Everyone's favourite education expert, Dominic Cummings, follows Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak and Carol Vorderman (cancelled) in opining on maths teaching.
Interesting that he looks to Russia, which long ago established the best maths teaching in the world by asking mathematicians what should be taught and psychologists how best to teach it. Pisa-topping Singapore followed the Russians.
How to help parents and teachers give their children better education?
Keep that stupid, lazy, ignorant, centralising twat Cummings away from it.
(He should have mentioned Vygotsky if he's going for Russian pedagogy, anyway.)
Maybe it is all a dream, and Bozo will emerge from the shower?
Sunak won't sack Braverman until Monday if he has any sense; if he sacked her tomorrow and the Remembrance ceremony is disrupted she'll be telling everyone she is vindicated.
Maybe that's the way to think about it.
Suella is for the chop. She must know that.
By squealing about a risk this weekend, she buys herself some time. And if something does go wrong, it's not her fault, and she becomes unsackable.
It's horrible cynical , and blooming irresponsible to play this sort of game to save her pathetic career.
Maybe it is all a dream, and Bozo will emerge from the shower?
Sunak won't sack Braverman until Monday if he has any sense; if he sacked her tomorrow and the Remembrance ceremony is disrupted she'll be telling everyone she is vindicated.
Maybe that's the way to think about it.
Suella is for the chop. She must know that.
By squealing about a risk this weekend, she buys herself some time. And if something does go wrong, it's not her fault, and she becomes unsackable.
It's horrible cynical , and blooming irresponsible to play this sort of game to save her pathetic career.
But that's politics (baby).
On the other hand, the Financial Times quotes an unnamed Tory backbencher as saying: "“Suppose something terrible happens over the weekend — there’s serious violence at the march — there’s a case to be made that she, as home secretary, has contributed to that ..." https://www.ft.com/content/71df0f40-2bd8-4493-9852-01f37a8fe0a6
I think this will be focused on more as the election gets nearer and it will start to show in the polls. Trump's numbers will slide as the idea of him back in the WH becomes less of a 'lol can you imagine!' hypothetical prospect and more of an 'am I truly up for that?' pressing actual question.
Were simply getting in to election nonsense. Mrs gaga is getting in on the act too.
But the dem media keep pumping Trump so I struggle to sympathise, they need him. However keeping him front of voters minds might be a stupid play.
He is a creature of the media. Right from The Apprentice. That beamed him into millions of homes primetime every week for years as this savvy no bullshit operator who could get things done. Fed into the 'businessman not a politician' shit that a certain sort of gullible pleb seems to lap up. It's a type of forelocking really although they fail to recognize that's what they're doing. The Apprentice was extremely important to his arc of assent imo. No Apprentice, no President Trump.
But anyway that's the point. To stop covering him as a reality tv star and instead start to calmly and repeatedly lay out the threat he poses, based on the record of what he's done and what he's said, hyperbole not required. Stop searching for balance and context, for equivalences with the other side (there aren't any), just do what he and his ilk on the populist right are always (mendaciously) claiming that they do - 'tell it like it is'.
How are they going to do that ? If they paint him as a demon it just plays to his victim narcissism. Likewise many of the claims made just are not true and the electorate can see that. He didnt kill democracy, he didnt crash the economy he didnt start world war 3 when he was President.
He is like a spoilt two years old and the best thing to do is ignore him. Having some credible policies might also help.
This is exactly the issue. He paints the media who call him out as partial and fake news and it just whips up his base even more.
There was an argument that the media should have been better at calling out his s**t when he was first running for president rather than the “both sides” equivalency but that time has long gone.
Really the only way to reduce his impact is to ignore him. Something media outlets are desperate to avoid because he actually generates a lot of drama for them. It’s a symbiotic relationship.
Ignoring him is the impossible dream sadly - he's the GOP frontrunner and the betting fav for next president. So it's about *how* he's covered.
Yes but theres no need to roll the turd in glitter, just make it mundane.
It could be we mean the same thing, I'm not sure. I doubt it because you are chilled about him coming back - thus by definition you don't see the prospect as being particularly dangerous or harmful. Beats me how anyone paying attention could feel that way but there you go, I accept that you see the same things as me, broadly speaking, and yet you do feel that way.
I dont want to see Trump or Biden as POTUS but currently thats not looking like an option. But I am more relaxed than you since most of the fear mongering is ridiculous and gives him credibility he shouldnt have. We have already seen what he's like in office, he huffs he puffs then goes off to a mirrot to ask who's the fairest of them all.
What if he gets nobbled, the GOP cant field a candidate in time and RFK beats Biden.
Would that be scarier ?
It's the opposite of ridiculous. It's based on what he's done and said in the past and what he's said and implied he'll do in the future. Take his 1st term and his behaviour since, then think about him back in the WH with even more ego, spite and grievance, pathology advanced, further gone in the head with narcissism, and with fewer constraints. Scary.
The guy has 91 criminal charges against him, plus the civil trials, fraud, racketeering, sexual assault, election denial, insurrection, I mean c'mon. He's a gangster. It's scary (and absurd) that he's even in the running to be president again let alone the short priced favourite. It's objectively very very scary.
Yet you say you're 'relaxed' about it and you don't want him 'or Biden' (as if they're in any way on the same level of undesirable). Utterly bewildering to me. So bewildering that I must reach for a brain chemistry explanation. I think you're trying to show how big and cool you are by not being scared of what is objectively scary. You see yourself as the Fonz of PB.
Have a lie down
Ok and you wake up. We can maybe meet in the middle.
Pax
It never wasn't. But I am intrigued. It's bizarre to be relaxed about Trump 2.0. Perhaps you can tell me sometime a couple of near term political prospects that you do worry about.
I think this will be focused on more as the election gets nearer and it will start to show in the polls. Trump's numbers will slide as the idea of him back in the WH becomes less of a 'lol can you imagine!' hypothetical prospect and more of an 'am I truly up for that?' pressing actual question.
I do wonder if people underestimate the desire for strongman politics - that indeed the idea that Trump will come in and ignore Congress or the Courts may be a selling point, not a negative. Democrats need to discuss why Trumps authoritarian tendencies are bad, not assume voters will just accept that - when voters may instead see strength and conviction.
Autocracy is a younger person thing, oldies have more sense.
I mean, I can understand why (in some ways) - if politics isn't changing, and isn't meeting your needs (which it clearly isn't for people in their mid 30s and under) then autocracy of either political persuasions have their allure. I would argue that oldies don't have more sense - they have just historically, and currently, had their interests served well by democratically elected governments.
In the US, specifically, it's key to note that Congressional approval is at net -65%, SCOTUS has record low approval at net -17%. Joe Biden is there with SCOTUS, at around -17% net approval, and Trump is the most popular with an astronomical -14% net approval. The most popular sitting politician in the US is... Bernie Sanders, with a net 36% approval rating (which is interesting considering he is also very well known, not something you can say about the other contenders for most popular senator, if anything name recognition tracks with a higher disapproval rating, and you'd think someone who ran twice as a Democrat for POTUS would have the typical partisan effect)
Nonsense oldies just have more life experience. Weve been through the cycle of this time its different ( rarely is ), project fear version 2 million ( were still alive ) and the back and forth of social trends.
The younger generations dont get is as you get older you have less hours on the planet so you value those you have left and dont waste time on things you have seen fail many times before.
Older people have had all the benefits of the post war consensus, and that ladder has slowly been hauled up behind them. I love my grandparents dearly, but after the war their economic prospects (as working class people) were significantly better than mine (a university graduate). The house they bought for a £9,000 mortgage in the 60s in now worth nearly half a million; my parents managed to get a house for £55k in the 90s - it is now worth over £300k. Free university education, investment in healthcare and education, decent pensions (that are now protected under the triple lock). We are sliding backwards, and young people aren't blind to that. All evidence shows that this generation is going to be economically worse of than their parents, and we feel it.
You might be sliding backwards but you keep voting for people who will put you there. As for housing when your parents die I assume its not all going to the cats home so who will be the beneficaries of a big lump sum?
I'm 32, my dad is in his early 50s (my mum is already dead). So, like, maybe in 30-35 years I'll have something to inherit, as long as the housing market bubble doesn't explode? Yay.
And I don't keep voting for people who put me there - that would be Tory voters who vote for politicians and policies that make it harder for younger people and easier for older and wealthy people. Whether it's the environment or the economy - the Tory party can't be trusted with the future. Unfortunately the next Labour government doesn't look much better...
Having lived through the recent past longer than you the whole nobody can afford to live nonsense started in in the late nineties with the so called Third Way kicked off. This started with the news that the government can solve all our problems rather than leaving us to sort our own lives out. It worked in the post cold war environment while we had a peace dividend to spend. But then the money ran out and we started to borrow, we passed more and more laws thus restricting the simple things in life - like building a house - and capitalism became corporatism where its who you know not what you know that counts. Both Conservatives and Labour are signed up to this, so we wont see much changes until one of them comes to their senses. Starmer is a north London lawyer so I cant see him rocking the boat, the Tories might come to their senses after a heavy defeat or lose of heavily they no longer exist.
Building a house is one of the simple things in life? Respect.
It was when I was growimg up. You didnt have armies of nimbies with the right to stop or delay building through planning appeals. Anyway isnt your Mr Starmer agreeing with me ? Or have you given up on him ?
Yes he seems to be majoring on that. I think he'll deliver on it personally. Vested interests and inertia are formidable foes but he's a tough nut. Far more so than (eg) Blair. This time there won't be that 'oh god we've won' sense of light-headedness, it'll be all business from day one. I think Starmer pretty much is the PM already in his head. In a good way, I mean, not as in feeling complacent. He doesn't feel complacent he feels ready.
You are projecting so much, that that you are lighting up the clouds.
I'm just getting a bit tired of all this 'no enthusiasm for Starmer' and 'won't change anything' business. It's the people doing that who are projecting. They're projecting a 'seen it, done it, got the tee shirt' worldly wise cynicism that's actually imo a teeny bit sterile and self-regarding. Either that or they're sulked up Corbynites pissed off about that whole episode passing into history or they're True Blue Tories being churlish about the certainty of losing and effectively saying they're going to stop playing and take their ball home.
All the actual evidence of Starmer, so far, speaks to a deeply establishment managerial type.
Swashbuckling his way through the vested interests is not something he has ever done. His career has been about applying the process to the task.
Well he's 'managed' the Labour Party into a wholly different beast in 3 years.
Maybe it is all a dream, and Bozo will emerge from the shower?
Sunak won't sack Braverman until Monday if he has any sense; if he sacked her tomorrow and the Remembrance ceremony is disrupted she'll be telling everyone she is vindicated.
Hang on, if it isn't disrupted she'll be telling everyone she is vindicated in getting the football supporters out to defend the certemony. Edit: not literally, but she does seem to have encouraged them.
Plus isn't there only one small remembrance ceremony on the day of the march? And the organization involved has said it's a free world and don't stop the demo on their account.
I think this will be focused on more as the election gets nearer and it will start to show in the polls. Trump's numbers will slide as the idea of him back in the WH becomes less of a 'lol can you imagine!' hypothetical prospect and more of an 'am I truly up for that?' pressing actual question.
I do wonder if people underestimate the desire for strongman politics - that indeed the idea that Trump will come in and ignore Congress or the Courts may be a selling point, not a negative. Democrats need to discuss why Trumps authoritarian tendencies are bad, not assume voters will just accept that - when voters may instead see strength and conviction.
Autocracy is a younger person thing, oldies have more sense.
I mean, I can understand why (in some ways) - if politics isn't changing, and isn't meeting your needs (which it clearly isn't for people in their mid 30s and under) then autocracy of either political persuasions have their allure. I would argue that oldies don't have more sense - they have just historically, and currently, had their interests served well by democratically elected governments.
