Maj bets at 7/2 when Boris was ousted. To be fair, my backs of them at 6/4 7/4 2/1 in 2021/22 was worthy of a bad tipster jibe! Locked in a monkey loss
I’m currently recovering from my second detached retina in 10 months. Got the ball whacked in my left eye playing football in Oct 22 then in the right on my 3rd game back, in July. Both resulting in a vitrectomy - that must have been long odds!
This isn't a blip. Look at the underlying numbers in both the Deltapoll and Ipsos polls today (helpfully summarised in the threads below). They're awful for the Tories.
At the risk of turning into @Heathener, the prospect of something close to a Tory wipe out is being underplayed.
Just because it's never happened (ignoring what happened to the Liberals) and just because they've existed for so long (so had the Liberals) doesn't mean it's never going to happen.
I’m pretty instinctively a Tory kind of guy. A Unionist through and through, proud to be British, a believer in capitalism and private enterprise, encouraging people to work hard to get on and rewarding ambition.
I really have no idea what this government is about anymore. It is high tax, low service, short sighted and, particularly anywhere near the Home Office, deeply unpleasant bordering on unBritish. I am in something approaching despair. What on earth happened to Cameron’s new Tories?
Short answer: they lost the referendum.
Long answer: Cameroonism didn't really have a good answer to the question "what are the Conservatives for?" The coalition was a bit of an "in office, not in power" experience and some sort of reaction against that was probably inevitable. I don't like the form that has taken any more than you, but I can sort of understand it. Add to that the change in the age graph; the Conservatives are a "waiting for God" party now in a way they weren't before. That has consequences.
As for the higher tax, lower services issue... I'm willing to cut Sunak some slack there, though I wish he'd be honest about it. The UK has been writing post-dated cheques for decades, and the electorate has rewarded governments for doing that. They were bound to be cashed eventually, and it's not entirely Sunak's fault that it's on his watch.
The medium answer: They lost the referendum, then didn’t stick around to honour the result.
Yes. It was essential to the Tory project in 2015/16 that Cameron, having given us the choice, remained as PM to see it through. If he had thought that a Leave result was undeliverable and was a resignation issue he should have said so in advance, as giving the people the choice was the manifesto commitment. He didn't.
That travesty was compounded by failing to appoint a genuine Brexiteer as PM in his place.
They have never recovered from those two disasters.
And yet, writing that down highlights quite what a mad gamble Cameron took.
There is no way he could plausibly remain PM after June 2016; he had recommended one course of action to the British population, and they voted against it. It wasn't technically a vote of confidence, but it had the same weight.
Besides, Cameron would (presumably) have negotiated an arrangement closer to the EU than May's or Johnson's. Given the buckets of shit poured on May, is it really plausible to think that Cameron negotiating something would have ended better?
I think so.
He shouldn’t have taken a prominent role in the referendum, so he could still have been PM no matter what. But even given the way it panned out, he should have hung around to make a deal as he said he would.
By the way, I hear Aklu Plaza is closing. They couldn’t get permission for the ‘banqueting suite/community space/wedding venue’ on the third floor in time, and the ‘shop’ downstairs was a rat infested front
Once upon a time it was a Debenhams, I remember mum and dad driving me and my brother there from Ilford every couple of weekends.
I remember it well. My Nan used to work there. I worked on a market stall outside when I was at school
Why this animus against the Commonwealth? It's a voluntary club. Don't be a member if you don't want to. But interesting that Francophone nations have chosen to join it. I wonder why?
It's all about taking back control from their unelected rulers.
Just imagine if the EU sacked a UK Prime Minister in the way the Queen, via her Governor-General did with Gough Whitlam in Australia, something King Charles endorsed.
Most Commonwealth nations are not realms as Australia was then.
However notably Fraser trounced Whitlam by a landslide after the Governor General had appointed him to replace Whitlam so it was not that unpopular a decision given the opposition controlled Senate was refusing to pass any finance bills from the House of Representatives without an election
Why this animus against the Commonwealth? It's a voluntary club. Don't be a member if you don't want to. But interesting that Francophone nations have chosen to join it. I wonder why?
It's had its day and the fact nobody is willing to hold the Commonwealth games anymore is symptomatic of a wider problem
No it hasn't, indeed it is a key bulwark in controlling Chinese influence in developing nations
She has a point. Is it right to deprive someone of their entire livelihood on the basis of hearsay and anonymous allegations - made to the media not the police?
I suppose you could argue that Brand has the money to fight libel actions but it still doesn’t seem quite right
Maybe key word is 'suspends'?
@Cyclefree probably knows way more than us about this kind of corporate thing, but if there is some kind of allegation of a v serious nature in a workplace are people not sometimes 'suspended' pending an investigation?
Quite often, they are.
Tiger Woods lost zillions in sponsorships for behaviour which wasn’t on the level of Brands - cheating on his wife with various er… professionals, mainly.
And amateurs! Like the next door neighbour's daughter.
Yup.
So Brand has nothing to whine about. If you are in the entertainment business, your image can affect others. So it matters. “But it’s legal” doesn’t work for that.
Hang on. I get all this if Brand is found guilty of what he is being accused of. But Leon is right. At the moment he is being cancelled based on (very credible) accusations.
Suspending YouTube income if held for him to be repaid if he was shown not to be guilty seems okay. But scrubbing content from Channel 4 seems way out of line. And should we not give individuals the choice as to whether they want to spend money and time at his shows?
I think the man is a money-grabbing turd these days, but I think we play into the hands of those stoking a culture war by reacting this way.
ETA: just to be clear, I suspect the allegations are probably true and then most/all of these things should happen. But there needs to be a sequence to this stuff imo
Commercial telly is simple. If it isn't going to make money then they won't show it. If their judgement is that people won't want him broadcast then off he goes.
As for YuToob, it has a stack of policies and is already very good at suspending people and channels for no particular reason.
I'm not saying that I support taking away his voice, at least not at this point. But its difficult to force people to watch someone they no longer want to watch. Though surely if he has been "cancelled" by C4 and YuToob, he will be welcomed on GBeebies and given his own "Common Sense" show.
Maybe the French have finally realised their food is unutterable shit and they are all at home learning to make new British cuisine and Singapore laksa
Au contraire (that’s French, mamma), at home they’re probably cooking pretty decent food. If they were replicating British home cooking they’d be microwaving ready meals while worshipping the star of a tv insurance advert strutting his culinary stuff.
Judging by the crap in the local supermarkets in France, there are a lot of people buying awful ready meals, and other low quality processed food.
And just as you start to despair of Labour having any ambition at all they confirm they'll build the whole of HS2 and NPR (though I'll believe it when I see it).
I know "out of touch" is a cliche but the government really are coming across as very 1996/7 at the moment. Tired and out of ideas.
Their big opportunity in the near term is a poor Labour showing at the byelections. If the SNP keep Rutherglen and Tories retain Tamworth (quite possible) and Mid Beds (also quite possible) then we'll get a couple of weeks of Starmer in crisis to reset the media narrative. If Labour win 2 or 3 of those then it'll just pile on the pain. If Labour win Rutherglen and Tamworth and Lib Dems get Mid Beds with Labour second then the Tories will go into meltdown.
So that we know what to look out for - in what ways would the Tories in meltdown look different from what we are seeing now?
That's the brilliant psychological experiment that the mice are currently running.
Sunak looks like a loser. Different methodologies make it hard to compare, but he's doing about as badly as Major in '96. And he doesn't have the residual kudos for being an election winner in his own right. And Britain is not, as the slogan went, Booming, or showing any signs of preparing to boom.
Standard Operating Procedure here is change leader and hope. But for the reasons listed by @david_herdson upthread, that's not really an option. So all they can do is hang on and hope.
They clearly want to melt down, but they aren't allowed to. The sort of torture some people pay good money for. Apparently.
Meltdown to me means another 1922 committee palaver with the entire parliamentary party stabbing each other in the back. One thing they've sort of managed in the last year is a modicum of unity.
I think the final attempted regicide before the election is there, in the background. It may not happen or it may. A bit like the Prigozhin mutiny (and like that one, I think Sunak would see off the mutineers). Some of the early signs are there.
When it becomes clear that keeping him is more costly electorally than offing him, he'll go. His personal polling falling beneath that of the party would be a sign.
The trouble is there is no king or queen across the water. No Boris.
This is right. It isn't enough for Tory MPs to conclude that Sunak is a liability in that he slips to being less popular than his party (which isn't the case at the moment anyway on most polls).
They also need to think that the act of defenestration wouldn't in itself hurt them still further, and that the new leader they end up with would be better. The new leader has to be an MP, ruling out at least one person of note. Any vaguely capable contender would far rather be the shiny new Leader of the Opposition after an election than the hapless mug who got a shellacking after a handful of months at the helm so will be really hard to persuade to step up rather than wait a short time. That just leaves the howling mad and the terminally sh1t, who aren't an obvious improvement to say the least.
I just can't see it.
The only one is Penny. I'm a fan of the person, but not necessarily the policy agenda of Penny, but she's always been fairly cagey about that anyway.
I think Penny is the only one that Charles would have as PM without making an awful constitutional fuss. I can't see him happily installing Steve Barclay as PM, he'd demand a GE. Penny's sword carrying means he'd probably go with her as caretaker PM. I'd like Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda. I don't think the latter is guaranteed, possibly not even likely, but the very presence of a new leader would mean a shift in policy was demanded. Nobody wants a new leader to do a 'better' version of Sunakism.
Firstly, King Charles' views have absolutely nothing to do with it. He might or might not express a view in private audience with the new PM as to whether an election should be called promptly, but his constitutional duty is simply to appoint as PM whoever, due to being elected leader by the majority party, is the person able to command a majority in the House of Commons. If you think he'd do anything else, you're living in a fantasy world.
Secondly, Mordaunt is very unlikely to have any interest in being the sap who gets to be caretaker for a few months before a shellacking. I'm not 100% certain on this one as she sometimes makes eccentric moves (taking her bid against Sunak to the wire in leadership contest 2 for instance) but very unlikely.
Finally, "Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda" is just your own, personal fantasy and best left for you to enjoy in your private time.
I made quite clear that that was what I wanted rather than what I expected, not sure why the attempted 'zinger' was necessary.
I think Charles is more than capable of throwing a constitutional strop that derails a leadership takeover. He lacks QEII's propriety in that regard imo.
I am convinced Charles would have told Boris and Cummings he would not prorogue Parliament to try and get Brexit done, while the Queen was probably a Leaver, Charles would probably have been a Remainer had he been able to vote. See his first state visits as King were to Germany and France
And his son and daughter-in-law weren’t that welcome in the Caribbean Commonwealth not long before the Coronation.
Most of the Caribbean Commonwealth are now republics or heading that way anyway
Most of the whole Commonwealth are now republics.
All the commonwealth will be shortly - it's inevitable
And just as you start to despair of Labour having any ambition at all they confirm they'll build the whole of HS2 and NPR (though I'll believe it when I see it).
I know "out of touch" is a cliche but the government really are coming across as very 1996/7 at the moment. Tired and out of ideas.
Their big opportunity in the near term is a poor Labour showing at the byelections. If the SNP keep Rutherglen and Tories retain Tamworth (quite possible) and Mid Beds (also quite possible) then we'll get a couple of weeks of Starmer in crisis to reset the media narrative. If Labour win 2 or 3 of those then it'll just pile on the pain. If Labour win Rutherglen and Tamworth and Lib Dems get Mid Beds with Labour second then the Tories will go into meltdown.
So that we know what to look out for - in what ways would the Tories in meltdown look different from what we are seeing now?
That's the brilliant psychological experiment that the mice are currently running.
Sunak looks like a loser. Different methodologies make it hard to compare, but he's doing about as badly as Major in '96. And he doesn't have the residual kudos for being an election winner in his own right. And Britain is not, as the slogan went, Booming, or showing any signs of preparing to boom.
Standard Operating Procedure here is change leader and hope. But for the reasons listed by @david_herdson upthread, that's not really an option. So all they can do is hang on and hope.
They clearly want to melt down, but they aren't allowed to. The sort of torture some people pay good money for. Apparently.
Meltdown to me means another 1922 committee palaver with the entire parliamentary party stabbing each other in the back. One thing they've sort of managed in the last year is a modicum of unity.
I think the final attempted regicide before the election is there, in the background. It may not happen or it may. A bit like the Prigozhin mutiny (and like that one, I think Sunak would see off the mutineers). Some of the early signs are there.
When it becomes clear that keeping him is more costly electorally than offing him, he'll go. His personal polling falling beneath that of the party would be a sign.
The trouble is there is no king or queen across the water. No Boris.
This is right. It isn't enough for Tory MPs to conclude that Sunak is a liability in that he slips to being less popular than his party (which isn't the case at the moment anyway on most polls).
They also need to think that the act of defenestration wouldn't in itself hurt them still further, and that the new leader they end up with would be better. The new leader has to be an MP, ruling out at least one person of note. Any vaguely capable contender would far rather be the shiny new Leader of the Opposition after an election than the hapless mug who got a shellacking after a handful of months at the helm so will be really hard to persuade to step up rather than wait a short time. That just leaves the howling mad and the terminally sh1t, who aren't an obvious improvement to say the least.
