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What are Ministers for? – politicalbetting.com

SystemSystem Posts: 12,161
edited November 2023 in General


What are Ministers for? – politicalbetting.com

A key issue in the Post Office (“PO”) scandal is what the government, was doing – or not – while it happened. It is not within the inquiry’s scope, that being written by politicians and civil servants whose behaviour, or that of their predecessors, would otherwise be uncomfortably scrutinised. Let’s look anyway.

Read the full story here

«1345

Comments

  • 1st!
    I recommend "The Great Post Office Trial on Radio 4 at 13:45 daily.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 32,549
    edited November 2023
    I was astonished to read in this article that a postmistress was still being pursued by the Post Office as recently as 2016.

    "Former Newcastle sub-postmistress accused of stealing £40k in Horizon Post Office scandal furious after missing out on compensation
    Newcastle mum Shazia Saddiq said her life was "destroyed" when she was wrongly accused of stealing £40,000 in the Post Office Horizon scandal

    In October 2016, Shazia was suspended for 'stealing' money from the Westgate Hill branch and said she was forced to flee her home with her two children after being attacked in the street following the false accusation. Although Shazia was never charged and prosecuted by the Post Office, she says her life was "destroyed" by the scandal."

    https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/newcastle-horizon-post-office-scandal-27827300
  • HeathenerHeathener Posts: 7,084
    edited November 2023
    Good morning all. The P.O. scandal is disgraceful and well done for keeping on it.

    However, my attention is inevitably drawn this morning to the civil war in the Conservative party. Good lord, I’ve seen the GB News People Polling opinion poll giving Labour a 30 point lead

    Labour 49%
    Cons 19%
    LibDems 9%

    This is the first poll properly conducted after the, erm, ‘reshuffle’ and Braverman’s onslaught against Sunak. Dates conducted were yesterday.

    However, I would suggest some caution. Although internal party civil war never looks good, and although this may reflect Red Wall anger, it may be a rogue poll.
  • HeathenerHeathener Posts: 7,084
    This is GB News front page. The first time I have ever visited the site. I totally missed their point that ReformUK are on 11%. Blimey.


  • HeathenerHeathener Posts: 7,084
    edited November 2023
    So the sacking of Suella Braverman and return of David Cameron has had a negative polling impact? As I suggested might be the case.

    I don’t think many in the blue wall will return. That goose is cooked. But they will lose even more of Boris’ 2019 voters.
  • HeathenerHeathener Posts: 7,084
    Putting the People Polling raw data into Electoral Calculus, without any tactical voting, produces a Labour majority of 458.

    :p
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 42,572
    Heathener said:

    Good morning all. The P.O. scandal is disgraceful and well done for keeping on it.

    However, my attention is inevitably drawn this morning to the civil war in the Conservative party. Good lord, I’ve seen the GB News People Polling opinion poll giving Labour a 30 point lead

    Labour 49%
    Cons 19%
    LibDems 9%

    This is the first poll properly conducted after the, erm, ‘reshuffle’ and Braverman’s onslaught against Sunak. Dates conducted were yesterday.

    However, I would suggest some caution. Although internal party civil war never looks good, and although this may reflect Red Wall anger, it may be a rogue poll.

    IMV it's definitely a rogue poll.

    "Although internal party civil war never looks good,"

    Well, Labour may be facing one of those this week, over Israel/Palestine. It'll be interesting to see how Starmer handles it - and an indication of how he will behave and act when he is PM.
  • HeathenerHeathener Posts: 7,084

    Heathener said:

    Good morning all. The P.O. scandal is disgraceful and well done for keeping on it.

    However, my attention is inevitably drawn this morning to the civil war in the Conservative party. Good lord, I’ve seen the GB News People Polling opinion poll giving Labour a 30 point lead

    Labour 49%
    Cons 19%
    LibDems 9%

    This is the first poll properly conducted after the, erm, ‘reshuffle’ and Braverman’s onslaught against Sunak. Dates conducted were yesterday.