In the US, specifically, it's key to note that Congressional approval is at net -65%, SCOTUS has record low approval at net -17%. Joe Biden is there with SCOTUS, at around -17% net approval, and Trump is the most popular with an astronomical -14% net approval. The most popular sitting politician in the US is... Bernie Sanders, with a net 36% approval rating (which is interesting considering he is also very well known, not something you can say about the other contenders for most popular senator, if anything name recognition tracks with a higher disapproval rating, and you'd think someone who ran twice as a Democrat for POTUS would have the typical partisan effect)
Nonsense oldies just have more life experience. Weve been through the cycle of this time its different ( rarely is ), project fear version 2 million ( were still alive ) and the back and forth of social trends.
The younger generations dont get is as you get older you have less hours on the planet so you value those you have left and dont waste time on things you have seen fail many times before.
Older people have had all the benefits of the post war consensus, and that ladder has slowly been hauled up behind them. I love my grandparents dearly, but after the war their economic prospects (as working class people) were significantly better than mine (a university graduate). The house they bought for a £9,000 mortgage in the 60s in now worth nearly half a million; my parents managed to get a house for £55k in the 90s - it is now worth over £300k. Free university education, investment in healthcare and education, decent pensions (that are now protected under the triple lock). We are sliding backwards, and young people aren't blind to that. All evidence shows that this generation is going to be economically worse of than their parents, and we feel it.
You might be sliding backwards but you keep voting for people who will put you there. As for housing when your parents die I assume its not all going to the cats home so who will be the beneficaries of a big lump sum?
I'm 32, my dad is in his early 50s (my mum is already dead). So, like, maybe in 30-35 years I'll have something to inherit, as long as the housing market bubble doesn't explode? Yay.
And I don't keep voting for people who put me there - that would be Tory voters who vote for politicians and policies that make it harder for younger people and easier for older and wealthy people. Whether it's the environment or the economy - the Tory party can't be trusted with the future. Unfortunately the next Labour government doesn't look much better...
Having lived through the recent past longer than you the whole nobody can afford to live nonsense started in in the late nineties with the so called Third Way kicked off. This started with the news that the government can solve all our problems rather than leaving us to sort our own lives out. It worked in the post cold war environment while we had a peace dividend to spend. But then the money ran out and we started to borrow, we passed more and more laws thus restricting the simple things in life - like building a house - and capitalism became corporatism where its who you know not what you know that counts. Both Conservatives and Labour are signed up to this, so we wont see much changes until one of them comes to their senses. Starmer is a north London lawyer so I cant see him rocking the boat, the Tories might come to their senses after a heavy defeat or lose of heavily they no longer exist.
Building a house is one of the simple things in life? Respect.
It was when I was growimg up. You didnt have armies of nimbies with the right to stop or delay building through planning appeals. Anyway isnt your Mr Starmer agreeing with me ? Or have you given up on him ?
Yes he seems to be majoring on that. I think he'll deliver on it personally. Vested interests and inertia are formidable foes but he's a tough nut. Far more so than (eg) Blair. This time there won't be that 'oh god we've won' sense of light-headedness, it'll be all business from day one. I think Starmer pretty much is the PM already in his head. In a good way, I mean, not as in feeling complacent. He doesn't feel complacent he feels ready.
You are projecting so much, that that you are lighting up the clouds.
I'm just getting a bit tired of all this 'no enthusiasm for Starmer' and 'won't change anything' business. It's the people doing that who are projecting. They're projecting a 'seen it, done it, got the tee shirt' worldly wise cynicism that's actually imo a teeny bit sterile and self-regarding. Either that or they're sulked up Corbynites pissed off about that whole episode passing into history or they're True Blue Tories being churlish about the certainty of losing and effectively saying they're going to stop playing and take their ball home.
All the actual evidence of Starmer, so far, speaks to a deeply establishment managerial type.
Swashbuckling his way through the vested interests is not something he has ever done. His career has been about applying the process to the task.
Well he's 'managed' the Labour Party into a wholly different beast in 3 years.
As I once said
“Now back to where we started, Keir Starmer QC leader of the Labour Party. Smarter than Jez, cleverer than Ed, better looking than Gordon…”
Unfortunately I continued
“while he has narrowed the gap to Boris on favourability, he loses the personality test 64-30. You know the rest.”
And this GE seems to be one where charisma doesn’t matter, because there is none on offer
Imagine how dull the debates will be. Worse still, one of Sir Keir, Sunak or Ed Davey might try some kind of cringeworthy. stage managed attempt to show some charisma ; the political equivalent of a Dad dance. Rishi must be fav to do that, out of pure desperation
Maybe this is why schools used to be run from the Town Hall not from Whitehall.
Trouble is, you don't need a bureaucracy to generate entropy, just a real universe and time.
One of the strands in Cummings's career in public affairs is a rage against the tendency to entropy, chaos and eventual death. If only we would all just do what he told us, it would be organised and efficient and it would all work. Remember his plan to put all the key people in one room and pump all the data into their brains so they would know what needed to happen. (You see something similar in some of the government's favourite schools.)
It's just that nothing ever functions like that. I doubt that government is really a system described by thermodynamics, but the general principle is that a bit of imposed order here is always compensated by a larger bit of disorder somewhere else.
There's not a great deal to be done about that, except to splash about in the mess, try to enjoy it and cultivate the beautiful things that arise as a result.
Conservatives used to intuitively understand this sort of thing.
Doesn't the Home Sec get to stand behind the PM at the Cenotaph?
Stabbing him in the back.
Scrub that - she's stabbing him in the front.
On my viewings of her in parliament - she's more likely to stab herself, drop the knife, then stab herself again while trying to pick it up. Al the while blaming someone else.
Maybe this is why schools used to be run from the Town Hall not from Whitehall.
Trouble is, you don't need a bureaucracy to generate entropy, just a real universe and time.
One of the strands in Cummings's career in public affairs is a rage against the tendency to entropy, chaos and eventual death. If only we would all just do what he told us, it would be organised and efficient and it would all work. Remember his plan to put all the key people in one room and pump all the data into their brains so they would know what needed to happen. (You see something similar in some of the government's favourite schools.)
It's just that nothing ever functions like that. I doubt that government is really a system described by thermodynamics, but the general principle is that a bit of imposed order here is always compensated by a larger bit of disorder somewhere else.
There's not a great deal to be done about that, except to splash about in the mess, try to enjoy it and cultivate the beautiful things that arise as a result.
Conservatives used to intuitively understand this sort of thing.
He's as much a conservative as he is an intellectual.
I think this will be focused on more as the election gets nearer and it will start to show in the polls. Trump's numbers will slide as the idea of him back in the WH becomes less of a 'lol can you imagine!' hypothetical prospect and more of an 'am I truly up for that?' pressing actual question.
I do wonder if people underestimate the desire for strongman politics - that indeed the idea that Trump will come in and ignore Congress or the Courts may be a selling point, not a negative. Democrats need to discuss why Trumps authoritarian tendencies are bad, not assume voters will just accept that - when voters may instead see strength and conviction.
Autocracy is a younger person thing, oldies have more sense.
I mean, I can understand why (in some ways) - if politics isn't changing, and isn't meeting your needs (which it clearly isn't for people in their mid 30s and under) then autocracy of either political persuasions have their allure. I would argue that oldies don't have more sense - they have just historically, and currently, had their interests served well by democratically elected governments.
In the US, specifically, it's key to note that Congressional approval is at net -65%, SCOTUS has record low approval at net -17%. Joe Biden is there with SCOTUS, at around -17% net approval, and Trump is the most popular with an astronomical -14% net approval. The most popular sitting politician in the US is... Bernie Sanders, with a net 36% approval rating (which is interesting considering he is also very well known, not something you can say about the other contenders for most popular senator, if anything name recognition tracks with a higher disapproval rating, and you'd think someone who ran twice as a Democrat for POTUS would have the typical partisan effect)
Nonsense oldies just have more life experience. Weve been through the cycle of this time its different ( rarely is ), project fear version 2 million ( were still alive ) and the back and forth of social trends.
The younger generations dont get is as you get older you have less hours on the planet so you value those you have left and dont waste time on things you have seen fail many times before.
Older people have had all the benefits of the post war consensus, and that ladder has slowly been hauled up behind them. I love my grandparents dearly, but after the war their economic prospects (as working class people) were significantly better than mine (a university graduate). The house they bought for a £9,000 mortgage in the 60s in now worth nearly half a million; my parents managed to get a house for £55k in the 90s - it is now worth over £300k. Free university education, investment in healthcare and education, decent pensions (that are now protected under the triple lock). We are sliding backwards, and young people aren't blind to that. All evidence shows that this generation is going to be economically worse of than their parents, and we feel it.
You might be sliding backwards but you keep voting for people who will put you there. As for housing when your parents die I assume its not all going to the cats home so who will be the beneficaries of a big lump sum?
I'm 32, my dad is in his early 50s (my mum is already dead). So, like, maybe in 30-35 years I'll have something to inherit, as long as the housing market bubble doesn't explode? Yay.
And I don't keep voting for people who put me there - that would be Tory voters who vote for politicians and policies that make it harder for younger people and easier for older and wealthy people. Whether it's the environment or the economy - the Tory party can't be trusted with the future. Unfortunately the next Labour government doesn't look much better...
Having lived through the recent past longer than you the whole nobody can afford to live nonsense started in in the late nineties with the so called Third Way kicked off. This started with the news that the government can solve all our problems rather than leaving us to sort our own lives out. It worked in the post cold war environment while we had a peace dividend to spend. But then the money ran out and we started to borrow, we passed more and more laws thus restricting the simple things in life - like building a house - and capitalism became corporatism where its who you know not what you know that counts. Both Conservatives and Labour are signed up to this, so we wont see much changes until one of them comes to their senses. Starmer is a north London lawyer so I cant see him rocking the boat, the Tories might come to their senses after a heavy defeat or lose of heavily they no longer exist.
Building a house is one of the simple things in life? Respect.
It was when I was growimg up. You didnt have armies of nimbies with the right to stop or delay building through planning appeals. Anyway isnt your Mr Starmer agreeing with me ? Or have you given up on him ?
Yes he seems to be majoring on that. I think he'll deliver on it personally. Vested interests and inertia are formidable foes but he's a tough nut. Far more so than (eg) Blair. This time there won't be that 'oh god we've won' sense of light-headedness, it'll be all business from day one. I think Starmer pretty much is the PM already in his head. In a good way, I mean, not as in feeling complacent. He doesn't feel complacent he feels ready.
You are projecting so much, that that you are lighting up the clouds.
I'm just getting a bit tired of all this 'no enthusiasm for Starmer' and 'won't change anything' business. It's the people doing that who are projecting. They're projecting a 'seen it, done it, got the tee shirt' worldly wise cynicism that's actually imo a teeny bit sterile and self-regarding. Either that or they're sulked up Corbynites pissed off about that whole episode passing into history or they're True Blue Tories being churlish about the certainty of losing and effectively saying they're going to stop playing and take their ball home.
All the actual evidence of Starmer, so far, speaks to a deeply establishment managerial type.
Swashbuckling his way through the vested interests is not something he has ever done. His career has been about applying the process to the task.
Well he's 'managed' the Labour Party into a wholly different beast in 3 years.
As I once said
“Now back to where we started, Keir Starmer QC leader of the Labour Party. Smarter than Jez, cleverer than Ed, better looking than Gordon…”
Unfortunately I continued
“while he has narrowed the gap to Boris on favourability, he loses the personality test 64-30. You know the rest.”