I just can't see it.
The only one is Penny. I'm a fan of the person, but not necessarily the policy agenda of Penny, but she's always been fairly cagey about that anyway.
I think Penny is the only one that Charles would have as PM without making an awful constitutional fuss. I can't see him happily installing Steve Barclay as PM, he'd demand a GE. Penny's sword carrying means he'd probably go with her as caretaker PM. I'd like Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda. I don't think the latter is guaranteed, possibly not even likely, but the very presence of a new leader would mean a shift in policy was demanded. Nobody wants a new leader to do a 'better' version of Sunakism.
Firstly, King Charles' views have absolutely nothing to do with it. He might or might not express a view in private audience with the new PM as to whether an election should be called promptly, but his constitutional duty is simply to appoint as PM whoever, due to being elected leader by the majority party, is the person able to command a majority in the House of Commons. If you think he'd do anything else, you're living in a fantasy world.
Secondly, Mordaunt is very unlikely to have any interest in being the sap who gets to be caretaker for a few months before a shellacking. I'm not 100% certain on this one as she sometimes makes eccentric moves (taking her bid against Sunak to the wire in leadership contest 2 for instance) but very unlikely.
Finally, "Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda" is just your own, personal fantasy and best left for you to enjoy in your private time.
I made quite clear that that was what I wanted rather than what I expected, not sure why the attempted 'zinger' was necessary.
I think Charles is more than capable of throwing a constitutional strop that derails a leadership takeover. He lacks QEII's propriety in that regard imo.
The King would appoint as PM whoever the majority party elects as PM, unless many of the governing party say they would not support the new PM's government, in which case he would request a vote of confidence in it first.
We are at the point now none of the major Tory leadership contenders, Braverman, Badenoch, Mordaunt, Barclay, Tugendhat etc have much interest in taking over now. They will let Sunak and Hunt lose the next election and then put their stalls forward to be Leader of the Opposition
Charles should remember what happened to the first of his name who tried to impose his will on Parliament. There were a surprising number of reminders of this on show at Windsor if he wished to brush up on it.
What has that got to do with what I said? If he asks a new PM to be confirmed by Parliament as the governing party is divided and if he had refused to prorogue Parliament that is exactly the opposite of imposing his will on Parliament
By the way, surely Tommy 'compromised by China' Tugend is out of the leadership picture now?
Far from it, indeed if I was a betting man I would say Barclay v Tugendhat would be the final 2 Tory MPs pick to go to the membership if Sunak resigns after losing the next general election
Why this animus against the Commonwealth? It's a voluntary club. Don't be a member if you don't want to. But interesting that Francophone nations have chosen to join it. I wonder why?
It's had its day and the fact nobody is willing to hold the Commonwealth games anymore is symptomatic of a wider problem
No it hasn't, indeed it is a key bulwark in controlling Chinese influence in developing nations
Interesting Sunak does this u-turn after the recent confirmation of investments in batteries and electric cars!
I was surprised by the views of Simon Clarke MP , I thought he would be pro this u-turn . His twitter feed makes an interest read.
Running some sort of anti-environmental climate change skeptical campaign next year is going to make the Tories look every bit as nuts as the red hatted MAGA moonbats in the US.
If that's the best Sunak an co. can come up with the should call election ASAP so that they can be dispatched before they come up with any even worse ideas.
What I find funny about the Renewable Energy Foundation's piece is that it deliberately excludes one of the main reasons why these payments exist:
Nuclear.
When the wind is blowing, the grid needs to turn off power supplies. With gas, that's dead easy. (Please turn off your OCGT/CCGT.) With coal, it's a bit harder, and suppliers will happily have negative prices for a bit rather than put plants through thermal contraction/expansion cycles.
With nuclear, they aren't lowering that output with less than 24 hours notice. Unless you're writing a very big cheque.
Which means that the grid is now looking for the cheapest way to get power production below power demand. And the cheapest way is usually to pay for wind turbines to be disconnected.
But this raises an important question: why is it the fault of wind that nuclear is highly inflexible? Why should the UK government be susbsidising new nuclear at 2x the price of wind, when having it as part of the mix inevitably means having to pay wind not to produce?
There's a second important factor. New windfarms have been built in places with inadequate takeaway capacity. In the old days (pre-2012), it was because permitting took no notice of the need to carry wind energy. But these days, almost everything built has been built because transmission capacity has been promised. And, indeed, that transmission capacity has often been paid for by the wind developers themselves.
If National Grid and Ofgem have failed to deliver contractually obliged takeaway capacity, why is that the fault of the wind developer?
Wind is economic in the UK. Indeed, it is highly economic.
Yes, it needs gas backup, but the capital and maintenance costs of a modern CCGT are miniscule, while it is the fuel that is expensive.
It isn't the fault of wind that nuclear is inflexible; it's the fault of wind that wind is intermittent and unpredictable.
As for subsidising nuclear, I dunno. I'm not a big fan of nuclear personally - look at Zaporiza, a nuclear power plant seems like painting a big target on your bum. I can see why Germany got rid of them. I think I'm in favour of filling the old decommissioned nuclear power stations with small reactors, which seems safer and cheaper, but I have no idea if this is true.
As for wind farms being built in places with poor connectivity, this is absolutely the fault of wind providers, the poor connectivity is a known factor, and this shouldn't be subsidised by the billpayer. Many companies deliberately built their farms in areas of poor connectivity to benefit from constraint payments.
What I find funny about the Renewable Energy Foundation's piece is that it deliberately excludes one of the main reasons why these payments exist:
Nuclear.
When the wind is blowing, the grid needs to turn off power supplies. With gas, that's dead easy. (Please turn off your OCGT/CCGT.) With coal, it's a bit harder, and suppliers will happily have negative prices for a bit rather than put plants through thermal contraction/expansion cycles.
With nuclear, they aren't lowering that output with less than 24 hours notice. Unless you're writing a very big cheque.
Which means that the grid is now looking for the cheapest way to get power production below power demand. And the cheapest way is usually to pay for wind turbines to be disconnected.
But this raises an important question: why is it the fault of wind that nuclear is highly inflexible? Why should the UK government be susbsidising new nuclear at 2x the price of wind, when having it as part of the mix inevitably means having to pay wind not to produce?
There's a second important factor. New windfarms have been built in places with inadequate takeaway capacity. In the old days (pre-2012), it was because permitting took no notice of the need to carry wind energy. But these days, almost everything built has been built because transmission capacity has been promised. And, indeed, that transmission capacity has often been paid for by the wind developers themselves.
If National Grid and Ofgem have failed to deliver contractually obliged takeaway capacity, why is that the fault of the wind developer?
Wind is economic in the UK. Indeed, it is highly economic.
Yes, it needs gas backup, but the capital and maintenance costs of a modern CCGT are miniscule, while it is the fuel that is expensive.
It isn't the fault of wind that nuclear is inflexible; it's the fault of wind that wind is intermittent and unpredictable.
As for subsidising nuclear, I dunno. I'm not a big fan of nuclear personally - look at Zaporiza, a nuclear power plant seems like painting a big target on your bum. I can see why Germany got rid of them. I think I'm in favour of filling the old decommissioned nuclear power stations with small reactors, which seems safer and cheaper, but I have no idea if this is true.
As for wind farms being built in places with poor connectivity, this is absolutely the fault of wind providers, the poor connectivity is a known factor, and this shouldn't be subsidised by the billpayer. Many companies deliberately built their farms in areas of poor connectivity to benefit from constraint payments.
Not exactly Paris but big enough to have life. Especially at 7pm on a balmy weekday evening
This is one of the main roads, in the centre, right now
They’ve all taken small boats to England.
I’ve found the tourist centre. Even here…
Provincial France feels notably “recessiony” to me
Perhaps they knew you were coming?
Hello Punter
What’s all this ‘he’s a terrible tipster” stuff I saw you posting about me?
Lol! I was thinking of certain suggestions concerning how well UKIP were going to do at one or two elections in the past. I'm afraid I followed you over the cliff a couple of times, and I tend to remember that kind of thing. But I take full responsibility myself, as all punters must, and I'm sure they were not at all typical of your prowess generally, so I apologise if I maligned you unfairly.
Good to see you back anyway.
I think any punter who knows his stuff would regard backing UKIP to get more than 10%,& to outpoll the Lib Dem’s in the 2015 GE, years before the election, taking money off half the site in the process to be a bit unlucky to back them in several constituencies only for them to poll 13% and only get one seat
Thurrock was the big bet at 16/1, it was 4/5 on election day and they lost by 300 votes. I wouldn’t want to be laying bets like that too often.
Don't tke it too seriously, Sam. I wouldn't have placed the bets if I hadn't thought they were value myself. They were, as you kind of indacate, great value losers. I don't really have a problem with that. And, if you've been lurking all these years, you will know that I have often pointed out the iniquitous way FPTP worked against the Kippers.
So, what you got in the locker these days? You heavy on Trump? Or Mordaunt maybe?
I don't bet serioosuly any more, so I don't give tips on here like I once did. It was always my policy never to tip anything I hadn't backed myself. My guess is you do likewise, in which case, respect.
Sorry I was a bit stern there, I was just surprised to read it
The only political bet I’ve had in the last 18 months really was to get out of the Tory Maj bets at 7/2 when Boris was ousted. To be fair, my backs of them at 6/4 7/4 2/1 in 2021/22 was worthy of a bad tipster jibe! Locked in a monkey loss
I’m currently recovering from my second detached retina in 10 months. Got the ball whacked in my left eye playing football in Oct 22 then in the right on my 3rd game back, in July. Both resulting in a vitrectomy - that must have been long odds!
Ouch! I feel your pain. You should take up something safer, like boxing.
And for the avoidance of doubt, I wasn't being serious when I made the tipster jibe, but if it sounded that way, my apologies.
This isn't a blip. Look at the underlying numbers in both the Deltapoll and Ipsos polls today (helpfully summarised in the threads below). They're awful for the Tories.
At the risk of turning into @Heathener, the prospect of something close to a Tory wipe out is being underplayed.
Just because it's never happened (ignoring what happened to the Liberals) and just because they've existed for so long (so had the Liberals) doesn't mean it's never going to happen.
I’m pretty instinctively a Tory kind of guy. A Unionist through and through, proud to be British, a believer in capitalism and private enterprise, encouraging people to work hard to get on and rewarding ambition.
I really have no idea what this government is about anymore. It is high tax, low service, short sighted and, particularly anywhere near the Home Office, deeply unpleasant bordering on unBritish. I am in something approaching despair. What on earth happened to Cameron’s new Tories?
Short answer: they lost the referendum.
Long answer: Cameroonism didn't really have a good answer to the question "what are the Conservatives for?" The coalition was a bit of an "in office, not in power" experience and some sort of reaction against that was probably inevitable. I don't like the form that has taken any more than you, but I can sort of understand it. Add to that the change in the age graph; the Conservatives are a "waiting for God" party now in a way they weren't before. That has consequences.
As for the higher tax, lower services issue... I'm willing to cut Sunak some slack there, though I wish he'd be honest about it. The UK has been writing post-dated cheques for decades, and the electorate has rewarded governments for doing that. They were bound to be cashed eventually, and it's not entirely Sunak's fault that it's on his watch.
The medium answer: They lost the referendum, then didn’t stick around to honour the result.
Yes. It was essential to the Tory project in 2015/16 that Cameron, having given us the choice, remained as PM to see it through. If he had thought that a Leave result was undeliverable and was a resignation issue he should have said so in advance, as giving the people the choice was the manifesto commitment. He didn't.
That travesty was compounded by failing to appoint a genuine Brexiteer as PM in his place.
They have never recovered from those two disasters.
And yet, writing that down highlights quite what a mad gamble Cameron took.
There is no way he could plausibly remain PM after June 2016; he had recommended one course of action to the British population, and they voted against it. It wasn't technically a vote of confidence, but it had the same weight.
Besides, Cameron would (presumably) have negotiated an arrangement closer to the EU than May's or Johnson's. Given the buckets of shit poured on May, is it really plausible to think that Cameron negotiating something would have ended better?
I think so.
He shouldn’t have taken a prominent role in the referendum, so he could still have been PM no matter what. But even given the way it panned out, he should have hung around to make a deal as he said he would.
By the way, I hear Aklu Plaza is closing. They couldn’t get permission for the ‘banqueting suite/community space/wedding venue’ on the third floor in time, and the ‘shop’ downstairs was a rat infested front
Once upon a time it was a Debenhams, I remember mum and dad driving me and my brother there from Ilford every couple of weekends.
I remember it well. My Nan used to work there. I worked on a market stall outside when I was at school
Cool! Hope your shop in Kannur, southern India is doing OK!
What I find funny about the Renewable Energy Foundation's piece is that it deliberately excludes one of the main reasons why these payments exist:
Nuclear.
When the wind is blowing, the grid needs to turn off power supplies. With gas, that's dead easy. (Please turn off your OCGT/CCGT.) With coal, it's a bit harder, and suppliers will happily have negative prices for a bit rather than put plants through thermal contraction/expansion cycles.
With nuclear, they aren't lowering that output with less than 24 hours notice. Unless you're writing a very big cheque.