    However, I would suggest some caution. Although internal party civil war never looks good, and although this may reflect Red Wall anger, it may be a rogue poll.

    IMV it's definitely a rogue poll.

    […]
    Good morning JJ.

    definitely?

    I’m not sure you are right about this. There seems to be genuine fury on the right. 11% for Reform UK is probably not to be dismissed too lightly.

    I’m not really paying a lot of attention to Labour at the moment and I don’t think the electorate are either. When the governing party are monopolising the UK news, for good or ill, the opposition parties don’t tend to get a look in. If Keir Starmer is sorting out his lefties then it’s probably not going to make much of a splash.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 71,067
    edited November 2023
    Heathener said:

    Good morning all. The P.O. scandal is disgraceful and well done for keeping on it.

    However, my attention is inevitably drawn this morning to the civil war in the Conservative party....

    That unfortunately illustrates the sort of response which has helped perpetuate this kind of behaviour in government.

    If a change of government is to mean anything, a little more attention to issues, and less to party politics is necessary.

    Read the header again - successive governments of all political stripes did absolutely nothing about this.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 42,572
    edited November 2023
    Heathener said:

    Heathener said:

    Good morning all. The P.O. scandal is disgraceful and well done for keeping on it.

    However, my attention is inevitably drawn this morning to the civil war in the Conservative party. Good lord, I’ve seen the GB News People Polling opinion poll giving Labour a 30 point lead

    Labour 49%
    Cons 19%
    LibDems 9%

    This is the first poll properly conducted after the, erm, ‘reshuffle’ and Braverman’s onslaught against Sunak. Dates conducted were yesterday.

    However, I would suggest some caution. Although internal party civil war never looks good, and although this may reflect Red Wall anger, it may be a rogue poll.

    IMV it's definitely a rogue poll.

    […]
    Good morning JJ.

    definitely?

    I’m not sure you are right about this. There seems to be genuine fury on the right. 11% for Reform UK is probably not to be dismissed too lightly.

    I’m not really paying a lot of attention to Labour at the moment and I don’t think the electorate are either. When the governing party are monopolising the UK news, for good or ill, the opposition parties don’t tend to get a look in. If Keir Starmer is sorting out his lefties then it’s probably not going to make much of a splash.
    "Genuine fury on the right"

    If you're talking about Cameron's appointment and Suella's sacking, then surely that will have taken place too recently to be reflected in the poll? when was the polling data taken? Even then, I doubt the 'fury' manifests itself in quite that way.

    As for Labour; they're having a fair few councillors resign over the Israel/Palestine situation, and might even lose control over councils. That's a sign of fury on the left; and although I doubt it will hurt Starmer's chances much, they're people who won't turn out to support Labour in a campaign - although most of these are in very Labour seats. The real danger for him comes if they form new parties, with candidates standing against Labour. even then though, probably not enough to swing very red seats.

    edit: Oh, and good morning. Hope you're hale and hearty.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 71,067
    Your best ever article, IMO, Cyclefree..

    Should be required reading for every incoming minister.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 49,859
    Nigelb said:

    Heathener said:

    Good morning all. The P.O. scandal is disgraceful and well done for keeping on it.

    However, my attention is inevitably drawn this morning to the civil war in the Conservative party....

    That unfortunately illustrates the sort of response which has helped perpetuate this kind of behaviour in government.

    If a change of government is to mean anything, a little more attention to issues, and less to party politics is necessary.

    Read the header again - successive governments of all political stripes did absolutely nothing about this.
    Not quite - the government, through its agency the DWP, was a partner to the original Horizon project, which wasted £millions trying to put in a computer system that didn’t have minor glitches (if ones with catestrophic human consequences) but didn’t work at all, and was widely known to a disaster of a project. The original idea having been to automate benefit payments and integrate payment through post offices.

    When it came to Horizon 2, the government pulled out of the project altogether, leaving the PO and Fujitsu to press on alone, and the rest is history.