And this GE seems to be one where charisma doesn’t matter, because there is none on offer
Imagine how dull the debates will be. Worse still, one of Sir Keir, Sunak or Ed Davey might try some kind of cringeworthy. stage managed attempt to show some charisma ; the political equivalent of a Dad dance. Rishi must be fav to do that, out of pure desperation
I think it unlikely Keir Starmer will be a QC again.
I think this will be focused on more as the election gets nearer and it will start to show in the polls. Trump's numbers will slide as the idea of him back in the WH becomes less of a 'lol can you imagine!' hypothetical prospect and more of an 'am I truly up for that?' pressing actual question.
I do wonder if people underestimate the desire for strongman politics - that indeed the idea that Trump will come in and ignore Congress or the Courts may be a selling point, not a negative. Democrats need to discuss why Trumps authoritarian tendencies are bad, not assume voters will just accept that - when voters may instead see strength and conviction.
Autocracy is a younger person thing, oldies have more sense.
I mean, I can understand why (in some ways) - if politics isn't changing, and isn't meeting your needs (which it clearly isn't for people in their mid 30s and under) then autocracy of either political persuasions have their allure. I would argue that oldies don't have more sense - they have just historically, and currently, had their interests served well by democratically elected governments.
In the US, specifically, it's key to note that Congressional approval is at net -65%, SCOTUS has record low approval at net -17%. Joe Biden is there with SCOTUS, at around -17% net approval, and Trump is the most popular with an astronomical -14% net approval. The most popular sitting politician in the US is... Bernie Sanders, with a net 36% approval rating (which is interesting considering he is also very well known, not something you can say about the other contenders for most popular senator, if anything name recognition tracks with a higher disapproval rating, and you'd think someone who ran twice as a Democrat for POTUS would have the typical partisan effect)
Nonsense oldies just have more life experience. Weve been through the cycle of this time its different ( rarely is ), project fear version 2 million ( were still alive ) and the back and forth of social trends.
The younger generations dont get is as you get older you have less hours on the planet so you value those you have left and dont waste time on things you have seen fail many times before.
Older people have had all the benefits of the post war consensus, and that ladder has slowly been hauled up behind them. I love my grandparents dearly, but after the war their economic prospects (as working class people) were significantly better than mine (a university graduate). The house they bought for a £9,000 mortgage in the 60s in now worth nearly half a million; my parents managed to get a house for £55k in the 90s - it is now worth over £300k. Free university education, investment in healthcare and education, decent pensions (that are now protected under the triple lock). We are sliding backwards, and young people aren't blind to that. All evidence shows that this generation is going to be economically worse of than their parents, and we feel it.
You might be sliding backwards but you keep voting for people who will put you there. As for housing when your parents die I assume its not all going to the cats home so who will be the beneficaries of a big lump sum?
I'm 32, my dad is in his early 50s (my mum is already dead). So, like, maybe in 30-35 years I'll have something to inherit, as long as the housing market bubble doesn't explode? Yay.
And I don't keep voting for people who put me there - that would be Tory voters who vote for politicians and policies that make it harder for younger people and easier for older and wealthy people. Whether it's the environment or the economy - the Tory party can't be trusted with the future. Unfortunately the next Labour government doesn't look much better...
Having lived through the recent past longer than you the whole nobody can afford to live nonsense started in in the late nineties with the so called Third Way kicked off. This started with the news that the government can solve all our problems rather than leaving us to sort our own lives out. It worked in the post cold war environment while we had a peace dividend to spend. But then the money ran out and we started to borrow, we passed more and more laws thus restricting the simple things in life - like building a house - and capitalism became corporatism where its who you know not what you know that counts. Both Conservatives and Labour are signed up to this, so we wont see much changes until one of them comes to their senses. Starmer is a north London lawyer so I cant see him rocking the boat, the Tories might come to their senses after a heavy defeat or lose of heavily they no longer exist.
Building a house is one of the simple things in life? Respect.
It was when I was growimg up. You didnt have armies of nimbies with the right to stop or delay building through planning appeals. Anyway isnt your Mr Starmer agreeing with me ? Or have you given up on him ?
Yes he seems to be majoring on that. I think he'll deliver on it personally. Vested interests and inertia are formidable foes but he's a tough nut. Far more so than (eg) Blair. This time there won't be that 'oh god we've won' sense of light-headedness, it'll be all business from day one. I think Starmer pretty much is the PM already in his head. In a good way, I mean, not as in feeling complacent. He doesn't feel complacent he feels ready.
You are projecting so much, that that you are lighting up the clouds.
I'm just getting a bit tired of all this 'no enthusiasm for Starmer' and 'won't change anything' business. It's the people doing that who are projecting. They're projecting a 'seen it, done it, got the tee shirt' worldly wise cynicism that's actually imo a teeny bit sterile and self-regarding. Either that or they're sulked up Corbynites pissed off about that whole episode passing into history or they're True Blue Tories being churlish about the certainty of losing and effectively saying they're going to stop playing and take their ball home.
All the actual evidence of Starmer, so far, speaks to a deeply establishment managerial type.
Swashbuckling his way through the vested interests is not something he has ever done. His career has been about applying the process to the task.
Well he's 'managed' the Labour Party into a wholly different beast in 3 years.
As I once said
“Now back to where we started, Keir Starmer QC leader of the Labour Party. Smarter than Jez, cleverer than Ed, better looking than Gordon…”
Unfortunately I continued
“while he has narrowed the gap to Boris on favourability, he loses the personality test 64-30. You know the rest.”
And this GE seems to be one where charisma doesn’t matter, because there is none on offer
Imagine how dull the debates will be. Worse still, one of Sir Keir, Sunak or Ed Davey might try some kind of cringeworthy. stage managed attempt to show some charisma ; the political equivalent of a Dad dance. Rishi must be fav to do that, out of pure desperation
I think it unlikely Keir Starmer will be a QC again.
Cartoon canceled: "The Washington Post took down an editorial cartoon Wednesday that depicted a Hamas leader using civilians as human shields, after the drawing was criticized as racist and dehumanizing toward Palestinians."
I planned to share that cartoon with you when it became publicly available, and so I didn't copy it. And I doubt that it will become publicly available any time soon.
(Except, of course, at Al Jazeera.)
(For the record: I would not have taken it down; it comes close to the line for me, but does not cross it. But then I am not facing any death threats, as the Post editors may be.)
I think this will be focused on more as the election gets nearer and it will start to show in the polls. Trump's numbers will slide as the idea of him back in the WH becomes less of a 'lol can you imagine!' hypothetical prospect and more of an 'am I truly up for that?' pressing actual question.
I do wonder if people underestimate the desire for strongman politics - that indeed the idea that Trump will come in and ignore Congress or the Courts may be a selling point, not a negative. Democrats need to discuss why Trumps authoritarian tendencies are bad, not assume voters will just accept that - when voters may instead see strength and conviction.
Autocracy is a younger person thing, oldies have more sense.
I mean, I can understand why (in some ways) - if politics isn't changing, and isn't meeting your needs (which it clearly isn't for people in their mid 30s and under) then autocracy of either political persuasions have their allure. I would argue that oldies don't have more sense - they have just historically, and currently, had their interests served well by democratically elected governments.
In the US, specifically, it's key to note that Congressional approval is at net -65%, SCOTUS has record low approval at net -17%. Joe Biden is there with SCOTUS, at around -17% net approval, and Trump is the most popular with an astronomical -14% net approval. The most popular sitting politician in the US is... Bernie Sanders, with a net 36% approval rating (which is interesting considering he is also very well known, not something you can say about the other contenders for most popular senator, if anything name recognition tracks with a higher disapproval rating, and you'd think someone who ran twice as a Democrat for POTUS would have the typical partisan effect)
Nonsense oldies just have more life experience. Weve been through the cycle of this time its different ( rarely is ), project fear version 2 million ( were still alive ) and the back and forth of social trends.
The younger generations dont get is as you get older you have less hours on the planet so you value those you have left and dont waste time on things you have seen fail many times before.
Older people have had all the benefits of the post war consensus, and that ladder has slowly been hauled up behind them. I love my grandparents dearly, but after the war their economic prospects (as working class people) were significantly better than mine (a university graduate). The house they bought for a £9,000 mortgage in the 60s in now worth nearly half a million; my parents managed to get a house for £55k in the 90s - it is now worth over £300k. Free university education, investment in healthcare and education, decent pensions (that are now protected under the triple lock). We are sliding backwards, and young people aren't blind to that. All evidence shows that this generation is going to be economically worse of than their parents, and we feel it.
You might be sliding backwards but you keep voting for people who will put you there. As for housing when your parents die I assume its not all going to the cats home so who will be the beneficaries of a big lump sum?
I'm 32, my dad is in his early 50s (my mum is already dead). So, like, maybe in 30-35 years I'll have something to inherit, as long as the housing market bubble doesn't explode? Yay.
And I don't keep voting for people who put me there - that would be Tory voters who vote for politicians and policies that make it harder for younger people and easier for older and wealthy people. Whether it's the environment or the economy - the Tory party can't be trusted with the future. Unfortunately the next Labour government doesn't look much better...
Having lived through the recent past longer than you the whole nobody can afford to live nonsense started in in the late nineties with the so called Third Way kicked off. This started with the news that the government can solve all our problems rather than leaving us to sort our own lives out. It worked in the post cold war environment while we had a peace dividend to spend. But then the money ran out and we started to borrow, we passed more and more laws thus restricting the simple things in life - like building a house - and capitalism became corporatism where its who you know not what you know that counts. Both Conservatives and Labour are signed up to this, so we wont see much changes until one of them comes to their senses. Starmer is a north London lawyer so I cant see him rocking the boat, the Tories might come to their senses after a heavy defeat or lose of heavily they no longer exist.
Building a house is one of the simple things in life? Respect.
It was when I was growimg up. You didnt have armies of nimbies with the right to stop or delay building through planning appeals. Anyway isnt your Mr Starmer agreeing with me ? Or have you given up on him ?
Yes he seems to be majoring on that. I think he'll deliver on it personally. Vested interests and inertia are formidable foes but he's a tough nut. Far more so than (eg) Blair. This time there won't be that 'oh god we've won' sense of light-headedness, it'll be all business from day one. I think Starmer pretty much is the PM already in his head. In a good way, I mean, not as in feeling complacent. He doesn't feel complacent he feels ready.
You are projecting so much, that that you are lighting up the clouds.
I'm just getting a bit tired of all this 'no enthusiasm for Starmer' and 'won't change anything' business. It's the people doing that who are projecting. They're projecting a 'seen it, done it, got the tee shirt' worldly wise cynicism that's actually imo a teeny bit sterile and self-regarding. Either that or they're sulked up Corbynites pissed off about that whole episode passing into history or they're True Blue Tories being churlish about the certainty of losing and effectively saying they're going to stop playing and take their ball home.
All the actual evidence of Starmer, so far, speaks to a deeply establishment managerial type.
Swashbuckling his way through the vested interests is not something he has ever done. His career has been about applying the process to the task.
Well he's 'managed' the Labour Party into a wholly different beast in 3 years.
As I once said
“Now back to where we started, Keir Starmer QC leader of the Labour Party. Smarter than Jez, cleverer than Ed, better looking than Gordon…”
Unfortunately I continued
“while he has narrowed the gap to Boris on favourability, he loses the personality test 64-30. You know the rest.”
And this GE seems to be one where charisma doesn’t matter, because there is none on offer
Imagine how dull the debates will be. Worse still, one of Sir Keir, Sunak or Ed Davey might try some kind of cringeworthy. stage managed attempt to show some charisma ; the political equivalent of a Dad dance. Rishi must be fav to do that, out of pure desperation
I think it unlikely Keir Starmer will be a QC again.
I think this will be focused on more as the election gets nearer and it will start to show in the polls. Trump's numbers will slide as the idea of him back in the WH becomes less of a 'lol can you imagine!' hypothetical prospect and more of an 'am I truly up for that?' pressing actual question.
