Off topic, but I thought you* might like some good news from the US: "Nikki Haley is increasingly threatening to supplant Ron DeSantis as the principal GOP presidential rival to Donald Trump, escalating frictions between the two candidates that are playing out before voters on the campaign trail and behind closed doors with wealthy donors. . . . Haley rose to third in a Washington Post average of national polling from October, with 8 percent support to DeSantis’s 14 percent. She’s pulled into third in Iowa, where DeSantis’s support is still noticeably stronger, and jumped ahead of DeSantis in recent surveys of New Hampshire and South Carolina." source $: https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2023/10/21/haley-desantis-trump-presidential-race/
“All military occupied people have a right to resist their occupation, even militarily. I do not support the military option in Palestine. I prefer the other option: civil insurrection and disobedience. It brought down the British empire in India and the Soviet empire in eastern Europe.”
Interesting comment by Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal.
Just in case any (eligible) PBers are interested in filing to run for President of the United States in the upcoming New Hampshire Presidential Primary
> Filing period October 11, 2023 through October 27, 2023
RSA 653:9 Date of Presidential Primary: The presidential primary election shall be held on the second Tuesday in March or on a date selected by the [NH] secretary of state which is 7 days or more immediately preceding the date on which any other state shall hold a similar election, whichever is earlier, of each year when a president of the United States is to be elected or the year previous. Said primary shall be held in connection with the regular March town meeting or election or, if held on any other day, at a special election called by the secretary of state for that purpose.
The purpose of this section is to protect the tradition of the New Hampshire first-in-the-nation presidential primary.
SSI - note that "any similar election" means a primary NOT a caucus, so Iowa or any other state is free (according to NH anyway) to hold precinct caucuses at earlier date than NH presidential primary.
Who may file: Any person who is qualified under the United States Constitution (Article II, Section 1) [natural born Citizen of the United States; resident of United States for 14 years and 35 years of age] and is a registered REPUBLICAN or DEMOCRAT may file to be a candidate in the New Hampshire Presidential Primary Election.
Joe Root has said that England are not playing enough one-day international cricket to continue competing at World Cups and suggested that staging more 50-over county matches at the expense of the Vitality Blast could help to develop a new generation of talent.
He would prefer to see the Blast cut back rather than the Hundred — an idea that may be unpopular with many counties who view the Blast as a contributor towards their financial health, though they receive an annual distribution from the city-based Hundred as well — but he accepts there is also a debate about the very future of the 50-over game itself owing to the global rise in T20 leagues.
“Here Lads, we’ve got a fellow here who won the London Mayoralty twice as a Conservative, bested a majority winning PM to win a national referendum, then achieved the biggest Tory landslide in a generation. Bit of a bounder, loads of kids with different women, but did manage to charm Marina Wheeler KC to take him back half a dozen times after having affairs. Now with a girl half his age”
“No, he’ll never be able to win over slightly dissatisfied voters, or recover a six point mid term deficit in the polls when there’s a million bad stories in the press about him, best call for Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak”
OTOH, there have been no Tory poll leads since December 6th 2021, *while Boris was in charge*.
There’d have been more chance of having any since if they’d stuck with him
Nah, Johnson wears out his welcome quite rapidly and completely. It is why he is on such poor terms with so many ex-paramours, ex-ediditors and ex-colleagues. It is the nature of his thin charm that he needs to move on quickly while the shit is still airborne and fan still pristine.
Won London twice didn’t he?
The voters didn’t seem to have gone off him that much between 2008 and 2019 - he won four major elections, with all his detractors saying the same stuff you are now. But the voters never got rid of him
“All military occupied people have a right to resist their occupation, even militarily. I do not support the military option in Palestine. I prefer the other option: civil insurrection and disobedience. It brought down the British empire in India and the Soviet empire in eastern Europe.”
Interesting comment by Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal.
Gaza is not under occupation by Israel, and hasn't been since 2005. Civil disobedience by Palestinians in Gaza would necessarily be towards Hamas, which would indeed be a massive step in the right direction.
I think this Gaza Israel debate is possibly even more depressing than discussing proportional representation
I know. Controversial take
The correct take. It's ruining PB.
And yet it fires up debate - worldwide - like no other geopolitical issue. Especially in proportion to its numerical scale
Why? - is a fascinating question. I am pretty sure the deep rooted mental fungus of anti Semitism is partly to blame. If you analyse most ardent pro Palestinians hard enough you will find fear and hatred of Jews. As we have seen this last week; many of the sufferers won’t even realise it
And I wonder what 'urges' drive the more exuberant of the pro-Israel brigade? And will they admit to or even realize it?
I’ve no doubt that “Islamophobia” is your tediously middlebrow answer
Let’s accept your terms
1. Islamophobia means an irrational fear of Islam. For many Jews the fear is entirely rational. Significant parts of the Islamic world apparently want them all dead
2. Islamophobia has never, in history, led to a serious attempt to kill every Muslim on earth, just for being Muslim
So I don’t think your comparison stands even if we accept it (despite its fatuity)
That IS middlebrow. Are you trying to get on my level? No but seriously, I doubt the feeling that Palestinians are somehow inferior to Israelis is caused by Islamophobia. Truth is, I don't know what it's caused by. I thought you might have some thoughts on it.
“Here Lads, we’ve got a fellow here who won the London Mayoralty twice as a Conservative, bested a majority winning PM to win a national referendum, then achieved the biggest Tory landslide in a generation. Bit of a bounder, loads of kids with different women, but did manage to charm Marina Wheeler KC to take him back half a dozen times after having affairs. Now with a girl half his age”
“No, he’ll never be able to win over slightly dissatisfied voters, or recover a six point mid term deficit in the polls when there’s a million bad stories in the press about him, best call for Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak”
Doesn't that overlook the elephant(s) in the room?
Even if you think that his charisma could have overcome the Paterson and Pincher stories, it was never going to work on the Privileges Committee. They were going to find him seriously guilty of knowingly lying.
Charisma lets you get away with a lot. But not everything.
(Besides, the thing that brought Boris down with Conservative MPs was the Pincher story. Partly because it was yet another lie on top of all the others, but also it directly affected them. How would you feel if your boss knowingly put a sex pest in as your line manager and then lied to you about doing it?)
He could have taken the suspension and still been doing better than his successors are now.
Aklu Plaza closing down by the way. They never did get that license for “weddings and banquets”
What bottomless level of depravity, inhumanity and hatred must you inhabit, to casually chat with a friend then shoot a 7 year old girl hiding under a table?
I’ve read about this stuff with the Nazis in the Holocaust. The absolute chilled-out relaxation with which they murdered children
This tells me that the constant indoctrination of gazan kids into jew-hatred has gone so far it cannot be redeemed
The only plausible outcome from this is an all out war between Israel and its enemies, and who knows how that ends up for the rest of us?
When this is a Hamas soldier killing a child it is a sign of specific and almost unique hatred; when IDF soldiers or Israeli missile strikes kill even more children it is just the casualties of war?
Without going into whether Israel takes sufficient steps to guard against civilian casualties, where I have a degree of sympathy with your position, there is a very clear moral and legal difference between choosing civilian targets (including children) and choosing military targets in a built-up area where civilians may be killed (sometimes because your enemy cynically uses "their" civilians as a shield).
I do appreciate that distinction doesn't come as any comfort to the families of civilians killed by strikes. But it is nevertheless a really important distinction that has been applied not just to this but to all wars.
If hamas didn't build it's bases it residential districts, hospitals and schools then the death toll of civillians that are innocent would be much less. No one like 148grss will ever explain how the idf are meant to deal with hamas when they hide behind civillian targets without causing collateral damage.
This is not to say israel isn't at fault through their actions either. Frankly I take the view that mostly they are both beyond redemption and have ceased to care about either side. Build a wall around the whole area and come back in a 100 years and see who is left
They deal with it as I said last week (when you apparently weren't listening) by sending in ground troops. They do not deal with it by sitting back in Israel lobbing missles and bombs into Gaza.
Thanks General Tyndall. Noted. Israel believes it is at war. In such circumstances they are unlikely to listen to an archaeologist from Lincs shouting the odds about what their strategy should be. Much like ISAF was oblivious to the no doubt sincere entreaties from Arab nations over their conduct of the war in Afghan.
Don't be a fuckwit all your life Topping. Try having a day off for once.
Pagan asked what else Israel could do instead of bombing civilians. I made a suggestion. I don't expect you or any of the other warmongers on here to agree wth it because frankly you have shown you don't give a flying fuck about civilian casualties as long as they are Arabs.
Some of us do and so are looking for ways they could be reduced.
And to think he’d make this the topic of conversation in real life with someone he otherwise liked!
LOL I was at a dinner party last week and someone mentioned Israel/Gaza and I immediately started talking about the rugby.
FWIW I mentioned the Israel/Gaza thing to my mate I shouldn’t be mates with, and we agreed it’s unsolvable
Joe Root has said that England are not playing enough one-day international cricket to continue competing at World Cups and suggested that staging more 50-over county matches at the expense of the Vitality Blast could help to develop a new generation of talent.
He would prefer to see the Blast cut back rather than the Hundred — an idea that may be unpopular with many counties who view the Blast as a contributor towards their financial health, though they receive an annual distribution from the city-based Hundred as well — but he accepts there is also a debate about the very future of the 50-over game itself owing to the global rise in T20 leagues.
There are too many forms of Cricket for England to support over a summer. essentially the shortest forms of cricket are of a length and entertainment value which brings viewers. over time 50 over forms will struggle and when it does test cricket will struggle to get the teams.
if anything is going it'll be the T20 blast, mainly due to attendances and TV revenue.
From previous threads: The discussion of the BBC's problems in covering the Hamas terrorist attack, and Israel's reply reminded me of earlier BBC problems. And I think they ought to come clean, finally, and publish the Balen Report. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balen_Report
(I see in the news that the NYT has, sort of, apologized for some of its earlier pieces on the conflict. Has the BBC done the same?)
I think this Gaza Israel debate is possibly even more depressing than discussing proportional representation
I know. Controversial take
The correct take. It's ruining PB.
And yet it fires up debate - worldwide - like no other geopolitical issue. Especially in proportion to its numerical scale
Why? - is a fascinating question. I am pretty sure the deep rooted mental fungus of anti Semitism is partly to blame. If you analyse most ardent pro Palestinians hard enough you will find fear and hatred of Jews. As we have seen this last week; many of the sufferers won’t even realise it
And I wonder what 'urges' drive the more exuberant of the pro-Israel brigade? And will they admit to or even realize it?
I’ve no doubt that “Islamophobia” is your tediously middlebrow answer
Let’s accept your terms
1. Islamophobia means an irrational fear of Islam. For many Jews the fear is entirely rational. Significant parts of the Islamic world apparently want them all dead
2. Islamophobia has never, in history, led to a serious attempt to kill every Muslim on earth, just for being Muslim
So I don’t think your comparison stands even if we accept it (despite its fatuity)
That IS middlebrow. Are you trying to get on my level? No but seriously, I doubt the feeling that Palestinians are somehow inferior to Israelis is caused by Islamophobia. Truth is, I don't know what it's caused by. I thought you might have some thoughts on it.
Even their fellow arabs dont like them or want them, so I cant see it as islam based. They are a PTSD nation and everyone seems happiest leaving the Rochesters in the attic.
“Here Lads, we’ve got a fellow here who won the London Mayoralty twice as a Conservative, bested a majority winning PM to win a national referendum, then achieved the biggest Tory landslide in a generation. Bit of a bounder, loads of kids with different women, but did manage to charm Marina Wheeler KC to take him back half a dozen times after having affairs. Now with a girl half his age”
“No, he’ll never be able to win over slightly dissatisfied voters, or recover a six point mid term deficit in the polls when there’s a million bad stories in the press about him, best call for Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak”
Doesn't that overlook the elephant(s) in the room?
Even if you think that his charisma could have overcome the Paterson and Pincher stories, it was never going to work on the Privileges Committee. They were going to find him seriously guilty of knowingly lying.
Charisma lets you get away with a lot. But not everything.
(Besides, the thing that brought Boris down with Conservative MPs was the Pincher story. Partly because it was yet another lie on top of all the others, but also it directly affected them. How would you feel if your boss knowingly put a sex pest in as your line manager and then lied to you about doing it?)
He could have taken the suspension and still been doing better than his successors are now.
Aklu Plaza closing down by the way. They never did get that license for “weddings and banquets”
Actually they did get the license in the end, but the rest of the store was a failure. Strange all round
FWIW I mentioned the Israel/Gaza thing to my mate I shouldn’t be mates with, and we agreed it’s unsolvable
Essentially you have two populations who claim the same lands. it's not going to be solvable. all of the refugees in other countries will have to accept that they are not going back and the people that are in the lands at the moment are going to have to have leaders who want peace.
There's no politician in Israel who will become PM who is serious about negotiating and there hasn't been in 30 years. There are no politicians in the WB/GS who can speak for all of the Palestinians. without negotiation this doesn't stop.
“Here Lads, we’ve got a fellow here who won the London Mayoralty twice as a Conservative, bested a majority winning PM to win a national referendum, then achieved the biggest Tory landslide in a generation. Bit of a bounder, loads of kids with different women, but did manage to charm Marina Wheeler KC to take him back half a dozen times after having affairs. Now with a girl half his age”
“No, he’ll never be able to win over slightly dissatisfied voters, or recover a six point mid term deficit in the polls when there’s a million bad stories in the press about him, best call for Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak”
OTOH, there have been no Tory poll leads since December 6th 2021, *while Boris was in charge*.
There’d have been more chance of having any since if they’d stuck with him
Nah, Johnson wears out his welcome quite rapidly and completely. It is why he is on such poor terms with so many ex-paramours, ex-ediditors and ex-colleagues. It is the nature of his thin charm that he needs to move on quickly while the shit is still airborne and fan still pristine.
Won London twice didn’t he?
The voters didn’t seem to have gone off him that much between 2008 and 2019 - he won four major elections, with all his detractors saying the same stuff you are now. But the voters never got rid of him
But he was lagging in the polls from December 2021 all the way to his resignation in July 2022.
“Here Lads, we’ve got a fellow here who won the London Mayoralty twice as a Conservative, bested a majority winning PM to win a national referendum, then achieved the biggest Tory landslide in a generation. Bit of a bounder, loads of kids with different women, but did manage to charm Marina Wheeler KC to take him back half a dozen times after having affairs. Now with a girl half his age”
“No, he’ll never be able to win over slightly dissatisfied voters, or recover a six point mid term deficit in the polls when there’s a million bad stories in the press about him, best call for Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak”
OTOH, there have been no Tory poll leads since December 6th 2021, *while Boris was in charge*.
There’d have been more chance of having any since if they’d stuck with him
Nah, Johnson wears out his welcome quite rapidly and completely. It is why he is on such poor terms with so many ex-paramours, ex-ediditors and ex-colleagues. It is the nature of his thin charm that he needs to move on quickly while the shit is still airborne and fan still pristine.
Won London twice didn’t he?
The voters didn’t seem to have gone off him that much between 2008 and 2019 - he won four major elections, with all his detractors saying the same stuff you are now. But the voters never got rid of him
I can certainly detect somebody who hasn't gone off him.
“Here Lads, we’ve got a fellow here who won the London Mayoralty twice as a Conservative, bested a majority winning PM to win a national referendum, then achieved the biggest Tory landslide in a generation. Bit of a bounder, loads of kids with different women, but did manage to charm Marina Wheeler KC to take him back half a dozen times after having affairs. Now with a girl half his age”
“No, he’ll never be able to win over slightly dissatisfied voters, or recover a six point mid term deficit in the polls when there’s a million bad stories in the press about him, best call for Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak”
OTOH, there have been no Tory poll leads since December 6th 2021, *while Boris was in charge*.
There’d have been more chance of having any since if they’d stuck with him
Nah, Johnson wears out his welcome quite rapidly and completely. It is why he is on such poor terms with so many ex-paramours, ex-ediditors and ex-colleagues. It is the nature of his thin charm that he needs to move on quickly while the shit is still airborne and fan still pristine.
Won London twice didn’t he?
The voters didn’t seem to have gone off him that much between 2008 and 2019 - he won four major elections, with all his detractors saying the same stuff you are now. But the voters never got rid of him
I can certainly detect somebody who hasn't gone off him.
Haha.
Sounds incredible, but I am not really a massive fan of his, or at least wasn’t until the inability of others to realise their bias led me to have about four years worth of arguments supporting him. Even now, with the Cons having plummeted by every measure since his departure, the same old people still can’t admit what’s staring them in the face
I’ve said many times, I was a sufferer from BDS and class envy myself - in 2008 I had my biggest ever political bet on Ken to beat him, purely because I couldn’t believe Londoners would elect such a posh Tory Boy after seeing the debates
“Here Lads, we’ve got a fellow here who won the London Mayoralty twice as a Conservative, bested a majority winning PM to win a national referendum, then achieved the biggest Tory landslide in a generation. Bit of a bounder, loads of kids with different women, but did manage to charm Marina Wheeler KC to take him back half a dozen times after having affairs. Now with a girl half his age”
“No, he’ll never be able to win over slightly dissatisfied voters, or recover a six point mid term deficit in the polls when there’s a million bad stories in the press about him, best call for Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak”
OTOH, there have been no Tory poll leads since December 6th 2021, *while Boris was in charge*.
There’d have been more chance of having any since if they’d stuck with him
Nah, Johnson wears out his welcome quite rapidly and completely. It is why he is on such poor terms with so many ex-paramours, ex-ediditors and ex-colleagues. It is the nature of his thin charm that he needs to move on quickly while the shit is still airborne and fan still pristine.
Won London twice didn’t he?
The voters didn’t seem to have gone off him that much between 2008 and 2019 - he won four major elections, with all his detractors saying the same stuff you are now. But the voters never got rid of him
To be fair, they didn't get rid of Blair, Cameron, May or Truss so he's got plenty of company.
There is a cohort on Twitter who remain diehard supporters of Johnson. They are uniformly pro-Brexit and anti-Sunak. It's a diluted form of Trumpism - this notion a single individual can somehow "put everything right".