    I expect those in government who knew a little about it were simply pleased to be out from under and thought they had washed their hands of the whole affair.
  • Our lame duck prime minister has made his most irrational move yet
    The fabric of Britain has fallen into disrepair and foreign ownership makes it much harder to reverse

    The consequences of this country’s naive help-yourself attitude to foreign takeovers are everywhere.

    The pipes that carry the nation’s water to our homes are leaking millions of litres of water every day.

    Car manufacturers have repeatedly threatened to pack up and leave unless the state hands over hundreds of millions of pounds in subsidies, and thousands of steel workers have become pawns in this Government’s yearning for a post-Brexit trade deal with India.

    Meanwhile, strategic assets such as our airports, ports and even the pipeline that sends gas around the UK are traded like pieces on a Monopoly board without a thought for the wider national interest.

    Swathes of this country’s vital infrastructure and key industries have ended up in the hands of unaccountable overseas investors, and private equity companies, who have routinely prioritised dividend payments and executive bonuses over basic yet necessary capital investment.

    As a result, the fabric of Britain has fallen into disrepair and foreign ownership makes it much harder to reverse.

    Elsewhere, some of the most promising firms in high-growth sectors such as engineering, software, and cyber-security have vanished abroad without so much as a whimper.

    Unforgivably, in some instances such as telecoms and attempts to replace our aging fleet of nuclear power stations, we’ve rolled out the red carpet to regimes that are outwardly hostile to Britain and actively seek to harm our interests.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/11/14/british-industry-foreign-investment-national-security-china/ (£££)

    The government (in the shape of Oliver Dowden) is now planning to weaken what little protection we have against foreign takeovers, just months after telling us how well its new takeover regime was performing.
  • rkrkrkrkrkrk Posts: 8,295
    This private eye report is a helpful explainer: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.private-eye.co.uk/pictures/special_reports/justice-lost-in-the-post.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjd_Yz8qsWCAxUjWkEAHWNtC8o4FBAWegQIFRAB&usg=AOvVaw26vsqdJSjMliH866DoEdhS

    One thing which comes out to me is that individual MPs, through the constituency system raised concerns - and seem to have been crucial to getting things out into the open.

    Investigative journalism also has really proved its worth.

    The system hasn't worked... but I suspect this never would have come to light without them.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 54,582
    Another excellent piece @Cyclefree, one of the biggest scandals in living memory.

    Notable in that the decisions were made deliberately and over a number of years, under governments of all colours, rather than as a reaction to a single tragic event. So much more like the Rotherham child abuse scandal, as opposed to Hillsborough or Aberfan.

    Have you thought about writing a book on the Post Office and other scandals over the years?
  • Good article as always Cyclefree.
    Sandpit said:

    Another excellent piece @Cyclefree, one of the biggest scandals in living memory.

    Notable in that the decisions were made deliberately and over a number of years, under governments of all colours, rather than as a reaction to a single tragic event. So much more like the Rotherham child abuse scandal, as opposed to Hillsborough or Aberfan.

    Have you thought about writing a book on the Post Office and other scandals over the years?

    This is an excellent idea, if she's interested. 👍
  • Good article.

    In short, it's much easier to blame others (be it in an institution or in a report) than take responsibility and, what most people seem to think that means, is resigning when things go wrong - so they rarely if ever do.

    What we need to teach is basic values of integrity, and that's what our leaders need to emulate and model - rather than rewarding blind loyalty.
  • Excellent header on the Post Office scandal and the role of the government. The one part where I might raise an eyebrow is the parenthetical lauding of the private sector which too has its fair share, even some involving lawyers as reported on yesterday's thread.

    But yes, where was the government? And the opposition? And the mainstream media, the fourth estate, once the scandal started to be reported in Computer Weekly and Private Eye?
  • FishingFishing Posts: 5,035
    Nigelb said:

    Heathener said:

    Good morning all. The P.O. scandal is disgraceful and well done for keeping on it.