I do wonder if people underestimate the desire for strongman politics - that indeed the idea that Trump will come in and ignore Congress or the Courts may be a selling point, not a negative. Democrats need to discuss why Trumps authoritarian tendencies are bad, not assume voters will just accept that - when voters may instead see strength and conviction.
Autocracy is a younger person thing, oldies have more sense.
I mean, I can understand why (in some ways) - if politics isn't changing, and isn't meeting your needs (which it clearly isn't for people in their mid 30s and under) then autocracy of either political persuasions have their allure. I would argue that oldies don't have more sense - they have just historically, and currently, had their interests served well by democratically elected governments.
In the US, specifically, it's key to note that Congressional approval is at net -65%, SCOTUS has record low approval at net -17%. Joe Biden is there with SCOTUS, at around -17% net approval, and Trump is the most popular with an astronomical -14% net approval. The most popular sitting politician in the US is... Bernie Sanders, with a net 36% approval rating (which is interesting considering he is also very well known, not something you can say about the other contenders for most popular senator, if anything name recognition tracks with a higher disapproval rating, and you'd think someone who ran twice as a Democrat for POTUS would have the typical partisan effect)
Nonsense oldies just have more life experience. Weve been through the cycle of this time its different ( rarely is ), project fear version 2 million ( were still alive ) and the back and forth of social trends.
The younger generations dont get is as you get older you have less hours on the planet so you value those you have left and dont waste time on things you have seen fail many times before.
Older people have had all the benefits of the post war consensus, and that ladder has slowly been hauled up behind them. I love my grandparents dearly, but after the war their economic prospects (as working class people) were significantly better than mine (a university graduate). The house they bought for a £9,000 mortgage in the 60s in now worth nearly half a million; my parents managed to get a house for £55k in the 90s - it is now worth over £300k. Free university education, investment in healthcare and education, decent pensions (that are now protected under the triple lock). We are sliding backwards, and young people aren't blind to that. All evidence shows that this generation is going to be economically worse of than their parents, and we feel it.
You might be sliding backwards but you keep voting for people who will put you there. As for housing when your parents die I assume its not all going to the cats home so who will be the beneficaries of a big lump sum?
I'm 32, my dad is in his early 50s (my mum is already dead). So, like, maybe in 30-35 years I'll have something to inherit, as long as the housing market bubble doesn't explode? Yay.
And I don't keep voting for people who put me there - that would be Tory voters who vote for politicians and policies that make it harder for younger people and easier for older and wealthy people. Whether it's the environment or the economy - the Tory party can't be trusted with the future. Unfortunately the next Labour government doesn't look much better...
Having lived through the recent past longer than you the whole nobody can afford to live nonsense started in in the late nineties with the so called Third Way kicked off. This started with the news that the government can solve all our problems rather than leaving us to sort our own lives out. It worked in the post cold war environment while we had a peace dividend to spend. But then the money ran out and we started to borrow, we passed more and more laws thus restricting the simple things in life - like building a house - and capitalism became corporatism where its who you know not what you know that counts. Both Conservatives and Labour are signed up to this, so we wont see much changes until one of them comes to their senses. Starmer is a north London lawyer so I cant see him rocking the boat, the Tories might come to their senses after a heavy defeat or lose of heavily they no longer exist.
Building a house is one of the simple things in life? Respect.
It was when I was growimg up. You didnt have armies of nimbies with the right to stop or delay building through planning appeals. Anyway isnt your Mr Starmer agreeing with me ? Or have you given up on him ?
Yes he seems to be majoring on that. I think he'll deliver on it personally. Vested interests and inertia are formidable foes but he's a tough nut. Far more so than (eg) Blair. This time there won't be that 'oh god we've won' sense of light-headedness, it'll be all business from day one. I think Starmer pretty much is the PM already in his head. In a good way, I mean, not as in feeling complacent. He doesn't feel complacent he feels ready.
You are projecting so much, that that you are lighting up the clouds.
I'm just getting a bit tired of all this 'no enthusiasm for Starmer' and 'won't change anything' business. It's the people doing that who are projecting. They're projecting a 'seen it, done it, got the tee shirt' worldly wise cynicism that's actually imo a teeny bit sterile and self-regarding. Either that or they're sulked up Corbynites pissed off about that whole episode passing into history or they're True Blue Tories being churlish about the certainty of losing and effectively saying they're going to stop playing and take their ball home.
All the actual evidence of Starmer, so far, speaks to a deeply establishment managerial type.
Swashbuckling his way through the vested interests is not something he has ever done. His career has been about applying the process to the task.
Well he's 'managed' the Labour Party into a wholly different beast in 3 years.
As I once said
“Now back to where we started, Keir Starmer QC leader of the Labour Party. Smarter than Jez, cleverer than Ed, better looking than Gordon…”
Unfortunately I continued
“while he has narrowed the gap to Boris on favourability, he loses the personality test 64-30. You know the rest.”
And this GE seems to be one where charisma doesn’t matter, because there is none on offer
Imagine how dull the debates will be. Worse still, one of Sir Keir, Sunak or Ed Davey might try some kind of cringeworthy. stage managed attempt to show some charisma ; the political equivalent of a Dad dance. Rishi must be fav to do that, out of pure desperation
I think it unlikely Keir Starmer will be a QC again.
I think this will be focused on more as the election gets nearer and it will start to show in the polls. Trump's numbers will slide as the idea of him back in the WH becomes less of a 'lol can you imagine!' hypothetical prospect and more of an 'am I truly up for that?' pressing actual question.
I do wonder if people underestimate the desire for strongman politics - that indeed the idea that Trump will come in and ignore Congress or the Courts may be a selling point, not a negative. Democrats need to discuss why Trumps authoritarian tendencies are bad, not assume voters will just accept that - when voters may instead see strength and conviction.
Autocracy is a younger person thing, oldies have more sense.
I mean, I can understand why (in some ways) - if politics isn't changing, and isn't meeting your needs (which it clearly isn't for people in their mid 30s and under) then autocracy of either political persuasions have their allure. I would argue that oldies don't have more sense - they have just historically, and currently, had their interests served well by democratically elected governments.
In the US, specifically, it's key to note that Congressional approval is at net -65%, SCOTUS has record low approval at net -17%. Joe Biden is there with SCOTUS, at around -17% net approval, and Trump is the most popular with an astronomical -14% net approval. The most popular sitting politician in the US is... Bernie Sanders, with a net 36% approval rating (which is interesting considering he is also very well known, not something you can say about the other contenders for most popular senator, if anything name recognition tracks with a higher disapproval rating, and you'd think someone who ran twice as a Democrat for POTUS would have the typical partisan effect)
Nonsense oldies just have more life experience. Weve been through the cycle of this time its different ( rarely is ), project fear version 2 million ( were still alive ) and the back and forth of social trends.
The younger generations dont get is as you get older you have less hours on the planet so you value those you have left and dont waste time on things you have seen fail many times before.
Older people have had all the benefits of the post war consensus, and that ladder has slowly been hauled up behind them. I love my grandparents dearly, but after the war their economic prospects (as working class people) were significantly better than mine (a university graduate). The house they bought for a £9,000 mortgage in the 60s in now worth nearly half a million; my parents managed to get a house for £55k in the 90s - it is now worth over £300k. Free university education, investment in healthcare and education, decent pensions (that are now protected under the triple lock). We are sliding backwards, and young people aren't blind to that. All evidence shows that this generation is going to be economically worse of than their parents, and we feel it.
You might be sliding backwards but you keep voting for people who will put you there. As for housing when your parents die I assume its not all going to the cats home so who will be the beneficaries of a big lump sum?
I'm 32, my dad is in his early 50s (my mum is already dead). So, like, maybe in 30-35 years I'll have something to inherit, as long as the housing market bubble doesn't explode? Yay.
And I don't keep voting for people who put me there - that would be Tory voters who vote for politicians and policies that make it harder for younger people and easier for older and wealthy people. Whether it's the environment or the economy - the Tory party can't be trusted with the future. Unfortunately the next Labour government doesn't look much better...
Having lived through the recent past longer than you the whole nobody can afford to live nonsense started in in the late nineties with the so called Third Way kicked off. This started with the news that the government can solve all our problems rather than leaving us to sort our own lives out. It worked in the post cold war environment while we had a peace dividend to spend. But then the money ran out and we started to borrow, we passed more and more laws thus restricting the simple things in life - like building a house - and capitalism became corporatism where its who you know not what you know that counts. Both Conservatives and Labour are signed up to this, so we wont see much changes until one of them comes to their senses. Starmer is a north London lawyer so I cant see him rocking the boat, the Tories might come to their senses after a heavy defeat or lose of heavily they no longer exist.
Building a house is one of the simple things in life? Respect.
It was when I was growimg up. You didnt have armies of nimbies with the right to stop or delay building through planning appeals. Anyway isnt your Mr Starmer agreeing with me ? Or have you given up on him ?
Yes he seems to be majoring on that. I think he'll deliver on it personally. Vested interests and inertia are formidable foes but he's a tough nut. Far more so than (eg) Blair. This time there won't be that 'oh god we've won' sense of light-headedness, it'll be all business from day one. I think Starmer pretty much is the PM already in his head. In a good way, I mean, not as in feeling complacent. He doesn't feel complacent he feels ready.
You are projecting so much, that that you are lighting up the clouds.
I'm just getting a bit tired of all this 'no enthusiasm for Starmer' and 'won't change anything' business. It's the people doing that who are projecting. They're projecting a 'seen it, done it, got the tee shirt' worldly wise cynicism that's actually imo a teeny bit sterile and self-regarding. Either that or they're sulked up Corbynites pissed off about that whole episode passing into history or they're True Blue Tories being churlish about the certainty of losing and effectively saying they're going to stop playing and take their ball home.
All the actual evidence of Starmer, so far, speaks to a deeply establishment managerial type.
Swashbuckling his way through the vested interests is not something he has ever done. His career has been about applying the process to the task.
Well he's 'managed' the Labour Party into a wholly different beast in 3 years.
As I once said
“Now back to where we started, Keir Starmer QC leader of the Labour Party. Smarter than Jez, cleverer than Ed, better looking than Gordon…”
Unfortunately I continued
“while he has narrowed the gap to Boris on favourability, he loses the personality test 64-30. You know the rest.”
And this GE seems to be one where charisma doesn’t matter, because there is none on offer
Imagine how dull the debates will be. Worse still, one of Sir Keir, Sunak or Ed Davey might try some kind of cringeworthy. stage managed attempt to show some charisma ; the political equivalent of a Dad dance. Rishi must be fav to do that, out of pure desperation
Thing is Ed and the Lib Dems can do stage managed cringe so well, so professionally, so knowingly, that the other two parties cannot compete.
On a completely unrelated subject: While reading Randall Munroe's 'What if?" last night, I found this exchange: "Q. What if everyone in Great Britain went to one of the coasts and started paddling.
Could they move the island at all?
No."
Which may please or annoy both those who would like Britain closer to Europe, and those who would like it farther away.
However. It occurs to me that Britons could move the island by collecting wheelbarrows full of dirt and rocks from one side, and move them to the other.
(How long this would take is left as an exercise for the reader.)
Interesting question came up this evening in a do I was at. Is the surge of nimbyism yet another symptom of our ageing demographics? Not because the old have houses and don’t see the need to build more for the young (which is the usual argument). But because there are just more retired people around with nothing to do during the day but worry about developments in their neighbourhood, and time on their hands to write objection letters.
The planning system is almost tailor made for the retired.
I think this will be focused on more as the election gets nearer and it will start to show in the polls. Trump's numbers will slide as the idea of him back in the WH becomes less of a 'lol can you imagine!' hypothetical prospect and more of an 'am I truly up for that?' pressing actual question.