Which means that the grid is now looking for the cheapest way to get power production below power demand. And the cheapest way is usually to pay for wind turbines to be disconnected.
But this raises an important question: why is it the fault of wind that nuclear is highly inflexible? Why should the UK government be susbsidising new nuclear at 2x the price of wind, when having it as part of the mix inevitably means having to pay wind not to produce?
There's a second important factor. New windfarms have been built in places with inadequate takeaway capacity. In the old days (pre-2012), it was because permitting took no notice of the need to carry wind energy. But these days, almost everything built has been built because transmission capacity has been promised. And, indeed, that transmission capacity has often been paid for by the wind developers themselves.
If National Grid and Ofgem have failed to deliver contractually obliged takeaway capacity, why is that the fault of the wind developer?
Wind is economic in the UK. Indeed, it is highly economic.
Yes, it needs gas backup, but the capital and maintenance costs of a modern CCGT are miniscule, while it is the fuel that is expensive.
It isn't the fault of wind that nuclear is inflexible; it's the fault of wind that wind is intermittent and unpredictable.
As for subsidising nuclear, I dunno. I'm not a big fan of nuclear personally - look at Zaporiza, a nuclear power plant seems like painting a big target on your bum. I can see why Germany got rid of them. I think I'm in favour of filling the old decommissioned nuclear power stations with small reactors, which seems safer and cheaper, but I have no idea if this is true.
As for wind farms being built in places with poor connectivity, this is absolutely the fault of wind providers, the poor connectivity is a known factor, and this shouldn't be subsidised by the billpayer. Many companies deliberately built their farms in areas of poor connectivity to benefit from constraint payments.
Maybe you should read all of my comment.
I would never do you the discourtesy of not reading to the end of your comment.
I haven't heard of cases of wind farms being built where appropriate grid capacity has been promised that then falls through. It would be a bit stupid of the wind farm company to do that - far better to build behind a grid bottleneck and benefit from constraint payments worth several times what selling the energy would have brought in.
Why this animus against the Commonwealth? It's a voluntary club. Don't be a member if you don't want to. But interesting that Francophone nations have chosen to join it. I wonder why?
It's all about taking back control from their unelected rulers.
Just imagine if the EU sacked a UK Prime Minister in the way the Queen, via her Governor-General did with Gough Whitlam in Australia, something King Charles endorsed.
Most Commonwealth nations are not realms as Australia was then.
However notably Fraser trounced Whitlam by a landslide after the Governor General had appointed him to replace Whitlam so it was not that unpopular a decision given the opposition controlled Senate was refusing to pass any finance bills from the House of Representatives without an election
Anyon else old enough to remember the "Kerr's cur" quote.
Why this animus against the Commonwealth? It's a voluntary club. Don't be a member if you don't want to. But interesting that Francophone nations have chosen to join it. I wonder why?
How many Francophone nations? English is official in Cameroon and Rwanda.
Why this animus against the Commonwealth? It's a voluntary club. Don't be a member if you don't want to. But interesting that Francophone nations have chosen to join it. I wonder why?
Why this animus against the Commonwealth? It's a voluntary club. Don't be a member if you don't want to. But interesting that Francophone nations have chosen to join it. I wonder why?
How many Francophone nations? English is official in Cameroon and Rwanda.
Mozambique joined, but it is Lusaphone.
It really is hard to see the point of the Commonwealth now that we don't even want to have running races anymore.
Though being so pointless makes it hard to object to it.
Why this animus against the Commonwealth? It's a voluntary club. Don't be a member if you don't want to. But interesting that Francophone nations have chosen to join it. I wonder why?
It's all about taking back control from their unelected rulers.
Just imagine if the EU sacked a UK Prime Minister in the way the Queen, via her Governor-General did with Gough Whitlam in Australia, something King Charles endorsed.
It's a family affair.
Don't forget Uncle Dickie was lined up to become titular Prime Minister when Wilson was due to be felled in a coup d'etat.
She has a point. Is it right to deprive someone of their entire livelihood on the basis of hearsay and anonymous allegations - made to the media not the police?
I suppose you could argue that Brand has the money to fight libel actions but it still doesn’t seem quite right
Maybe key word is 'suspends'?
@Cyclefree probably knows way more than us about this kind of corporate thing, but if there is some kind of allegation of a v serious nature in a workplace are people not sometimes 'suspended' pending an investigation?
Quite often, they are.
Tiger Woods lost zillions in sponsorships for behaviour which wasn’t on the level of Brands - cheating on his wife with various er… professionals, mainly.
And amateurs! Like the next door neighbour's daughter.
Yup.
So Brand has nothing to whine about. If you are in the entertainment business, your image can affect others. So it matters. “But it’s legal” doesn’t work for that.
Hang on. I get all this if Brand is found guilty of what he is being accused of. But Leon is right. At the moment he is being cancelled based on (very credible) accusations.
Suspending YouTube income if held for him to be repaid if he was shown not to be guilty seems okay. But scrubbing content from Channel 4 seems way out of line. And should we not give individuals the choice as to whether they want to spend money and time at his shows?
I think the man is a money-grabbing turd these days, but I think we play into the hands of those stoking a culture war by reacting this way.
ETA: just to be clear, I suspect the allegations are probably true and then most/all of these things should happen. But there needs to be a sequence to this stuff imo
Commercial telly is simple. If it isn't going to make money then they won't show it. If their judgement is that people won't want him broadcast then off he goes.
As for YuToob, it has a stack of policies and is already very good at suspending people and channels for no particular reason.
I'm not saying that I support taking away his voice, at least not at this point. But its difficult to force people to watch someone they no longer want to watch. Though surely if he has been "cancelled" by C4 and YuToob, he will be welcomed on GBeebies and given his own "Common Sense" show.
But it’s difficult to force people to watch… Unless I have misunderstood, no one is being forced to watch stuff - in the C4 case they’re being forced not to.
I do think Sir Norfolk Passmore makes a good point that the ‘innocent until proven guilty’ line doesn’t quite apply here. But I also think we cancel people, even moral turds, far too easily. At this stage of proceedings, if people still want to watch him on C4, I think they should be allowed to do so.
Why this animus against the Commonwealth? It's a voluntary club. Don't be a member if you don't want to. But interesting that Francophone nations have chosen to join it. I wonder why?
How many Francophone nations? English is official in Cameroon and Rwanda.
Mozambique joined, but it is Lusaphone.
It really is hard to see the point of the Commonwealth now that we don't even want to have running races anymore.
Though being so pointless makes it hard to object to it.
Scale down the games so only needs one stadium, a swimming pool and some additional small venues, and give it a permanent home in a place in need of rejuvenation. Blackpool, for example. Mass accomodation already in place.
And just as you start to despair of Labour having any ambition at all they confirm they'll build the whole of HS2 and NPR (though I'll believe it when I see it).
I know "out of touch" is a cliche but the government really are coming across as very 1996/7 at the moment. Tired and out of ideas.
Their big opportunity in the near term is a poor Labour showing at the byelections. If the SNP keep Rutherglen and Tories retain Tamworth (quite possible) and Mid Beds (also quite possible) then we'll get a couple of weeks of Starmer in crisis to reset the media narrative. If Labour win 2 or 3 of those then it'll just pile on the pain. If Labour win Rutherglen and Tamworth and Lib Dems get Mid Beds with Labour second then the Tories will go into meltdown.
So that we know what to look out for - in what ways would the Tories in meltdown look different from what we are seeing now?
That's the brilliant psychological experiment that the mice are currently running.
Sunak looks like a loser. Different methodologies make it hard to compare, but he's doing about as badly as Major in '96. And he doesn't have the residual kudos for being an election winner in his own right. And Britain is not, as the slogan went, Booming, or showing any signs of preparing to boom.
Standard Operating Procedure here is change leader and hope. But for the reasons listed by @david_herdson upthread, that's not really an option. So all they can do is hang on and hope.
They clearly want to melt down, but they aren't allowed to. The sort of torture some people pay good money for. Apparently.
Meltdown to me means another 1922 committee palaver with the entire parliamentary party stabbing each other in the back. One thing they've sort of managed in the last year is a modicum of unity.
I think the final attempted regicide before the election is there, in the background. It may not happen or it may. A bit like the Prigozhin mutiny (and like that one, I think Sunak would see off the mutineers). Some of the early signs are there.
When it becomes clear that keeping him is more costly electorally than offing him, he'll go. His personal polling falling beneath that of the party would be a sign.
The trouble is there is no king or queen across the water. No Boris.
This is right. It isn't enough for Tory MPs to conclude that Sunak is a liability in that he slips to being less popular than his party (which isn't the case at the moment anyway on most polls).
They also need to think that the act of defenestration wouldn't in itself hurt them still further, and that the new leader they end up with would be better. The new leader has to be an MP, ruling out at least one person of note. Any vaguely capable contender would far rather be the shiny new Leader of the Opposition after an election than the hapless mug who got a shellacking after a handful of months at the helm so will be really hard to persuade to step up rather than wait a short time. That just leaves the howling mad and the terminally sh1t, who aren't an obvious improvement to say the least.
I just can't see it.
The only one is Penny. I'm a fan of the person, but not necessarily the policy agenda of Penny, but she's always been fairly cagey about that anyway.
I think Penny is the only one that Charles would have as PM without making an awful constitutional fuss. I can't see him happily installing Steve Barclay as PM, he'd demand a GE. Penny's sword carrying means he'd probably go with her as caretaker PM. I'd like Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda. I don't think the latter is guaranteed, possibly not even likely, but the very presence of a new leader would mean a shift in policy was demanded. Nobody wants a new leader to do a 'better' version of Sunakism.
Firstly, King Charles' views have absolutely nothing to do with it. He might or might not express a view in private audience with the new PM as to whether an election should be called promptly, but his constitutional duty is simply to appoint as PM whoever, due to being elected leader by the majority party, is the person able to command a majority in the House of Commons. If you think he'd do anything else, you're living in a fantasy world.
Secondly, Mordaunt is very unlikely to have any interest in being the sap who gets to be caretaker for a few months before a shellacking. I'm not 100% certain on this one as she sometimes makes eccentric moves (taking her bid against Sunak to the wire in leadership contest 2 for instance) but very unlikely.
Finally, "Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda" is just your own, personal fantasy and best left for you to enjoy in your private time.
I made quite clear that that was what I wanted rather than what I expected, not sure why the attempted 'zinger' was necessary.
I think Charles is more than capable of throwing a constitutional strop that derails a leadership takeover. He lacks QEII's propriety in that regard imo.
I am convinced Charles would have told Boris and Cummings he would not prorogue Parliament to try and get Brexit done, while the Queen was probably a Leaver, Charles would probably have been a Remainer had he been able to vote. See his first state visits as King were to Germany and France
And his son and daughter-in-law weren’t that welcome in the Caribbean Commonwealth not long before the Coronation.
Most of the Caribbean Commonwealth are now republics or heading that way anyway
Most of the whole Commonwealth are now republics.
All the commonwealth will be shortly - it's inevitable
No it isn't, certainly not in the white majority largely British Isles origin Australia, Canada and New Zealand, even if it is and largely already is in non white majority Commonwealth nations.
Indeed on current polls Australians may even reject a Voice for Aborigines to their Parliament in the referendum next month
It most certainly is especially with Charles looking uninspiring and frankly who cares
Uninspiring? What do you want, another Coronation? 😀😀😀
We can be sure of one thing: Charles will absolutely veto the return of Liz "monarch killer" Truss to prevent another early Coronation....
Why this animus against the Commonwealth? It's a voluntary club. Don't be a member if you don't want to. But interesting that Francophone nations have chosen to join it. I wonder why?
It's all about taking back control from their unelected rulers.
Just imagine if the EU sacked a UK Prime Minister in the way the Queen, via her Governor-General did with Gough Whitlam in Australia, something King Charles endorsed.
It's a family affair.
Don't forget Uncle Dickie was lined up to become titular Prime Minister when Wilson was due to be felled in a coup d'etat.
Democracy in action.
Our democracy has made an ass of itself. Cameron, Truss, Boris!, Lizaster, Dishi. But we have an elected system. When a party makes an ass of itself we can remove it.
What is democratic about the monarchy? Whilst the Queen dedicated her life to serving the country, she was imposed. And had she been awful we would have been stuck with her, decade after decade.
I recognise the Take Back Control rationale. And yet so many of the people who champion the principles of democracy and accountability are also wedded to the monarchy.
She has a point. Is it right to deprive someone of their entire livelihood on the basis of hearsay and anonymous allegations - made to the media not the police?
I suppose you could argue that Brand has the money to fight libel actions but it still doesn’t seem quite right
Maybe key word is 'suspends'?
@Cyclefree probably knows way more than us about this kind of corporate thing, but if there is some kind of allegation of a v serious nature in a workplace are people not sometimes 'suspended' pending an investigation?
Quite often, they are.
Tiger Woods lost zillions in sponsorships for behaviour which wasn’t on the level of Brands - cheating on his wife with various er… professionals, mainly.
And amateurs! Like the next door neighbour's daughter.
Yup.
So Brand has nothing to whine about. If you are in the entertainment business, your image can affect others. So it matters. “But it’s legal” doesn’t work for that.
