For those of my generation the news that the news that the boss of Saatchi & Saatchi has turned on the Tores is a big deal. This was the agency that played a huge part in the Maggie Thatcher election successes of the 1980s and for the boss to come out now and back Starmer is the perfect symbol of where Tory politics is now.
Comments
It was a fairly comfortable win. Not a landslide.
In 1979 however they played a key role in honing Thatcher's message that the economy wasn't working under Labour and in making her presentable and enabling her to win after just 5 years of Labour rule an election Callaghan was originally expected to see her off comfortably in
Not exactly journalism at its finest.
As people have stated the police approach now is not to kettle people, rather just film and investigate later. Surely damaging statues, bus stops etc are already vandalism, and again we have seen the courts really don't do much as the eco-fascists seem to have to get to strike 100 before they get any real punishment (and the number of cases where they got nothing e.g. the fire engine spraying paint everywhere).
The Met (to their credit and my personal surprise) have been considerably more robust in resisting political calls for bans than they might have been.
A lowered threshold would have taken away their strongest argument against the Home Secretary this last week.
So Richard Huntingdon is not the boss of Saatchi & Saatchi, he is the Chief Strategy Officer. That puts him around on the second tier of management for that particular agency.
Secondly, S&S are just one of literally >100 agency groups out there, many of whom also have a CSO. It is not a big deal.
Thirdly, S&S is now owned by Publicis. Some symbolism but not huge. And not sure how they will react to one of their CSO being on the front page.
I am. more surprised someone thought having a relatively senior (but will little real wuthority) ad exec expressing pro-Starmer views was front page news
One is banned, one is encouraged (though denied). It is left as an excersise to the reader as to which.
Out of interest, how are the Indy still going? They are online only now and their website is horrific. Their offering is significantly inferior to Times or Guardian.
Because the incredible thing is that Sunak does not seem to appreciate that Braverman staying in place really builds up the tarnish on the Tory brand. Leave this person in place to perform as she has over recent days and she will make Theresa May's "Nasty Party" look like childcare assistants.
How many votes does Sunak want to haemorrhage?
My concern would be for more niche issues where there isn't the political or numerical support so are much more vulnerable to a ban.
UK spending on the NHS is £176bn in 2023-24 covering circa 68 million people, £2,588 ($3,164) per person p.a.
So, that would appear to be several times cheaper per capita than Medicaid which from your figures looks like $7,058 per person p.a. ($600bn covering 85m people).
Of course, the NHS covers everyone, not just the poor and disabled, so it might be expected to have a healthier client base maybe?
(If anyone thinks I've made a mistake with any of those figures, please feel free to correct me.)
He has also proposed an offence of “having a flag that is associated with terrorism generally”. This could be the Shahada black flag, which “looked like the Islamic State flag but is not the Islamic state flag”, he added.
The review is also likely to look at proposals to lower the threshold at which a protest or march can be banned, such as by taking into account the impact on a community.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/11/12/suella-braverman-pro-palestinian-marches-cannot-go-on/
If we are not careful do we not get into situations like the OK hand sign, where it was a meme, then it was kinda of reality for a small number of white nationalists, but then it became witchfinder general stuff of guessing that somebody did it, therefore...
The reality these kind of laws only catch the most moronic e.g. having a call for Global Interfada banner.
The ones you have to worry about are the ones who know the rules, they know the line and they know how to signal what they mean. Hence why Nick Griffin was able to avoid trouble, where as Tommy Two Names just walks into again and again.
If the BoE waits for services inflation to fall before cutting rates we're going to be in the shit and just as we were way, way too late and slow in raising rates we're going to be too late and slow in cutting them.
Andrew Bailey is going to cost the Tories an extra 30-40 seats they would probably otherwise hold onto with interest rates falling by April to May next year and down to ~3.5% by election time in October-December.
I mean, I think the Tories are in for a shellacking, but that's still thin gruel for a headline. That's a blog post header at best.
And anyway, the police already have the required powers: they are simply scared of using them, because
1. they are intimidated by liberal media
2. they are intimidated by the fear of Muslim violence
and
3. they are individually scared they could be filmed and done for racism, and get cancelled
What the coppers need is a Home Sec to back them, to the hilt. Enforce the laws we already have
Managing the competing needs of free speech and the desire to protect vulnerable people from intimidating rhetoric is difficult. This is just something must be doneism
The question is less whether the Tories can be re elected again, which is highly unlikely but more whether they can narrow the gap
Wayne King (yes, I know, I know).