I do wonder if people underestimate the desire for strongman politics - that indeed the idea that Trump will come in and ignore Congress or the Courts may be a selling point, not a negative. Democrats need to discuss why Trumps authoritarian tendencies are bad, not assume voters will just accept that - when voters may instead see strength and conviction.
Autocracy is a younger person thing, oldies have more sense.
I mean, I can understand why (in some ways) - if politics isn't changing, and isn't meeting your needs (which it clearly isn't for people in their mid 30s and under) then autocracy of either political persuasions have their allure. I would argue that oldies don't have more sense - they have just historically, and currently, had their interests served well by democratically elected governments.
In the US, specifically, it's key to note that Congressional approval is at net -65%, SCOTUS has record low approval at net -17%. Joe Biden is there with SCOTUS, at around -17% net approval, and Trump is the most popular with an astronomical -14% net approval. The most popular sitting politician in the US is... Bernie Sanders, with a net 36% approval rating (which is interesting considering he is also very well known, not something you can say about the other contenders for most popular senator, if anything name recognition tracks with a higher disapproval rating, and you'd think someone who ran twice as a Democrat for POTUS would have the typical partisan effect)
Nonsense oldies just have more life experience. Weve been through the cycle of this time its different ( rarely is ), project fear version 2 million ( were still alive ) and the back and forth of social trends.
The younger generations dont get is as you get older you have less hours on the planet so you value those you have left and dont waste time on things you have seen fail many times before.
Older people have had all the benefits of the post war consensus, and that ladder has slowly been hauled up behind them. I love my grandparents dearly, but after the war their economic prospects (as working class people) were significantly better than mine (a university graduate). The house they bought for a £9,000 mortgage in the 60s in now worth nearly half a million; my parents managed to get a house for £55k in the 90s - it is now worth over £300k. Free university education, investment in healthcare and education, decent pensions (that are now protected under the triple lock). We are sliding backwards, and young people aren't blind to that. All evidence shows that this generation is going to be economically worse of than their parents, and we feel it.
You might be sliding backwards but you keep voting for people who will put you there. As for housing when your parents die I assume its not all going to the cats home so who will be the beneficaries of a big lump sum?
I'm 32, my dad is in his early 50s (my mum is already dead). So, like, maybe in 30-35 years I'll have something to inherit, as long as the housing market bubble doesn't explode? Yay.
And I don't keep voting for people who put me there - that would be Tory voters who vote for politicians and policies that make it harder for younger people and easier for older and wealthy people. Whether it's the environment or the economy - the Tory party can't be trusted with the future. Unfortunately the next Labour government doesn't look much better...
Having lived through the recent past longer than you the whole nobody can afford to live nonsense started in in the late nineties with the so called Third Way kicked off. This started with the news that the government can solve all our problems rather than leaving us to sort our own lives out. It worked in the post cold war environment while we had a peace dividend to spend. But then the money ran out and we started to borrow, we passed more and more laws thus restricting the simple things in life - like building a house - and capitalism became corporatism where its who you know not what you know that counts. Both Conservatives and Labour are signed up to this, so we wont see much changes until one of them comes to their senses. Starmer is a north London lawyer so I cant see him rocking the boat, the Tories might come to their senses after a heavy defeat or lose of heavily they no longer exist.
Building a house is one of the simple things in life? Respect.
It was when I was growimg up. You didnt have armies of nimbies with the right to stop or delay building through planning appeals. Anyway isnt your Mr Starmer agreeing with me ? Or have you given up on him ?
Yes he seems to be majoring on that. I think he'll deliver on it personally. Vested interests and inertia are formidable foes but he's a tough nut. Far more so than (eg) Blair. This time there won't be that 'oh god we've won' sense of light-headedness, it'll be all business from day one. I think Starmer pretty much is the PM already in his head. In a good way, I mean, not as in feeling complacent. He doesn't feel complacent he feels ready.
You are projecting so much, that that you are lighting up the clouds.
I'm just getting a bit tired of all this 'no enthusiasm for Starmer' and 'won't change anything' business. It's the people doing that who are projecting. They're projecting a 'seen it, done it, got the tee shirt' worldly wise cynicism that's actually imo a teeny bit sterile and self-regarding. Either that or they're sulked up Corbynites pissed off about that whole episode passing into history or they're True Blue Tories being churlish about the certainty of losing and effectively saying they're going to stop playing and take their ball home.
All the actual evidence of Starmer, so far, speaks to a deeply establishment managerial type.
Swashbuckling his way through the vested interests is not something he has ever done. His career has been about applying the process to the task.
Well he's 'managed' the Labour Party into a wholly different beast in 3 years.
As I once said
“Now back to where we started, Keir Starmer QC leader of the Labour Party. Smarter than Jez, cleverer than Ed, better looking than Gordon…”
Unfortunately I continued
“while he has narrowed the gap to Boris on favourability, he loses the personality test 64-30. You know the rest.”
And this GE seems to be one where charisma doesn’t matter, because there is none on offer
Imagine how dull the debates will be. Worse still, one of Sir Keir, Sunak or Ed Davey might try some kind of cringeworthy. stage managed attempt to show some charisma ; the political equivalent of a Dad dance. Rishi must be fav to do that, out of pure desperation
That had me wondering if Rishi might try the (unintentional) May gambit in reverse. Have a ridiculously long election campaign and there is just a chance that the press will get bored halfway through and start going after Labour rather than the Conservatives, or that SKS will stumble badly or maybe both.
As the Conservatives are down to their core vote in the polls, what else do they have to lose?
On a completely unrelated subject: While reading Randall Munroe's 'What if?" last night, I found this exchange: "Q. What if everyone in Great Britain went to one of the coasts and started paddling.
Could they move the island at all?
No."
Which may please or annoy both those who would like Britain closer to Europe, and those who would like it farther away.
However. It occurs to me that Britons could move the island by collecting wheelbarrows full of dirt and rocks from one side, and move them to the other.
(How long this would take is left as an exercise for the reader.)
You’ve been listening to too many Trump policy ideas, evidently.
Rishi Sunak is weighing up whether to sack Suella Braverman after the Conservative Party descended into open warfare over her claim that police were “playing favourites” with protesters.
The home secretary defied Downing Street’s instructions to tone down an incendiary article for The Times in which she compared the pro-Palestinian rally — planned for central London on Armistice Day on Saturday — to sectarian marches held in Northern Ireland during the Troubles.
No 10 said it was attempting to “establish the detail” of how the article was published without formal approval amid claims that Braverman had breached the ministerial code. Labour and the Liberal Democrats have called for her to be sacked.
On Thursday night the prime minister was said to be weighing up Braverman’s future. It was claimed he may bring forward a cabinet reshuffle, planned for before Christmas, to dismiss her.
Among those being considered for her job is Oliver Dowden, the Cabinet Office minister and deputy prime minister, who is seen as a “safe pair of hands” by Downing Street.
Interesting question came up this evening in a do I was at. Is the surge of nimbyism yet another symptom of our ageing demographics? Not because the old have houses and don’t see the need to build more for the young (which is the usual argument). But because there are just more retired people around with nothing to do during the day but worry about developments in their neighbourhood, and time on their hands to write objection letters.
The planning system is almost tailor made for the retired.
When I look to modern Britain, I see an equivalent of all-powerful, societally damaging unions accruing economic rent.
Instead of the National Union of Miners and Arthur Scargill, I see Janet.
Janet Slimfast is 67. A former civil servant, she lives in her detached 3 bedroom house with her husband, Roy. Roy is an unreconstructed Ronnie Pickering. He hates cyclists, wears transition lenses, and thinks charity begins at home.
Janet is the most powerful person in British politics. Forget Rupert Murdoch. It’s all about janet_1954@btinternet.com.
I don't know how the Conservatives back away from Janet, because she is about the only voter they can rely on right now. But until they do... Blended family matriarch on a niche website.
I think this will be focused on more as the election gets nearer and it will start to show in the polls. Trump's numbers will slide as the idea of him back in the WH becomes less of a 'lol can you imagine!' hypothetical prospect and more of an 'am I truly up for that?' pressing actual question.
I do wonder if people underestimate the desire for strongman politics - that indeed the idea that Trump will come in and ignore Congress or the Courts may be a selling point, not a negative. Democrats need to discuss why Trumps authoritarian tendencies are bad, not assume voters will just accept that - when voters may instead see strength and conviction.
Autocracy is a younger person thing, oldies have more sense.
I mean, I can understand why (in some ways) - if politics isn't changing, and isn't meeting your needs (which it clearly isn't for people in their mid 30s and under) then autocracy of either political persuasions have their allure. I would argue that oldies don't have more sense - they have just historically, and currently, had their interests served well by democratically elected governments.
In the US, specifically, it's key to note that Congressional approval is at net -65%, SCOTUS has record low approval at net -17%. Joe Biden is there with SCOTUS, at around -17% net approval, and Trump is the most popular with an astronomical -14% net approval. The most popular sitting politician in the US is... Bernie Sanders, with a net 36% approval rating (which is interesting considering he is also very well known, not something you can say about the other contenders for most popular senator, if anything name recognition tracks with a higher disapproval rating, and you'd think someone who ran twice as a Democrat for POTUS would have the typical partisan effect)
Nonsense oldies just have more life experience. Weve been through the cycle of this time its different ( rarely is ), project fear version 2 million ( were still alive ) and the back and forth of social trends.
The younger generations dont get is as you get older you have less hours on the planet so you value those you have left and dont waste time on things you have seen fail many times before.
Older people have had all the benefits of the post war consensus, and that ladder has slowly been hauled up behind them. I love my grandparents dearly, but after the war their economic prospects (as working class people) were significantly better than mine (a university graduate). The house they bought for a £9,000 mortgage in the 60s in now worth nearly half a million; my parents managed to get a house for £55k in the 90s - it is now worth over £300k. Free university education, investment in healthcare and education, decent pensions (that are now protected under the triple lock). We are sliding backwards, and young people aren't blind to that. All evidence shows that this generation is going to be economically worse of than their parents, and we feel it.
You might be sliding backwards but you keep voting for people who will put you there. As for housing when your parents die I assume its not all going to the cats home so who will be the beneficaries of a big lump sum?
I'm 32, my dad is in his early 50s (my mum is already dead). So, like, maybe in 30-35 years I'll have something to inherit, as long as the housing market bubble doesn't explode? Yay.
And I don't keep voting for people who put me there - that would be Tory voters who vote for politicians and policies that make it harder for younger people and easier for older and wealthy people. Whether it's the environment or the economy - the Tory party can't be trusted with the future. Unfortunately the next Labour government doesn't look much better...
Having lived through the recent past longer than you the whole nobody can afford to live nonsense started in in the late nineties with the so called Third Way kicked off. This started with the news that the government can solve all our problems rather than leaving us to sort our own lives out. It worked in the post cold war environment while we had a peace dividend to spend. But then the money ran out and we started to borrow, we passed more and more laws thus restricting the simple things in life - like building a house - and capitalism became corporatism where its who you know not what you know that counts. Both Conservatives and Labour are signed up to this, so we wont see much changes until one of them comes to their senses. Starmer is a north London lawyer so I cant see him rocking the boat, the Tories might come to their senses after a heavy defeat or lose of heavily they no longer exist.
Building a house is one of the simple things in life? Respect.
It was when I was growimg up. You didnt have armies of nimbies with the right to stop or delay building through planning appeals. Anyway isnt your Mr Starmer agreeing with me ? Or have you given up on him ?