I've never understood that kind of uncritical adulation.
“Here Lads, we’ve got a fellow here who won the London Mayoralty twice as a Conservative, bested a majority winning PM to win a national referendum, then achieved the biggest Tory landslide in a generation. Bit of a bounder, loads of kids with different women, but did manage to charm Marina Wheeler KC to take him back half a dozen times after having affairs. Now with a girl half his age”
“No, he’ll never be able to win over slightly dissatisfied voters, or recover a six point mid term deficit in the polls when there’s a million bad stories in the press about him, best call for Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak”
Doesn't that overlook the elephant(s) in the room?
Even if you think that his charisma could have overcome the Paterson and Pincher stories, it was never going to work on the Privileges Committee. They were going to find him seriously guilty of knowingly lying.
Charisma lets you get away with a lot. But not everything.
(Besides, the thing that brought Boris down with Conservative MPs was the Pincher story. Partly because it was yet another lie on top of all the others, but also it directly affected them. How would you feel if your boss knowingly put a sex pest in as your line manager and then lied to you about doing it?)
He could have taken the suspension and still been doing better than his successors are now.
Aklu Plaza closing down by the way. They never did get that license for “weddings and banquets”
Actually they did get the license in the end, but the rest of the store was a failure. Strange all round
Not that strange, really. Shops closing left, right and centre, probably too big a building for what they wanted to do, and- for all Romford continues to change- not really sufficient market for what they were attempting. Entrepreneur tries something and it fails- nothing much to explain.
Still, full marks for trying. After all, that makes three big empty shops around that bit of the Market Square (Littlewoods has been derilict for over a decade and the Aldi site is empty as well. Plus Wilko nearby.) beyond a certain point, the empty shop units are positively offputting.
I just saw a very powerful pro-Israel advert about kidnapped children, with a tag of something like 'Hamas=Isis'.
It was powerful, but I'd give one criticism: the voices were not in English with English subtitles, and I was listening to something, rather than watching the screen, which meant I missed some of the context.
“Here Lads, we’ve got a fellow here who won the London Mayoralty twice as a Conservative, bested a majority winning PM to win a national referendum, then achieved the biggest Tory landslide in a generation. Bit of a bounder, loads of kids with different women, but did manage to charm Marina Wheeler KC to take him back half a dozen times after having affairs. Now with a girl half his age”
“No, he’ll never be able to win over slightly dissatisfied voters, or recover a six point mid term deficit in the polls when there’s a million bad stories in the press about him, best call for Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak”
OTOH, there have been no Tory poll leads since December 6th 2021, *while Boris was in charge*.
There’d have been more chance of having any since if they’d stuck with him
Nah, Johnson wears out his welcome quite rapidly and completely. It is why he is on such poor terms with so many ex-paramours, ex-ediditors and ex-colleagues. It is the nature of his thin charm that he needs to move on quickly while the shit is still airborne and fan still pristine.
Won London twice didn’t he?
The voters didn’t seem to have gone off him that much between 2008 and 2019 - he won four major elections, with all his detractors saying the same stuff you are now. But the voters never got rid of him
To be fair, they didn't get rid of Blair, Cameron, May or Truss so he's got plenty of company.
There is a cohort on Twitter who remain diehard supporters of Johnson. They are uniformly pro-Brexit and anti-Sunak. It's a diluted form of Trumpism - this notion a single individual can somehow "put everything right".
I've never understood that kind of uncritical adulation.
You've clearly not spent enough time with @Luckyguy1983.
I think this Gaza Israel debate is possibly even more depressing than discussing proportional representation
I know. Controversial take
The correct take. It's ruining PB.
And yet it fires up debate - worldwide - like no other geopolitical issue. Especially in proportion to its numerical scale
Why? - is a fascinating question. I am pretty sure the deep rooted mental fungus of anti Semitism is partly to blame. If you analyse most ardent pro Palestinians hard enough you will find fear and hatred of Jews. As we have seen this last week; many of the sufferers won’t even realise it
And I wonder what 'urges' drive the more exuberant of the pro-Israel brigade? And will they admit to or even realize it?
I’ve no doubt that “Islamophobia” is your tediously middlebrow answer
Let’s accept your terms
1. Islamophobia means an irrational fear of Islam. For many Jews the fear is entirely rational. Significant parts of the Islamic world apparently want them all dead
2. Islamophobia has never, in history, led to a serious attempt to kill every Muslim on earth, just for being Muslim
So I don’t think your comparison stands even if we accept it (despite its fatuity)
That IS middlebrow. Are you trying to get on my level? No but seriously, I doubt the feeling that Palestinians are somehow inferior to Israelis is caused by Islamophobia. Truth is, I don't know what it's caused by. I thought you might have some thoughts on it.
Even their fellow arabs dont like them or want them, so I cant see it as islam based. They are a PTSD nation and everyone seems happiest leaving the Rochesters in the attic.
Ok but I was more trying to understand why some right wing people over here (and it's a fair number) are so pro Israel as to be blase about Palestinian suffering and see no weight or validity to their cause. Where's that coming from? We rightly talk a lot about antisemitism but we don't probe that so much. Any offers?
“Here Lads, we’ve got a fellow here who won the London Mayoralty twice as a Conservative, bested a majority winning PM to win a national referendum, then achieved the biggest Tory landslide in a generation. Bit of a bounder, loads of kids with different women, but did manage to charm Marina Wheeler KC to take him back half a dozen times after having affairs. Now with a girl half his age”
“No, he’ll never be able to win over slightly dissatisfied voters, or recover a six point mid term deficit in the polls when there’s a million bad stories in the press about him, best call for Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak”
Doesn't that overlook the elephant(s) in the room?
Even if you think that his charisma could have overcome the Paterson and Pincher stories, it was never going to work on the Privileges Committee. They were going to find him seriously guilty of knowingly lying.
Charisma lets you get away with a lot. But not everything.
(Besides, the thing that brought Boris down with Conservative MPs was the Pincher story. Partly because it was yet another lie on top of all the others, but also it directly affected them. How would you feel if your boss knowingly put a sex pest in as your line manager and then lied to you about doing it?)
He could have taken the suspension and still been doing better than his successors are now.
Aklu Plaza closing down by the way. They never did get that license for “weddings and banquets”
Actually they did get the license in the end, but the rest of the store was a failure. Strange all round
Not that strange, really. Shops closing left, right and centre, probably too big a building for what they wanted to do, and- for all Romford continues to change- not really sufficient market for what they were attempting. Entrepreneur tries something and it fails- nothing much to explain.
Still, full marks for trying. After all, that makes three big empty shops around that bit of the Market Square (Littlewoods has been derilict for over a decade and the Aldi site is empty as well. Plus Wilko nearby.) beyond a certain point, the empty shop units are positively offputting.
Surely there is an argument for turning them all into housing - “Market Square”, I can see it now
A far cry from when I worked on the market as a teenager, it was absolutely buzzing back then
I think this Gaza Israel debate is possibly even more depressing than discussing proportional representation
I know. Controversial take
The correct take. It's ruining PB.
And yet it fires up debate - worldwide - like no other geopolitical issue. Especially in proportion to its numerical scale
Why? - is a fascinating question. I am pretty sure the deep rooted mental fungus of anti Semitism is partly to blame. If you analyse most ardent pro Palestinians hard enough you will find fear and hatred of Jews. As we have seen this last week; many of the sufferers won’t even realise it
And I wonder what 'urges' drive the more exuberant of the pro-Israel brigade? And will they admit to or even realize it?
I don't know if you'd call me one of the "more exuberant of the pro-Israel brigade?", but here's an answer as to why I'm unwilling to see Israel be driven into the sea.
*) Israel is, in laws and lifestyle, more like the 'west' than many of its neighbouring countries. Homosexual rights being a classic example. If I had to live anywhere in that region (and not having visited the region), I'd choose Israel. As an agnostic with a Christian upbringing, I'd feel like my rights would most be respected there.
*) History. Not just the obvious Holocaust, but also the way Jews have been treated throughout time. There's still a massive amount of sympathy for their plight out there.
*) Emerging from the above, an understanding that many (not all) Jews believe they can only be 'safe' within their own country. (I also support a Kurdish state as well, although also accept that it would be massively complex to create one.)
*) Israel has already made moves for peace many times; for instance returning Sinai to Egypt, or their withdrawal from Gaza twenty-odd years ago.
For these reasons, I find it hard to paint Israel as the bad guy - or at least, the only bad guy. In contrast, see the way Palestinians and Palestinian refugees have been treated by their neighbouring countries over the years. Innocent Palestinian civilians are used, not just by the shits of Hamas, but also by Egypt, Jordan, Syria etc. Ditto Lebanon.
On the other hand, my position is that Israel has to make the first (in fact, more...) moves to peace.
It doesn't follow from all this that it's OK to rob your neighbour's land or bomb residential dwellings because you might get a baddie.
No, it doesn't. But ask yourself if a country - and Hamas is in charge of Gaza - had just killed well over a thousand of our population (or relatively more, given our larger population...), how would you want us to react? Especially if the bad guys were willing and able to do the same again, and their avowed intention was to wipe us off the face of the Earth?
I find it impossible to say it is not a casus belli.
This is not to excuse many of Israel's actions that led up to this - the expansion of the settlements in particular. But the idea that Israel is not able to react to the attack is odd, to say the least. And if you know if a surgical scalpel that can just it Hamas soldiers and leaders, please let me know.
It's a truly hideous situation.
Israel knows the consequences of a full scale invasion - ruination, death, international condemantion and the radicalisation of a new generation, not just in Gaza but potentially across the whole Arab world potentially destabilising what few moderate Arab regimes still exist.
It also knows the political consequences of doing nothing.
This is where it was always going to end - with Israel caught between the proverbial rock and the metaphorical hard place.
Off topic, but I thought you* might like some good news from the US: "Nikki Haley is increasingly threatening to supplant Ron DeSantis as the principal GOP presidential rival to Donald Trump, escalating frictions between the two candidates that are playing out before voters on the campaign trail and behind closed doors with wealthy donors. . . . Haley rose to third in a Washington Post average of national polling from October, with 8 percent support to DeSantis’s 14 percent. She’s pulled into third in Iowa, where DeSantis’s support is still noticeably stronger, and jumped ahead of DeSantis in recent surveys of New Hampshire and South Carolina." source $: https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2023/10/21/haley-desantis-trump-presidential-race/
And I like the fact that she can do arithmetic. (She was doing the books for her family's business, as a teenager.) Too many of our politicians can't.
*Well, most of you, anyway.
For someone so comprehensively re-elected recently DeSantis seems to have been a bit of a damp squib as a candidate. Not that he would have been expected to come out swinging against Trump right from the off, nor has Haley, but even on those terms he's seems lacklustre, uncompelling, and trying to hard to be like Trump whilst telling people not to vote Trump.
“Here Lads, we’ve got a fellow here who won the London Mayoralty twice as a Conservative, bested a majority winning PM to win a national referendum, then achieved the biggest Tory landslide in a generation. Bit of a bounder, loads of kids with different women, but did manage to charm Marina Wheeler KC to take him back half a dozen times after having affairs. Now with a girl half his age”
“No, he’ll never be able to win over slightly dissatisfied voters, or recover a six point mid term deficit in the polls when there’s a million bad stories in the press about him, best call for Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak”
OTOH, there have been no Tory poll leads since December 6th 2021, *while Boris was in charge*.
There’d have been more chance of having any since if they’d stuck with him
Nah, Johnson wears out his welcome quite rapidly and completely. It is why he is on such poor terms with so many ex-paramours, ex-ediditors and ex-colleagues. It is the nature of his thin charm that he needs to move on quickly while the shit is still airborne and fan still pristine.
Won London twice didn’t he?
The voters didn’t seem to have gone off him that much between 2008 and 2019 - he won four major elections, with all his detractors saying the same stuff you are now. But the voters never got rid of him
To be fair, they didn't get rid of Blair, Cameron, May or Truss so he's got plenty of company.
There is a cohort on Twitter who remain diehard supporters of Johnson. They are uniformly pro-Brexit and anti-Sunak. It's a diluted form of Trumpism - this notion a single individual can somehow "put everything right".
I've never understood that kind of uncritical adulation.
The central mystery is being pro-Brexit and anti-Sunak. Sunak is Brexit in a way that Johnson wasn't; he believed in it before it was cool, and had a coherent, logical idea of what Britain should aim for- Sunshine State Techbro Utopia.
There is the catch that, had that been on the ballot in 2016, it would have got nowhere.
“Here Lads, we’ve got a fellow here who won the London Mayoralty twice as a Conservative, bested a majority winning PM to win a national referendum, then achieved the biggest Tory landslide in a generation. Bit of a bounder, loads of kids with different women, but did manage to charm Marina Wheeler KC to take him back half a dozen times after having affairs. Now with a girl half his age”
“No, he’ll never be able to win over slightly dissatisfied voters, or recover a six point mid term deficit in the polls when there’s a million bad stories in the press about him, best call for Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak”
OTOH, there have been no Tory poll leads since December 6th 2021, *while Boris was in charge*.
There’d have been more chance of having any since if they’d stuck with him
Nah, Johnson wears out his welcome quite rapidly and completely. It is why he is on such poor terms with so many ex-paramours, ex-ediditors and ex-colleagues. It is the nature of his thin charm that he needs to move on quickly while the shit is still airborne and fan still pristine.
Won London twice didn’t he?
The voters didn’t seem to have gone off him that much between 2008 and 2019 - he won four major elections, with all his detractors saying the same stuff you are now. But the voters never got rid of him
To be fair, they didn't get rid of Blair, Cameron, May or Truss so he's got plenty of company.
There is a cohort on Twitter who remain diehard supporters of Johnson. They are uniformly pro-Brexit and anti-Sunak. It's a diluted form of Trumpism - this notion a single individual can somehow "put everything right".
I've never understood that kind of uncritical adulation.
Cameron & May did ‘lose’ big elections though.
I think a lot of the reason there are still die hard Boris supporters is that he never really got a chance to show his stuff; the pandemic did for him. There’s a loyalty to someone you’ve voted for that just isn’t there for their replacements.
I think this Gaza Israel debate is possibly even more depressing than discussing proportional representation
I know. Controversial take
The correct take. It's ruining PB.
And yet it fires up debate - worldwide - like no other geopolitical issue. Especially in proportion to its numerical scale
Why? - is a fascinating question. I am pretty sure the deep rooted mental fungus of anti Semitism is partly to blame. If you analyse most ardent pro Palestinians hard enough you will find fear and hatred of Jews. As we have seen this last week; many of the sufferers won’t even realise it
And I wonder what 'urges' drive the more exuberant of the pro-Israel brigade? And will they admit to or even realize it?
I’ve no doubt that “Islamophobia” is your tediously middlebrow answer
Let’s accept your terms
1. Islamophobia means an irrational fear of Islam. For many Jews the fear is entirely rational. Significant parts of the Islamic world apparently want them all dead
2. Islamophobia has never, in history, led to a serious attempt to kill every Muslim on earth, just for being Muslim
So I don’t think your comparison stands even if we accept it (despite its fatuity)
That IS middlebrow. Are you trying to get on my level? No but seriously, I doubt the feeling that Palestinians are somehow inferior to Israelis is caused by Islamophobia. Truth is, I don't know what it's caused by. I thought you might have some thoughts on it.
Even their fellow arabs dont like them or want them, so I cant see it as islam based. They are a PTSD nation and everyone seems happiest leaving the Rochesters in the attic.
Ok but I was more trying to understand why some right wing people over here (and it's a fair number) are so pro Israel as to be blase about Palestinian suffering and see no weight or validity to their cause. Where's that coming from? We rightly talk a lot about antisemitism but we don't probe that so much. Any offers?
If you think some right wing people over here are pro Israel as to be blase about Palestinian suffering, then do you also think that some left-wing people are so pro-Palestinian as to be blase about Israeli suffering?
Where's that coming from? In this case, there's an obvious answer...
“Here Lads, we’ve got a fellow here who won the London Mayoralty twice as a Conservative, bested a majority winning PM to win a national referendum, then achieved the biggest Tory landslide in a generation. Bit of a bounder, loads of kids with different women, but did manage to charm Marina Wheeler KC to take him back half a dozen times after having affairs. Now with a girl half his age”
“No, he’ll never be able to win over slightly dissatisfied voters, or recover a six point mid term deficit in the polls when there’s a million bad stories in the press about him, best call for Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak”
OTOH, there have been no Tory poll leads since December 6th 2021, *while Boris was in charge*.
There’d have been more chance of having any since if they’d stuck with him
Nah, Johnson wears out his welcome quite rapidly and completely. It is why he is on such poor terms with so many ex-paramours, ex-ediditors and ex-colleagues. It is the nature of his thin charm that he needs to move on quickly while the shit is still airborne and fan still pristine.
Won London twice didn’t he?
The voters didn’t seem to have gone off him that much between 2008 and 2019 - he won four major elections, with all his detractors saying the same stuff you are now. But the voters never got rid of him
To be fair, they didn't get rid of Blair, Cameron, May or Truss so he's got plenty of company.
There is a cohort on Twitter who remain diehard supporters of Johnson. They are uniformly pro-Brexit and anti-Sunak. It's a diluted form of Trumpism - this notion a single individual can somehow "put everything right".
I've never understood that kind of uncritical adulation.
The central mystery is being pro-Brexit and anti-Sunak. Sunak is Brexit in a way that Johnson wasn't; he believed in it before it was cool, and had a coherent, logical idea of what Britain should aim for- Sunshine State Techbro Utopia.
There is the catch that, had that been on the ballot in 2016, it would have got nowhere.
I am pro Brexit and anti Sunak. But my anti Sunak has little or nothing to do with Brexit where I think he has performed reasonably well. It is all the other stuff, not least his belief in his obnoxious Home Secretary and support for her actions, that turn me against him.
I still think he is a better PM than any of his three predecessors but that really isn't a very high bar.