Hang on. I get all this if Brand is found guilty of what he is being accused of. But Leon is right. At the moment he is being cancelled based on (very credible) accusations.
Suspending YouTube income if held for him to be repaid if he was shown not to be guilty seems okay. But scrubbing content from Channel 4 seems way out of line. And should we not give individuals the choice as to whether they want to spend money and time at his shows?
I think the man is a money-grabbing turd these days, but I think we play into the hands of those stoking a culture war by reacting this way.
ETA: just to be clear, I suspect the allegations are probably true and then most/all of these things should happen. But there needs to be a sequence to this stuff imo
Commercial telly is simple. If it isn't going to make money then they won't show it. If their judgement is that people won't want him broadcast then off he goes.
As for YuToob, it has a stack of policies and is already very good at suspending people and channels for no particular reason.
I'm not saying that I support taking away his voice, at least not at this point. But its difficult to force people to watch someone they no longer want to watch. Though surely if he has been "cancelled" by C4 and YuToob, he will be welcomed on GBeebies and given his own "Common Sense" show.
But it’s difficult to force people to watch… Unless I have misunderstood, no one is being forced to watch stuff - in the C4 case they’re being forced not to.
I do think Sir Norfolk Passmore makes a good point that the ‘innocent until proven guilty’ line doesn’t quite apply here. But I also think we cancel people, even moral turds, far too easily. At this stage of proceedings, if people still want to watch him on C4, I think they should be allowed to do so.
But that is my point. C4 chiefs evidently don't think people will watch him.
She has a point. Is it right to deprive someone of their entire livelihood on the basis of hearsay and anonymous allegations - made to the media not the police?
I suppose you could argue that Brand has the money to fight libel actions but it still doesn’t seem quite right
Maybe key word is 'suspends'?
@Cyclefree probably knows way more than us about this kind of corporate thing, but if there is some kind of allegation of a v serious nature in a workplace are people not sometimes 'suspended' pending an investigation?
Quite often, they are.
Tiger Woods lost zillions in sponsorships for behaviour which wasn’t on the level of Brands - cheating on his wife with various er… professionals, mainly.
And amateurs! Like the next door neighbour's daughter.
Yup.
So Brand has nothing to whine about. If you are in the entertainment business, your image can affect others. So it matters. “But it’s legal” doesn’t work for that.
Hang on. I get all this if Brand is found guilty of what he is being accused of. But Leon is right. At the moment he is being cancelled based on (very credible) accusations.
Suspending YouTube income if held for him to be repaid if he was shown not to be guilty seems okay. But scrubbing content from Channel 4 seems way out of line. And should we not give individuals the choice as to whether they want to spend money and time at his shows?
I think the man is a money-grabbing turd these days, but I think we play into the hands of those stoking a culture war by reacting this way.
ETA: just to be clear, I suspect the allegations are probably true and then most/all of these things should happen. But there needs to be a sequence to this stuff imo
Commercial telly is simple. If it isn't going to make money then they won't show it. If their judgement is that people won't want him broadcast then off he goes.
As for YuToob, it has a stack of policies and is already very good at suspending people and channels for no particular reason.
I'm not saying that I support taking away his voice, at least not at this point. But its difficult to force people to watch someone they no longer want to watch. Though surely if he has been "cancelled" by C4 and YuToob, he will be welcomed on GBeebies and given his own "Common Sense" show.
But it’s difficult to force people to watch… Unless I have misunderstood, no one is being forced to watch stuff - in the C4 case they’re being forced not to.
I do think Sir Norfolk Passmore makes a good point that the ‘innocent until proven guilty’ line doesn’t quite apply here. But I also think we cancel people, even moral turds, far too easily. At this stage of proceedings, if people still want to watch him on C4, I think they should be allowed to do so.
Jim"ll Fix It on the iPlayer too? He was never convicted either.
Broadcasters can make decisions about what from their archives they make available, on what terms they want (subject to the Charter for Beeb) and how it reflects on them.
The copyright isn't Brand's as he presumably contracted it away for cash. The right to access the whole C4 archive for free isn't something we have ever enjoyed.
And just as you start to despair of Labour having any ambition at all they confirm they'll build the whole of HS2 and NPR (though I'll believe it when I see it).
I know "out of touch" is a cliche but the government really are coming across as very 1996/7 at the moment. Tired and out of ideas.
Their big opportunity in the near term is a poor Labour showing at the byelections. If the SNP keep Rutherglen and Tories retain Tamworth (quite possible) and Mid Beds (also quite possible) then we'll get a couple of weeks of Starmer in crisis to reset the media narrative. If Labour win 2 or 3 of those then it'll just pile on the pain. If Labour win Rutherglen and Tamworth and Lib Dems get Mid Beds with Labour second then the Tories will go into meltdown.
So that we know what to look out for - in what ways would the Tories in meltdown look different from what we are seeing now?
That's the brilliant psychological experiment that the mice are currently running.
Sunak looks like a loser. Different methodologies make it hard to compare, but he's doing about as badly as Major in '96. And he doesn't have the residual kudos for being an election winner in his own right. And Britain is not, as the slogan went, Booming, or showing any signs of preparing to boom.
Standard Operating Procedure here is change leader and hope. But for the reasons listed by @david_herdson upthread, that's not really an option. So all they can do is hang on and hope.
They clearly want to melt down, but they aren't allowed to. The sort of torture some people pay good money for. Apparently.
Meltdown to me means another 1922 committee palaver with the entire parliamentary party stabbing each other in the back. One thing they've sort of managed in the last year is a modicum of unity.
I think the final attempted regicide before the election is there, in the background. It may not happen or it may. A bit like the Prigozhin mutiny (and like that one, I think Sunak would see off the mutineers). Some of the early signs are there.
When it becomes clear that keeping him is more costly electorally than offing him, he'll go. His personal polling falling beneath that of the party would be a sign.
The trouble is there is no king or queen across the water. No Boris.
This is right. It isn't enough for Tory MPs to conclude that Sunak is a liability in that he slips to being less popular than his party (which isn't the case at the moment anyway on most polls).
They also need to think that the act of defenestration wouldn't in itself hurt them still further, and that the new leader they end up with would be better. The new leader has to be an MP, ruling out at least one person of note. Any vaguely capable contender would far rather be the shiny new Leader of the Opposition after an election than the hapless mug who got a shellacking after a handful of months at the helm so will be really hard to persuade to step up rather than wait a short time. That just leaves the howling mad and the terminally sh1t, who aren't an obvious improvement to say the least.
I just can't see it.
The only one is Penny. I'm a fan of the person, but not necessarily the policy agenda of Penny, but she's always been fairly cagey about that anyway.
I think Penny is the only one that Charles would have as PM without making an awful constitutional fuss. I can't see him happily installing Steve Barclay as PM, he'd demand a GE. Penny's sword carrying means he'd probably go with her as caretaker PM. I'd like Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda. I don't think the latter is guaranteed, possibly not even likely, but the very presence of a new leader would mean a shift in policy was demanded. Nobody wants a new leader to do a 'better' version of Sunakism.
Firstly, King Charles' views have absolutely nothing to do with it. He might or might not express a view in private audience with the new PM as to whether an election should be called promptly, but his constitutional duty is simply to appoint as PM whoever, due to being elected leader by the majority party, is the person able to command a majority in the House of Commons. If you think he'd do anything else, you're living in a fantasy world.
Secondly, Mordaunt is very unlikely to have any interest in being the sap who gets to be caretaker for a few months before a shellacking. I'm not 100% certain on this one as she sometimes makes eccentric moves (taking her bid against Sunak to the wire in leadership contest 2 for instance) but very unlikely.
Finally, "Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda" is just your own, personal fantasy and best left for you to enjoy in your private time.
I made quite clear that that was what I wanted rather than what I expected, not sure why the attempted 'zinger' was necessary.
I think Charles is more than capable of throwing a constitutional strop that derails a leadership takeover. He lacks QEII's propriety in that regard imo.
The King would appoint as PM whoever the majority party elects as PM, unless many of the governing party say they would not support the new PM's government, in which case he would request a vote of confidence in it first.
We are at the point now none of the major Tory leadership contenders, Braverman, Badenoch, Mordaunt, Barclay, Tugendhat etc have much interest in taking over now. They will let Sunak and Hunt lose the next election and then put their stalls forward to be Leader of the Opposition
Charles should remember what happened to the first of his name who tried to impose his will on Parliament. There were a surprising number of reminders of this on show at Windsor if he wished to brush up on it.
What has that got to do with what I said? If he asks a new PM to be confirmed by Parliament as the governing party is divided and if he had refused to prorogue Parliament that is exactly the opposite of imposing his will on Parliament
By the way, surely Tommy 'compromised by China' Tugend is out of the leadership picture now?
Far from it, indeed if I was a betting man I would say Barclay v Tugendhat would be the final 2 Tory MPs pick to go to the membership if Sunak resigns after losing the next general election
And just as you start to despair of Labour having any ambition at all they confirm they'll build the whole of HS2 and NPR (though I'll believe it when I see it).
I know "out of touch" is a cliche but the government really are coming across as very 1996/7 at the moment. Tired and out of ideas.
Their big opportunity in the near term is a poor Labour showing at the byelections. If the SNP keep Rutherglen and Tories retain Tamworth (quite possible) and Mid Beds (also quite possible) then we'll get a couple of weeks of Starmer in crisis to reset the media narrative. If Labour win 2 or 3 of those then it'll just pile on the pain. If Labour win Rutherglen and Tamworth and Lib Dems get Mid Beds with Labour second then the Tories will go into meltdown.
So that we know what to look out for - in what ways would the Tories in meltdown look different from what we are seeing now?
That's the brilliant psychological experiment that the mice are currently running.
Sunak looks like a loser. Different methodologies make it hard to compare, but he's doing about as badly as Major in '96. And he doesn't have the residual kudos for being an election winner in his own right. And Britain is not, as the slogan went, Booming, or showing any signs of preparing to boom.
Standard Operating Procedure here is change leader and hope. But for the reasons listed by @david_herdson upthread, that's not really an option. So all they can do is hang on and hope.
They clearly want to melt down, but they aren't allowed to. The sort of torture some people pay good money for. Apparently.
Meltdown to me means another 1922 committee palaver with the entire parliamentary party stabbing each other in the back. One thing they've sort of managed in the last year is a modicum of unity.
I think the final attempted regicide before the election is there, in the background. It may not happen or it may. A bit like the Prigozhin mutiny (and like that one, I think Sunak would see off the mutineers). Some of the early signs are there.
When it becomes clear that keeping him is more costly electorally than offing him, he'll go. His personal polling falling beneath that of the party would be a sign.
The trouble is there is no king or queen across the water. No Boris.
This is right. It isn't enough for Tory MPs to conclude that Sunak is a liability in that he slips to being less popular than his party (which isn't the case at the moment anyway on most polls).
They also need to think that the act of defenestration wouldn't in itself hurt them still further, and that the new leader they end up with would be better. The new leader has to be an MP, ruling out at least one person of note. Any vaguely capable contender would far rather be the shiny new Leader of the Opposition after an election than the hapless mug who got a shellacking after a handful of months at the helm so will be really hard to persuade to step up rather than wait a short time. That just leaves the howling mad and the terminally sh1t, who aren't an obvious improvement to say the least.
I just can't see it.
The only one is Penny. I'm a fan of the person, but not necessarily the policy agenda of Penny, but she's always been fairly cagey about that anyway.
I think Penny is the only one that Charles would have as PM without making an awful constitutional fuss. I can't see him happily installing Steve Barclay as PM, he'd demand a GE. Penny's sword carrying means he'd probably go with her as caretaker PM. I'd like Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda. I don't think the latter is guaranteed, possibly not even likely, but the very presence of a new leader would mean a shift in policy was demanded. Nobody wants a new leader to do a 'better' version of Sunakism.
Firstly, King Charles' views have absolutely nothing to do with it. He might or might not express a view in private audience with the new PM as to whether an election should be called promptly, but his constitutional duty is simply to appoint as PM whoever, due to being elected leader by the majority party, is the person able to command a majority in the House of Commons. If you think he'd do anything else, you're living in a fantasy world.
Secondly, Mordaunt is very unlikely to have any interest in being the sap who gets to be caretaker for a few months before a shellacking. I'm not 100% certain on this one as she sometimes makes eccentric moves (taking her bid against Sunak to the wire in leadership contest 2 for instance) but very unlikely.
Finally, "Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda" is just your own, personal fantasy and best left for you to enjoy in your private time.
I made quite clear that that was what I wanted rather than what I expected, not sure why the attempted 'zinger' was necessary.
I think Charles is more than capable of throwing a constitutional strop that derails a leadership takeover. He lacks QEII's propriety in that regard imo.
I am convinced Charles would have told Boris and Cummings he would not prorogue Parliament to try and get Brexit done, while the Queen was probably a Leaver, Charles would probably have been a Remainer had he been able to vote. See his first state visits as King were to Germany and France
And his son and daughter-in-law weren’t that welcome in the Caribbean Commonwealth not long before the Coronation.