Yes he seems to be majoring on that. I think he'll deliver on it personally. Vested interests and inertia are formidable foes but he's a tough nut. Far more so than (eg) Blair. This time there won't be that 'oh god we've won' sense of light-headedness, it'll be all business from day one. I think Starmer pretty much is the PM already in his head. In a good way, I mean, not as in feeling complacent. He doesn't feel complacent he feels ready.
You are projecting so much, that that you are lighting up the clouds.
I'm just getting a bit tired of all this 'no enthusiasm for Starmer' and 'won't change anything' business. It's the people doing that who are projecting. They're projecting a 'seen it, done it, got the tee shirt' worldly wise cynicism that's actually imo a teeny bit sterile and self-regarding. Either that or they're sulked up Corbynites pissed off about that whole episode passing into history or they're True Blue Tories being churlish about the certainty of losing and effectively saying they're going to stop playing and take their ball home.
All the actual evidence of Starmer, so far, speaks to a deeply establishment managerial type.
Swashbuckling his way through the vested interests is not something he has ever done. His career has been about applying the process to the task.
Well he's 'managed' the Labour Party into a wholly different beast in 3 years.
As I once said
“Now back to where we started, Keir Starmer QC leader of the Labour Party. Smarter than Jez, cleverer than Ed, better looking than Gordon…”
Unfortunately I continued
“while he has narrowed the gap to Boris on favourability, he loses the personality test 64-30. You know the rest.”
And this GE seems to be one where charisma doesn’t matter, because there is none on offer
Imagine how dull the debates will be. Worse still, one of Sir Keir, Sunak or Ed Davey might try some kind of cringeworthy. stage managed attempt to show some charisma ; the political equivalent of a Dad dance. Rishi must be fav to do that, out of pure desperation
Rishi Sunak is weighing up whether to sack Suella Braverman after the Conservative Party descended into open warfare over her claim that police were “playing favourites” with protesters.
The home secretary defied Downing Street’s instructions to tone down an incendiary article for The Times in which she compared the pro-Palestinian rally — planned for central London on Armistice Day on Saturday — to sectarian marches held in Northern Ireland during the Troubles.
No 10 said it was attempting to “establish the detail” of how the article was published without formal approval amid claims that Braverman had breached the ministerial code. Labour and the Liberal Democrats have called for her to be sacked.
On Thursday night the prime minister was said to be weighing up Braverman’s future. It was claimed he may bring forward a cabinet reshuffle, planned for before Christmas, to dismiss her.
Among those being considered for her job is Oliver Dowden, the Cabinet Office minister and deputy prime minister, who is seen as a “safe pair of hands” by Downing Street.
I think this will be focused on more as the election gets nearer and it will start to show in the polls. Trump's numbers will slide as the idea of him back in the WH becomes less of a 'lol can you imagine!' hypothetical prospect and more of an 'am I truly up for that?' pressing actual question.
I do wonder if people underestimate the desire for strongman politics - that indeed the idea that Trump will come in and ignore Congress or the Courts may be a selling point, not a negative. Democrats need to discuss why Trumps authoritarian tendencies are bad, not assume voters will just accept that - when voters may instead see strength and conviction.
Autocracy is a younger person thing, oldies have more sense.
I mean, I can understand why (in some ways) - if politics isn't changing, and isn't meeting your needs (which it clearly isn't for people in their mid 30s and under) then autocracy of either political persuasions have their allure. I would argue that oldies don't have more sense - they have just historically, and currently, had their interests served well by democratically elected governments.
In the US, specifically, it's key to note that Congressional approval is at net -65%, SCOTUS has record low approval at net -17%. Joe Biden is there with SCOTUS, at around -17% net approval, and Trump is the most popular with an astronomical -14% net approval. The most popular sitting politician in the US is... Bernie Sanders, with a net 36% approval rating (which is interesting considering he is also very well known, not something you can say about the other contenders for most popular senator, if anything name recognition tracks with a higher disapproval rating, and you'd think someone who ran twice as a Democrat for POTUS would have the typical partisan effect)
Nonsense oldies just have more life experience. Weve been through the cycle of this time its different ( rarely is ), project fear version 2 million ( were still alive ) and the back and forth of social trends.
The younger generations dont get is as you get older you have less hours on the planet so you value those you have left and dont waste time on things you have seen fail many times before.
Older people have had all the benefits of the post war consensus, and that ladder has slowly been hauled up behind them. I love my grandparents dearly, but after the war their economic prospects (as working class people) were significantly better than mine (a university graduate). The house they bought for a £9,000 mortgage in the 60s in now worth nearly half a million; my parents managed to get a house for £55k in the 90s - it is now worth over £300k. Free university education, investment in healthcare and education, decent pensions (that are now protected under the triple lock). We are sliding backwards, and young people aren't blind to that. All evidence shows that this generation is going to be economically worse of than their parents, and we feel it.
You might be sliding backwards but you keep voting for people who will put you there. As for housing when your parents die I assume its not all going to the cats home so who will be the beneficaries of a big lump sum?
I'm 32, my dad is in his early 50s (my mum is already dead). So, like, maybe in 30-35 years I'll have something to inherit, as long as the housing market bubble doesn't explode? Yay.
And I don't keep voting for people who put me there - that would be Tory voters who vote for politicians and policies that make it harder for younger people and easier for older and wealthy people. Whether it's the environment or the economy - the Tory party can't be trusted with the future. Unfortunately the next Labour government doesn't look much better...
Having lived through the recent past longer than you the whole nobody can afford to live nonsense started in in the late nineties with the so called Third Way kicked off. This started with the news that the government can solve all our problems rather than leaving us to sort our own lives out. It worked in the post cold war environment while we had a peace dividend to spend. But then the money ran out and we started to borrow, we passed more and more laws thus restricting the simple things in life - like building a house - and capitalism became corporatism where its who you know not what you know that counts. Both Conservatives and Labour are signed up to this, so we wont see much changes until one of them comes to their senses. Starmer is a north London lawyer so I cant see him rocking the boat, the Tories might come to their senses after a heavy defeat or lose of heavily they no longer exist.
Building a house is one of the simple things in life? Respect.
It was when I was growimg up. You didnt have armies of nimbies with the right to stop or delay building through planning appeals. Anyway isnt your Mr Starmer agreeing with me ? Or have you given up on him ?
Yes he seems to be majoring on that. I think he'll deliver on it personally. Vested interests and inertia are formidable foes but he's a tough nut. Far more so than (eg) Blair. This time there won't be that 'oh god we've won' sense of light-headedness, it'll be all business from day one. I think Starmer pretty much is the PM already in his head. In a good way, I mean, not as in feeling complacent. He doesn't feel complacent he feels ready.
You are projecting so much, that that you are lighting up the clouds.
I'm just getting a bit tired of all this 'no enthusiasm for Starmer' and 'won't change anything' business. It's the people doing that who are projecting. They're projecting a 'seen it, done it, got the tee shirt' worldly wise cynicism that's actually imo a teeny bit sterile and self-regarding. Either that or they're sulked up Corbynites pissed off about that whole episode passing into history or they're True Blue Tories being churlish about the certainty of losing and effectively saying they're going to stop playing and take their ball home.
All the actual evidence of Starmer, so far, speaks to a deeply establishment managerial type.
Swashbuckling his way through the vested interests is not something he has ever done. His career has been about applying the process to the task.
Well he's 'managed' the Labour Party into a wholly different beast in 3 years.
As I once said
“Now back to where we started, Keir Starmer QC leader of the Labour Party. Smarter than Jez, cleverer than Ed, better looking than Gordon…”
Unfortunately I continued
“while he has narrowed the gap to Boris on favourability, he loses the personality test 64-30. You know the rest.”
And this GE seems to be one where charisma doesn’t matter, because there is none on offer
Imagine how dull the debates will be. Worse still, one of Sir Keir, Sunak or Ed Davey might try some kind of cringeworthy. stage managed attempt to show some charisma ; the political equivalent of a Dad dance. Rishi must be fav to do that, out of pure desperation
That had me wondering if Rishi might try the (unintentional) May gambit in reverse. Have a ridiculously long election campaign and there is just a chance that the press will get bored halfway through and start going after Labour rather than the Conservatives, or that SKS will stumble badly or maybe both.
As the Conservatives are down to their core vote in the polls, what else do they have to lose?
We're already in a ridiculously long election campaign.
I think this will be focused on more as the election gets nearer and it will start to show in the polls. Trump's numbers will slide as the idea of him back in the WH becomes less of a 'lol can you imagine!' hypothetical prospect and more of an 'am I truly up for that?' pressing actual question.
I do wonder if people underestimate the desire for strongman politics - that indeed the idea that Trump will come in and ignore Congress or the Courts may be a selling point, not a negative. Democrats need to discuss why Trumps authoritarian tendencies are bad, not assume voters will just accept that - when voters may instead see strength and conviction.
Autocracy is a younger person thing, oldies have more sense.
I mean, I can understand why (in some ways) - if politics isn't changing, and isn't meeting your needs (which it clearly isn't for people in their mid 30s and under) then autocracy of either political persuasions have their allure. I would argue that oldies don't have more sense - they have just historically, and currently, had their interests served well by democratically elected governments.
In the US, specifically, it's key to note that Congressional approval is at net -65%, SCOTUS has record low approval at net -17%. Joe Biden is there with SCOTUS, at around -17% net approval, and Trump is the most popular with an astronomical -14% net approval. The most popular sitting politician in the US is... Bernie Sanders, with a net 36% approval rating (which is interesting considering he is also very well known, not something you can say about the other contenders for most popular senator, if anything name recognition tracks with a higher disapproval rating, and you'd think someone who ran twice as a Democrat for POTUS would have the typical partisan effect)
Nonsense oldies just have more life experience. Weve been through the cycle of this time its different ( rarely is ), project fear version 2 million ( were still alive ) and the back and forth of social trends.
The younger generations dont get is as you get older you have less hours on the planet so you value those you have left and dont waste time on things you have seen fail many times before.
Older people have had all the benefits of the post war consensus, and that ladder has slowly been hauled up behind them. I love my grandparents dearly, but after the war their economic prospects (as working class people) were significantly better than mine (a university graduate). The house they bought for a £9,000 mortgage in the 60s in now worth nearly half a million; my parents managed to get a house for £55k in the 90s - it is now worth over £300k. Free university education, investment in healthcare and education, decent pensions (that are now protected under the triple lock). We are sliding backwards, and young people aren't blind to that. All evidence shows that this generation is going to be economically worse of than their parents, and we feel it.
You might be sliding backwards but you keep voting for people who will put you there. As for housing when your parents die I assume its not all going to the cats home so who will be the beneficaries of a big lump sum?
I'm 32, my dad is in his early 50s (my mum is already dead). So, like, maybe in 30-35 years I'll have something to inherit, as long as the housing market bubble doesn't explode? Yay.
And I don't keep voting for people who put me there - that would be Tory voters who vote for politicians and policies that make it harder for younger people and easier for older and wealthy people. Whether it's the environment or the economy - the Tory party can't be trusted with the future. Unfortunately the next Labour government doesn't look much better...
Having lived through the recent past longer than you the whole nobody can afford to live nonsense started in in the late nineties with the so called Third Way kicked off. This started with the news that the government can solve all our problems rather than leaving us to sort our own lives out. It worked in the post cold war environment while we had a peace dividend to spend. But then the money ran out and we started to borrow, we passed more and more laws thus restricting the simple things in life - like building a house - and capitalism became corporatism where its who you know not what you know that counts. Both Conservatives and Labour are signed up to this, so we wont see much changes until one of them comes to their senses. Starmer is a north London lawyer so I cant see him rocking the boat, the Tories might come to their senses after a heavy defeat or lose of heavily they no longer exist.
Building a house is one of the simple things in life? Respect.
It was when I was growimg up. You didnt have armies of nimbies with the right to stop or delay building through planning appeals. Anyway isnt your Mr Starmer agreeing with me ? Or have you given up on him ?