Queen (Elizabeth)
Visionary (Truss).
One of the golden greats of British political history, every day of her leadership an unforgettable experience.
THE TRUSS
I'm thinking...poster? From the back, three quarter profile, her looking sideways and down, some implement in her nearest hand (Sceptre. Let's go with that, looks good). Bisexual lighting, since Orange and Teal is too 2010s
Tag lines: "The women nobody knew. The PM nobody will forget". "Destiny. Nemesis". "Forget everything you've ever known". "Today is the day everything changes". "Everything you have done in your life has led to this moment".
Two names works best, as we know him for his assumed stage name and the name the Judge uses when passing sentence.
https://twitter.com/AlisonMoyet/status/1723702543144952183
This one I just can't.
https://twitter.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1723623367045992545
I could have added that some elderly are poor, too, so they get covered by both Medicare and Medicaid. (Medicare is much more generous, but doesn't cover everything Medicaid does.)
(Full disclosure: I am now enrolled in a Medicare "advantage" plan, which gives me additional benefits, such as dental, as long as I stay with the doctors and dentists who accept their coverage.
They will also pay for me to exercise at clubs under a "Silver Sneakers" plan. I am going to try to get them to help me get to snow so I can do more cross country skiing.
The plans must be quite profitable, since I have been seeing so many ads from the competing providers in this area, during the "open-enrollment" period that comes near the end of each year.)
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/11/12/tim-scott-presidential-campaign-00126793
...he remained at risk of failing to qualify for the next debate, which had even higher donor and polling criteria. The polling threshold for that debate, on Dec. 6 in Alabama, is 6 percent, a mark Scott has not been hitting. And the campaign had dwindling resources to try and improve his numbers, having spent significantly more than it had brought in. The campaign had $12.4 million in expenditures during the third fundraising quarter, while raising $4.6 million...
..Scott on Wednesday had just unveiled his girlfriend, after months of teasing her existence. Scott brought the woman, Mindy Noce, onstage for photos after the debate in Miami. He had faced questions throughout his candidacy about being a 58-year-old bachelor, though Scott assured an audience in Iowa in September that he was dating a “lovely Christian girl.”..
He does not appear to have passed Holac vetting.
https://twitter.com/HarryYorke1/status/1723623157863534925
Donald Trump
Ron DeSantis
Vivek Ramaswarmy
Nikki Haley
Chris Christie
(Plus Doug Burgum and Asa Hutchinson, who theoretically have campaigns still going).
Can’t see Christie making the next debate either, so we’ll be down to four serious contenders before the primaries even start. Does Trump turn up for the December debate, if it’s only going to be four of them?
Next.
Homeless people's tents in central London have been destroyed during a Met Police operation.
Refuse workers threw the tents into the back of their lorry on Huntley Street, Camden, at about 15:00 GMT on Friday.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-67392992
https://twitter.com/edleonklinger/status/1723789427137196260
Although she did turn the following two elections into landslides when the doubters, and there were many, were proved wrong.
1983 144 seat majority
1987 102 seat majority
She was helped in 1983 by the fact that Labour lurched to the hard Left, just as I expect the Conservatives to lurch to the hard Right. So she was up against someone repulsive to the centre ground of the British electorate.
History repeats itself. Has to. No one listens.
https://twitter.com/nexta_tv/status/1723775254147817633
London's streets are being polluted by hate.
Much of it from her.
I think deep-down she knows she's getting sucked into the same vortex Owen Jones did.
But none of us can solve that problem - we can though speak up, like the folk on the bus.
Of more interest is Maurice Saatchi's own list of failures in analysing how he lost an election:
I DID NOT convince the Party that if you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything.
I DID NOT dispel the illusion of research, which said that, as immigration was the number one issue in deciding how people vote, it should be the number one topic.
I DID NOT prevent economics, the Conservatives' former ace of trumps, becoming a 'second order issue.'
I DID NOT avoid the underestimation of public intelligence, as in the policy description 'Lower Taxes' when in fact taxes would be higher.
I found it startling how may of these mistakes are being repeated in 2023.
Score one for the pedants.