Most of the Caribbean Commonwealth are now republics or heading that way anyway
Most of the whole Commonwealth are now republics.
All the commonwealth will be shortly - it's inevitable
No it isn't, certainly not in the white majority largely British Isles origin Australia, Canada and New Zealand, even if it is and largely already is in non white majority Commonwealth nations.
Indeed on current polls Australians may even reject a Voice for Aborigines to their Parliament in the referendum next month
It most certainly is especially with Charles looking uninspiring and frankly who cares
Why this animus against the Commonwealth? It's a voluntary club. Don't be a member if you don't want to. But interesting that Francophone nations have chosen to join it. I wonder why?
How many Francophone nations? English is official in Cameroon and Rwanda.
Mozambique joined, but it is Lusaphone.
It really is hard to see the point of the Commonwealth now that we don't even want to have running races anymore.
Though being so pointless makes it hard to object to it.
It's often overlooked, but there was one part of Mozambique that was British from 1891 to 1923 - Chinde, a thriving port till it started to silt up in the 1920s.
Why this animus against the Commonwealth? It's a voluntary club. Don't be a member if you don't want to. But interesting that Francophone nations have chosen to join it. I wonder why?
It's all about taking back control from their unelected rulers.
Just imagine if the EU sacked a UK Prime Minister in the way the Queen, via her Governor-General did with Gough Whitlam in Australia, something King Charles endorsed.
It's a family affair.
Don't forget Uncle Dickie was lined up to become titular Prime Minister when Wilson was due to be felled in a coup d'etat.
Democracy in action.
Our democracy has made an ass of itself. Cameron, Truss, Boris!, Lizaster, Dishi. But we have an elected system. When a party makes an ass of itself we can remove it.
What is democratic about the monarchy? Whilst the Queen dedicated her life to serving the country, she was imposed. And had she been awful we would have been stuck with her, decade after decade.
I recognise the Take Back Control rationale. And yet so many of the people who champion the principles of democracy and accountability are also wedded to the monarchy.
But if you elect a government committed to abolishing the monarchy, it will be abolished (and it would be much easier than leaving the EU), so that argument isn’t really valid.
Why this animus against the Commonwealth? It's a voluntary club. Don't be a member if you don't want to. But interesting that Francophone nations have chosen to join it. I wonder why?
It's all about taking back control from their unelected rulers.
Just imagine if the EU sacked a UK Prime Minister in the way the Queen, via her Governor-General did with Gough Whitlam in Australia, something King Charles endorsed.
It's a family affair.
Don't forget Uncle Dickie was lined up to become titular Prime Minister when Wilson was due to be felled in a coup d'etat.
Democracy in action.
Our democracy has made an ass of itself. Cameron, Truss, Boris!, Lizaster, Dishi. But we have an elected system. When a party makes an ass of itself we can remove it.
What is democratic about the monarchy? Whilst the Queen dedicated her life to serving the country, she was imposed. And had she been awful we would have been stuck with her, decade after decade.
I recognise the Take Back Control rationale. And yet so many of the people who champion the principles of democracy and accountability are also wedded to the monarchy.
FFS. The Guardian's report on Sunak's Net Zero reverse ferret:
"He is also expected to rule out proposed recycling schemes with multiple bins."
It's gone full-on Cones Hotline, hasn't it? This is basically Government by Alan Partridge.
Don't most places already have multiple bins? That's the norm surely, and it has been the case for many years now.
I (and 1000s of others round here) have 'blue bins' and that's it. Once in a while they even get emptied. In between - everything gets chucked in the regular waste.
Our council leader backed reducing the recycling collections as people were ... recycling too much.
That doesn't sound very good, but I can't see why anyone would want to rule out multiple bin schemes, it surely makes sense to get households to sort their waste first?
We have just moved on after a week in Sunak’s constituency. We are used to recycling at home (four bins). We found it extremely difficult to find any recycling facilities, apart from clothes banks. It was almost impossible to recycle glass. We were very disappointed, but I suppose his voters are totally uninterested in the environment.
Why this animus against the Commonwealth? It's a voluntary club. Don't be a member if you don't want to. But interesting that Francophone nations have chosen to join it. I wonder why?
How many Francophone nations? English is official in Cameroon and Rwanda.
Mozambique joined, but it is Lusaphone.
It really is hard to see the point of the Commonwealth now that we don't even want to have running races anymore.
Though being so pointless makes it hard to object to it.
Scale down the games so only needs one stadium, a swimming pool and some additional small venues, and give it a permanent home in a place in need of rejuvenation. Blackpool, for example. Mass accomodation already in place.
A few Septembers ago, on Heritage Open Day, they threw open the remains of the Commonwealth Institute to the gaze of the curious. What a depressing sight it was - like the day after a badly-attended trade exhibition when everyone had gone home leaving their pop-up displays and burgeoning leaflet-dispensers behind. The whole sad gamut of British worldwide influence, from Trinidad to Tristan da Cunha, was just defiantly visible beneath the cobwebs and tumbling plaster.
Nowadays it's the Design Museum. A much more uplifting use of the space.
And just as you start to despair of Labour having any ambition at all they confirm they'll build the whole of HS2 and NPR (though I'll believe it when I see it).
I know "out of touch" is a cliche but the government really are coming across as very 1996/7 at the moment. Tired and out of ideas.
Their big opportunity in the near term is a poor Labour showing at the byelections. If the SNP keep Rutherglen and Tories retain Tamworth (quite possible) and Mid Beds (also quite possible) then we'll get a couple of weeks of Starmer in crisis to reset the media narrative. If Labour win 2 or 3 of those then it'll just pile on the pain. If Labour win Rutherglen and Tamworth and Lib Dems get Mid Beds with Labour second then the Tories will go into meltdown.
So that we know what to look out for - in what ways would the Tories in meltdown look different from what we are seeing now?
That's the brilliant psychological experiment that the mice are currently running.
Sunak looks like a loser. Different methodologies make it hard to compare, but he's doing about as badly as Major in '96. And he doesn't have the residual kudos for being an election winner in his own right. And Britain is not, as the slogan went, Booming, or showing any signs of preparing to boom.
Standard Operating Procedure here is change leader and hope. But for the reasons listed by @david_herdson upthread, that's not really an option. So all they can do is hang on and hope.
They clearly want to melt down, but they aren't allowed to. The sort of torture some people pay good money for. Apparently.
Meltdown to me means another 1922 committee palaver with the entire parliamentary party stabbing each other in the back. One thing they've sort of managed in the last year is a modicum of unity.
I think the final attempted regicide before the election is there, in the background. It may not happen or it may. A bit like the Prigozhin mutiny (and like that one, I think Sunak would see off the mutineers). Some of the early signs are there.
When it becomes clear that keeping him is more costly electorally than offing him, he'll go. His personal polling falling beneath that of the party would be a sign.
The trouble is there is no king or queen across the water. No Boris.
This is right. It isn't enough for Tory MPs to conclude that Sunak is a liability in that he slips to being less popular than his party (which isn't the case at the moment anyway on most polls).
They also need to think that the act of defenestration wouldn't in itself hurt them still further, and that the new leader they end up with would be better. The new leader has to be an MP, ruling out at least one person of note. Any vaguely capable contender would far rather be the shiny new Leader of the Opposition after an election than the hapless mug who got a shellacking after a handful of months at the helm so will be really hard to persuade to step up rather than wait a short time. That just leaves the howling mad and the terminally sh1t, who aren't an obvious improvement to say the least.
I just can't see it.
The only one is Penny. I'm a fan of the person, but not necessarily the policy agenda of Penny, but she's always been fairly cagey about that anyway.
I think Penny is the only one that Charles would have as PM without making an awful constitutional fuss. I can't see him happily installing Steve Barclay as PM, he'd demand a GE. Penny's sword carrying means he'd probably go with her as caretaker PM. I'd like Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda. I don't think the latter is guaranteed, possibly not even likely, but the very presence of a new leader would mean a shift in policy was demanded. Nobody wants a new leader to do a 'better' version of Sunakism.
Firstly, King Charles' views have absolutely nothing to do with it. He might or might not express a view in private audience with the new PM as to whether an election should be called promptly, but his constitutional duty is simply to appoint as PM whoever, due to being elected leader by the majority party, is the person able to command a majority in the House of Commons. If you think he'd do anything else, you're living in a fantasy world.
Secondly, Mordaunt is very unlikely to have any interest in being the sap who gets to be caretaker for a few months before a shellacking. I'm not 100% certain on this one as she sometimes makes eccentric moves (taking her bid against Sunak to the wire in leadership contest 2 for instance) but very unlikely.
Finally, "Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda" is just your own, personal fantasy and best left for you to enjoy in your private time.
I made quite clear that that was what I wanted rather than what I expected, not sure why the attempted 'zinger' was necessary.
I think Charles is more than capable of throwing a constitutional strop that derails a leadership takeover. He lacks QEII's propriety in that regard imo.
I am convinced Charles would have told Boris and Cummings he would not prorogue Parliament to try and get Brexit done, while the Queen was probably a Leaver, Charles would probably have been a Remainer had he been able to vote. See his first state visits as King were to Germany and France
And his son and daughter-in-law weren’t that welcome in the Caribbean Commonwealth not long before the Coronation.
Most of the Caribbean Commonwealth are now republics or heading that way anyway
Most of the whole Commonwealth are now republics.
All the commonwealth will be shortly - it's inevitable
No it isn't, certainly not in the white majority largely British Isles origin Australia, Canada and New Zealand, even if it is and largely already is in non white majority Commonwealth nations.
Indeed on current polls Australians may even reject a Voice for Aborigines to their Parliament in the referendum next month
It most certainly is especially with Charles looking uninspiring and frankly who cares
Uninspiring? What do you want, another Coronation? 😀😀😀
We can be sure of one thing: Charles will absolutely veto the return of Liz "monarch killer" Truss to prevent another early Coronation....
I thought she only stayed alive long enough to accept Johnson’s resignation?
People who have lost revenue (streaming, sponsorship, etc.) due to actions that may not be illegal:
Russell Brand Woody Allen Lance Armstrong Jordan Peterson Tiger Woods
It's a nice mix of left and right. But there must be some kind of radical centrist - Rennard? - who we can include too?
Well, Thorpe would've had a post-politics career of some kind. He was a larger than life figure who brought a lot of colour to politics - box office as these things go.
He wasn't just not convicted but acquitted. But nobody would touch him really and he slipped into obscurity, unsurprisingly. That's life - turns out not being proved beyond reasonable doubt to have tried to kill your lover doesn't guarantee you'll resume exactly as before, or that people will still want to hear from you. Who knew?
She has a point. Is it right to deprive someone of their entire livelihood on the basis of hearsay and anonymous allegations - made to the media not the police?
I suppose you could argue that Brand has the money to fight libel actions but it still doesn’t seem quite right
Maybe key word is 'suspends'?
@Cyclefree probably knows way more than us about this kind of corporate thing, but if there is some kind of allegation of a v serious nature in a workplace are people not sometimes 'suspended' pending an investigation?
Quite often, they are.
Tiger Woods lost zillions in sponsorships for behaviour which wasn’t on the level of Brands - cheating on his wife with various er… professionals, mainly.
And amateurs! Like the next door neighbour's daughter.
Yup.
So Brand has nothing to whine about. If you are in the entertainment business, your image can affect others. So it matters. “But it’s legal” doesn’t work for that.
Hang on. I get all this if Brand is found guilty of what he is being accused of. But Leon is right. At the moment he is being cancelled based on (very credible) accusations.
Suspending YouTube income if held for him to be repaid if he was shown not to be guilty seems okay. But scrubbing content from Channel 4 seems way out of line. And should we not give individuals the choice as to whether they want to spend money and time at his shows?
I think the man is a money-grabbing turd these days, but I think we play into the hands of those stoking a culture war by reacting this way.
ETA: just to be clear, I suspect the allegations are probably true and then most/all of these things should happen. But there needs to be a sequence to this stuff imo
Commercial telly is simple. If it isn't going to make money then they won't show it. If their judgement is that people won't want him broadcast then off he goes.
As for YuToob, it has a stack of policies and is already very good at suspending people and channels for no particular reason.
I'm not saying that I support taking away his voice, at least not at this point. But its difficult to force people to watch someone they no longer want to watch. Though surely if he has been "cancelled" by C4 and YuToob, he will be welcomed on GBeebies and given his own "Common Sense" show.
But it’s difficult to force people to watch… Unless I have misunderstood, no one is being forced to watch stuff - in the C4 case they’re being forced not to.
I do think Sir Norfolk Passmore makes a good point that the ‘innocent until proven guilty’ line doesn’t quite apply here. But I also think we cancel people, even moral turds, far too easily. At this stage of proceedings, if people still want to watch him on C4, I think they should be allowed to do so.
But that is my point. C4 chiefs evidently don't think people will watch him.
Is that evident? Or are they worried about being criticised for not acting? I suspect it’s the latter - if anything I would anticipate more demand for his shows (all publicity…and all that).
FFS. The Guardian's report on Sunak's Net Zero reverse ferret:
"He is also expected to rule out proposed recycling schemes with multiple bins."
It's gone full-on Cones Hotline, hasn't it? This is basically Government by Alan Partridge.