Yes he seems to be majoring on that. I think he'll deliver on it personally. Vested interests and inertia are formidable foes but he's a tough nut. Far more so than (eg) Blair. This time there won't be that 'oh god we've won' sense of light-headedness, it'll be all business from day one. I think Starmer pretty much is the PM already in his head. In a good way, I mean, not as in feeling complacent. He doesn't feel complacent he feels ready.
You are projecting so much, that that you are lighting up the clouds.
I'm just getting a bit tired of all this 'no enthusiasm for Starmer' and 'won't change anything' business. It's the people doing that who are projecting. They're projecting a 'seen it, done it, got the tee shirt' worldly wise cynicism that's actually imo a teeny bit sterile and self-regarding. Either that or they're sulked up Corbynites pissed off about that whole episode passing into history or they're True Blue Tories being churlish about the certainty of losing and effectively saying they're going to stop playing and take their ball home.
All the actual evidence of Starmer, so far, speaks to a deeply establishment managerial type.
Swashbuckling his way through the vested interests is not something he has ever done. His career has been about applying the process to the task.
Well he's 'managed' the Labour Party into a wholly different beast in 3 years.
As I once said
“Now back to where we started, Keir Starmer QC leader of the Labour Party. Smarter than Jez, cleverer than Ed, better looking than Gordon…”
Unfortunately I continued
“while he has narrowed the gap to Boris on favourability, he loses the personality test 64-30. You know the rest.”
And this GE seems to be one where charisma doesn’t matter, because there is none on offer
Imagine how dull the debates will be. Worse still, one of Sir Keir, Sunak or Ed Davey might try some kind of cringeworthy. stage managed attempt to show some charisma ; the political equivalent of a Dad dance. Rishi must be fav to do that, out of pure desperation
That had me wondering if Rishi might try the (unintentional) May gambit in reverse. Have a ridiculously long election campaign and there is just a chance that the press will get bored halfway through and start going after Labour rather than the Conservatives, or that SKS will stumble badly or maybe both.
As the Conservatives are down to their core vote in the polls, what else do they have to lose?
Like Major in '97?
The risk is that it gives individual MPs time to panic and go for a sauve qui peut approach. Then it was the Euro, now it would be something like ECHR or the death penalty.
Rishi Sunak is weighing up whether to sack Suella Braverman after the Conservative Party descended into open warfare over her claim that police were “playing favourites” with protesters.
The home secretary defied Downing Street’s instructions to tone down an incendiary article for The Times in which she compared the pro-Palestinian rally — planned for central London on Armistice Day on Saturday — to sectarian marches held in Northern Ireland during the Troubles.
No 10 said it was attempting to “establish the detail” of how the article was published without formal approval amid claims that Braverman had breached the ministerial code. Labour and the Liberal Democrats have called for her to be sacked.
On Thursday night the prime minister was said to be weighing up Braverman’s future. It was claimed he may bring forward a cabinet reshuffle, planned for before Christmas, to dismiss her.
Among those being considered for her job is Oliver Dowden, the Cabinet Office minister and deputy prime minister, who is seen as a “safe pair of hands” by Downing Street.
Sunak may not be stupid, unlike his friend Cummings, but his judgement is personnel matters is so bad that even Indira Gandhi would be embarrassed.
Dowden is another person who read law at Cambridge, this is a government of people who read law at Cambridge (Steve Barclay and Lucy Frazer to name two more)
Rishi Sunak is weighing up whether to sack Suella Braverman after the Conservative Party descended into open warfare over her claim that police were “playing favourites” with protesters.
The home secretary defied Downing Street’s instructions to tone down an incendiary article for The Times in which she compared the pro-Palestinian rally — planned for central London on Armistice Day on Saturday — to sectarian marches held in Northern Ireland during the Troubles.
No 10 said it was attempting to “establish the detail” of how the article was published without formal approval amid claims that Braverman had breached the ministerial code. Labour and the Liberal Democrats have called for her to be sacked.
On Thursday night the prime minister was said to be weighing up Braverman’s future. It was claimed he may bring forward a cabinet reshuffle, planned for before Christmas, to dismiss her.
Among those being considered for her job is Oliver Dowden, the Cabinet Office minister and deputy prime minister, who is seen as a “safe pair of hands” by Downing Street.
Sunak may not be stupid, unlike his friend Cummings, but his judgement is personnel matters is so bad that even Indira Gandhi would be embarrassed.
Dowden is another person who read law at Cambridge, this is a government of people who read law at Cambridge (Steve Barclay and Lucy Frazer to name two more)
I would say Sunak has excellent judgment.
Those, added to Richard Burgon and Amanda Spielman, are not inspiring me with confidence in the quality of Cambridge's law graduates.
Rishi Sunak is weighing up whether to sack Suella Braverman after the Conservative Party descended into open warfare over her claim that police were “playing favourites” with protesters.
The home secretary defied Downing Street’s instructions to tone down an incendiary article for The Times in which she compared the pro-Palestinian rally — planned for central London on Armistice Day on Saturday — to sectarian marches held in Northern Ireland during the Troubles.
No 10 said it was attempting to “establish the detail” of how the article was published without formal approval amid claims that Braverman had breached the ministerial code. Labour and the Liberal Democrats have called for her to be sacked.
On Thursday night the prime minister was said to be weighing up Braverman’s future. It was claimed he may bring forward a cabinet reshuffle, planned for before Christmas, to dismiss her.
Among those being considered for her job is Oliver Dowden, the Cabinet Office minister and deputy prime minister, who is seen as a “safe pair of hands” by Downing Street.
Sunak may not be stupid, unlike his friend Cummings, but his judgement is personnel matters is so bad that even Indira Gandhi would be embarrassed.
Dowden is another person who read law at Cambridge, this is a government of people who read law at Cambridge (Steve Barclay and Lucy Frazer to name two more)
I would say Sunak has excellent judgment.
Those, added to Richard Burgon and Amanda Spielman, are not inspiring me with confidence in the quality of Cambridge's law graduates.
Richard Burgon read English Literature, not law.
I invite you to withdraw that vile calumny against those who read law at Cambridge.
Rishi Sunak is weighing up whether to sack Suella Braverman after the Conservative Party descended into open warfare over her claim that police were “playing favourites” with protesters.
The home secretary defied Downing Street’s instructions to tone down an incendiary article for The Times in which she compared the pro-Palestinian rally — planned for central London on Armistice Day on Saturday — to sectarian marches held in Northern Ireland during the Troubles.
No 10 said it was attempting to “establish the detail” of how the article was published without formal approval amid claims that Braverman had breached the ministerial code. Labour and the Liberal Democrats have called for her to be sacked.
On Thursday night the prime minister was said to be weighing up Braverman’s future. It was claimed he may bring forward a cabinet reshuffle, planned for before Christmas, to dismiss her.
Among those being considered for her job is Oliver Dowden, the Cabinet Office minister and deputy prime minister, who is seen as a “safe pair of hands” by Downing Street.
Sunak may not be stupid, unlike his friend Cummings, but his judgement is personnel matters is so bad that even Indira Gandhi would be embarrassed.
Dowden is another person who read law at Cambridge, this is a government of people who read law at Cambridge (Steve Barclay and Lucy Frazer to name two more)
I would say Sunak has excellent judgment.
Those, added to Richard Burgon and Amanda Spielman, are not inspiring me with confidence in the quality of Cambridge's law graduates.
Richard Burgon read English Literature, not law.
I invite you to withdraw that vile calumny against those who read law at Cambridge.
Breaking on @MSNBC: The FBI and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service are investigating a series of letters containing suspicious powder that were sent to election workers in multiple states — Georgia, Oregon and Washington — in recent days.
Rishi Sunak is weighing up whether to sack Suella Braverman after the Conservative Party descended into open warfare over her claim that police were “playing favourites” with protesters.
The home secretary defied Downing Street’s instructions to tone down an incendiary article for The Times in which she compared the pro-Palestinian rally — planned for central London on Armistice Day on Saturday — to sectarian marches held in Northern Ireland during the Troubles.
No 10 said it was attempting to “establish the detail” of how the article was published without formal approval amid claims that Braverman had breached the ministerial code. Labour and the Liberal Democrats have called for her to be sacked.
On Thursday night the prime minister was said to be weighing up Braverman’s future. It was claimed he may bring forward a cabinet reshuffle, planned for before Christmas, to dismiss her.
Among those being considered for her job is Oliver Dowden, the Cabinet Office minister and deputy prime minister, who is seen as a “safe pair of hands” by Downing Street.
Sunak may not be stupid, unlike his friend Cummings, but his judgement is personnel matters is so bad that even Indira Gandhi would be embarrassed.
Dowden is another person who read law at Cambridge, this is a government of people who read law at Cambridge (Steve Barclay and Lucy Frazer to name two more)
Braverman knows what she is doing and so does Starmer. Both think the next election is done and dusted and both are already thinking about what happens when the polls close and the posters are taken down.
Starmer presumably thinks an opposition Conservative Party led by Suella Braverman will never win an election - he may be right - so having her opposite him at the dispatch box ensures the continuation of his Government.
If I were being cynical, I'd argue Braverman is trying to maximise the scale of the Conservative defeat in the certain knowledge she will be one of the survivors and the membership (depleted though it may be) will still be there the other side of the poll. She may hold the view expressed by some on here that the incoming Government will soon become unpopular and she will be the beneficiary of that unpopularity in 2029. She is young enough to wait out the opposition years and get back in power.
Rishi Sunak is weighing up whether to sack Suella Braverman after the Conservative Party descended into open warfare over her claim that police were “playing favourites” with protesters.
The home secretary defied Downing Street’s instructions to tone down an incendiary article for The Times in which she compared the pro-Palestinian rally — planned for central London on Armistice Day on Saturday — to sectarian marches held in Northern Ireland during the Troubles.
No 10 said it was attempting to “establish the detail” of how the article was published without formal approval amid claims that Braverman had breached the ministerial code. Labour and the Liberal Democrats have called for her to be sacked.
On Thursday night the prime minister was said to be weighing up Braverman’s future. It was claimed he may bring forward a cabinet reshuffle, planned for before Christmas, to dismiss her.
Among those being considered for her job is Oliver Dowden, the Cabinet Office minister and deputy prime minister, who is seen as a “safe pair of hands” by Downing Street.
Sunak may not be stupid, unlike his friend Cummings, but his judgement is personnel matters is so bad that even Indira Gandhi would be embarrassed.
Dowden is another person who read law at Cambridge, this is a government of people who read law at Cambridge (Steve Barclay and Lucy Frazer to name two more)
I would say Sunak has excellent judgment.
They read it, but did they understand it?
At a Freshers reception held by the President of my college, the President’s wife asked me what I was reading. “Captain Correlli’s Mandolin” I replied innocently. She moved swiftly on.
If Suella is fired her supporters ought to launch a leadership bid.
Love it. A proper homage to deckchairs and the titanic.
Braverman supporters are the sort who regard lifeboats as a lifestyle choice.
More than anything it's a crap leadership bid, even with the insanity that is the current Tory party.
Look how quick Patel sank in the ConHome approval ratings doing half this sort of stuff. Why should Braverman fare any better? To my eyes, a lifeboat is a lifestyle choice for the Suellites themselves.
Looking at the YouGov date, England breaks 48-24-10 so that's an 18.5% swing from Conservative to Labour.
The 2019 Conservative vote splits 38% Conservative, 23% Don't Know, 11% Labour and 11% Reform - as I've remarked before, those are outlier numbers compared to other pollsters.
21% of women and 13% of men are Don't Knows - the age group with the largest numbers (25-44) has the biggest Labour lead.