“Here Lads, we’ve got a fellow here who won the London Mayoralty twice as a Conservative, bested a majority winning PM to win a national referendum, then achieved the biggest Tory landslide in a generation. Bit of a bounder, loads of kids with different women, but did manage to charm Marina Wheeler KC to take him back half a dozen times after having affairs. Now with a girl half his age”
“No, he’ll never be able to win over slightly dissatisfied voters, or recover a six point mid term deficit in the polls when there’s a million bad stories in the press about him, best call for Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak”
OTOH, there have been no Tory poll leads since December 6th 2021, *while Boris was in charge*.
There’d have been more chance of having any since if they’d stuck with him
Nah, Johnson wears out his welcome quite rapidly and completely. It is why he is on such poor terms with so many ex-paramours, ex-ediditors and ex-colleagues. It is the nature of his thin charm that he needs to move on quickly while the shit is still airborne and fan still pristine.
Won London twice didn’t he?
The voters didn’t seem to have gone off him that much between 2008 and 2019 - he won four major elections, with all his detractors saying the same stuff you are now. But the voters never got rid of him
To be fair, they didn't get rid of Blair, Cameron, May or Truss so he's got plenty of company.
There is a cohort on Twitter who remain diehard supporters of Johnson. They are uniformly pro-Brexit and anti-Sunak. It's a diluted form of Trumpism - this notion a single individual can somehow "put everything right".
I've never understood that kind of uncritical adulation.
Cameron & May did ‘lose’ big elections though.
I think a lot of the reason there are still die hard Boris supporters is that he never really got a chance to show his stuff; the pandemic did for him. There’s a loyalty to someone you’ve voted for that just isn’t there for their replacements.
I don't really buy that we never got a chance to see the real Boris, for all the massive costs and delays the pandemic undoubtedly caused it could also have been used as an opportunity to reset things, as a pivot point to a new direction, if he'd wanted to and been able to plan things out for it.
But I do agree that that is the sense a lot of people have, and with the added loyalty that people actually voted in support of him personally through their local candidate, that keeps the fire burning even when he's been ejected.
Politico.com - The fingerprints on a letter to Congress about AI
Sy Damle, a Washington lawyer representing OpenAI in copyright lawsuits, covertly organized a letter from tech groups and academics urging Congress to avoid new laws on AI and copyright.
The message in the open letter sent to Congress on Sept. 11 was clear: Don’t put new copyright regulations on artificial intelligence systems.
The letter’s signatories were real players, a broad coalition of think tanks, professors and civil-society groups with a stake in the growing debate about AI and copyright in Washington.
Undisclosed, however, were the fingerprints of Sy Damle, a tech-friendly Washington lawyer and former government official who works for top firms in the industry — including OpenAI, one of the top developers of cutting-edge AI models. Damle is currently representing OpenAI in ongoing copyright lawsuits.
Damle did not sign the letter, and did not reply to multiple attempts to contact him with questions about his involvement. But data contained in a publicly posted PDF of the letter show the document was authored by “SDamle,” and three signatories confirmed to POLITICO that Damle was involved in its drafting and circulation. Two of them said they were first made aware of the letter by Damle, and signed it at his invitation.
The letter’s covert origin offers a window into the deep and often invisible reach of Big Tech influence in the Washington debate over AI — a fast-moving part of the policy landscape where Congress is hungry for outside advice, and which is still new enough to create strange political bedfellows. Signatories included the American Library Association, the progressive nonprofit Public Knowledge and the free-market R Street Institute. . . .
I think this Gaza Israel debate is possibly even more depressing than discussing proportional representation
I know. Controversial take
The correct take. It's ruining PB.
And yet it fires up debate - worldwide - like no other geopolitical issue. Especially in proportion to its numerical scale
Why? - is a fascinating question. I am pretty sure the deep rooted mental fungus of anti Semitism is partly to blame. If you analyse most ardent pro Palestinians hard enough you will find fear and hatred of Jews. As we have seen this last week; many of the sufferers won’t even realise it
And I wonder what 'urges' drive the more exuberant of the pro-Israel brigade? And will they admit to or even realize it?
I don't know if you'd call me one of the "more exuberant of the pro-Israel brigade?", but here's an answer as to why I'm unwilling to see Israel be driven into the sea.
*) Israel is, in laws and lifestyle, more like the 'west' than many of its neighbouring countries. Homosexual rights being a classic example. If I had to live anywhere in that region (and not having visited the region), I'd choose Israel. As an agnostic with a Christian upbringing, I'd feel like my rights would most be respected there.
*) History. Not just the obvious Holocaust, but also the way Jews have been treated throughout time. There's still a massive amount of sympathy for their plight out there.
*) Emerging from the above, an understanding that many (not all) Jews believe they can only be 'safe' within their own country. (I also support a Kurdish state as well, although also accept that it would be massively complex to create one.)
*) Israel has already made moves for peace many times; for instance returning Sinai to Egypt, or their withdrawal from Gaza twenty-odd years ago.
For these reasons, I find it hard to paint Israel as the bad guy - or at least, the only bad guy. In contrast, see the way Palestinians and Palestinian refugees have been treated by their neighbouring countries over the years. Innocent Palestinian civilians are used, not just by the shits of Hamas, but also by Egypt, Jordan, Syria etc. Ditto Lebanon.
On the other hand, my position is that Israel has to make the first (in fact, more...) moves to peace.
It doesn't follow from all this that it's OK to rob your neighbour's land or bomb residential dwellings because you might get a baddie.
No, it doesn't. But ask yourself if a country - and Hamas is in charge of Gaza - had just killed well over a thousand of our population (or relatively more, given our larger population...), how would you want us to react? Especially if the bad guys were willing and able to do the same again, and their avowed intention was to wipe us off the face of the Earth?
I find it impossible to say it is not a casus belli.
This is not to excuse many of Israel's actions that led up to this - the expansion of the settlements in particular. But the idea that Israel is not able to react to the attack is odd, to say the least. And if you know if a surgical scalpel that can just it Hamas soldiers and leaders, please let me know.
It's a truly hideous situation.
Israel knows the consequences of a full scale invasion - ruination, death, international condemantion and the radicalisation of a new generation, not just in Gaza but potentially across the whole Arab world potentially destabilising what few moderate Arab regimes still exist.
It also knows the political consequences of doing nothing.
This is where it was always going to end - with Israel caught between the proverbial rock and the metaphorical hard place.
for many years, I've wondered if Israel should play the victim: when these hideous acts occur, they secure their own territory, and do nothing else. Every suicide bombing, every knife attack, every rocket launched from the neighbours should be ignored.
There are three problems with that: *) I - and we - have no right to ask that of Israelis.
*) The people who hate Israel would still not see Israelis as victims - after all, they are still occupiers. They would pay no notice of the bombings, the knife attacks, and especially the rockets.
*) It would not stop the bombings, the knife attacks, or the rockets.
Interestingly tonight RTÉ was mostly referring to, "figures from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Ministry of Health," when discussing the numbers of Gazans said to have died in Israeli airstrikes. Think that's the first time they've done that.
I think this Gaza Israel debate is possibly even more depressing than discussing proportional representation
I know. Controversial take
The correct take. It's ruining PB.
And yet it fires up debate - worldwide - like no other geopolitical issue. Especially in proportion to its numerical scale
Why? - is a fascinating question. I am pretty sure the deep rooted mental fungus of anti Semitism is partly to blame. If you analyse most ardent pro Palestinians hard enough you will find fear and hatred of Jews. As we have seen this last week; many of the sufferers won’t even realise it
And I wonder what 'urges' drive the more exuberant of the pro-Israel brigade? And will they admit to or even realize it?
I’ve no doubt that “Islamophobia” is your tediously middlebrow answer
Let’s accept your terms
1. Islamophobia means an irrational fear of Islam. For many Jews the fear is entirely rational. Significant parts of the Islamic world apparently want them all dead
2. Islamophobia has never, in history, led to a serious attempt to kill every Muslim on earth, just for being Muslim
So I don’t think your comparison stands even if we accept it (despite its fatuity)
That IS middlebrow. Are you trying to get on my level? No but seriously, I doubt the feeling that Palestinians are somehow inferior to Israelis is caused by Islamophobia. Truth is, I don't know what it's caused by. I thought you might have some thoughts on it.
Even their fellow arabs dont like them or want them, so I cant see it as islam based. They are a PTSD nation and everyone seems happiest leaving the Rochesters in the attic.
Ok but I was more trying to understand why some right wing people over here (and it's a fair number) are so pro Israel as to be blase about Palestinian suffering and see no weight or validity to their cause. Where's that coming from? We rightly talk a lot about antisemitism but we don't probe that so much. Any offers?
If you think some right wing people over here are pro Israel as to be blase about Palestinian suffering, then do you also think that some left-wing people are so pro-Palestinian as to be blase about Israeli suffering?
Where's that coming from? In this case, there's an obvious answer...
Great quote from Andrew Sullivan on young progressive types.
“Of course they support Hamas. Palestinians are merely punching up — and that exonerates them of any moral culpability. Just as African-Americans cannot commit a hate crime, so Hamas definitionally cannot commit terror. Once you see the world in this way — as groups of the oppressed and oppressors, with the oppressed always justified in their resistance to the oppressors — the rights of individual Jews, or whites, or Asians, or even dissident non-whites are irrelevant. It’s all about “power structures” and “systems” and “context”. All morality is relative to privilege. There is not a trace of universalism among the woke left, not a single objective measurement of morality except what is justified in response to “oppression”.
Interestingly tonight RTÉ was mostly referring to, "figures from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Ministry of Health," when discussing the numbers of Gazans said to have died in Israeli airstrikes. Think that's the first time they've done that.
Sky earlier this afternoon was also explicit in mentioning the 'Hamas controlled Ministry of Health'
Re header. Whatever you say about Sunak, he hasn't crashed the car within five minutes of being handed the keys. Truss set a new standard for being completely rubbish. Even the daftest of the Popes can't compete - and there have been some very daft popes.
Interestingly tonight RTÉ was mostly referring to, "figures from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Ministry of Health," when discussing the numbers of Gazans said to have died in Israeli airstrikes. Think that's the first time they've done that.
The numbers are quite plausible from the evidence of destruction, rammed hospitals and mass burials. I don't think there will ever be precise figures.
Interestingly tonight RTÉ was mostly referring to, "figures from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Ministry of Health," when discussing the numbers of Gazans said to have died in Israeli airstrikes. Think that's the first time they've done that.
I noticed the BBC did that aswell . Although given the level of destruction in Gaza it wouldn’t be a surprise if those released figures weren’t far out .
Great quote from Andrew Sullivan on young progressive types.
“Of course they support Hamas. Palestinians are merely punching up — and that exonerates them of any moral culpability. Just as African-Americans cannot commit a hate crime, so Hamas definitionally cannot commit terror. Once you see the world in this way — as groups of the oppressed and oppressors, with the oppressed always justified in their resistance to the oppressors — the rights of individual Jews, or whites, or Asians, or even dissident non-whites are irrelevant. It’s all about “power structures” and “systems” and “context”. All morality is relative to privilege. There is not a trace of universalism among the woke left, not a single objective measurement of morality except what is justified in response to “oppression”.
“Here Lads, we’ve got a fellow here who won the London Mayoralty twice as a Conservative, bested a majority winning PM to win a national referendum, then achieved the biggest Tory landslide in a generation. Bit of a bounder, loads of kids with different women, but did manage to charm Marina Wheeler KC to take him back half a dozen times after having affairs. Now with a girl half his age”
“No, he’ll never be able to win over slightly dissatisfied voters, or recover a six point mid term deficit in the polls when there’s a million bad stories in the press about him, best call for Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak”
OTOH, there have been no Tory poll leads since December 6th 2021, *while Boris was in charge*.
There’d have been more chance of having any since if they’d stuck with him
Nah, Johnson wears out his welcome quite rapidly and completely. It is why he is on such poor terms with so many ex-paramours, ex-ediditors and ex-colleagues. It is the nature of his thin charm that he needs to move on quickly while the shit is still airborne and fan still pristine.
Won London twice didn’t he?
The voters didn’t seem to have gone off him that much between 2008 and 2019 - he won four major elections, with all his detractors saying the same stuff you are now. But the voters never got rid of him
To be fair, they didn't get rid of Blair, Cameron, May or Truss so he's got plenty of company.
There is a cohort on Twitter who remain diehard supporters of Johnson. They are uniformly pro-Brexit and anti-Sunak. It's a diluted form of Trumpism - this notion a single individual can somehow "put everything right".
I've never understood that kind of uncritical adulation.
Cameron & May did ‘lose’ big elections though.
I think a lot of the reason there are still die hard Boris supporters is that he never really got a chance to show his stuff; the pandemic did for him. There’s a loyalty to someone you’ve voted for that just isn’t there for their replacements.
He wasn't an unknown like Major had been in 1990. Johnson was a well established public political figure and had been for nearly 20 years.
He was Foreign Secretary under Theresa May before he quit.
The truth is he plotted, schemed and manoeuvred for two decades to get to where he wanted to be: Prime Minister. He finally got there, won his mandate and within weeks he was undermined by a microscopic virus. In the end, the job he wanted wasn't what he expected or wanted. Instead of cheering us all up and leading the optimistic chorus for the 2020s, he had to lock us all down. You can see the anguish as he made the historic announcement.
Fate has certainly had a jolly good laugh at Boris's expense.
I think this Gaza Israel debate is possibly even more depressing than discussing proportional representation
I know. Controversial take
The correct take. It's ruining PB.
And yet it fires up debate - worldwide - like no other geopolitical issue. Especially in proportion to its numerical scale
Why? - is a fascinating question. I am pretty sure the deep rooted mental fungus of anti Semitism is partly to blame. If you analyse most ardent pro Palestinians hard enough you will find fear and hatred of Jews. As we have seen this last week; many of the sufferers won’t even realise it
And I wonder what 'urges' drive the more exuberant of the pro-Israel brigade? And will they admit to or even realize it?
I’ve no doubt that “Islamophobia” is your tediously middlebrow answer
Let’s accept your terms
1. Islamophobia means an irrational fear of Islam. For many Jews the fear is entirely rational. Significant parts of the Islamic world apparently want them all dead
2. Islamophobia has never, in history, led to a serious attempt to kill every Muslim on earth, just for being Muslim
So I don’t think your comparison stands even if we accept it (despite its fatuity)
That IS middlebrow. Are you trying to get on my level? No but seriously, I doubt the feeling that Palestinians are somehow inferior to Israelis is caused by Islamophobia. Truth is, I don't know what it's caused by. I thought you might have some thoughts on it.
Even their fellow arabs dont like them or want them, so I cant see it as islam based. They are a PTSD nation and everyone seems happiest leaving the Rochesters in the attic.
Ok but I was more trying to understand why some right wing people over here (and it's a fair number) are so pro Israel as to be blase about Palestinian suffering and see no weight or validity to their cause. Where's that coming from? We rightly talk a lot about antisemitism but we don't probe that so much. Any offers?
If all the hostages were released tonight, everyone in Gaza stopped firing rockets at Israeli towns and cities, and the Hamas leadership surrendered unconditionally, Israel would immediately cease firing at Gaza, international aid would resume, the blockade would end and Israel would eventually also reopen the border to allow Gazans with work permits to resume their jobs in Israel. Assuming the violence out of Gaza stopped, there is also a decent chance of the area moving towards proper autonomy - it's a much less controversial issue than the West Bank, since Israel has no meaningful territorial ambitions towards it, and there are no historical sites of any significance.
There is no possibility whatsoever of the same happening if Israel stops firing unilaterally. None. The terrorist groups in Gaza would simply be encouraged and increase the barrage of rockets fired hourly at Israel, with incursions at regular intervals aimed at murdering as many Jews as possible.
That's why the two sides are treated differently. Is that clear enough for you?
Great quote from Andrew Sullivan on young progressive types.
“Of course they support Hamas. Palestinians are merely punching up — and that exonerates them of any moral culpability. Just as African-Americans cannot commit a hate crime, so Hamas definitionally cannot commit terror. Once you see the world in this way — as groups of the oppressed and oppressors, with the oppressed always justified in their resistance to the oppressors — the rights of individual Jews, or whites, or Asians, or even dissident non-whites are irrelevant. It’s all about “power structures” and “systems” and “context”. All morality is relative to privilege. There is not a trace of universalism among the woke left, not a single objective measurement of morality except what is justified in response to “oppression”.
Interestingly tonight RTÉ was mostly referring to, "figures from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Ministry of Health," when discussing the numbers of Gazans said to have died in Israeli airstrikes. Think that's the first time they've done that.
Sky earlier this afternoon was also explicit in mentioning the 'Hamas controlled Ministry of Health'
Interestingly tonight RTÉ was mostly referring to, "figures from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Ministry of Health," when discussing the numbers of Gazans said to have died in Israeli airstrikes. Think that's the first time they've done that.
Definitely been a slight change of emphasis in reporting figures.
Re header. Whatever you say about Sunak, he hasn't crashed the car within five minutes of being handed the keys. Truss set a new standard for being completely rubbish. Even the daftest of the Popes can't compete - and there have been some very daft popes.
Is Liz Truss the reincarnation of Lucrezia Borgia?
I think this Gaza Israel debate is possibly even more depressing than discussing proportional representation
I know. Controversial take
The correct take. It's ruining PB.
And yet it fires up debate - worldwide - like no other geopolitical issue. Especially in proportion to its numerical scale
Why? - is a fascinating question. I am pretty sure the deep rooted mental fungus of anti Semitism is partly to blame. If you analyse most ardent pro Palestinians hard enough you will find fear and hatred of Jews. As we have seen this last week; many of the sufferers won’t even realise it
And I wonder what 'urges' drive the more exuberant of the pro-Israel brigade? And will they admit to or even realize it?
I don't know if you'd call me one of the "more exuberant of the pro-Israel brigade?", but here's an answer as to why I'm unwilling to see Israel be driven into the sea.
*) Israel is, in laws and lifestyle, more like the 'west' than many of its neighbouring countries. Homosexual rights being a classic example. If I had to live anywhere in that region (and not having visited the region), I'd choose Israel. As an agnostic with a Christian upbringing, I'd feel like my rights would most be respected there.