Don't most places already have multiple bins? That's the norm surely, and it has been the case for many years now.
I (and 1000s of others round here) have 'blue bins' and that's it. Once in a while they even get emptied. In between - everything gets chucked in the regular waste.
Our council leader backed reducing the recycling collections as people were ... recycling too much.
That doesn't sound very good, but I can't see why anyone would want to rule out multiple bin schemes, it surely makes sense to get households to sort their waste first?
We have just moved on after a week in Sunak’s constituency. We are used to recycling at home (four bins). We found it extremely difficult to find any recycling facilities, apart from clothes banks. It was almost impossible to recycle glass. We were very disappointed, but I suppose his voters are totally uninterested in the environment.
all emptied pretty efficiently at reasonable intervals. The garden bin does have to be paid for bu an annual charge, and runs from about March to November.
What I find funny about the Renewable Energy Foundation's piece is that it deliberately excludes one of the main reasons why these payments exist:
Nuclear.
When the wind is blowing, the grid needs to turn off power supplies. With gas, that's dead easy. (Please turn off your OCGT/CCGT.) With coal, it's a bit harder, and suppliers will happily have negative prices for a bit rather than put plants through thermal contraction/expansion cycles.
With nuclear, they aren't lowering that output with less than 24 hours notice. Unless you're writing a very big cheque.
Which means that the grid is now looking for the cheapest way to get power production below power demand. And the cheapest way is usually to pay for wind turbines to be disconnected.
But this raises an important question: why is it the fault of wind that nuclear is highly inflexible? Why should the UK government be susbsidising new nuclear at 2x the price of wind, when having it as part of the mix inevitably means having to pay wind not to produce?
There's a second important factor. New windfarms have been built in places with inadequate takeaway capacity. In the old days (pre-2012), it was because permitting took no notice of the need to carry wind energy. But these days, almost everything built has been built because transmission capacity has been promised. And, indeed, that transmission capacity has often been paid for by the wind developers themselves.
If National Grid and Ofgem have failed to deliver contractually obliged takeaway capacity, why is that the fault of the wind developer?
Wind is economic in the UK. Indeed, it is highly economic.
Yes, it needs gas backup, but the capital and maintenance costs of a modern CCGT are miniscule, while it is the fuel that is expensive.
It isn't the fault of wind that nuclear is inflexible; it's the fault of wind that wind is intermittent and unpredictable.
As for subsidising nuclear, I dunno. I'm not a big fan of nuclear personally - look at Zaporiza, a nuclear power plant seems like painting a big target on your bum. I can see why Germany got rid of them. I think I'm in favour of filling the old decommissioned nuclear power stations with small reactors, which seems safer and cheaper, but I have no idea if this is true.
As for wind farms being built in places with poor connectivity, this is absolutely the fault of wind providers, the poor connectivity is a known factor, and this shouldn't be subsidised by the billpayer. Many companies deliberately built their farms in areas of poor connectivity to benefit from constraint payments.
Maybe you should read all of my comment.
I would never do you the discourtesy of not reading to the end of your comment.
I haven't heard of cases of wind farms being built where appropriate grid capacity has been promised that then falls through. It would be a bit stupid of the wind farm company to do that - far better to build behind a grid bottleneck and benefit from constraint payments worth several times what selling the energy would have brought in.
These days, when you submit your plans to the Department of Energy, you are legally required to demonstrate that there is sufficient takeaway capacity for any power you produce. You will not be allowed to build unless you can demonstrate it exists or is in the process of being developed. (And this is true for wind, tidal, and basically anything except small scale solar.)
The problem is that you - the developer - won't be building transmission lines yourself. Those will be the responsibility of National Grid. And National Grid is (a) running several years behind on its capex programme; (b) has different priorities you; and (c) is remunerated in a way, based on returns on its regulated asset base, that do not mesh with what is best for electricity supply in general.
There's a final issue worth mentioning: sometimes power lines get stalled in the planning process. (And sometimes it is in the financial interests of National Grid for them to stall in the planning process.)
FFS. The Guardian's report on Sunak's Net Zero reverse ferret:
"He is also expected to rule out proposed recycling schemes with multiple bins."
It's gone full-on Cones Hotline, hasn't it? This is basically Government by Alan Partridge.
Don't most places already have multiple bins? That's the norm surely, and it has been the case for many years now.
I (and 1000s of others round here) have 'blue bins' and that's it. Once in a while they even get emptied. In between - everything gets chucked in the regular waste.
Our council leader backed reducing the recycling collections as people were ... recycling too much.
That doesn't sound very good, but I can't see why anyone would want to rule out multiple bin schemes, it surely makes sense to get households to sort their waste first?
We have just moved on after a week in Sunak’s constituency. We are used to recycling at home (four bins). We found it extremely difficult to find any recycling facilities, apart from clothes banks. It was almost impossible to recycle glass. We were very disappointed, but I suppose his voters are totally uninterested in the environment.
all emptied pretty efficiently at reasonable intervals. The garden bin does have to be paid for bu an annual charge, and runs from about March to November.
We have 4 - glass goes in with the rest of the recycling.
She has a point. Is it right to deprive someone of their entire livelihood on the basis of hearsay and anonymous allegations - made to the media not the police?
I suppose you could argue that Brand has the money to fight libel actions but it still doesn’t seem quite right
Maybe key word is 'suspends'?
@Cyclefree probably knows way more than us about this kind of corporate thing, but if there is some kind of allegation of a v serious nature in a workplace are people not sometimes 'suspended' pending an investigation?
Quite often, they are.
Tiger Woods lost zillions in sponsorships for behaviour which wasn’t on the level of Brands - cheating on his wife with various er… professionals, mainly.
And amateurs! Like the next door neighbour's daughter.
Yup.
So Brand has nothing to whine about. If you are in the entertainment business, your image can affect others. So it matters. “But it’s legal” doesn’t work for that.
Hang on. I get all this if Brand is found guilty of what he is being accused of. But Leon is right. At the moment he is being cancelled based on (very credible) accusations.
Suspending YouTube income if held for him to be repaid if he was shown not to be guilty seems okay. But scrubbing content from Channel 4 seems way out of line. And should we not give individuals the choice as to whether they want to spend money and time at his shows?
I think the man is a money-grabbing turd these days, but I think we play into the hands of those stoking a culture war by reacting this way.
ETA: just to be clear, I suspect the allegations are probably true and then most/all of these things should happen. But there needs to be a sequence to this stuff imo
Commercial telly is simple. If it isn't going to make money then they won't show it. If their judgement is that people won't want him broadcast then off he goes.
As for YuToob, it has a stack of policies and is already very good at suspending people and channels for no particular reason.
I'm not saying that I support taking away his voice, at least not at this point. But its difficult to force people to watch someone they no longer want to watch. Though surely if he has been "cancelled" by C4 and YuToob, he will be welcomed on GBeebies and given his own "Common Sense" show.
But it’s difficult to force people to watch… Unless I have misunderstood, no one is being forced to watch stuff - in the C4 case they’re being forced not to.
I do think Sir Norfolk Passmore makes a good point that the ‘innocent until proven guilty’ line doesn’t quite apply here. But I also think we cancel people, even moral turds, far too easily. At this stage of proceedings, if people still want to watch him on C4, I think they should be allowed to do so.
Jim"ll Fix It on the iPlayer too? He was never convicted either.
Broadcasters can make decisions about what from their archives they make available, on what terms they want (subject to the Charter for Beeb) and how it reflects on them.
The copyright isn't Brand's as he presumably contracted it away for cash. The right to access the whole C4 archive for free isn't something we have ever enjoyed.
But there is obviously a good reason why Saville was never convicted, being dead.
There’s another reason why the parallel doesn’t work - to watch Saville with kids at this point would be horrendous given what we know about him. I also think it would be appropriate to cancel Tate, because much of what he talks about is closely linked to the reasons why he was arrested. But Brand’s comedy (or his conspiracy nonsense on YouTube) has nothing to do with whether he is a rapist or not.
Of course C4 is free to make this decision. But I think at this stage it is a poor, and damaging, decision.
And just as you start to despair of Labour having any ambition at all they confirm they'll build the whole of HS2 and NPR (though I'll believe it when I see it).
I know "out of touch" is a cliche but the government really are coming across as very 1996/7 at the moment. Tired and out of ideas.
Their big opportunity in the near term is a poor Labour showing at the byelections. If the SNP keep Rutherglen and Tories retain Tamworth (quite possible) and Mid Beds (also quite possible) then we'll get a couple of weeks of Starmer in crisis to reset the media narrative. If Labour win 2 or 3 of those then it'll just pile on the pain. If Labour win Rutherglen and Tamworth and Lib Dems get Mid Beds with Labour second then the Tories will go into meltdown.
So that we know what to look out for - in what ways would the Tories in meltdown look different from what we are seeing now?
That's the brilliant psychological experiment that the mice are currently running.
Sunak looks like a loser. Different methodologies make it hard to compare, but he's doing about as badly as Major in '96. And he doesn't have the residual kudos for being an election winner in his own right. And Britain is not, as the slogan went, Booming, or showing any signs of preparing to boom.
Standard Operating Procedure here is change leader and hope. But for the reasons listed by @david_herdson upthread, that's not really an option. So all they can do is hang on and hope.
They clearly want to melt down, but they aren't allowed to. The sort of torture some people pay good money for. Apparently.
Meltdown to me means another 1922 committee palaver with the entire parliamentary party stabbing each other in the back. One thing they've sort of managed in the last year is a modicum of unity.
I think the final attempted regicide before the election is there, in the background. It may not happen or it may. A bit like the Prigozhin mutiny (and like that one, I think Sunak would see off the mutineers). Some of the early signs are there.
When it becomes clear that keeping him is more costly electorally than offing him, he'll go. His personal polling falling beneath that of the party would be a sign.
The trouble is there is no king or queen across the water. No Boris.
This is right. It isn't enough for Tory MPs to conclude that Sunak is a liability in that he slips to being less popular than his party (which isn't the case at the moment anyway on most polls).
They also need to think that the act of defenestration wouldn't in itself hurt them still further, and that the new leader they end up with would be better. The new leader has to be an MP, ruling out at least one person of note. Any vaguely capable contender would far rather be the shiny new Leader of the Opposition after an election than the hapless mug who got a shellacking after a handful of months at the helm so will be really hard to persuade to step up rather than wait a short time. That just leaves the howling mad and the terminally sh1t, who aren't an obvious improvement to say the least.
I just can't see it.
The only one is Penny. I'm a fan of the person, but not necessarily the policy agenda of Penny, but she's always been fairly cagey about that anyway.
I think Penny is the only one that Charles would have as PM without making an awful constitutional fuss. I can't see him happily installing Steve Barclay as PM, he'd demand a GE. Penny's sword carrying means he'd probably go with her as caretaker PM. I'd like Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda. I don't think the latter is guaranteed, possibly not even likely, but the very presence of a new leader would mean a shift in policy was demanded. Nobody wants a new leader to do a 'better' version of Sunakism.
Firstly, King Charles' views have absolutely nothing to do with it. He might or might not express a view in private audience with the new PM as to whether an election should be called promptly, but his constitutional duty is simply to appoint as PM whoever, due to being elected leader by the majority party, is the person able to command a majority in the House of Commons. If you think he'd do anything else, you're living in a fantasy world.
Secondly, Mordaunt is very unlikely to have any interest in being the sap who gets to be caretaker for a few months before a shellacking. I'm not 100% certain on this one as she sometimes makes eccentric moves (taking her bid against Sunak to the wire in leadership contest 2 for instance) but very unlikely.
Finally, "Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda" is just your own, personal fantasy and best left for you to enjoy in your private time.
I made quite clear that that was what I wanted rather than what I expected, not sure why the attempted 'zinger' was necessary.
I think Charles is more than capable of throwing a constitutional strop that derails a leadership takeover. He lacks QEII's propriety in that regard imo.
I am convinced Charles would have told Boris and Cummings he would not prorogue Parliament to try and get Brexit done, while the Queen was probably a Leaver, Charles would probably have been a Remainer had he been able to vote. See his first state visits as King were to Germany and France
And his son and daughter-in-law weren’t that welcome in the Caribbean Commonwealth not long before the Coronation.
Most of the Caribbean Commonwealth are now republics or heading that way anyway
Most of the whole Commonwealth are now republics.
All the commonwealth will be shortly - it's inevitable
No it isn't, certainly not in the white majority largely British Isles origin Australia, Canada and New Zealand, even if it is and largely already is in non white majority Commonwealth nations.
Indeed on current polls Australians may even reject a Voice for Aborigines to their Parliament in the referendum next month
It most certainly is especially with Charles looking uninspiring and frankly who cares
Uninspiring? What do you want, another Coronation? 😀😀😀
We can be sure of one thing: Charles will absolutely veto the return of Liz "monarch killer" Truss to prevent another early Coronation....
I thought she only stayed alive long enough to accept Johnson’s resignation?
I thought it spoke to her fortitude and sense of duty that she graciously consented to hang on a few more minutes to let Truss kiss her hand.
I'd have been tempted to close the door on Johnson before dying laughing. That Her Majesty didn't is why she'll always be the Guv'nor.