Shall we just say that binning HS2 hasn't exactly played well anywhere except in a few niche areas - and even then Chesham and Amersham is still subject to HS2 building work so may remain a Lib Dem seat.
To be fair, I agree with the central point that chanting in that way at a climate justice rally is a dodgy thing to do, but the worst thing in the clip in my view is the powerlessness she clearly felt as the man took the microphone and she realised she wasn't strong enough to get it back without assistance.
Imagine thinking that half a million people on a peaceful march calling for a ceasfire on armistice day are evil and are putting the cenotaph at risk
Imagine arguing that it's okay to kill babies on incubators because you've labelled them human
shields.
Imagine being on the same side as Tommy Robinson.
A number of respected PBers hold these views along with a couple that you wouldn't expect anything better
The NHS is pretty cheap, but also pretty awful at the moment. Central management by the DoH just isn't working.
Pupils should be taught maths, sciences, history (and the classics in particular).
Pupils should celebrate working-class culture, school experts say
Songs by The Specials and films such as Trainspotting could be part of the curriculum to challenge classism
Pulp sang about a rich student who wanted to live like “common people”. Now a book suggests the song should be studied at school, along with books, films and music that celebrate working-class culture.
Its authors, two education consultants — one a former teacher and both from working-class backgrounds — say schools must do more to raise standards among disadvantaged children and recognise their rich heritage rather than seeing it as a weakness.
They say meritocracy is “smoke and mirrors” and criticise social mobility as lifting a few working-class children away from their identity rather than challenging snobbery.
White working-class boys are some of the lowest achievers at school, on average, and their book says classroom attitudes must change to boost standards.
Day-to-day practices in England’s schools often unintentionally draw attention to family incomes and make children feel embarrassed and different, the book says. These include expensive uniform policies, non-uniform days and requests from teachers to bring in pencil cases.
Matt Bromley and Andy Griffith, the authors of The Working Classroom, say every school’s curriculum should celebrate working-class culture alongside the culture of dominant classes, but that poorer children should also not be excluded from “high culture”.
While every pupil should be offered the same ambitious curriculum, there should be more opportunities for working-class pupils to ensure equity.
“So much of what schools do is classist, including the way the curriculum is designed, the way the assessment system works and the impact of the hidden curriculum on students,” the book says.
“Social mobility implies lifting students out of the working classes and leaving behind all that they are and identify with. Rather, the aim of equity in education is to celebrate and embrace students’ working-class roots, while simultaneously ensuring those roots don’t take a stranglehold of their life chances.”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/pupils-should-celebrate-working-class-culture-school-experts-say-kv8nq7lr3
Humza Yousaf and his deputy are under pressure to refer themselves to the independent adviser for the ministerial code over suggestions they misled parliament.
The first minister and Shona Robison have been criticised after the Scottish government published a timeline of its dealings with the UK Covid-19 Inquiry and when it was asked to divulge WhatsApp messages.
The timeline showed that requests for messages had been made by the inquiry in February, as opposed to September as previously stated.
Last week the Scottish government handed over 14,000 messages to the inquiry, including unredacted correspondence from the first minister.
The timeline was laid out after the inquiry “asked us to set out in more detail the full timetable of requests for information of the Scottish government”, Robison said.
Both Yousaf and Robison have been accused by opposition leaders of misleading parliament. If they are found to have intentionally done so, they would be “expected to offer their resignation”, according to the ministerial code.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/humza-yousaf-and-shona-robison-accused-of-misleading-parliament-sknrvncs9
But they're Israeli, so they don't count on the Far Left.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/nov/12/police-say-suella-bravermans-claims-of-forces-bias-a-factor-in-attacks-on-them
A very serious criminal offence.
In parish news, any sightings of Big G?
Pathetic mate
If there was one film that put me off trying drugs it was Trainspotting.
Babies dead 40 vs 5000 speaks for itself for right minded people far right people don't care about the many only the few
Much of the underground infrastructure was built by Israel when the expanded the hospital during the last occupation.
Which is why they know it's there.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Shifa_Hospital
The choice to use it as a military base is Hamas's responsibility, of course.
It's one of the reasons for the massive commercial success of K-pop.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/nov/12/k-pop-reggaeton-english-language-music-
https://www.derbytelegraph.co.uk/news/derby-news/police-investigating-israel-tweet-former-8843171