*) History. Not just the obvious Holocaust, but also the way Jews have been treated throughout time. There's still a massive amount of sympathy for their plight out there.
*) Emerging from the above, an understanding that many (not all) Jews believe they can only be 'safe' within their own country. (I also support a Kurdish state as well, although also accept that it would be massively complex to create one.)
*) Israel has already made moves for peace many times; for instance returning Sinai to Egypt, or their withdrawal from Gaza twenty-odd years ago.
For these reasons, I find it hard to paint Israel as the bad guy - or at least, the only bad guy. In contrast, see the way Palestinians and Palestinian refugees have been treated by their neighbouring countries over the years. Innocent Palestinian civilians are used, not just by the shits of Hamas, but also by Egypt, Jordan, Syria etc. Ditto Lebanon.
On the other hand, my position is that Israel has to make the first (in fact, more...) moves to peace.
It doesn't follow from all this that it's OK to rob your neighbour's land or bomb residential dwellings because you might get a baddie.
No, it doesn't. But ask yourself if a country - and Hamas is in charge of Gaza - had just killed well over a thousand of our population (or relatively more, given our larger population...), how would you want us to react? Especially if the bad guys were willing and able to do the same again, and their avowed intention was to wipe us off the face of the Earth?
I find it impossible to say it is not a casus belli.
This is not to excuse many of Israel's actions that led up to this - the expansion of the settlements in particular. But the idea that Israel is not able to react to the attack is odd, to say the least. And if you know if a surgical scalpel that can just it Hamas soldiers and leaders, please let me know.
It's a truly hideous situation.
Israel knows the consequences of a full scale invasion - ruination, death, international condemantion and the radicalisation of a new generation, not just in Gaza but potentially across the whole Arab world potentially destabilising what few moderate Arab regimes still exist.
It also knows the political consequences of doing nothing.
This is where it was always going to end - with Israel caught between the proverbial rock and the metaphorical hard place.
for many years, I've wondered if Israel should play the victim: when these hideous acts occur, they secure their own territory, and do nothing else. Every suicide bombing, every knife attack, every rocket launched from the neighbours should be ignored.
There are three problems with that: *) I - and we - have no right to ask that of Israelis.
*) The people who hate Israel would still not see Israelis as victims - after all, they are still occupiers. They would pay no notice of the bombings, the knife attacks, and especially the rockets.
*) It would not stop the bombings, the knife attacks, or the rockets.
I don't disagree - the scale of the Hamas savagery is impossible to ignore - it was and was meant to be the ultimate provocation. NO nation could ignore that scale of civilian losses - if any Government tried it would be swept aside by a tide of popular anger.
Again, Hamas wanted to provoke a response - it's worth repeating but this wasn't just about killing Jews, it had many other objectives many of which may yet be met. The radicalisation of Arab opinion, the polarisation between pro-Israel and pro-Arab and the possible economic and political consequences of any Arab (OPEC) backlash against the destruction of Gaza.
Great quote from Andrew Sullivan on young progressive types.
“Of course they support Hamas. Palestinians are merely punching up — and that exonerates them of any moral culpability. Just as African-Americans cannot commit a hate crime, so Hamas definitionally cannot commit terror. Once you see the world in this way — as groups of the oppressed and oppressors, with the oppressed always justified in their resistance to the oppressors — the rights of individual Jews, or whites, or Asians, or even dissident non-whites are irrelevant. It’s all about “power structures” and “systems” and “context”. All morality is relative to privilege. There is not a trace of universalism among the woke left, not a single objective measurement of morality except what is justified in response to “oppression”.
What a fabulous quote.
And a massive straw man...
It contains a lot of sense. Then uses the word woke. And you realise it’s coming from a sense-free place.
As always with ideological types the writer takes a reasonable point and then reductioes it ad absurdum.
But there is definitely a point under all that. People are able to support hideous crimes when they feel sanctimonious enough on behalf of the oppressed.
Great quote from Andrew Sullivan on young progressive types.
“Of course they support Hamas. Palestinians are merely punching up — and that exonerates them of any moral culpability. Just as African-Americans cannot commit a hate crime, so Hamas definitionally cannot commit terror. Once you see the world in this way — as groups of the oppressed and oppressors, with the oppressed always justified in their resistance to the oppressors — the rights of individual Jews, or whites, or Asians, or even dissident non-whites are irrelevant. It’s all about “power structures” and “systems” and “context”. All morality is relative to privilege. There is not a trace of universalism among the woke left, not a single objective measurement of morality except what is justified in response to “oppression”.
What a fabulous quote.
And a massive straw man...
Gods forbid someone making a broad point not include every possible caveat and hypothetical alternative explanation or favourable interpretation on things.
Yes, it's not a perfect scenario, and it's probably not meant to be. Yes, it may not apply to as many people as Sullivan thinks it does, as an overall proportion.
But even if we consider it only a minority, a vocal online heavy force, are we going to say we've not seen lots of comments like that online? Not seen people endorse that very view with that actions and slogans that go far beyond sympathy with Palestinain suffering?
Strawmanning doesn't mean something is therefore simply incorrect or irrelevant and to be dismissed, which is how it is used online. "Oh, it's a strawman, therefore it can be ignored".
It may not be as big a deal as the author thinks, but it can still be a thing nonetheless. And picking the worst interpretation and scenario can be no different to an economic historian emphasising economic factors in an analysis - it doesn't mean they are not some other possible factors or explanations too, but it doesn't render the thesis empty either.
Are we saying no one is ever to summarise or simplify a matter ever? Things are more complicated than a simple piece of text, obviously, but is there no room, no worth, in simple messages either? Do we just say 'Heck if I know, we cannot accurately analyse a complex political situation and cultural trends so no need to try?'
I think this Gaza Israel debate is possibly even more depressing than discussing proportional representation
I know. Controversial take
The correct take. It's ruining PB.
And yet it fires up debate - worldwide - like no other geopolitical issue. Especially in proportion to its numerical scale
Why? - is a fascinating question. I am pretty sure the deep rooted mental fungus of anti Semitism is partly to blame. If you analyse most ardent pro Palestinians hard enough you will find fear and hatred of Jews. As we have seen this last week; many of the sufferers won’t even realise it
And I wonder what 'urges' drive the more exuberant of the pro-Israel brigade? And will they admit to or even realize it?
I’ve no doubt that “Islamophobia” is your tediously middlebrow answer
Let’s accept your terms
1. Islamophobia means an irrational fear of Islam. For many Jews the fear is entirely rational. Significant parts of the Islamic world apparently want them all dead
2. Islamophobia has never, in history, led to a serious attempt to kill every Muslim on earth, just for being Muslim
So I don’t think your comparison stands even if we accept it (despite its fatuity)
That IS middlebrow. Are you trying to get on my level? No but seriously, I doubt the feeling that Palestinians are somehow inferior to Israelis is caused by Islamophobia. Truth is, I don't know what it's caused by. I thought you might have some thoughts on it.
Even their fellow arabs dont like them or want them, so I cant see it as islam based. They are a PTSD nation and everyone seems happiest leaving the Rochesters in the attic.
Ok but I was more trying to understand why some right wing people over here (and it's a fair number) are so pro Israel as to be blase about Palestinian suffering and see no weight or validity to their cause. Where's that coming from? We rightly talk a lot about antisemitism but we don't probe that so much. Any offers?
If you think some right wing people over here are pro Israel as to be blase about Palestinian suffering, then do you also think that some left-wing people are so pro-Palestinian as to be blase about Israeli suffering?
Where's that coming from? In this case, there's an obvious answer...
Racism in BOTH cases.
I think so. But I don't want to ape Andrew Sullivan and do smeary amateur mass psychiatry on who I disagree with.
Most potential Conservative voters will agree with Braverman's rhetoric on immigration and Jihadi chants, that is less of a problem than cost of living.
Overall Sunak has improved on Truss. Most polls have the current Labour lead around 15-20%, before Truss resigned the average Labour lead was 30-35%. He is still doing worse than Boris though, given the average Labour lead was only 5-10% before he resigned.
Reform UK is also doing better under Sunak on 5-8% when under Truss and Boris it was generally under 5%
Re header. Whatever you say about Sunak, he hasn't crashed the car within five minutes of being handed the keys. Truss set a new standard for being completely rubbish. Even the daftest of the Popes can't compete - and there have been some very daft popes.
Is Liz Truss the reincarnation of Lucrezia Borgia?
Definitely not, looked her up, because I was somewhat in the dark. Wikipedia says, amongst other things, about Lucrezia "The biggest testament to her intelligence is her ability in administration"
No I think the only parallel are the Popes themselves - I think it was Sextus 6th that was elected on an anti-nepotism ticket and then appointed al his relatives. (Very likely I'm getting my popes mixed up though)
Interestingly tonight RTÉ was mostly referring to, "figures from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Ministry of Health," when discussing the numbers of Gazans said to have died in Israeli airstrikes. Think that's the first time they've done that.
Sky earlier this afternoon was also explicit in mentioning the 'Hamas controlled Ministry of Health'
"The Likud-controlled Israeli Govt."
Forcall that I am highly critical of the Israeli Government I don't think that analogy is accurate. There are far too many independent channels for information in Israel for them to be that dishonest about their own casualties.
“Here Lads, we’ve got a fellow here who won the London Mayoralty twice as a Conservative, bested a majority winning PM to win a national referendum, then achieved the biggest Tory landslide in a generation. Bit of a bounder, loads of kids with different women, but did manage to charm Marina Wheeler KC to take him back half a dozen times after having affairs. Now with a girl half his age”
“No, he’ll never be able to win over slightly dissatisfied voters, or recover a six point mid term deficit in the polls when there’s a million bad stories in the press about him, best call for Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak”
OTOH, there have been no Tory poll leads since December 6th 2021, *while Boris was in charge*.
There’d have been more chance of having any since if they’d stuck with him
Nah, Johnson wears out his welcome quite rapidly and completely. It is why he is on such poor terms with so many ex-paramours, ex-ediditors and ex-colleagues. It is the nature of his thin charm that he needs to move on quickly while the shit is still airborne and fan still pristine.
Won London twice didn’t he?
The voters didn’t seem to have gone off him that much between 2008 and 2019 - he won four major elections, with all his detractors saying the same stuff you are now. But the voters never got rid of him
To be fair, they didn't get rid of Blair, Cameron, May or Truss so he's got plenty of company.
There is a cohort on Twitter who remain diehard supporters of Johnson. They are uniformly pro-Brexit and anti-Sunak. It's a diluted form of Trumpism - this notion a single individual can somehow "put everything right".
I've never understood that kind of uncritical adulation.
Cameron & May did ‘lose’ big elections though.
I think a lot of the reason there are still die hard Boris supporters is that he never really got a chance to show his stuff; the pandemic did for him. There’s a loyalty to someone you’ve voted for that just isn’t there for their replacements.
I actually agree with you about Boris. He's an election winner. He would be a much more formidable and charismatic opponent to Starmer and Labour than Sunak. He retains the affection of a significant proportion of voters, particularly, but not only, I think, the white 'working class'. And I don't think many people have much affection for Sunak.
But, and it's a big but. Boris has absolutely nobody else to blame for his demise but himself. He wasn't brought down by his party, by Covid, or by anything else external to him. He brought himself down, because he lacks the fundamental self-discipline, honesty and integrity to be PM. He left the Tories with no choice but to get rid. It's all on him.
I just saw a very powerful pro-Israel advert about kidnapped children, with a tag of something like 'Hamas=Isis'.
It was powerful, but I'd give one criticism: the voices were not in English with English subtitles, and I was listening to something, rather than watching the screen, which meant I missed some of the context.
Still, powerful stuff.
The language probably reflects the target audience. The Israeli foreign ministry has uploaded several videos to Youtube and is paying for some to be shown as adverts. The Halloween one has a lot of gore. Its Youtube channel is:- https://www.youtube.com/@IsraelMFA/videos
The Hamas = ISIS thing is common to a lot of these, and is also something I've remarked on before. Once the fighting stops and the judge-led inquiries start, it will be interesting to know if Hamas has been taken over by ISIS.
I think this Gaza Israel debate is possibly even more depressing than discussing proportional representation
I know. Controversial take
The correct take. It's ruining PB.
And yet it fires up debate - worldwide - like no other geopolitical issue. Especially in proportion to its numerical scale
Why? - is a fascinating question. I am pretty sure the deep rooted mental fungus of anti Semitism is partly to blame. If you analyse most ardent pro Palestinians hard enough you will find fear and hatred of Jews. As we have seen this last week; many of the sufferers won’t even realise it
And I wonder what 'urges' drive the more exuberant of the pro-Israel brigade? And will they admit to or even realize it?
I’ve no doubt that “Islamophobia” is your tediously middlebrow answer
Let’s accept your terms
1. Islamophobia means an irrational fear of Islam. For many Jews the fear is entirely rational. Significant parts of the Islamic world apparently want them all dead
2. Islamophobia has never, in history, led to a serious attempt to kill every Muslim on earth, just for being Muslim
So I don’t think your comparison stands even if we accept it (despite its fatuity)
That IS middlebrow. Are you trying to get on my level? No but seriously, I doubt the feeling that Palestinians are somehow inferior to Israelis is caused by Islamophobia. Truth is, I don't know what it's caused by. I thought you might have some thoughts on it.
Even their fellow arabs dont like them or want them, so I cant see it as islam based. They are a PTSD nation and everyone seems happiest leaving the Rochesters in the attic.
Ok but I was more trying to understand why some right wing people over here (and it's a fair number) are so pro Israel as to be blase about Palestinian suffering and see no weight or validity to their cause. Where's that coming from? We rightly talk a lot about antisemitism but we don't probe that so much. Any offers?
If you think some right wing people over here are pro Israel as to be blase about Palestinian suffering, then do you also think that some left-wing people are so pro-Palestinian as to be blase about Israeli suffering?
Where's that coming from? In this case, there's an obvious answer...
Racism in BOTH cases.
I think so. But I don't want to ape Andrew Sullivan and do smeary amateur mass psychiatry on who I disagree with.
Is it smeary only because it is 'mass' and thus not as widely applicable as he thinks, or smeary because it is wrong? Because I've definitely see lots of comments online with people unironically saying the same things about oppression and oppressors. So the critique is probably not fair on the scale of where he applies it, not that that argument is not indeed used at all (which again, is why the strawman dismissal is lazy, since is it still a strawman if you can find real examples).
It's the 'can't be racist towards x' view, based on power structures rather than, well, actual racism, taken to its conclusion.
I think this Gaza Israel debate is possibly even more depressing than discussing proportional representation
I know. Controversial take
The correct take. It's ruining PB.
And yet it fires up debate - worldwide - like no other geopolitical issue. Especially in proportion to its numerical scale
Why? - is a fascinating question. I am pretty sure the deep rooted mental fungus of anti Semitism is partly to blame. If you analyse most ardent pro Palestinians hard enough you will find fear and hatred of Jews. As we have seen this last week; many of the sufferers won’t even realise it
And I wonder what 'urges' drive the more exuberant of the pro-Israel brigade? And will they admit to or even realize it?
I’ve no doubt that “Islamophobia” is your tediously middlebrow answer
Let’s accept your terms
1. Islamophobia means an irrational fear of Islam. For many Jews the fear is entirely rational. Significant parts of the Islamic world apparently want them all dead
2. Islamophobia has never, in history, led to a serious attempt to kill every Muslim on earth, just for being Muslim
So I don’t think your comparison stands even if we accept it (despite its fatuity)
That IS middlebrow. Are you trying to get on my level? No but seriously, I doubt the feeling that Palestinians are somehow inferior to Israelis is caused by Islamophobia. Truth is, I don't know what it's caused by. I thought you might have some thoughts on it.
Even their fellow arabs dont like them or want them, so I cant see it as islam based. They are a PTSD nation and everyone seems happiest leaving the Rochesters in the attic.
Ok but I was more trying to understand why some right wing people over here (and it's a fair number) are so pro Israel as to be blase about Palestinian suffering and see no weight or validity to their cause. Where's that coming from? We rightly talk a lot about antisemitism but we don't probe that so much. Any offers?
If all the hostages were released tonight, everyone in Gaza stopped firing rockets at Israeli towns and cities, and the Hamas leadership surrendered unconditionally, Israel would immediately cease firing at Gaza, international aid would resume, the blockade would end and Israel would eventually also reopen the border to allow Gazans with work permits to resume their jobs in Israel. Assuming the violence out of Gaza stopped, there is also a decent chance of the area moving towards proper autonomy - it's a much less controversial issue than the West Bank, since Israel has no meaningful territorial ambitions towards it, and there are no historical sites of any significance.
There is no possibility whatsoever of the same happening if Israel stops firing unilaterally. None. The terrorist groups in Gaza would simply be encouraged and increase the barrage of rockets fired hourly at Israel, with incursions at regular intervals aimed at murdering as many Jews as possible.
That's why the two sides are treated differently. Is that clear enough for you?
The Palestinians in the West Bank followedcthe route of negotiation and ended up having loads more of their kand stolen by Israeli settlers with the support of the Israeli Government.
So whilst I agree negotiation would be the best solution you can see why the Palestinians are not exactly overjoyed about the idea.
Interestingly tonight RTÉ was mostly referring to, "figures from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Ministry of Health," when discussing the numbers of Gazans said to have died in Israeli airstrikes. Think that's the first time they've done that.
The numbers are quite plausible from the evidence of destruction, rammed hospitals and mass burials. I don't think there will ever be precise figures.
I think it's important less because it casts doubt on the figures, but more because it makes clear that Hamas is the government in Gaza. And that's very important context when considering supplying fuel into Gaza, or what actions by Israel are reasonable.
During the Troubles it's clear that the IRA were active in the Republic, and even that some people in the Republic were sympathetic to them, but they did not control the government in Dublin, and that makes a difference in terms of what action is appropriate to take in response to a terrorist attack.
I just saw a very powerful pro-Israel advert about kidnapped children, with a tag of something like 'Hamas=Isis'.