    However, my attention is inevitably drawn this morning to the civil war in the Conservative party....

    That unfortunately illustrates the sort of response which has helped perpetuate this kind of behaviour in government.

    If a change of government is to mean anything, a little more attention to issues, and less to party politics is necessary.

    Read the header again - successive governments of all political stripes did absolutely nothing about this.
    But the lazy, short-termist, centrist blob that has run this country for the past generation has no interest in tackling "issues", as this involves unpopularity in the short- to medium- term. And the complacent electorate has penalised them when they try to do so. So I'm afraid we, like most European countries, are set for at least another few years of stagnation or gentle decline.
  • On the polling, I'd be surprised if the reshuffle moved the dial much.

    I thought on Sunday a move for Suella wasn't happening because of the ruckus it would cause in the party - I couldn't see a political advantage.

    David Cameron coming back is actually a good move - he benefited from Hague's experience in the run up to 2010, as did Brown from Mandelson - but giving an impression of surrendering the right flank is dangerous.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 49,859
    Behr in the Guardian:

    Sunak’s decision to bring David Cameron back into government is a bold act of surrender. It is an admission that the only way out of the mess the Tories are in might be back the way they came.

    Whatever comes next, it won’t bolster Sunak’s claim to be a change candidate, campaigning to end 30 years of failed orthodoxy. As a general election strategy, that already looked far-fetched when it was rehearsed at the Conservative conference last month. Now it is dead. A prime minister driven by a sincere commitment to wiping the political slate clean would use a cabinet reshuffle to showcase talented young MPs, all loyal to their leader’s vision. Cameron filled a high-profile vacancy because no such cadre exists.

    Sunak…seems disoriented by his inability to succeed as prime minister and wounded by the country’s ingratitude in failing to recognise the hard work he is putting in on its behalf. There is a ring of personal defeat about the decision to call in Cameron at this stage.

    Sunak is harking back to an idea of what the Conservative party was before 2016, before the Brexit revolution. But that isn’t the party he leads. He is borrowing political capital from the Tory past to bail himself out in the present, desperate to stop the slide into electoral insolvency.
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 119,630
    edited November 2023
    Heathener said:

    Putting the People Polling raw data into Electoral Calculus, without any tactical voting, produces a Labour majority of 458.

    :p

    You are reading too much into a pollster that doesn't adhere to BPC rules and may be removed from the BPC if they don't change.
  • Nigelb said:

    Heathener said:

    Good morning all. The P.O. scandal is disgraceful and well done for keeping on it.

    However, my attention is inevitably drawn this morning to the civil war in the Conservative party....

    That unfortunately illustrates the sort of response which has helped perpetuate this kind of behaviour in government.

    If a change of government is to mean anything, a little more attention to issues, and less to party politics is necessary.

    Read the header again - successive governments of all political stripes did absolutely nothing about this.
    @Heathener is a ramper who sees it as her role to set the tone beneath the line each morning as part of her duties to Labour.

    I expect her to rapidly disappear post election.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 54,582
    IanB2 said:

    Our lame duck prime minister has made his most irrational move yet
    The fabric of Britain has fallen into disrepair and foreign ownership makes it much harder to reverse

    The consequences of this country’s naive help-yourself attitude to foreign takeovers are everywhere.

    The pipes that carry the nation’s water to our homes are leaking millions of litres of water every day.

    Car manufacturers have repeatedly threatened to pack up and leave unless the state hands over hundreds of millions of pounds in subsidies, and thousands of steel workers have become pawns in this Government’s yearning for a post-Brexit trade deal with India.

    Meanwhile, strategic assets such as our airports, ports and even the pipeline that sends gas around the UK are traded like pieces on a Monopoly board without a thought for the wider national interest.

    Swathes of this country’s vital infrastructure and key industries have ended up in the hands of unaccountable overseas investors, and private equity companies, who have routinely prioritised dividend payments and executive bonuses over basic yet necessary capital investment.

    As a result, the fabric of Britain has fallen into disrepair and foreign ownership makes it much harder to reverse.