FFS. The Guardian's report on Sunak's Net Zero reverse ferret:
"He is also expected to rule out proposed recycling schemes with multiple bins."
It's gone full-on Cones Hotline, hasn't it? This is basically Government by Alan Partridge.
Don't most places already have multiple bins? That's the norm surely, and it has been the case for many years now.
I (and 1000s of others round here) have 'blue bins' and that's it. Once in a while they even get emptied. In between - everything gets chucked in the regular waste.
Our council leader backed reducing the recycling collections as people were ... recycling too much.
That doesn't sound very good, but I can't see why anyone would want to rule out multiple bin schemes, it surely makes sense to get households to sort their waste first?
We have just moved on after a week in Sunak’s constituency. We are used to recycling at home (four bins). We found it extremely difficult to find any recycling facilities, apart from clothes banks. It was almost impossible to recycle glass. We were very disappointed, but I suppose his voters are totally uninterested in the environment.
all emptied pretty efficiently at reasonable intervals. The garden bin does have to be paid for bu an annual charge, and runs from about March to November.
We have 4 - glass goes in with the rest of the recycling.
Quite common from what I have seen.
It's startling how much local authorities vary in their approach. I had no idea any were as minimalist as Richmond but we have Fairliered's testimony.
What I find funny about the Renewable Energy Foundation's piece is that it deliberately excludes one of the main reasons why these payments exist:
Nuclear.
When the wind is blowing, the grid needs to turn off power supplies. With gas, that's dead easy. (Please turn off your OCGT/CCGT.) With coal, it's a bit harder, and suppliers will happily have negative prices for a bit rather than put plants through thermal contraction/expansion cycles.
With nuclear, they aren't lowering that output with less than 24 hours notice. Unless you're writing a very big cheque.
Which means that the grid is now looking for the cheapest way to get power production below power demand. And the cheapest way is usually to pay for wind turbines to be disconnected.
But this raises an important question: why is it the fault of wind that nuclear is highly inflexible? Why should the UK government be susbsidising new nuclear at 2x the price of wind, when having it as part of the mix inevitably means having to pay wind not to produce?
There's a second important factor. New windfarms have been built in places with inadequate takeaway capacity. In the old days (pre-2012), it was because permitting took no notice of the need to carry wind energy. But these days, almost everything built has been built because transmission capacity has been promised. And, indeed, that transmission capacity has often been paid for by the wind developers themselves.
If National Grid and Ofgem have failed to deliver contractually obliged takeaway capacity, why is that the fault of the wind developer?
Wind is economic in the UK. Indeed, it is highly economic.
Yes, it needs gas backup, but the capital and maintenance costs of a modern CCGT are miniscule, while it is the fuel that is expensive.
It isn't the fault of wind that nuclear is inflexible; it's the fault of wind that wind is intermittent and unpredictable.
As for subsidising nuclear, I dunno. I'm not a big fan of nuclear personally - look at Zaporiza, a nuclear power plant seems like painting a big target on your bum. I can see why Germany got rid of them. I think I'm in favour of filling the old decommissioned nuclear power stations with small reactors, which seems safer and cheaper, but I have no idea if this is true.
As for wind farms being built in places with poor connectivity, this is absolutely the fault of wind providers, the poor connectivity is a known factor, and this shouldn't be subsidised by the billpayer. Many companies deliberately built their farms in areas of poor connectivity to benefit from constraint payments.
Maybe you should read all of my comment.
I would never do you the discourtesy of not reading to the end of your comment.
I haven't heard of cases of wind farms being built where appropriate grid capacity has been promised that then falls through. It would be a bit stupid of the wind farm company to do that - far better to build behind a grid bottleneck and benefit from constraint payments worth several times what selling the energy would have brought in.
These days, when you submit your plans to the Department of Energy, you are legally required to demonstrate that there is sufficient takeaway capacity for any power you produce. You will not be allowed to build unless you can demonstrate it exists or is in the process of being developed. (And this is true for wind, tidal, and basically anything except small scale solar.)
The problem is that you - the developer - won't be building transmission lines yourself. Those will be the responsibility of National Grid. And National Grid is (a) running several years behind on its capex programme; (b) has different priorities you; and (c) is remunerated in a way, based on returns on its regulated asset base, that do not mesh with what is best for electricity supply in general.
There's a final issue worth mentioning: sometimes power lines get stalled in the planning process. (And sometimes it is in the financial interests of National Grid for them to stall in the planning process.)
Well, that's an interesting development and I'm glad to hear it. I agree, windfarms shouldn't be penalised for constraining when they had a right to expect that the necessary capacity would be built.
This isn't a blip. Look at the underlying numbers in both the Deltapoll and Ipsos polls today (helpfully summarised in the threads below). They're awful for the Tories.
At the risk of turning into @Heathener, the prospect of something close to a Tory wipe out is being underplayed.
Just because it's never happened (ignoring what happened to the Liberals) and just because they've existed for so long (so had the Liberals) doesn't mean it's never going to happen.
I’m pretty instinctively a Tory kind of guy. A Unionist through and through, proud to be British, a believer in capitalism and private enterprise, encouraging people to work hard to get on and rewarding ambition.
I really have no idea what this government is about anymore. It is high tax, low service, short sighted and, particularly anywhere near the Home Office, deeply unpleasant bordering on unBritish. I am in something approaching despair. What on earth happened to Cameron’s new Tories?
She has a point. Is it right to deprive someone of their entire livelihood on the basis of hearsay and anonymous allegations - made to the media not the police?
I suppose you could argue that Brand has the money to fight libel actions but it still doesn’t seem quite right
Maybe key word is 'suspends'?
@Cyclefree probably knows way more than us about this kind of corporate thing, but if there is some kind of allegation of a v serious nature in a workplace are people not sometimes 'suspended' pending an investigation?
Yes they are. Though not always. It depends on the entity's appetite for risk.
She has a point. Is it right to deprive someone of their entire livelihood on the basis of hearsay and anonymous allegations - made to the media not the police?
I suppose you could argue that Brand has the money to fight libel actions but it still doesn’t seem quite right
Maybe key word is 'suspends'?
@Cyclefree probably knows way more than us about this kind of corporate thing, but if there is some kind of allegation of a v serious nature in a workplace are people not sometimes 'suspended' pending an investigation?
If fhere is no court case, and no prosecution, will YouTube “desuspend” him? I rather doubt it, but if so fair enough
If they don’t then this is tantamount to trial and conviction by media and anonymous allegation, with the punishment being: end of career
Without the courts even being involved. That makes me deeply uneasy
And I don’t even stan Brand. He wasn't funny and he got far too much sex for my liking
Tons of entertainers have lost their rides - and often for stuff that isn’t especially bad. See Tiger Woods, mentioned above.
What laws did Lance Armstrong actually break?
If you are in entertainment, you need to be better than “it’s all legal”. It needs to be “my reputation is not a negative for my sponsors.”
That’s a valid argument, on the face of it
And yet it is also an invitation to any malefactor to destroy a public figure they don’t like by merely gathering some “anonymous accounts” and splashing them all over the media
You never have to stand them up in court. You never have to prove anything. You can destroy someone by innuendo. smear and anonymous denunciation
Do we really want to applaud that?
Come off it Leon. Don't be naive. That story in the papers and on Channel 4 will have been lawyered to within an inch of its life. There will be files with names, dates, evidence, witnesses etc - all for the day a libel writ is served. The lawyers wrote to Brand with detailed questions and allegations so he will have known exactly what the allegations and evidence were. Indeed he complained about the amount of detail and also said that he had evidence to rebut the claims.
Criminal proceedings would be better and may yet follow. But let's not pretend that this is some anonymous smear with no substance behind it.
Why this animus against the Commonwealth? It's a voluntary club. Don't be a member if you don't want to. But interesting that Francophone nations have chosen to join it. I wonder why?
It's all about taking back control from their unelected rulers.
Just imagine if the EU sacked a UK Prime Minister in the way the Queen, via her Governor-General did with Gough Whitlam in Australia, something King Charles endorsed.
It's a family affair.
Don't forget Uncle Dickie was lined up to become titular Prime Minister when Wilson was due to be felled in a coup d'etat.
Democracy in action.
Our democracy has made an ass of itself. Cameron, Truss, Boris!, Lizaster, Dishi. But we have an elected system. When a party makes an ass of itself we can remove it.
What is democratic about the monarchy? Whilst the Queen dedicated her life to serving the country, she was imposed. And had she been awful we would have been stuck with her, decade after decade.
I recognise the Take Back Control rationale. And yet so many of the people who champion the principles of democracy and accountability are also wedded to the monarchy.
Putin and Trump and Mugabe were elected Presidents, the Queen wasn't.
Having an elected President doesn't automatically make a great free democracy, indeed most of the dictators in the world today are in republics. Constitutional monarchies like the UK, New Zealand, Norway and Japan and the Netherlands and Canada however are amongst the most free and prosperous nations on earth
And just as you start to despair of Labour having any ambition at all they confirm they'll build the whole of HS2 and NPR (though I'll believe it when I see it).
I know "out of touch" is a cliche but the government really are coming across as very 1996/7 at the moment. Tired and out of ideas.
Their big opportunity in the near term is a poor Labour showing at the byelections. If the SNP keep Rutherglen and Tories retain Tamworth (quite possible) and Mid Beds (also quite possible) then we'll get a couple of weeks of Starmer in crisis to reset the media narrative. If Labour win 2 or 3 of those then it'll just pile on the pain. If Labour win Rutherglen and Tamworth and Lib Dems get Mid Beds with Labour second then the Tories will go into meltdown.
So that we know what to look out for - in what ways would the Tories in meltdown look different from what we are seeing now?
That's the brilliant psychological experiment that the mice are currently running.
Sunak looks like a loser. Different methodologies make it hard to compare, but he's doing about as badly as Major in '96. And he doesn't have the residual kudos for being an election winner in his own right. And Britain is not, as the slogan went, Booming, or showing any signs of preparing to boom.
Standard Operating Procedure here is change leader and hope. But for the reasons listed by @david_herdson upthread, that's not really an option. So all they can do is hang on and hope.
They clearly want to melt down, but they aren't allowed to. The sort of torture some people pay good money for. Apparently.
Meltdown to me means another 1922 committee palaver with the entire parliamentary party stabbing each other in the back. One thing they've sort of managed in the last year is a modicum of unity.
I think the final attempted regicide before the election is there, in the background. It may not happen or it may. A bit like the Prigozhin mutiny (and like that one, I think Sunak would see off the mutineers). Some of the early signs are there.
When it becomes clear that keeping him is more costly electorally than offing him, he'll go. His personal polling falling beneath that of the party would be a sign.
The trouble is there is no king or queen across the water. No Boris.
This is right. It isn't enough for Tory MPs to conclude that Sunak is a liability in that he slips to being less popular than his party (which isn't the case at the moment anyway on most polls).
They also need to think that the act of defenestration wouldn't in itself hurt them still further, and that the new leader they end up with would be better. The new leader has to be an MP, ruling out at least one person of note. Any vaguely capable contender would far rather be the shiny new Leader of the Opposition after an election than the hapless mug who got a shellacking after a handful of months at the helm so will be really hard to persuade to step up rather than wait a short time. That just leaves the howling mad and the terminally sh1t, who aren't an obvious improvement to say the least.
I just can't see it.
The only one is Penny. I'm a fan of the person, but not necessarily the policy agenda of Penny, but she's always been fairly cagey about that anyway.
I think Penny is the only one that Charles would have as PM without making an awful constitutional fuss. I can't see him happily installing Steve Barclay as PM, he'd demand a GE. Penny's sword carrying means he'd probably go with her as caretaker PM. I'd like Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda. I don't think the latter is guaranteed, possibly not even likely, but the very presence of a new leader would mean a shift in policy was demanded. Nobody wants a new leader to do a 'better' version of Sunakism.
Firstly, King Charles' views have absolutely nothing to do with it. He might or might not express a view in private audience with the new PM as to whether an election should be called promptly, but his constitutional duty is simply to appoint as PM whoever, due to being elected leader by the majority party, is the person able to command a majority in the House of Commons. If you think he'd do anything else, you're living in a fantasy world.
Secondly, Mordaunt is very unlikely to have any interest in being the sap who gets to be caretaker for a few months before a shellacking. I'm not 100% certain on this one as she sometimes makes eccentric moves (taking her bid against Sunak to the wire in leadership contest 2 for instance) but very unlikely.
Finally, "Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda" is just your own, personal fantasy and best left for you to enjoy in your private time.
I made quite clear that that was what I wanted rather than what I expected, not sure why the attempted 'zinger' was necessary.
I think Charles is more than capable of throwing a constitutional strop that derails a leadership takeover. He lacks QEII's propriety in that regard imo.
The King would appoint as PM whoever the majority party elects as PM, unless many of the governing party say they would not support the new PM's government, in which case he would request a vote of confidence in it first.
We are at the point now none of the major Tory leadership contenders, Braverman, Badenoch, Mordaunt, Barclay, Tugendhat etc have much interest in taking over now. They will let Sunak and Hunt lose the next election and then put their stalls forward to be Leader of the Opposition
Charles should remember what happened to the first of his name who tried to impose his will on Parliament. There were a surprising number of reminders of this on show at Windsor if he wished to brush up on it.