It was powerful, but I'd give one criticism: the voices were not in English with English subtitles, and I was listening to something, rather than watching the screen, which meant I missed some of the context.
Still, powerful stuff.
The language probably reflects the target audience. The Israeli foreign ministry has uploaded several videos to Youtube and is paying for some to be shown as adverts. The Halloween one has a lot of gore. Its Youtube channel is:- https://www.youtube.com/@IsraelMFA/videos
The Hamas = ISIS thing is common to a lot of these, and is also something I've remarked on before. Once the fighting stops and the judge-led inquiries start, it will be interesting to know if Hamas has been taken over by ISIS.
It is clearly not. Hamas is a brutal terrorist organisation, but it is quite obvious from what we see in Gaza that it is nothing like ISIS Islamism. No Burkas, women out without male escorts, functioning churches and Christian hospitals.
Not a liberal government at all, but not out of line with other Arab regimes, including those like Saudi that we call allies.
“Here Lads, we’ve got a fellow here who won the London Mayoralty twice as a Conservative, bested a majority winning PM to win a national referendum, then achieved the biggest Tory landslide in a generation. Bit of a bounder, loads of kids with different women, but did manage to charm Marina Wheeler KC to take him back half a dozen times after having affairs. Now with a girl half his age”
“No, he’ll never be able to win over slightly dissatisfied voters, or recover a six point mid term deficit in the polls when there’s a million bad stories in the press about him, best call for Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak”
OTOH, there have been no Tory poll leads since December 6th 2021, *while Boris was in charge*.
There’d have been more chance of having any since if they’d stuck with him
Nah, Johnson wears out his welcome quite rapidly and completely. It is why he is on such poor terms with so many ex-paramours, ex-ediditors and ex-colleagues. It is the nature of his thin charm that he needs to move on quickly while the shit is still airborne and fan still pristine.
Won London twice didn’t he?
The voters didn’t seem to have gone off him that much between 2008 and 2019 - he won four major elections, with all his detractors saying the same stuff you are now. But the voters never got rid of him
To be fair, they didn't get rid of Blair, Cameron, May or Truss so he's got plenty of company.
There is a cohort on Twitter who remain diehard supporters of Johnson. They are uniformly pro-Brexit and anti-Sunak. It's a diluted form of Trumpism - this notion a single individual can somehow "put everything right".
I've never understood that kind of uncritical adulation.
Cameron & May did ‘lose’ big elections though.
I think a lot of the reason there are still die hard Boris supporters is that he never really got a chance to show his stuff; the pandemic did for him. There’s a loyalty to someone you’ve voted for that just isn’t there for their replacements.
He wasn't an unknown like Major had been in 1990. Johnson was a well established public political figure and had been for nearly 20 years.
He was Foreign Secretary under Theresa May before he quit.
The truth is he plotted, schemed and manoeuvred for two decades to get to where he wanted to be: Prime Minister. He finally got there, won his mandate and within weeks he was undermined by a microscopic virus. In the end, the job he wanted wasn't what he expected or wanted. Instead of cheering us all up and leading the optimistic chorus for the 2020s, he had to lock us all down. You can see the anguish as he made the historic announcement.
Fate has certainly had a jolly good laugh at Boris's expense.
It's even funnier (for the Fates) than that.
The characteristics that made him so formidable as a candidate- his ability to work out what people in front of him wanted to hear and to say it- are what made him a terrible PM, and are what brought him down.
I don't know (I went to a comprehensive and then studied physical sciences) but there must a relevant story in the classical storybook about this.
Welcome diversion & comic relief from horrors of Gaza > ongoing MAGA rabid squirrel flying circus over election of next not-so-great GOP Speaker of the US House of Representatives.
Republican House members assembling in secret conclave today, to (see if they can) select (yet again) a nominee for Speaker who can actually get enough votes from Republican House members on the floor, to actually be elected.
Without going into gory details or getting down to number crunching, have been wondering this -
WHY doesn't the GOP House caucus nominate a WOMAN?
Seeing as a) they've got fair number in their ranks; and b) this is classic political strategy for moving forward from similar predicaments.
NOTE am NOT talking about the likes of Lauren Boebert or Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Instead, someone like Elise Stefanick (R-NY) or Cathy McMorris Rogers (R-WA).
Personally hold both of the above in minimal low regard; the former his a two-faced schemer, while the latter is basically a big nothing. And can also be faulted (if that's the word) for being insufficiently pro-Trump, despite bending over backwards enabling and propitiating him.
But my point stands - cherchez la femme.
Note she need NOT be a dynamic leader (or dragon lady if your prefer) like Nancy Pelosi. Alternative would be a front-woman Speaker, the velvet slipper for somebody else's iron boot.
Like Denny Hastert was for Tom DeLay back at the dawn of the 3rd millennium, before the the later took up ballroom dancing and former became a convicted sex offender.
My argument here isn't that I'd personally support such a candidate, or expect much good out of her IF she got elected.
Instead, that it's a political strategy that's worked before . . . including for Republicans.
I think this Gaza Israel debate is possibly even more depressing than discussing proportional representation
I know. Controversial take
The correct take. It's ruining PB.
And yet it fires up debate - worldwide - like no other geopolitical issue. Especially in proportion to its numerical scale
Why? - is a fascinating question. I am pretty sure the deep rooted mental fungus of anti Semitism is partly to blame. If you analyse most ardent pro Palestinians hard enough you will find fear and hatred of Jews. As we have seen this last week; many of the sufferers won’t even realise it
And I wonder what 'urges' drive the more exuberant of the pro-Israel brigade? And will they admit to or even realize it?
I’ve no doubt that “Islamophobia” is your tediously middlebrow answer
Let’s accept your terms
1. Islamophobia means an irrational fear of Islam. For many Jews the fear is entirely rational. Significant parts of the Islamic world apparently want them all dead
2. Islamophobia has never, in history, led to a serious attempt to kill every Muslim on earth, just for being Muslim
So I don’t think your comparison stands even if we accept it (despite its fatuity)
That IS middlebrow. Are you trying to get on my level? No but seriously, I doubt the feeling that Palestinians are somehow inferior to Israelis is caused by Islamophobia. Truth is, I don't know what it's caused by. I thought you might have some thoughts on it.
Even their fellow arabs dont like them or want them, so I cant see it as islam based. They are a PTSD nation and everyone seems happiest leaving the Rochesters in the attic.
Ok but I was more trying to understand why some right wing people over here (and it's a fair number) are so pro Israel as to be blase about Palestinian suffering and see no weight or validity to their cause. Where's that coming from? We rightly talk a lot about antisemitism but we don't probe that so much. Any offers?
If all the hostages were released tonight, everyone in Gaza stopped firing rockets at Israeli towns and cities, and the Hamas leadership surrendered unconditionally, Israel would immediately cease firing at Gaza, international aid would resume, the blockade would end and Israel would eventually also reopen the border to allow Gazans with work permits to resume their jobs in Israel. Assuming the violence out of Gaza stopped, there is also a decent chance of the area moving towards proper autonomy - it's a much less controversial issue than the West Bank, since Israel has no meaningful territorial ambitions towards it, and there are no historical sites of any significance.
There is no possibility whatsoever of the same happening if Israel stops firing unilaterally. None. The terrorist groups in Gaza would simply be encouraged and increase the barrage of rockets fired hourly at Israel, with incursions at regular intervals aimed at murdering as many Jews as possible.
That's why the two sides are treated differently. Is that clear enough for you?
The Palestinians in the West Bank followedcthe route of negotiation and ended up having loads more of their kand stolen by Israeli settlers with the support of the Israeli Government.
So whilst I agree negotiation would be the best solution you can see why the Palestinians are not exactly overjoyed about the idea.
At least she had ideas, even if you disagreed with them, and the reaction to her was out of all proportion to what what actually announced, led by the Sunakites in the PCP and media.
Led by the bond markets really.
Nonsense. Take a look at US bonds markets now. The rise in gilt yields was not a lot to do with Truss and her tax cuts and everything to do with a historic reversion to norm of monetary policy globally. It was a hysterical media feeding frenzy.
In the Uk it was fed particularly that week by the blowing up of poorly regulated LDI pensions that almost no one seemed to realise was happening. The bloke responsible for that still in his job. He’s a “technocrat” you see.
With all due respect, Ms Truss and Mr Kwarteng made it clear that their plan was to cut taxes and increase spending, in order to get the economy moving again. And that absolutely did have an impact on bond prices.
You can see this my looking at UK bond yields during the Truss Premiership and comparing them to peers. The UK yield premium absolutely blew out.
For your theory to be true UK bond yields simply reverted to normal levels before everyone else. But that clearly didn't happen: UK bond yields went out during the Truss premiership, came back in when she was defenestrated, and then moved largely in lockstep with our peers.
I contend that it was largely a coincidence of timing. The feedback loop from ldi gilt liquidation was already in full swing before kwarteng announced the “growth funded” cuts. And was backstopped by the BoE on more or less the same day as Kwarteng was fired.
By the way what’s the difference between the deficit plan of Kwarteng vs Biden’s IRA. What’s the latest forecast of the Federal deficit this year, 6%? 7%?
I don’t claim that the Truss/Kwaeteng presentation and timing were ideal. But I do think had she ridden out the headlines and stood by his chancellor and his budget, uk yields wouldn’t look so different to today. But there’s a reasonable chance the polls would look pretty different .
Two things can be simultaneously true:
(1) The initial spike in UK bond yields was caused by Truss/Kwarteng (2) Had they stayed, then there probably wouldn't be a big difference in bond yields
It is also important to remember, though, that over the past five years Uk bond yields have averaged about 75 bps below the US. During Truss/Kwarteng, they want from more than 100bps below the US to well above. That wasn't caused by LDI pensions.
A trading friend of mine was like a kid at Xmas that week. He didn’t realise at first why but he (correctly) sensed that selling gilts was a one way bet. A couple of days later the terrible truth within ldi emerged to a broader audience, combined with the narrative of a chaotic govt flying by the seat of its pants. That last bit was true actually given the hasty and in my view unnecessary reverse ferret.
Still, my hypothesis is not one that can reasonably tested. We can both only infer what we will from historic data. I am just bitter, resigned to working much longer, given no political party will dare test the consensus of taxation to fund electorally motivated transfer payments for perhaps a generation.
With all due respect, the hypothesis can very easily be tested. Let's look at the yield gap on a day-by-day basis, and overlay events that happened.
Ldi forced selling and media hysteria over 45% tax cut et al were happening simultaneously. Perhaps an economics professor one day might try and tease it out. Don’t know about you but I’ve not got the time nor motivation to do it myself.
The LDI forced selling was caused by the spiking yields, you can't disaggregate them.
The Kwartang announcement was communicating change planned for his future Budget (rather than an immediate change) and this plan was reversed very swiftly.
If the markets reacted due to these planned changes wouldn't they have re-corrected when they were withdrawn shortly thereafter?
Yields shot up, came partly back when Kwarteng (who I would note is a friend of mine) was defenestrated and the changes were rolled back, and then returned to roughly the same position relative to other developed nations after Truss herself stepped down.
Why did yields spike?
Because Mr Market thought that the Truss/Kwarteng changes were adding inflationary fire to an economy that was already running quite hot. Wage growth in 2022 had been steadily climbing through the year (source), and had reached 6% in June, heading for 6.5%.
It was generally considered that increasing aggregate demand via lower tax (and a bit of higher spending) due to a focus on growth was likely to cause wage growth to continue to run hot. It was also considered unwise to throw fiscal fire on the economy at a time when the country was facing external inflationary pressures due to the Ukraine war.
Now, did the markets overreact? Quite possibly. But they were not behaving irrationally. Truss was elected on a platform of throwing away balanced budget orthodoxy and making a dash for growth.
Not growth grounded on supply side reforms and fiscal restraint; but instead driven by the belief that the reason growth had been modest was because of excessive levels of taxation.
We can argue this one to death. I'm a believer that you get to lower taxes by lower spending; Ms Truss believed that a more buoyant economy would generate more taxes.
But one cannot credibly claim that spiking bond yields - that only happened in the UK - was somehow a coincidence, and had nothing to do with the government's avowed change of direction.
This argument is really quite bizarre in its evasion. The simultaneous nature of the Bank's round of QT and Kwasi's minibudget announcement has already been discussed. But what about the Bank's 'intervention' to stabilise the bond markets (successfully) by buying back a load of its own bonds? If the markets were fretting about a few billion in tax cuts, and didn't care about the fact that the Bank was ridding itself of UK Government bonds, why did a temporary reversal of the Bank's policy work to stabilise bond markets, but a reversal of the Government's policy didn’t?
And furthermore, why, when we now have safe, responsible Sunak/Hunt, have bond yields continued to rise, now the Bank's QT has been resumed?
Europe would be pretty screwed. Another reason his far from a US only problem.
Why? Western European militaries, Canada and Turkey and Poland and Ukraine combined are comfortably stronger than the Russian military.
The US would be needed to contain China but that is not our continent and not a NATO problem anyway
If, and it is a very big if, USA went AWOL on NATO one immense effect would be that France and the UK would suddenly be looked at very differently by our fellow liberal democracies.
“Here Lads, we’ve got a fellow here who won the London Mayoralty twice as a Conservative, bested a majority winning PM to win a national referendum, then achieved the biggest Tory landslide in a generation. Bit of a bounder, loads of kids with different women, but did manage to charm Marina Wheeler KC to take him back half a dozen times after having affairs. Now with a girl half his age”
“No, he’ll never be able to win over slightly dissatisfied voters, or recover a six point mid term deficit in the polls when there’s a million bad stories in the press about him, best call for Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak”
Doesn't that overlook the elephant(s) in the room?
Even if you think that his charisma could have overcome the Paterson and Pincher stories, it was never going to work on the Privileges Committee. They were going to find him seriously guilty of knowingly lying.
Charisma lets you get away with a lot. But not everything.
(Besides, the thing that brought Boris down with Conservative MPs was the Pincher story. Partly because it was yet another lie on top of all the others, but also it directly affected them. How would you feel if your boss knowingly put a sex pest in as your line manager and then lied to you about doing it?)
He could have taken the suspension and still been doing better than his successors are now.
Aklu Plaza closing down by the way. They never did get that license for “weddings and banquets”
Actually they did get the license in the end, but the rest of the store was a failure. Strange all round
Not that strange, really. Shops closing left, right and centre, probably too big a building for what they wanted to do, and- for all Romford continues to change- not really sufficient market for what they were attempting. Entrepreneur tries something and it fails- nothing much to explain.
Still, full marks for trying. After all, that makes three big empty shops around that bit of the Market Square (Littlewoods has been derilict for over a decade and the Aldi site is empty as well. Plus Wilko nearby.) beyond a certain point, the empty shop units are positively offputting.
Surely there is an argument for turning them all into housing - “Market Square”, I can see it now
A far cry from when I worked on the market as a teenager, it was absolutely buzzing back then
Something like that is probably inevitable in a lot of places. Romford is particularly unlucky, being squeezed between Lakeside and Stratford, but the general principle applies more widely. We have too much retail space.
Personally, I'd get Doug and Dinsdale Piranha to persuade the tenants of the Brewery to consolidate into the Market Square and raze the Brewery for housing, but that's secondary.
Europe would be pretty screwed. Another reason his far from a US only problem.
Why? Western European militaries, Canada and Turkey and Poland and Ukraine combined are comfortably stronger than the Russian military.
The US would be needed to contain China but that is not our continent and not a NATO problem anyway
If, and it is a very big if, USA went AWOL on NATO one immense effect would be that France and the UK would suddenly be looked at very differently by our fellow liberal democracies.
France and the UK would then be lead military powers in NATO yes, with Turkey not far behind and the remaining ones with nuclear weapons
The Redfield & Wilton numbers for England are Labour 46%, Conservatives 27%, Liberal Democrats 13%, Reform 8%.
It was 34-47-12 so that's a 16% swing from Conservative to Labour and a 10.5% swing from Conservative to Liberal Democrat.
To show how little things have changed, the R&W poll on 2-3 January had headline numbers of Labour on 47%, Conservatives on 27% and Liberal Democrats on 12%.
Europe would be pretty screwed. Another reason his far from a US only problem.
Why? Western European militaries, Canada and Turkey and Poland and Ukraine combined are comfortably stronger than the Russian military.
The US would be needed to contain China but that is not our continent and not a NATO problem anyway
If, and it is a very big if, USA went AWOL on NATO one immense effect would be that France and the UK would suddenly be looked at very differently by our fellow liberal democracies.
The biggest problem of NATO minus the USA would be the lack of strategic depth. The Americans are probably the only military that can sustain a long war. Possibly China could, but even Russia now cannot, as evidenced by having to buy North Korean ammo.
Interestingly tonight RTÉ was mostly referring to, "figures from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Ministry of Health," when discussing the numbers of Gazans said to have died in Israeli airstrikes. Think that's the first time they've done that.
The numbers are quite plausible from the evidence of destruction, rammed hospitals and mass burials. I don't think there will ever be precise figures.
The main point is that they are a bunch of liars who's word should not be trusted. Accepting what they say at face value is taking gullibility to a whole new level.
Kinabalu tries (and fails) to play bothsidesism. Where is all this hostility to Palestinians that you speak of? We saw the most depraved massacre of 1400 people in Israel. Was that accompanied by 100,000 people marching on the streets calling for Zionism, full colonisation (I don't know) the mass waving of Israeli flags? It's true that the government said that it would support Israel, so I suppose it's opponents have more reason to be protesting on the streets, but where has the anti Palestinian energy been? Most of those 'enraged' seem to be so as a result of seeing people in their own country cheering the massacre on.
I think this Gaza Israel debate is possibly even more depressing than discussing proportional representation
I know. Controversial take
The correct take. It's ruining PB.
And yet it fires up debate - worldwide - like no other geopolitical issue. Especially in proportion to its numerical scale
Why? - is a fascinating question. I am pretty sure the deep rooted mental fungus of anti Semitism is partly to blame. If you analyse most ardent pro Palestinians hard enough you will find fear and hatred of Jews. As we have seen this last week; many of the sufferers won’t even realise it
And I wonder what 'urges' drive the more exuberant of the pro-Israel brigade? And will they admit to or even realize it?