A short video about the Beer Hall Putsch, which was 100 years ago today, from historian Mark Felton - interesting and concise, as ever. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-hDmm2itO0
Interesting question came up this evening in a do I was at. Is the surge of nimbyism yet another symptom of our ageing demographics? Not because the old have houses and don’t see the need to build more for the young (which is the usual argument). But because there are just more retired people around with nothing to do during the day but worry about developments in their neighbourhood, and time on their hands to write objection letters.
The planning system is almost tailor made for the retired.
When I look to modern Britain, I see an equivalent of all-powerful, societally damaging unions accruing economic rent.
Instead of the National Union of Miners and Arthur Scargill, I see Janet.
Janet Slimfast is 67. A former civil servant, she lives in her detached 3 bedroom house with her husband, Roy. Roy is an unreconstructed Ronnie Pickering. He hates cyclists, wears transition lenses, and thinks charity begins at home.
Janet is the most powerful person in British politics. Forget Rupert Murdoch. It’s all about janet_1954@btinternet.com.
I don't know how the Conservatives back away from Janet, because she is about the only voter they can rely on right now. But until they do... Blended family matriarch on a niche website.
A fun article. I know many Janets. Britain needs a new Labour Thatcher to break the Janet union barons.
I was wondering whether councils should consider charging for people to lodge a planning objection. Same price as an application.
Maybe it is all a dream, and Bozo will emerge from the shower?
Sunak won't sack Braverman until Monday if he has any sense; if he sacked her tomorrow and the Remembrance ceremony is disrupted she'll be telling everyone she is vindicated.
Maybe that's the way to think about it.
Suella is for the chop. She must know that.
By squealing about a risk this weekend, she buys herself some time. And if something does go wrong, it's not her fault, and she becomes unsackable.
It's horrible cynical , and blooming irresponsible to play this sort of game to save her pathetic career.
But that's politics (baby).
On the other hand, the Financial Times quotes an unnamed Tory backbencher as saying: "“Suppose something terrible happens over the weekend — there’s serious violence at the march — there’s a case to be made that she, as home secretary, has contributed to that ..." https://www.ft.com/content/71df0f40-2bd8-4493-9852-01f37a8fe0a6
That's a heck of a reach, even for a shit for brains wet Tory MP flapping their gums to the FT.
A short video about the Beer Hall Putsch, which was 100 years ago today, from historian Mark Felton - interesting and concise, as ever. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-hDmm2itO0
His videos on the events of the very end of the war are excellent.
Braverman knows what she is doing and so does Starmer. Both think the next election is done and dusted and both are already thinking about what happens when the polls close and the posters are taken down.
Starmer presumably thinks an opposition Conservative Party led by Suella Braverman will never win an election - he may be right - so having her opposite him at the dispatch box ensures the continuation of his Government.
If I were being cynical, I'd argue Braverman is trying to maximise the scale of the Conservative defeat in the certain knowledge she will be one of the survivors and the membership (depleted though it may be) will still be there the other side of the poll. She may hold the view expressed by some on here that the incoming Government will soon become unpopular and she will be the beneficiary of that unpopularity in 2029. She is young enough to wait out the opposition years and get back in power.
I think the only leadership ambitions she is bolstering are those of K Badenoch and J Cleverly. Certainly not S Braverman. I reckon she's a busted flush now. Lord Randolph Churchill redux.
If Suella is fired her supporters ought to launch a leadership bid.
Love it. A proper homage to deckchairs and the titanic.
Braverman supporters are the sort who regard lifeboats as a lifestyle choice.
More than anything it's a crap leadership bid, even with the insanity that is the current Tory party.
Look how quick Patel sank in the ConHome approval ratings doing half this sort of stuff. Why should Braverman fare any better? To my eyes, a lifeboat is a lifestyle choice for the Suellites themselves.
Not at all. It is merely another confirmation of its takeover by the swivel eyed loons. It is now competing with the Greens to be the least conservative party.
Comments
Stabbing him in the back.
Scrub that - she's stabbing him in the front.
Keep that stupid, lazy, ignorant, centralising twat Cummings away from it.
(He should have mentioned Vygotsky if he's going for Russian pedagogy, anyway.)
Suella is for the chop. She must know that.
By squealing about a risk this weekend, she buys herself some time. And if something does go wrong, it's not her fault, and she becomes unsackable.
It's horrible cynical , and blooming irresponsible to play this sort of game to save her pathetic career.
But that's politics (baby).
https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1722692987359023109
"“Suppose something terrible happens over the weekend — there’s serious violence at the march — there’s a case to be made that she, as home secretary, has contributed to that ..."
https://www.ft.com/content/71df0f40-2bd8-4493-9852-01f37a8fe0a6
https://twitter.com/AccountableGOP/status/1722443133793730937
What an unselfaware idiot he really is.
The irony being, of course, he is right, but he was himself the worst example of it.
Edit: Nigelb was there before me! I feel a right heel now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5i2Dj5YO3Q
Let’s hope for a little more polish, though.
Idiot.
Comer says he expects the Bidens to cooperate with investigations just like the Trumps did
https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1722372298794000824
Plus isn't there only one small remembrance ceremony on the day of the march? And the organization involved has said it's a free world and don't stop the demo on their account.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/nov/08/organiser-of-armistice-day-event-at-cenotaph-hopes-pro-palestine-protest-can-go-ahead
I'm beginning to feel confused about Armistice Day and Remembrance Day being different days but some folk talk as if they are one and the same ...
“Now back to where we started, Keir Starmer QC leader of the Labour Party. Smarter than Jez, cleverer than Ed, better looking than Gordon…”
Unfortunately I continued
“while he has narrowed the gap to Boris on favourability, he loses the personality test 64-30. You know the rest.”
https://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2020/06/06/the-case-for-making-personality-ratings-a-good-electoral-indicator/
And this GE seems to be one where charisma doesn’t matter, because there is none on offer
Imagine how dull the debates will be. Worse still, one of Sir Keir, Sunak or Ed Davey might try some kind of cringeworthy. stage managed attempt to show some charisma ; the political equivalent of a Dad dance. Rishi must be fav to do that, out of pure desperation
One of the strands in Cummings's career in public affairs is a rage against the tendency to entropy, chaos and eventual death. If only we would all just do what he told us, it would be organised and efficient and it would all work. Remember his plan to put all the key people in one room and pump all the data into their brains so they would know what needed to happen. (You see something similar in some of the government's favourite schools.)
It's just that nothing ever functions like that. I doubt that government is really a system described by thermodynamics, but the general principle is that a bit of imposed order here is always compensated by a larger bit of disorder somewhere else.
There's not a great deal to be done about that, except to splash about in the mess, try to enjoy it and cultivate the beautiful things that arise as a result.
Conservatives used to intuitively understand this sort of thing.
Although it does seem that Bibi is already over the hostage crisis.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/09/netanyahu-rejected-ceasefire-for-hostages-deal-in-gaza-sources-say
source: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/washington-post-deletes-editorial-cartoon-criticized-as-racist/ar-AA1jCHUT?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=8ecb184ac3b4407ff227954eadd64d72&ei=132
I planned to share that cartoon with you when it became publicly available, and so I didn't copy it. And I doubt that it will become publicly available any time soon.
(Except, of course, at Al Jazeera.)
(For the record: I would not have taken it down; it comes close to the line for me, but does not cross it. But then I am not facing any death threats, as the Post editors may be.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristallnacht
"Q. What if everyone in Great Britain went to one of the coasts and started paddling.
Could they move the island at all?
No."
Which may please or annoy both those who would like Britain closer to Europe, and those who would like it farther away.
However. It occurs to me that Britons could move the island by collecting wheelbarrows full of dirt and rocks from one side, and move them to the other.
(How long this would take is left as an exercise for the reader.)
But I don't think it is guaranteed.
The planning system is almost tailor made for the retired.
As the Conservatives are down to their core vote in the polls, what else do they have to lose?
The home secretary defied Downing Street’s instructions to tone down an incendiary article for The Times in which she compared the pro-Palestinian rally — planned for central London on Armistice Day on Saturday — to sectarian marches held in Northern Ireland during the Troubles.
No 10 said it was attempting to “establish the detail” of how the article was published without formal approval amid claims that Braverman had breached the ministerial code. Labour and the Liberal Democrats have called for her to be sacked.
On Thursday night the prime minister was said to be weighing up Braverman’s future. It was claimed he may bring forward a cabinet reshuffle, planned for before Christmas, to dismiss her.
Among those being considered for her job is Oliver Dowden, the Cabinet Office minister and deputy prime minister, who is seen as a “safe pair of hands” by Downing Street.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/suella-braverman-latest-news-rishi-sunak-sack-pro-palestinian-protest-2lsjzzvdg
Instead of the National Union of Miners and Arthur Scargill, I see Janet.
Janet Slimfast is 67. A former civil servant, she lives in her detached 3 bedroom house with her husband, Roy. Roy is an unreconstructed Ronnie Pickering. He hates cyclists, wears transition lenses, and thinks charity begins at home.
Janet is the most powerful person in British politics. Forget Rupert Murdoch. It’s all about janet_1954@btinternet.com.
https://www.himbonomics.com/p/-the-triumph-of-janet-
I don't know how the Conservatives back away from Janet, because she is about the only voter they can rely on right now. But until they do... Blended family matriarch on a niche website.
The risk is that it gives individual MPs time to panic and go for a sauve qui peut approach. Then it was the Euro, now it would be something like ECHR or the death penalty.
There's nearly always more to lose.
I would say Sunak has excellent judgment.
https://uk.yahoo.com/news/jeremy-corbyn-confirms-considering-running-102721827.html
I invite you to withdraw that vile calumny against those who read law at Cambridge.
We're still left with these others...
Edit - and didn't you read History?
https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1722723256791081296
Lettuce remember that for all her many faults, in her world leading 49 days as Prime Minister, Liz Truss still managed to sack Suella Braverman
Braverman knows what she is doing and so does Starmer. Both think the next election is done and dusted and both are already thinking about what happens when the polls close and the posters are taken down.
Starmer presumably thinks an opposition Conservative Party led by Suella Braverman will never win an election - he may be right - so having her opposite him at the dispatch box ensures the continuation of his Government.
If I were being cynical, I'd argue Braverman is trying to maximise the scale of the Conservative defeat in the certain knowledge she will be one of the survivors and the membership (depleted though it may be) will still be there the other side of the poll. She may hold the view expressed by some on here that the incoming Government will soon become unpopular and she will be the beneficiary of that unpopularity in 2029. She is young enough to wait out the opposition years and get back in power.
She sacked her Chancellor at the first sign of trouble.
The Braverman drama is indicative of a party that knows it faces a choice of defeat – or annihilation
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/11/09/are-we-witnessing-break-up-of-conservative-party/
Look how quick Patel sank in the ConHome approval ratings doing half this sort of stuff. Why should Braverman fare any better? To my eyes, a lifeboat is a lifestyle choice for the Suellites themselves.
The 2019 Conservative vote splits 38% Conservative, 23% Don't Know, 11% Labour and 11% Reform - as I've remarked before, those are outlier numbers compared to other pollsters.
21% of women and 13% of men are Don't Knows - the age group with the largest numbers (25-44) has the biggest Labour lead.
A short video about the Beer Hall Putsch, which was 100 years ago today, from historian Mark Felton - interesting and concise, as ever.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-hDmm2itO0
Ooooft.
A backbench Tory MP texts:
“Just like Liz Truss, Suella lacks the intellectual capacity to run a country.”
and have fiver on her at good odds as next leader...
Britain needs a new Labour Thatcher to break the Janet union barons.
I was wondering whether councils should consider charging for people to lodge a planning objection. Same price as an application.
If intellect were dynamite the Tories couldn't blow their nose.
over the water....