What has that got to do with what I said? If he asks a new PM to be confirmed by Parliament as the governing party is divided and if he had refused to prorogue Parliament that is exactly the opposite of imposing his will on Parliament
By the way, surely Tommy 'compromised by China' Tugend is out of the leadership picture now?
Far from it, indeed if I was a betting man I would say Barclay v Tugendhat would be the final 2 Tory MPs pick to go to the membership if Sunak resigns after losing the next general election
Heaven help the conservative party
"Barclay v Tugendhat" ???
Seriously.
The membership will do their absolute nuts at being deprived of who they really want to pick.
Why this animus against the Commonwealth? It's a voluntary club. Don't be a member if you don't want to. But interesting that Francophone nations have chosen to join it. I wonder why?
It's all about taking back control from their unelected rulers.
Just imagine if the EU sacked a UK Prime Minister in the way the Queen, via her Governor-General did with Gough Whitlam in Australia, something King Charles endorsed.
It's a family affair.
Don't forget Uncle Dickie was lined up to become titular Prime Minister when Wilson was due to be felled in a coup d'etat.
Democracy in action.
Our democracy has made an ass of itself. Cameron, Truss, Boris!, Lizaster, Dishi. But we have an elected system. When a party makes an ass of itself we can remove it.
What is democratic about the monarchy? Whilst the Queen dedicated her life to serving the country, she was imposed. And had she been awful we would have been stuck with her, decade after decade.
I recognise the Take Back Control rationale. And yet so many of the people who champion the principles of democracy and accountability are also wedded to the monarchy.
But if you elect a government committed to abolishing the monarchy, it will be abolished (and it would be much easier than leaving the EU), so that argument isn’t really valid.
Yes, voters could have voted for the republican Corbyn to be PM in 2017 and 2019 rather than the monarchist Tories but they didn't, now even Starmer backs keeping the monarchy.
Foot was a republican too in 1983 but was also trounced. Indeed Labour has had its heaviest defeats since WW2 under republican leaders
Why this animus against the Commonwealth? It's a voluntary club. Don't be a member if you don't want to. But interesting that Francophone nations have chosen to join it. I wonder why?
It's all about taking back control from their unelected rulers.
Just imagine if the EU sacked a UK Prime Minister in the way the Queen, via her Governor-General did with Gough Whitlam in Australia, something King Charles endorsed.
It's a family affair.
Don't forget Uncle Dickie was lined up to become titular Prime Minister when Wilson was due to be felled in a coup d'etat.
Democracy in action.
Our democracy has made an ass of itself. Cameron, Truss, Boris!, Lizaster, Dishi. But we have an elected system. When a party makes an ass of itself we can remove it.
What is democratic about the monarchy? Whilst the Queen dedicated her life to serving the country, she was imposed. And had she been awful we would have been stuck with her, decade after decade.
I recognise the Take Back Control rationale. And yet so many of the people who champion the principles of democracy and accountability are also wedded to the monarchy.
But if you elect a government committed to abolishing the monarchy, it will be abolished (and it would be much easier than leaving the EU), so that argument isn’t really valid.
Yes, voters could have voted for the republican Corbyn to be PM in 2017 and 2019 rather than the monarchist Tories but they didn't, now even Starmer backs keeping the monarchy.
Foot was a republican too in 1983 but was also trounced. Indeed Labour has had its heaviest defeats since WW2 under republican leaders
Ms Truss came a cropper too, though I think her republicanism was from before she became totally bonkers.
Comments
So, what you got in the locker these days? You heavy on Trump? Or Mordaunt maybe?
I don't bet serioosuly any more, so I don't give tips on here like I once did. It was always my policy never to tip anything I hadn't backed myself. My guess is you do likewise, in which case, respect.
https://thespinoff.co.nz/live-updates/04-05-2023/new-zealand-would-vote-to-keep-monarchy-poll
https://au.yougov.com/society/articles/45658-australians-have-positive-opinion-king-charles-iii
Interesting times (for this observer at least).
Is that my coat?
Our council leader backed reducing the recycling collections as people were ... recycling too much.
There are well known reasons why women often do not wish to go to criminal courts over sexual matters. Ask Cyclefree. But C4 and the Times have said 'publish and be damned'. Brand can sue them, just as those the DM described as the murderers of Stephen Lawrence can sue the DM for millions. We are still waiting. Let us wait and see on this one too.
You, and others, fundamentally misunderstand what the presumption of innocence is and what it means for debate.
The presumption of innocence is a (perfectly reasonable) legal construct such that the state cannot impose punishment up to and including deprivation of liberty, without convincing an independent tribunal beyond reasonable doubt that a defined crime has been committed.
It does not, however, mean that someone cannot be publicly accused of a crime, or any other wrongdoing short of a crime, nor that people cannot believe the accuser rather than the accused (whether they believe it because of the quality of the investigative journalism, or simply because they always thought him a wrong'un). And, within the law, they can treat the accused accordingly.
The wrongly accused has options in those circumstances including issuing a denial and resorting to the laws of libel. But demanding people think better of them, and their accusers shut their mouths, simply because they haven't in fact been convicted in a criminal court isn't one of those options, and never has been.
You are right on point one until it is costly or inconvenient; you are right on point two except that nearly all politics is talk, and the parameters of talk can change by the minute.
Seems there is a growing market for non-guardrailled "GPT's" which will happily do a "there's been a murder!" chats.
Which obviously leads to non-guardrailled "GPT's" which will chat about "How do I make a deadly bioweapon?".
Fun times.
The best route longer term would be to rotate the Head of the Commonwealth amongst Commonwealth heads of state
Simplified - but that's the general downward spiral.
Not helped by scummy landlords who would just dump the contents of a whole flat over the top of the bins. But that's a rant for another day.
Naughty.
(1) Google monetizes better than anyone else, because they know everything about you.
(2) Google has a financial incentive to demonetize videos. Because you are still seeing adverts (at a rate of x per hour viewed), even if the creators aren't being rewarded for it.
It seems like the correct answer here is to allow advertisers to choose not to avoid controversial videos. Because competition to be shown alongside a video of a Bully XL ripping a human being to bits is going to be lower than for a Taylor Swift video, revenues would be more modest for those who produced controversial content. But it would also avoid people being "cut off at the knees".
I would suggest this is one of these times when Competition Authorities need to encourage behaviour change.
The place I used to live in Japan asks you to sort into: burnable garbage; non-burnable garbage; recyclable paper and card; PET bottles; other recyclable plastics; empty cans; refillable bottles; other empty bottles; all with their own correct type of rubbish bag or container. But Japanese local governments can rely on social pressure and local residential organisation to ensure that people put the right things in the right binbags on the right days...
( https://www.city.okazaki.lg.jp/1550/1564/1625/p034798_d/fil/shigentogomi.pdf is the leaflet for English-speaking residents, if you want the gory detail.)
Just imagine if the EU sacked a UK Prime Minister in the way the Queen, via her Governor-General did with Gough Whitlam in Australia, something King Charles endorsed.
The only political bet I’ve had in the last 18 months really was to get out of the Tory Maj bets at 7/2 when Boris was ousted. To be fair, my backs of them at 6/4 7/4 2/1 in 2021/22 was worthy of a bad tipster jibe! Locked in a monkey loss
I’m currently recovering from my second detached retina in 10 months. Got the ball whacked in my left eye playing football in Oct 22 then in the right on my 3rd game back, in July. Both resulting in a vitrectomy - that must have been long odds!
I was surprised by the views of Simon Clarke MP , I thought he would be pro this u-turn . His twitter feed makes an interest read.
Russell Brand
Woody Allen
Lance Armstrong
Jordan Peterson
Tiger Woods
It's a nice mix of left and right. But there must be some kind of radical centrist - Rennard? - who we can include too?
But I'm in Aix-en-Provence at the moment, not far from you, and I was suprised by how busy everything is.
On the other hand my train tomorrow was cancelled so the French are at least as bad as we are on some measures ...
However notably Fraser trounced Whitlam by a landslide after the Governor General had appointed him to replace Whitlam so it was not that unpopular a decision given the opposition controlled Senate was refusing to pass any finance bills from the House of Representatives without an election
As for YuToob, it has a stack of policies and is already very good at suspending people and channels for no particular reason.
I'm not saying that I support taking away his voice, at least not at this point. But its difficult to force people to watch someone they no longer want to watch. Though surely if he has been "cancelled" by C4 and YuToob, he will be welcomed on GBeebies and given his own "Common Sense" show.
If that's the best Sunak an co. can come up with the should call election ASAP so that they can be dispatched before they come up with any even worse ideas.
As for subsidising nuclear, I dunno. I'm not a big fan of nuclear personally - look at Zaporiza, a nuclear power plant seems like painting a big target on your bum. I can see why Germany got rid of them. I think I'm in favour of filling the old decommissioned nuclear power stations with small reactors, which seems safer and cheaper, but I have no idea if this is true.
As for wind farms being built in places with poor connectivity, this is absolutely the fault of wind providers, the poor connectivity is a known factor, and this shouldn't be subsidised by the billpayer. Many companies deliberately built their farms in areas of poor connectivity to benefit from constraint payments.
And for the avoidance of doubt, I wasn't being serious when I made the tipster jibe, but if it sounded that way, my apologies.
I haven't heard of cases of wind farms being built where appropriate grid capacity has been promised that then falls through. It would be a bit stupid of the wind farm company to do that - far better to build behind a grid bottleneck and benefit from constraint payments worth several times what selling the energy would have brought in.
It really is hard to see the point of the Commonwealth now that we don't even want to have running races anymore.
Though being so pointless makes it hard to object to it.
Don't forget Uncle Dickie was lined up to become titular Prime Minister when Wilson was due to be felled in a coup d'etat.
Democracy in action.
Unless I have misunderstood, no one is being forced to watch stuff - in the C4 case they’re being forced not to.
I do think Sir Norfolk Passmore makes a good point that the ‘innocent until proven guilty’ line doesn’t quite apply here. But I also think we cancel people, even moral turds, far too easily. At this stage of proceedings, if people still want to watch him on C4, I think they should be allowed to do so.
What is democratic about the monarchy? Whilst the Queen dedicated her life to serving the country, she was imposed. And had she been awful we would have been stuck with her, decade after decade.
I recognise the Take Back Control rationale. And yet so many of the people who champion the principles of democracy and accountability are also wedded to the monarchy.
Broadcasters can make decisions about what from their archives they make available, on what terms they want (subject to the Charter for Beeb) and how it reflects on them.
The copyright isn't Brand's as he presumably contracted it away for cash. The right to access the whole C4 archive for free isn't something we have ever enjoyed.
Nowadays it's the Design Museum. A much more uplifting use of the space.
He wasn't just not convicted but acquitted. But nobody would touch him really and he slipped into obscurity, unsurprisingly. That's life - turns out not being proved beyond reasonable doubt to have tried to kill your lover doesn't guarantee you'll resume exactly as before, or that people will still want to hear from you. Who knew?
- food (small, composting caddy type)
-glass
-other recycling
-garden
-rubbish
all emptied pretty efficiently at reasonable intervals. The garden bin does have to be paid for bu an annual charge, and runs from about March to November.
It reminds me of the regular Russian threats that this time they’re really going to start trying in the Ukraine war.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1Hj5I0M4aU&ab_channel=WarthogDefense
The problem is that you - the developer - won't be building transmission lines yourself. Those will be the responsibility of National Grid. And National Grid is (a) running several years behind on its capex programme; (b) has different priorities you; and (c) is remunerated in a way, based on returns on its regulated asset base, that do not mesh with what is best for electricity supply in general.
There's a final issue worth mentioning: sometimes power lines get stalled in the planning process. (And sometimes it is in the financial interests of National Grid for them to stall in the planning process.)
There’s another reason why the parallel doesn’t work - to watch Saville with kids at this point would be horrendous given what we know about him. I also think it would be appropriate to cancel Tate, because much of what he talks about is closely linked to the reasons why he was arrested. But Brand’s comedy (or his conspiracy nonsense on YouTube) has nothing to do with whether he is a rapist or not.
Of course C4 is free to make this decision. But I think at this stage it is a poor, and damaging, decision.
I'd have been tempted to close the door on Johnson before dying laughing. That Her Majesty didn't is why she'll always be the Guv'nor.
It's startling how much local authorities vary in their approach. I had no idea any were as minimalist as Richmond but we have Fairliered's testimony.
@Cyclefree needed on the board of directors at UHB please
https://youtu.be/oljOqKy2k1I?feature=shared
Criminal proceedings would be better and may yet follow. But let's not pretend that this is some anonymous smear with no substance behind it.
Having an elected President doesn't automatically make a great free democracy, indeed most of the dictators in the world today are in republics. Constitutional monarchies like the UK, New Zealand, Norway and Japan and the Netherlands and Canada however are amongst the most free and prosperous nations on earth
Seriously.
The membership will do their absolute nuts at being deprived of who they really want to pick.
Foot was a republican too in 1983 but was also trounced. Indeed Labour has had its heaviest defeats since WW2 under republican leaders