I’ve no doubt that “Islamophobia” is your tediously middlebrow answer
Let’s accept your terms
1. Islamophobia means an irrational fear of Islam. For many Jews the fear is entirely rational. Significant parts of the Islamic world apparently want them all dead
2. Islamophobia has never, in history, led to a serious attempt to kill every Muslim on earth, just for being Muslim
So I don’t think your comparison stands even if we accept it (despite its fatuity)
That IS middlebrow. Are you trying to get on my level? No but seriously, I doubt the feeling that Palestinians are somehow inferior to Israelis is caused by Islamophobia. Truth is, I don't know what it's caused by. I thought you might have some thoughts on it.
Even their fellow arabs dont like them or want them, so I cant see it as islam based. They are a PTSD nation and everyone seems happiest leaving the Rochesters in the attic.
Ok but I was more trying to understand why some right wing people over here (and it's a fair number) are so pro Israel as to be blase about Palestinian suffering and see no weight or validity to their cause. Where's that coming from? We rightly talk a lot about antisemitism but we don't probe that so much. Any offers?
If all the hostages were released tonight, everyone in Gaza stopped firing rockets at Israeli towns and cities, and the Hamas leadership surrendered unconditionally, Israel would immediately cease firing at Gaza, international aid would resume, the blockade would end and Israel would eventually also reopen the border to allow Gazans with work permits to resume their jobs in Israel. Assuming the violence out of Gaza stopped, there is also a decent chance of the area moving towards proper autonomy - it's a much less controversial issue than the West Bank, since Israel has no meaningful territorial ambitions towards it, and there are no historical sites of any significance.
There is no possibility whatsoever of the same happening if Israel stops firing unilaterally. None. The terrorist groups in Gaza would simply be encouraged and increase the barrage of rockets fired hourly at Israel, with incursions at regular intervals aimed at murdering as many Jews as possible.
That's why the two sides are treated differently. Is that clear enough for you?
Trouble with this is it’s the same situation ordinary decent Germans were in in 1944-45. The allies kept pulverising cities in the expectation that any sensible populace would overthrow the Nazi regime and sue for peace. Yet they couldn’t, as the regime would happily execute any Germans who tried this, and did. Hamas is the same. Ideally ordinary decent Palestinians will round up Hamas and hand them over, but that’s just not possible.
So here we are with Harris sending more bombs in one night than the Luftwaffe sent to London in months, just as Israel is dumping more ordinance in Gaza each night than Hamas will ever fire back.
Europe would be pretty screwed. Another reason his far from a US only problem.
Why? Western European militaries, Canada and Turkey and Poland and Ukraine combined are comfortably stronger than the Russian military.
The US would be needed to contain China but that is not our continent and not a NATO problem anyway
If, and it is a very big if, USA went AWOL on NATO one immense effect would be that France and the UK would suddenly be looked at very differently by our fellow liberal democracies.
The biggest problem of NATO minus the USA would be the lack of strategic depth. The Americans are probably the only military that can sustain a long war. Possibly China could, but even Russia now cannot, as evidenced by having to buy North Korean ammo.
Indeed but containing China is not NATO's problem, containing Russia is
“Here Lads, we’ve got a fellow here who won the London Mayoralty twice as a Conservative, bested a majority winning PM to win a national referendum, then achieved the biggest Tory landslide in a generation. Bit of a bounder, loads of kids with different women, but did manage to charm Marina Wheeler KC to take him back half a dozen times after having affairs. Now with a girl half his age”
“No, he’ll never be able to win over slightly dissatisfied voters, or recover a six point mid term deficit in the polls when there’s a million bad stories in the press about him, best call for Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak”
OTOH, there have been no Tory poll leads since December 6th 2021, *while Boris was in charge*.
There’d have been more chance of having any since if they’d stuck with him
Nah, Johnson wears out his welcome quite rapidly and completely. It is why he is on such poor terms with so many ex-paramours, ex-ediditors and ex-colleagues. It is the nature of his thin charm that he needs to move on quickly while the shit is still airborne and fan still pristine.
Won London twice didn’t he?
The voters didn’t seem to have gone off him that much between 2008 and 2019 - he won four major elections, with all his detractors saying the same stuff you are now. But the voters never got rid of him
To be fair, they didn't get rid of Blair, Cameron, May or Truss so he's got plenty of company.
There is a cohort on Twitter who remain diehard supporters of Johnson. They are uniformly pro-Brexit and anti-Sunak. It's a diluted form of Trumpism - this notion a single individual can somehow "put everything right".
I've never understood that kind of uncritical adulation.
You've clearly not spent enough time with @Luckyguy1983.
That's very kind of you poppet, but I can't put *everything* right.
Off topic, but I thought you* might like some good news from the US: "Nikki Haley is increasingly threatening to supplant Ron DeSantis as the principal GOP presidential rival to Donald Trump, escalating frictions between the two candidates that are playing out before voters on the campaign trail and behind closed doors with wealthy donors. . . . Haley rose to third in a Washington Post average of national polling from October, with 8 percent support to DeSantis’s 14 percent. She’s pulled into third in Iowa, where DeSantis’s support is still noticeably stronger, and jumped ahead of DeSantis in recent surveys of New Hampshire and South Carolina." source $: https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2023/10/21/haley-desantis-trump-presidential-race/
And I like the fact that she can do arithmetic. (She was doing the books for her family's business, as a teenager.) Too many of our politicians can't.
*Well, most of you, anyway.
For someone so comprehensively re-elected recently DeSantis seems to have been a bit of a damp squib as a candidate. Not that he would have been expected to come out swinging against Trump right from the off, nor has Haley, but even on those terms he's seems lacklustre, uncompelling, and trying to hard to be like Trump whilst telling people not to vote Trump.
Ron DeSantis is trying to out-asshole Donald Trump.
Now RDS is indeed a Class-A A-hole. But he ain't in the same league as DJT.
Nor is Ted Cruz, who's arguably an even bigger asshole than DeSantis. Who isn't smart enough to have noticed, that Ted tried to out-asshole Trump back in 2016, proving already that THAT is indeed Mission Impossible.
Anyway, American political history is littered with the remains of politicos who were serially successful on their own state or locality, but who proved to be flops on the national stage.
Nelson Rockefeller and Hillary Clinton both spring to mind.
At least she had ideas, even if you disagreed with them, and the reaction to her was out of all proportion to what what actually announced, led by the Sunakites in the PCP and media.
Led by the bond markets really.
Nonsense. Take a look at US bonds markets now. The rise in gilt yields was not a lot to do with Truss and her tax cuts and everything to do with a historic reversion to norm of monetary policy globally. It was a hysterical media feeding frenzy.
In the Uk it was fed particularly that week by the blowing up of poorly regulated LDI pensions that almost no one seemed to realise was happening. The bloke responsible for that still in his job. He’s a “technocrat” you see.
With all due respect, Ms Truss and Mr Kwarteng made it clear that their plan was to cut taxes and increase spending, in order to get the economy moving again. And that absolutely did have an impact on bond prices.
You can see this my looking at UK bond yields during the Truss Premiership and comparing them to peers. The UK yield premium absolutely blew out.
For your theory to be true UK bond yields simply reverted to normal levels before everyone else. But that clearly didn't happen: UK bond yields went out during the Truss premiership, came back in when she was defenestrated, and then moved largely in lockstep with our peers.
I contend that it was largely a coincidence of timing. The feedback loop from ldi gilt liquidation was already in full swing before kwarteng announced the “growth funded” cuts. And was backstopped by the BoE on more or less the same day as Kwarteng was fired.
By the way what’s the difference between the deficit plan of Kwarteng vs Biden’s IRA. What’s the latest forecast of the Federal deficit this year, 6%? 7%?
I don’t claim that the Truss/Kwaeteng presentation and timing were ideal. But I do think had she ridden out the headlines and stood by his chancellor and his budget, uk yields wouldn’t look so different to today. But there’s a reasonable chance the polls would look pretty different .
Two things can be simultaneously true:
(1) The initial spike in UK bond yields was caused by Truss/Kwarteng (2) Had they stayed, then there probably wouldn't be a big difference in bond yields
It is also important to remember, though, that over the past five years Uk bond yields have averaged about 75 bps below the US. During Truss/Kwarteng, they want from more than 100bps below the US to well above. That wasn't caused by LDI pensions.
A trading friend of mine was like a kid at Xmas that week. He didn’t realise at first why but he (correctly) sensed that selling gilts was a one way bet. A couple of days later the terrible truth within ldi emerged to a broader audience, combined with the narrative of a chaotic govt flying by the seat of its pants. That last bit was true actually given the hasty and in my view unnecessary reverse ferret.
Still, my hypothesis is not one that can reasonably tested. We can both only infer what we will from historic data. I am just bitter, resigned to working much longer, given no political party will dare test the consensus of taxation to fund electorally motivated transfer payments for perhaps a generation.
With all due respect, the hypothesis can very easily be tested. Let's look at the yield gap on a day-by-day basis, and overlay events that happened.
Ldi forced selling and media hysteria over 45% tax cut et al were happening simultaneously. Perhaps an economics professor one day might try and tease it out. Don’t know about you but I’ve not got the time nor motivation to do it myself.
The LDI forced selling was caused by the spiking yields, you can't disaggregate them.
The Kwartang announcement was communicating change planned for his future Budget (rather than an immediate change) and this plan was reversed very swiftly.
If the markets reacted due to these planned changes wouldn't they have re-corrected when they were withdrawn shortly thereafter?
Yields shot up, came partly back when Kwarteng (who I would note is a friend of mine) was defenestrated and the changes were rolled back, and then returned to roughly the same position relative to other developed nations after Truss herself stepped down.
Why did yields spike?
Because Mr Market thought that the Truss/Kwarteng changes were adding inflationary fire to an economy that was already running quite hot. Wage growth in 2022 had been steadily climbing through the year (source), and had reached 6% in June, heading for 6.5%.
It was generally considered that increasing aggregate demand via lower tax (and a bit of higher spending) due to a focus on growth was likely to cause wage growth to continue to run hot. It was also considered unwise to throw fiscal fire on the economy at a time when the country was facing external inflationary pressures due to the Ukraine war.
Now, did the markets overreact? Quite possibly. But they were not behaving irrationally. Truss was elected on a platform of throwing away balanced budget orthodoxy and making a dash for growth.
Not growth grounded on supply side reforms and fiscal restraint; but instead driven by the belief that the reason growth had been modest was because of excessive levels of taxation.
We can argue this one to death. I'm a believer that you get to lower taxes by lower spending; Ms Truss believed that a more buoyant economy would generate more taxes.
But one cannot credibly claim that spiking bond yields - that only happened in the UK - was somehow a coincidence, and had nothing to do with the government's avowed change of direction.
This argument is really quite bizarre in its evasion. The simultaneous nature of the Bank's round of QT and Kwasi's minibudget announcement has already been discussed. But what about the Bank's 'intervention' to stabilise the bond markets (successfully) by buying back a load of its own bonds? If the markets were fretting about a few billion in tax cuts, and didn't care about the fact that the Bank was ridding itself of UK Government bonds, why did a temporary reversal of the Bank's policy work to stabilise bond markets, but a reversal of the Government's policy didn’t?
And furthermore, why, when we now have safe, responsible Sunak/Hunt, have bond yields continued to rise, now the Bank's QT has been resumed?
No, @Luckyguy1983, this is not "evasion", it is simple reality.
I think this Gaza Israel debate is possibly even more depressing than discussing proportional representation
I know. Controversial take
The correct take. It's ruining PB.
And yet it fires up debate - worldwide - like no other geopolitical issue. Especially in proportion to its numerical scale
Why? - is a fascinating question. I am pretty sure the deep rooted mental fungus of anti Semitism is partly to blame. If you analyse most ardent pro Palestinians hard enough you will find fear and hatred of Jews. As we have seen this last week; many of the sufferers won’t even realise it
And I wonder what 'urges' drive the more exuberant of the pro-Israel brigade? And will they admit to or even realize it?
I’ve no doubt that “Islamophobia” is your tediously middlebrow answer
Let’s accept your terms
1. Islamophobia means an irrational fear of Islam. For many Jews the fear is entirely rational. Significant parts of the Islamic world apparently want them all dead
2. Islamophobia has never, in history, led to a serious attempt to kill every Muslim on earth, just for being Muslim
So I don’t think your comparison stands even if we accept it (despite its fatuity)
That IS middlebrow. Are you trying to get on my level? No but seriously, I doubt the feeling that Palestinians are somehow inferior to Israelis is caused by Islamophobia. Truth is, I don't know what it's caused by. I thought you might have some thoughts on it.
Even their fellow arabs dont like them or want them, so I cant see it as islam based. They are a PTSD nation and everyone seems happiest leaving the Rochesters in the attic.
Ok but I was more trying to understand why some right wing people over here (and it's a fair number) are so pro Israel as to be blase about Palestinian suffering and see no weight or validity to their cause. Where's that coming from? We rightly talk a lot about antisemitism but we don't probe that so much. Any offers?
If you think some right wing people over here are pro Israel as to be blase about Palestinian suffering, then do you also think that some left-wing people are so pro-Palestinian as to be blase about Israeli suffering?
Where's that coming from? In this case, there's an obvious answer...
Racism in BOTH cases.
I think so. But I don't want to ape Andrew Sullivan and do smeary amateur mass psychiatry on who I disagree with.
Is it smeary only because it is 'mass' and thus not as widely applicable as he thinks, or smeary because it is wrong? Because I've definitely see lots of comments online with people unironically saying the same things about oppression and oppressors. So the critique is probably not fair on the scale of where he applies it, not that that argument is not indeed used at all (which again, is why the strawman dismissal is lazy, since is it still a strawman if you can find real examples).
It's the 'can't be racist towards x' view, based on power structures rather than, well, actual racism, taken to its conclusion.
Yes ok I went a bit high bp there because I took it personally. I'm what he was trying to do a rhetorical number on. A young progressive. 63 is the new 25.
At least she had ideas, even if you disagreed with them, and the reaction to her was out of all proportion to what what actually announced, led by the Sunakites in the PCP and media.
Led by the bond markets really.
Nonsense. Take a look at US bonds markets now. The rise in gilt yields was not a lot to do with Truss and her tax cuts and everything to do with a historic reversion to norm of monetary policy globally. It was a hysterical media feeding frenzy.
In the Uk it was fed particularly that week by the blowing up of poorly regulated LDI pensions that almost no one seemed to realise was happening. The bloke responsible for that still in his job. He’s a “technocrat” you see.
With all due respect, Ms Truss and Mr Kwarteng made it clear that their plan was to cut taxes and increase spending, in order to get the economy moving again. And that absolutely did have an impact on bond prices.
You can see this my looking at UK bond yields during the Truss Premiership and comparing them to peers. The UK yield premium absolutely blew out.
For your theory to be true UK bond yields simply reverted to normal levels before everyone else. But that clearly didn't happen: UK bond yields went out during the Truss premiership, came back in when she was defenestrated, and then moved largely in lockstep with our peers.
I contend that it was largely a coincidence of timing. The feedback loop from ldi gilt liquidation was already in full swing before kwarteng announced the “growth funded” cuts. And was backstopped by the BoE on more or less the same day as Kwarteng was fired.
By the way what’s the difference between the deficit plan of Kwarteng vs Biden’s IRA. What’s the latest forecast of the Federal deficit this year, 6%? 7%?
I don’t claim that the Truss/Kwaeteng presentation and timing were ideal. But I do think had she ridden out the headlines and stood by his chancellor and his budget, uk yields wouldn’t look so different to today. But there’s a reasonable chance the polls would look pretty different .
Two things can be simultaneously true:
(1) The initial spike in UK bond yields was caused by Truss/Kwarteng (2) Had they stayed, then there probably wouldn't be a big difference in bond yields
It is also important to remember, though, that over the past five years Uk bond yields have averaged about 75 bps below the US. During Truss/Kwarteng, they want from more than 100bps below the US to well above. That wasn't caused by LDI pensions.
A trading friend of mine was like a kid at Xmas that week. He didn’t realise at first why but he (correctly) sensed that selling gilts was a one way bet. A couple of days later the terrible truth within ldi emerged to a broader audience, combined with the narrative of a chaotic govt flying by the seat of its pants. That last bit was true actually given the hasty and in my view unnecessary reverse ferret.
Still, my hypothesis is not one that can reasonably tested. We can both only infer what we will from historic data. I am just bitter, resigned to working much longer, given no political party will dare test the consensus of taxation to fund electorally motivated transfer payments for perhaps a generation.
With all due respect, the hypothesis can very easily be tested. Let's look at the yield gap on a day-by-day basis, and overlay events that happened.
Ldi forced selling and media hysteria over 45% tax cut et al were happening simultaneously. Perhaps an economics professor one day might try and tease it out. Don’t know about you but I’ve not got the time nor motivation to do it myself.
The LDI forced selling was caused by the spiking yields, you can't disaggregate them.
The Kwartang announcement was communicating change planned for his future Budget (rather than an immediate change) and this plan was reversed very swiftly.
If the markets reacted due to these planned changes wouldn't they have re-corrected when they were withdrawn shortly thereafter?
Yields shot up, came partly back when Kwarteng (who I would note is a friend of mine) was defenestrated and the changes were rolled back, and then returned to roughly the same position relative to other developed nations after Truss herself stepped down.
Why did yields spike?
Because Mr Market thought that the Truss/Kwarteng changes were adding inflationary fire to an economy that was already running quite hot. Wage growth in 2022 had been steadily climbing through the year (source), and had reached 6% in June, heading for 6.5%.
It was generally considered that increasing aggregate demand via lower tax (and a bit of higher spending) due to a focus on growth was likely to cause wage growth to continue to run hot. It was also considered unwise to throw fiscal fire on the economy at a time when the country was facing external inflationary pressures due to the Ukraine war.
Now, did the markets overreact? Quite possibly. But they were not behaving irrationally. Truss was elected on a platform of throwing away balanced budget orthodoxy and making a dash for growth.
Not growth grounded on supply side reforms and fiscal restraint; but instead driven by the belief that the reason growth had been modest was because of excessive levels of taxation.
We can argue this one to death. I'm a believer that you get to lower taxes by lower spending; Ms Truss believed that a more buoyant economy would generate more taxes.
But one cannot credibly claim that spiking bond yields - that only happened in the UK - was somehow a coincidence, and had nothing to do with the government's avowed change of direction.
This argument is really quite bizarre in its evasion. The simultaneous nature of the Bank's round of QT and Kwasi's minibudget announcement has already been discussed. But what about the Bank's 'intervention' to stabilise the bond markets (successfully) by buying back a load of its own bonds? If the markets were fretting about a few billion in tax cuts, and didn't care about the fact that the Bank was ridding itself of UK Government bonds, why did a temporary reversal of the Bank's policy work to stabilise bond markets, but a reversal of the Government's policy didn’t?
And furthermore, why, when we now have safe, responsible Sunak/Hunt, have bond yields continued to rise, now the Bank's QT has been resumed?
No, @Luckyguy1983, this is not "evasion", it is simple reality.
To paraphrase the old song, Liz Truss fought reality . . . and reality won.
Most potential Conservative voters will agree with Braverman's rhetoric on immigration and Jihadi chants, that is less of a problem than cost of living.
Overall Sunak has improved on Truss. Most polls have the current Labour lead around 15-20%, before Truss resigned the average Labour lead was 30-35%. He is still doing worse than Boris though, given the average Labour lead was only 5-10% before he resigned.
Reform UK is also doing better under Sunak on 5-8% when under Truss and Boris it was generally under 5%
The last six polls have Labour leads between 18 and 22 points.
Nothing has changed since January - the Redfield & Wilton on 2-3 January had the Conservatives on 27% trailing Labour by 20. Tonight's has the Conservatives on 26% trailing Labour by 18. Yes, Sunak is better than some of the Truss polling (not all) but an 18-point deficit is still a big gap.
At least she had ideas, even if you disagreed with them, and the reaction to her was out of all proportion to what what actually announced, led by the Sunakites in the PCP and media.
Led by the bond markets really.
Nonsense. Take a look at US bonds markets now. The rise in gilt yields was not a lot to do with Truss and her tax cuts and everything to do with a historic reversion to norm of monetary policy globally. It was a hysterical media feeding frenzy.
In the Uk it was fed particularly that week by the blowing up of poorly regulated LDI pensions that almost no one seemed to realise was happening. The bloke responsible for that still in his job. He’s a “technocrat” you see.
With all due respect, Ms Truss and Mr Kwarteng made it clear that their plan was to cut taxes and increase spending, in order to get the economy moving again. And that absolutely did have an impact on bond prices.
You can see this my looking at UK bond yields during the Truss Premiership and comparing them to peers. The UK yield premium absolutely blew out.
For your theory to be true UK bond yields simply reverted to normal levels before everyone else. But that clearly didn't happen: UK bond yields went out during the Truss premiership, came back in when she was defenestrated, and then moved largely in lockstep with our peers.
I contend that it was largely a coincidence of timing. The feedback loop from ldi gilt liquidation was already in full swing before kwarteng announced the “growth funded” cuts. And was backstopped by the BoE on more or less the same day as Kwarteng was fired.
By the way what’s the difference between the deficit plan of Kwarteng vs Biden’s IRA. What’s the latest forecast of the Federal deficit this year, 6%? 7%?
I don’t claim that the Truss/Kwaeteng presentation and timing were ideal. But I do think had she ridden out the headlines and stood by his chancellor and his budget, uk yields wouldn’t look so different to today. But there’s a reasonable chance the polls would look pretty different .
Two things can be simultaneously true:
(1) The initial spike in UK bond yields was caused by Truss/Kwarteng (2) Had they stayed, then there probably wouldn't be a big difference in bond yields
It is also important to remember, though, that over the past five years Uk bond yields have averaged about 75 bps below the US. During Truss/Kwarteng, they want from more than 100bps below the US to well above. That wasn't caused by LDI pensions.
A trading friend of mine was like a kid at Xmas that week. He didn’t realise at first why but he (correctly) sensed that selling gilts was a one way bet. A couple of days later the terrible truth within ldi emerged to a broader audience, combined with the narrative of a chaotic govt flying by the seat of its pants. That last bit was true actually given the hasty and in my view unnecessary reverse ferret.
Still, my hypothesis is not one that can reasonably tested. We can both only infer what we will from historic data. I am just bitter, resigned to working much longer, given no political party will dare test the consensus of taxation to fund electorally motivated transfer payments for perhaps a generation.
With all due respect, the hypothesis can very easily be tested. Let's look at the yield gap on a day-by-day basis, and overlay events that happened.
Ldi forced selling and media hysteria over 45% tax cut et al were happening simultaneously. Perhaps an economics professor one day might try and tease it out. Don’t know about you but I’ve not got the time nor motivation to do it myself.
The LDI forced selling was caused by the spiking yields, you can't disaggregate them.
The Kwartang announcement was communicating change planned for his future Budget (rather than an immediate change) and this plan was reversed very swiftly.
If the markets reacted due to these planned changes wouldn't they have re-corrected when they were withdrawn shortly thereafter?
Yields shot up, came partly back when Kwarteng (who I would note is a friend of mine) was defenestrated and the changes were rolled back, and then returned to roughly the same position relative to other developed nations after Truss herself stepped down.
Why did yields spike?
Because Mr Market thought that the Truss/Kwarteng changes were adding inflationary fire to an economy that was already running quite hot. Wage growth in 2022 had been steadily climbing through the year (source), and had reached 6% in June, heading for 6.5%.
It was generally considered that increasing aggregate demand via lower tax (and a bit of higher spending) due to a focus on growth was likely to cause wage growth to continue to run hot. It was also considered unwise to throw fiscal fire on the economy at a time when the country was facing external inflationary pressures due to the Ukraine war.
Now, did the markets overreact? Quite possibly. But they were not behaving irrationally. Truss was elected on a platform of throwing away balanced budget orthodoxy and making a dash for growth.
Not growth grounded on supply side reforms and fiscal restraint; but instead driven by the belief that the reason growth had been modest was because of excessive levels of taxation.
We can argue this one to death. I'm a believer that you get to lower taxes by lower spending; Ms Truss believed that a more buoyant economy would generate more taxes.
But one cannot credibly claim that spiking bond yields - that only happened in the UK - was somehow a coincidence, and had nothing to do with the government's avowed change of direction.
This argument is really quite bizarre in its evasion. The simultaneous nature of the Bank's round of QT and Kwasi's minibudget announcement has already been discussed. But what about the Bank's 'intervention' to stabilise the bond markets (successfully) by buying back a load of its own bonds? If the markets were fretting about a few billion in tax cuts, and didn't care about the fact that the Bank was ridding itself of UK Government bonds, why did a temporary reversal of the Bank's policy work to stabilise bond markets, but a reversal of the Government's policy didn’t?
And furthermore, why, when we now have safe, responsible Sunak/Hunt, have bond yields continued to rise, now the Bank's QT has been resumed?
No, @Luckyguy1983, this is not "evasion", it is simple reality.
To paraphrase the old song, Liz Truss fought reality . . . and reality won.
Great quote from Andrew Sullivan on young progressive types.
“Of course they support Hamas. Palestinians are merely punching up — and that exonerates them of any moral culpability. Just as African-Americans cannot commit a hate crime, so Hamas definitionally cannot commit terror. Once you see the world in this way — as groups of the oppressed and oppressors, with the oppressed always justified in their resistance to the oppressors — the rights of individual Jews, or whites, or Asians, or even dissident non-whites are irrelevant. It’s all about “power structures” and “systems” and “context”. All morality is relative to privilege. There is not a trace of universalism among the woke left, not a single objective measurement of morality except what is justified in response to “oppression”.
Sounds like a sweeping generalisation, confirming his own prejudices, to me.
I think this Gaza Israel debate is possibly even more depressing than discussing proportional representation
I know. Controversial take
The correct take. It's ruining PB.
And yet it fires up debate - worldwide - like no other geopolitical issue. Especially in proportion to its numerical scale
Why? - is a fascinating question. I am pretty sure the deep rooted mental fungus of anti Semitism is partly to blame. If you analyse most ardent pro Palestinians hard enough you will find fear and hatred of Jews. As we have seen this last week; many of the sufferers won’t even realise it
And I wonder what 'urges' drive the more exuberant of the pro-Israel brigade? And will they admit to or even realize it?
I’ve no doubt that “Islamophobia” is your tediously middlebrow answer
Let’s accept your terms
1. Islamophobia means an irrational fear of Islam. For many Jews the fear is entirely rational. Significant parts of the Islamic world apparently want them all dead
2. Islamophobia has never, in history, led to a serious attempt to kill every Muslim on earth, just for being Muslim
So I don’t think your comparison stands even if we accept it (despite its fatuity)
That IS middlebrow. Are you trying to get on my level? No but seriously, I doubt the feeling that Palestinians are somehow inferior to Israelis is caused by Islamophobia. Truth is, I don't know what it's caused by. I thought you might have some thoughts on it.
Even their fellow arabs dont like them or want them, so I cant see it as islam based. They are a PTSD nation and everyone seems happiest leaving the Rochesters in the attic.
Ok but I was more trying to understand why some right wing people over here (and it's a fair number) are so pro Israel as to be blase about Palestinian suffering and see no weight or validity to their cause. Where's that coming from? We rightly talk a lot about antisemitism but we don't probe that so much. Any offers?
If all the hostages were released tonight, everyone in Gaza stopped firing rockets at Israeli towns and cities, and the Hamas leadership surrendered unconditionally, Israel would immediately cease firing at Gaza, international aid would resume, the blockade would end and Israel would eventually also reopen the border to allow Gazans with work permits to resume their jobs in Israel. Assuming the violence out of Gaza stopped, there is also a decent chance of the area moving towards proper autonomy - it's a much less controversial issue than the West Bank, since Israel has no meaningful territorial ambitions towards it, and there are no historical sites of any significance.
There is no possibility whatsoever of the same happening if Israel stops firing unilaterally. None. The terrorist groups in Gaza would simply be encouraged and increase the barrage of rockets fired hourly at Israel, with incursions at regular intervals aimed at murdering as many Jews as possible.
That's why the two sides are treated differently. Is that clear enough for you?
Trouble with this is it’s the same situation ordinary decent Germans were in in 1944-45. The allies kept pulverising cities in the expectation that any sensible populace would overthrow the Nazi regime and sue for peace. Yet they couldn’t, as the regime would happily execute any Germans who tried this, and did. Hamas is the same. Ideally ordinary decent Palestinians will round up Hamas and hand them over, but that’s just not possible.
So here we are with Harris sending more bombs in one night than the Luftwaffe sent to London in months, just as Israel is dumping more ordinance in Gaza each night than Hamas will ever fire back.
Off topic, but I thought you* might like some good news from the US: "Nikki Haley is increasingly threatening to supplant Ron DeSantis as the principal GOP presidential rival to Donald Trump, escalating frictions between the two candidates that are playing out before voters on the campaign trail and behind closed doors with wealthy donors. . . . Haley rose to third in a Washington Post average of national polling from October, with 8 percent support to DeSantis’s 14 percent. She’s pulled into third in Iowa, where DeSantis’s support is still noticeably stronger, and jumped ahead of DeSantis in recent surveys of New Hampshire and South Carolina." source $: https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2023/10/21/haley-desantis-trump-presidential-race/
And I like the fact that she can do arithmetic. (She was doing the books for her family's business, as a teenager.) Too many of our politicians can't.
*Well, most of you, anyway.
For someone so comprehensively re-elected recently DeSantis seems to have been a bit of a damp squib as a candidate. Not that he would have been expected to come out swinging against Trump right from the off, nor has Haley, but even on those terms he's seems lacklustre, uncompelling, and trying to hard to be like Trump whilst telling people not to vote Trump.
Ron DeSantis is trying to out-asshole Donald Trump.
Now RDS is indeed a Class-A A-hole. But he ain't in the same league as DJT.
Nor is Ted Cruz, who's arguably an even bigger asshole than DeSantis. Who isn't smart enough to have noticed, that Ted tried to out-asshole Trump back in 2016, proving already that THAT is indeed Mission Impossible.
Anyway, American political history is littered with the remains of politicos who were serially successful on their own state or locality, but who proved to be flops on the national stage.
Nelson Rockefeller and Hillary Clinton both spring to mind.
De Santis and Pence are right of Trump on domestic and social issues and De Santis and Ramaswamy not much different to him on his largely isolationist foreign policy either.
The idea Trump is some huge extreme outlier compared to the rest of the GOP does not stand up, only Haley and Christie are more moderate than Trump. He is only an outlier in his reluctance to accept election results and the criminal charges he faces
I think this Gaza Israel debate is possibly even more depressing than discussing proportional representation
I know. Controversial take
The correct take. It's ruining PB.
And yet it fires up debate - worldwide - like no other geopolitical issue. Especially in proportion to its numerical scale
Why? - is a fascinating question. I am pretty sure the deep rooted mental fungus of anti Semitism is partly to blame. If you analyse most ardent pro Palestinians hard enough you will find fear and hatred of Jews. As we have seen this last week; many of the sufferers won’t even realise it
And I wonder what 'urges' drive the more exuberant of the pro-Israel brigade? And will they admit to or even realize it?
I’ve no doubt that “Islamophobia” is your tediously middlebrow answer
Let’s accept your terms
1. Islamophobia means an irrational fear of Islam. For many Jews the fear is entirely rational. Significant parts of the Islamic world apparently want them all dead
2. Islamophobia has never, in history, led to a serious attempt to kill every Muslim on earth, just for being Muslim
So I don’t think your comparison stands even if we accept it (despite its fatuity)
That IS middlebrow. Are you trying to get on my level? No but seriously, I doubt the feeling that Palestinians are somehow inferior to Israelis is caused by Islamophobia. Truth is, I don't know what it's caused by. I thought you might have some thoughts on it.
Even their fellow arabs dont like them or want them, so I cant see it as islam based. They are a PTSD nation and everyone seems happiest leaving the Rochesters in the attic.
Ok but I was more trying to understand why some right wing people over here (and it's a fair number) are so pro Israel as to be blase about Palestinian suffering and see no weight or validity to their cause. Where's that coming from? We rightly talk a lot about antisemitism but we don't probe that so much. Any offers?
If you think some right wing people over here are pro Israel as to be blase about Palestinian suffering, then do you also think that some left-wing people are so pro-Palestinian as to be blase about Israeli suffering?
Where's that coming from? In this case, there's an obvious answer...
Racism in BOTH cases.
I think so. But I don't want to ape Andrew Sullivan and do smeary amateur mass psychiatry on who I disagree with.
Is it smeary only because it is 'mass' and thus not as widely applicable as he thinks, or smeary because it is wrong? Because I've definitely see lots of comments online with people unironically saying the same things about oppression and oppressors. So the critique is probably not fair on the scale of where he applies it, not that that argument is not indeed used at all (which again, is why the strawman dismissal is lazy, since is it still a strawman if you can find real examples).
It's the 'can't be racist towards x' view, based on power structures rather than, well, actual racism, taken to its conclusion.
The thing is that whilst not that many people believe it they are more likely to be politically engaged and vocal.
At least she had ideas, even if you disagreed with them, and the reaction to her was out of all proportion to what what actually announced, led by the Sunakites in the PCP and media.
Led by the bond markets really.
Nonsense. Take a look at US bonds markets now. The rise in gilt yields was not a lot to do with Truss and her tax cuts and everything to do with a historic reversion to norm of monetary policy globally. It was a hysterical media feeding frenzy.
In the Uk it was fed particularly that week by the blowing up of poorly regulated LDI pensions that almost no one seemed to realise was happening. The bloke responsible for that still in his job. He’s a “technocrat” you see.
With all due respect, Ms Truss and Mr Kwarteng made it clear that their plan was to cut taxes and increase spending, in order to get the economy moving again. And that absolutely did have an impact on bond prices.
You can see this my looking at UK bond yields during the Truss Premiership and comparing them to peers. The UK yield premium absolutely blew out.
For your theory to be true UK bond yields simply reverted to normal levels before everyone else. But that clearly didn't happen: UK bond yields went out during the Truss premiership, came back in when she was defenestrated, and then moved largely in lockstep with our peers.
I contend that it was largely a coincidence of timing. The feedback loop from ldi gilt liquidation was already in full swing before kwarteng announced the “growth funded” cuts. And was backstopped by the BoE on more or less the same day as Kwarteng was fired.
By the way what’s the difference between the deficit plan of Kwarteng vs Biden’s IRA. What’s the latest forecast of the Federal deficit this year, 6%? 7%?
I don’t claim that the Truss/Kwaeteng presentation and timing were ideal. But I do think had she ridden out the headlines and stood by his chancellor and his budget, uk yields wouldn’t look so different to today. But there’s a reasonable chance the polls would look pretty different .
Two things can be simultaneously true:
(1) The initial spike in UK bond yields was caused by Truss/Kwarteng (2) Had they stayed, then there probably wouldn't be a big difference in bond yields
It is also important to remember, though, that over the past five years Uk bond yields have averaged about 75 bps below the US. During Truss/Kwarteng, they want from more than 100bps below the US to well above. That wasn't caused by LDI pensions.
A trading friend of mine was like a kid at Xmas that week. He didn’t realise at first why but he (correctly) sensed that selling gilts was a one way bet. A couple of days later the terrible truth within ldi emerged to a broader audience, combined with the narrative of a chaotic govt flying by the seat of its pants. That last bit was true actually given the hasty and in my view unnecessary reverse ferret.
Still, my hypothesis is not one that can reasonably tested. We can both only infer what we will from historic data. I am just bitter, resigned to working much longer, given no political party will dare test the consensus of taxation to fund electorally motivated transfer payments for perhaps a generation.
With all due respect, the hypothesis can very easily be tested. Let's look at the yield gap on a day-by-day basis, and overlay events that happened.
Ldi forced selling and media hysteria over 45% tax cut et al were happening simultaneously. Perhaps an economics professor one day might try and tease it out. Don’t know about you but I’ve not got the time nor motivation to do it myself.
The LDI forced selling was caused by the spiking yields, you can't disaggregate them.
The Kwartang announcement was communicating change planned for his future Budget (rather than an immediate change) and this plan was reversed very swiftly.
If the markets reacted due to these planned changes wouldn't they have re-corrected when they were withdrawn shortly thereafter?
Yields shot up, came partly back when Kwarteng (who I would note is a friend of mine) was defenestrated and the changes were rolled back, and then returned to roughly the same position relative to other developed nations after Truss herself stepped down.
Why did yields spike?
Because Mr Market thought that the Truss/Kwarteng changes were adding inflationary fire to an economy that was already running quite hot. Wage growth in 2022 had been steadily climbing through the year (source), and had reached 6% in June, heading for 6.5%.
It was generally considered that increasing aggregate demand via lower tax (and a bit of higher spending) due to a focus on growth was likely to cause wage growth to continue to run hot. It was also considered unwise to throw fiscal fire on the economy at a time when the country was facing external inflationary pressures due to the Ukraine war.
Now, did the markets overreact? Quite possibly. But they were not behaving irrationally. Truss was elected on a platform of throwing away balanced budget orthodoxy and making a dash for growth.
Not growth grounded on supply side reforms and fiscal restraint; but instead driven by the belief that the reason growth had been modest was because of excessive levels of taxation.
We can argue this one to death. I'm a believer that you get to lower taxes by lower spending; Ms Truss believed that a more buoyant economy would generate more taxes.
But one cannot credibly claim that spiking bond yields - that only happened in the UK - was somehow a coincidence, and had nothing to do with the government's avowed change of direction.
This argument is really quite bizarre in its evasion. The simultaneous nature of the Bank's round of QT and Kwasi's minibudget announcement has already been discussed. But what about the Bank's 'intervention' to stabilise the bond markets (successfully) by buying back a load of its own bonds? If the markets were fretting about a few billion in tax cuts, and didn't care about the fact that the Bank was ridding itself of UK Government bonds, why did a temporary reversal of the Bank's policy work to stabilise bond markets, but a reversal of the Government's policy didn’t?
And furthermore, why, when we now have safe, responsible Sunak/Hunt, have bond yields continued to rise, now the Bank's QT has been resumed?
No, @Luckyguy1983, this is not "evasion", it is simple reality.
It is a version of reality with some key parts missing. That's the essence of the evasion I am trying to highlight.
Most potential Conservative voters will agree with Braverman's rhetoric on immigration and Jihadi chants, that is less of a problem than cost of living.
Overall Sunak has improved on Truss. Most polls have the current Labour lead around 15-20%, before Truss resigned the average Labour lead was 30-35%. He is still doing worse than Boris though, given the average Labour lead was only 5-10% before he resigned.
Reform UK is also doing better under Sunak on 5-8% when under Truss and Boris it was generally under 5%
The last six polls have Labour leads between 18 and 22 points.
Nothing has changed since January - the Redfield & Wilton on 2-3 January had the Conservatives on 27% trailing Labour by 20. Tonight's has the Conservatives on 26% trailing Labour by 18. Yes, Sunak is better than some of the Truss polling (not all) but an 18-point deficit is still a big gap.
So as I said Sunak is still doing better than Truss, indeed in the polls taken 5 days before Truss resigned the Tories were 29-36% behind but worse than Boris was polling
Comments
😊
Interesting comment by Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal.
https://www.firstpost.com/world/watch-civil-disobedience-brought-down-british-empire-saudi-prince-says-hamas-should-learn-from-india-13285372.html
> Filing period October 11, 2023 through October 27, 2023
RSA 653:9
Date of Presidential Primary: The presidential primary election shall be held on the second Tuesday in March or on a date selected by the [NH] secretary of state which is 7 days or more immediately preceding the date on which any other state shall hold a similar election, whichever is earlier, of each year when a president of the United States is to be elected or the year previous. Said primary shall be held in connection with the regular March town meeting or election or, if held on any other day, at a special election called by the secretary of state for that purpose.
The purpose of this section is to protect the tradition of the New Hampshire first-in-the-nation presidential primary.
SSI - note that "any similar election" means a primary NOT a caucus, so Iowa or any other state is free (according to NH anyway) to hold precinct caucuses at earlier date than NH presidential primary.
Who may file: Any person who is qualified under the United States Constitution (Article II, Section 1) [natural born Citizen of the United States; resident of United States for 14 years and 35 years of age] and is a registered REPUBLICAN or DEMOCRAT may file to be a candidate in the New Hampshire Presidential Primary Election.
https://www.sos.nh.gov/elections/running-office
Joe Root has said that England are not playing enough one-day international cricket to continue competing at World Cups and suggested that staging more 50-over county matches at the expense of the Vitality Blast could help to develop a new generation of talent.
He would prefer to see the Blast cut back rather than the Hundred — an idea that may be unpopular with many counties who view the Blast as a contributor towards their financial health, though they receive an annual distribution from the city-based Hundred as well — but he accepts there is also a debate about the very future of the 50-over game itself owing to the global rise in T20 leagues.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/joe-root-counties-should-play-more-50-over-games-and-fewer-t20s-7mvvs7hb6
The voters didn’t seem to have gone off him that much between 2008 and 2019 - he won four major elections, with all his detractors saying the same stuff you are now. But the voters never got rid of him
Aklu Plaza closing down by the way. They never did get that license for “weddings and banquets”
if anything is going it'll be the T20 blast, mainly due to attendances and TV revenue.
(I see in the news that the NYT has, sort of, apologized for some of its earlier pieces on the conflict. Has the BBC done the same?)
There's no politician in Israel who will become PM who is serious about negotiating and there hasn't been in 30 years. There are no politicians in the WB/GS who can speak for all of the Palestinians. without negotiation this doesn't stop.
Sounds incredible, but I am not really a massive fan of his, or at least wasn’t until the inability of others to realise their bias led me to have about four years worth of arguments supporting him. Even now, with the Cons having plummeted by every measure since his departure, the same old people still can’t admit what’s staring them in the face
I’ve said many times, I was a sufferer from BDS and class envy myself - in 2008 I had my biggest ever political bet on Ken to beat him, purely because I couldn’t believe Londoners would elect such a posh Tory Boy after seeing the debates
There is a cohort on Twitter who remain diehard supporters of Johnson. They are uniformly pro-Brexit and anti-Sunak. It's a diluted form of Trumpism - this notion a single individual can somehow "put everything right".
I've never understood that kind of uncritical adulation.
Still, full marks for trying. After all, that makes three big empty shops around that bit of the Market Square (Littlewoods has been derilict for over a decade and the Aldi site is empty as well. Plus Wilko nearby.) beyond a certain point, the empty shop units are positively offputting.
It was powerful, but I'd give one criticism: the voices were not in English with English subtitles, and I was listening to something, rather than watching the screen, which meant I missed some of the context.
Still, powerful stuff.
A far cry from when I worked on the market as a teenager, it was absolutely buzzing back then
It also knows the political consequences of doing nothing.
This is where it was always going to end - with Israel caught between the proverbial rock and the metaphorical hard place.
There is the catch that, had that been on the ballot in 2016, it would have got nowhere.
I think a lot of the reason there are still die hard Boris supporters is that he never really got a chance to show his stuff; the pandemic did for him. There’s a loyalty to someone you’ve voted for that just isn’t there for their replacements.
Where's that coming from? In this case, there's an obvious answer...
I still think he is a better PM than any of his three predecessors but that really isn't a very high bar.
But I do agree that that is the sense a lot of people have, and with the added loyalty that people actually voted in support of him personally through their local candidate, that keeps the fire burning even when he's been ejected.
Sy Damle, a Washington lawyer representing OpenAI in copyright lawsuits, covertly organized a letter from tech groups and academics urging Congress to avoid new laws on AI and copyright.
The message in the open letter sent to Congress on Sept. 11 was clear: Don’t put new copyright regulations on artificial intelligence systems.
The letter’s signatories were real players, a broad coalition of think tanks, professors and civil-society groups with a stake in the growing debate about AI and copyright in Washington.
Undisclosed, however, were the fingerprints of Sy Damle, a tech-friendly Washington lawyer and former government official who works for top firms in the industry — including OpenAI, one of the top developers of cutting-edge AI models. Damle is currently representing OpenAI in ongoing copyright lawsuits.
Damle did not sign the letter, and did not reply to multiple attempts to contact him with questions about his involvement. But data contained in a publicly posted PDF of the letter show the document was authored by “SDamle,” and three signatories confirmed to POLITICO that Damle was involved in its drafting and circulation. Two of them said they were first made aware of the letter by Damle, and signed it at his invitation.
The letter’s covert origin offers a window into the deep and often invisible reach of Big Tech influence in the Washington debate over AI — a fast-moving part of the policy landscape where Congress is hungry for outside advice, and which is still new enough to create strange political bedfellows. Signatories included the American Library Association, the progressive nonprofit Public Knowledge and the free-market R Street Institute. . . .
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/23/tech-lawyer-ai-letter-congress-00122857
SSI - makes me wonder, who & what & how (but not why) is/are UK versions of above?
There are three problems with that:
*) I - and we - have no right to ask that of Israelis.
*) The people who hate Israel would still not see Israelis as victims - after all, they are still occupiers. They would pay no notice of the bombings, the knife attacks, and especially the rockets.
*) It would not stop the bombings, the knife attacks, or the rockets.
“Of course they support Hamas. Palestinians are merely punching up — and that exonerates them of any moral culpability. Just as African-Americans cannot commit a hate crime, so Hamas definitionally cannot commit terror. Once you see the world in this way — as groups of the oppressed and oppressors, with the oppressed always justified in their resistance to the oppressors — the rights of individual Jews, or whites, or Asians, or even dissident non-whites are irrelevant. It’s all about “power structures” and “systems” and “context”. All morality is relative to privilege. There is not a trace of universalism among the woke left, not a single objective measurement of morality except what is justified in response to “oppression”.
Constantin Eckner"
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/will-germanys-new-left-wing-party-challenge-the-afd/
He was Foreign Secretary under Theresa May before he quit.
The truth is he plotted, schemed and manoeuvred for two decades to get to where he wanted to be: Prime Minister. He finally got there, won his mandate and within weeks he was undermined by a microscopic virus. In the end, the job he wanted wasn't what he expected or wanted. Instead of cheering us all up and leading the optimistic chorus for the 2020s, he had to lock us all down. You can see the anguish as he made the historic announcement.
Fate has certainly had a jolly good laugh at Boris's expense.
There is no possibility whatsoever of the same happening if Israel stops firing unilaterally. None. The terrorist groups in Gaza would simply be encouraged and increase the barrage of rockets fired hourly at Israel, with incursions at regular intervals aimed at murdering as many Jews as possible.
That's why the two sides are treated differently. Is that clear enough for you?
Again, Hamas wanted to provoke a response - it's worth repeating but this wasn't just about killing Jews, it had many other objectives many of which may yet be met. The radicalisation of Arab opinion, the polarisation between pro-Israel and pro-Arab and the possible economic and political consequences of any Arab (OPEC) backlash against the destruction of Gaza.
As always with ideological types the writer takes a reasonable point and then reductioes it ad absurdum.
But there is definitely a point under all that. People are able to support hideous crimes when they feel sanctimonious enough on behalf of the oppressed.
Yes, it's not a perfect scenario, and it's probably not meant to be. Yes, it may not apply to as many people as Sullivan thinks it does, as an overall proportion.
But even if we consider it only a minority, a vocal online heavy force, are we going to say we've not seen lots of comments like that online? Not seen people endorse that very view with that actions and slogans that go far beyond sympathy with Palestinain suffering?
Strawmanning doesn't mean something is therefore simply incorrect or irrelevant and to be dismissed, which is how it is used online. "Oh, it's a strawman, therefore it can be ignored".
It may not be as big a deal as the author thinks, but it can still be a thing nonetheless. And picking the worst interpretation and scenario can be no different to an economic historian emphasising economic factors in an analysis - it doesn't mean they are not some other possible factors or explanations too, but it doesn't render the thesis empty either.
Are we saying no one is ever to summarise or simplify a matter ever? Things are more complicated than a simple piece of text, obviously, but is there no room, no worth, in simple messages either? Do we just say 'Heck if I know, we cannot accurately analyse a complex political situation and cultural trends so no need to try?'
Overall Sunak has improved on Truss. Most polls have the current Labour lead around 15-20%, before Truss resigned the average Labour lead was 30-35%. He is still doing worse than Boris though, given the average Labour lead was only 5-10% before he resigned.
Reform UK is also doing better under Sunak on 5-8% when under Truss and Boris it was generally under 5%
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election
No I think the only parallel are the Popes themselves - I think it was Sextus 6th that was elected on an anti-nepotism ticket and then appointed al his relatives. (Very likely I'm getting my popes mixed up though)
But, and it's a big but. Boris has absolutely nobody else to blame for his demise but himself. He wasn't brought down by his party, by Covid, or by anything else external to him. He brought himself down, because he lacks the fundamental self-discipline, honesty and integrity to be PM. He left the Tories with no choice but to get rid. It's all on him.
The US would be needed to contain China but that is not our continent and not a NATO problem anyway
https://www.youtube.com/@IsraelMFA/videos
The Hamas = ISIS thing is common to a lot of these, and is also something I've remarked on before. Once the fighting stops and the judge-led inquiries start, it will be interesting to know if Hamas has been taken over by ISIS.
It's the 'can't be racist towards x' view, based on power structures rather than, well, actual racism, taken to its conclusion.
So whilst I agree negotiation would be the best solution you can see why the Palestinians are not exactly overjoyed about the idea.
During the Troubles it's clear that the IRA were active in the Republic, and even that some people in the Republic were sympathetic to them, but they did not control the government in Dublin, and that makes a difference in terms of what action is appropriate to take in response to a terrorist attack.
Not a liberal government at all, but not out of line with other Arab regimes, including those like Saudi that we call allies.
The characteristics that made him so formidable as a candidate- his ability to work out what people in front of him wanted to hear and to say it- are what made him a terrible PM, and are what brought him down.
I don't know (I went to a comprehensive and then studied physical sciences) but there must a relevant story in the classical storybook about this.
Republican House members assembling in secret conclave today, to (see if they can) select (yet again) a nominee for Speaker who can actually get enough votes from Republican House members on the floor, to actually be elected.
Without going into gory details or getting down to number crunching, have been wondering this -
WHY doesn't the GOP House caucus nominate a WOMAN?
Seeing as a) they've got fair number in their ranks; and b) this is classic political strategy for moving forward from similar predicaments.
NOTE am NOT talking about the likes of Lauren Boebert or Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Instead, someone like Elise Stefanick (R-NY) or Cathy McMorris Rogers (R-WA).
Personally hold both of the above in minimal low regard; the former his a two-faced schemer, while the latter is basically a big nothing. And can also be faulted (if that's the word) for being insufficiently pro-Trump, despite bending over backwards enabling and propitiating him.
But my point stands - cherchez la femme.
Note she need NOT be a dynamic leader (or dragon lady if your prefer) like Nancy Pelosi. Alternative would be a front-woman Speaker, the velvet slipper for somebody else's iron boot.
Like Denny Hastert was for Tom DeLay back at the dawn of the 3rd millennium, before the the later took up ballroom dancing and former became a convicted sex offender.
My argument here isn't that I'd personally support such a candidate, or expect much good out of her IF she got elected.
Instead, that it's a political strategy that's worked before . . . including for Republicans.
And furthermore, why, when we now have safe, responsible Sunak/Hunt, have bond yields continued to rise, now the Bank's QT has been resumed?
Personally, I'd get Doug and Dinsdale Piranha to persuade the tenants of the Brewery to consolidate into the Market Square and raze the Brewery for housing, but that's secondary.
Hashtag Romforddeetsbutnobyelection.
It was 34-47-12 so that's a 16% swing from Conservative to Labour and a 10.5% swing from Conservative to Liberal Democrat.
To show how little things have changed, the R&W poll on 2-3 January had headline numbers of Labour on 47%, Conservatives on 27% and Liberal Democrats on 12%.
Kinabalu tries (and fails) to play bothsidesism. Where is all this hostility to Palestinians that you speak of? We saw the most depraved massacre of 1400 people in Israel. Was that accompanied by 100,000 people marching on the streets calling for Zionism, full colonisation (I don't know) the mass waving of Israeli flags? It's true that the government said that it would support Israel, so I suppose it's opponents have more reason to be protesting on the streets, but where has the anti Palestinian energy been? Most of those 'enraged' seem to be so as a result of seeing people in their own country cheering the massacre on.
So here we are with Harris sending more bombs in one night than the Luftwaffe sent to London in months, just as Israel is dumping more ordinance in Gaza each night than Hamas will ever fire back.
Now RDS is indeed a Class-A A-hole. But he ain't in the same league as DJT.
Nor is Ted Cruz, who's arguably an even bigger asshole than DeSantis. Who isn't smart enough to have noticed, that Ted tried to out-asshole Trump back in 2016, proving already that THAT is indeed Mission Impossible.
Anyway, American political history is littered with the remains of politicos who were serially successful on their own state or locality, but who proved to be flops on the national stage.
Nelson Rockefeller and Hillary Clinton both spring to mind.
https://barackobama.medium.com/my-statement-on-israel-and-gaza-a6c397f09a30
Nothing has changed since January - the Redfield & Wilton on 2-3 January had the Conservatives on 27% trailing Labour by 20. Tonight's has the Conservatives on 26% trailing Labour by 18. Yes, Sunak is better than some of the Truss polling (not all) but an 18-point deficit is still a big gap.
The idea Trump is some huge extreme outlier compared to the rest of the GOP does not stand up, only Haley and Christie are more moderate than Trump. He is only an outlier in his reluctance to accept election results and the criminal charges he faces