    Elsewhere, some of the most promising firms in high-growth sectors such as engineering, software, and cyber-security have vanished abroad without so much as a whimper.

    Unforgivably, in some instances such as telecoms and attempts to replace our aging fleet of nuclear power stations, we’ve rolled out the red carpet to regimes that are outwardly hostile to Britain and actively seek to harm our interests.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/11/14/british-industry-foreign-investment-national-security-china/ (£££)

    The government (in the shape of Oliver Dowden) is now planning to weaken what little protection we have against foreign takeovers, just months after telling us how well its new takeover regime was performing.

    It is certainly remarkable how different our attitude is from, well, almost everywhere else. Even the home of global free capitalism the US protects its economic national interests more doggedly.
    As someone said on here the other day, it all started to go wrong when the balance of payments figures stopped being reported as front page news.

    We need to export more as a country, otherwise the incoming money starts buying up shares and property instead.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 49,859

    Excellent header on the Post Office scandal and the role of the government. The one part where I might raise an eyebrow is the parenthetical lauding of the private sector which too has its fair share, even some involving lawyers as reported on yesterday's thread.

    But yes, where was the government? And the opposition? And the mainstream media, the fourth estate, once the scandal started to be reported in Computer Weekly and Private Eye?

    As I say above, the fact that the government itself had walked away from the project surely provided a strong disincentive for anyone to go back asking questions about it. The government (by which I really mean the officials) view about it would have been that it was a lucky escape, stay away from it and leave the PO to sort out its internal issues. Little will anyone inside government, politician or official, have imagined that the whole thing would eventually blow up and come back to bite them big time, not least in having to pick up the final bill.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 42,572
    An interesting chart on healthcare. Is NHS really the 'envy of the world' ?

    https://twitter.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1724368034343641598

    Although it does show that we do not want a US-style system...
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 37,347

    On the polling, I'd be surprised if the reshuffle moved the dial much.

    I thought on Sunday a move for Suella wasn't happening because of the ruckus it would cause in the party - I couldn't see a political advantage.

    David Cameron coming back is actually a good move - he benefited from Hague's experience in the run up to 2010, as did Brown from Mandelson - but giving an impression of surrendering the right flank is dangerous.

    She had become wildly unpopular with voters in general, and she saw it as her role to make increasingly offensive comments, rather than get on with her job.
  • So Chelsea should be stripped off all honours won under Abramovich and should also be relegated 10 divisions.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/15/chelsea-fc-face-new-questions-over-how-roman-abramovich-funded-success
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 37,347
    Another excellent header.

    The management may be second rate (is that too kind?), but they have first rate egos, and draw first rate salaries.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,263
    Morning


  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,372
    FPT

    Sarah Vine: "I can't help thinking that if Sunak was going to resurrect the ghost of any Prime Minister past, he might have been better off choosing the one who inspired an 80-seat majority — and not the one who lost a referendum and then walked away."

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-12749625/SARAH-VINE-David-Camerons-decent-White-Lady-Rishi-Sunak-resurrect-ghost-PM.html

    She starts with a false premise - that she thinks.

    As for the rest, bringing back a known criminal and perjurer would have been a hundred times worse than bringing back a dodgy lobbyist. Leaving aside the fact that Johnson was an unmitigated fiasco in every major government role he held.

    But then, she married Michael Gove, her judgement is clearly not of the best.
  • Sean_F said:

    On the polling, I'd be surprised if the reshuffle moved the dial much.

    I thought on Sunday a move for Suella wasn't happening because of the ruckus it would cause in the party - I couldn't see a political advantage.

    David Cameron coming back is actually a good move - he benefited from Hague's experience in the run up to 2010, as did Brown from Mandelson - but giving an impression of surrendering the right flank is dangerous.

    She had become wildly unpopular with voters in general, and she saw it as her role to make increasingly offensive comments, rather than get on with her job.
    Key word being increasingly.

    Had Rishi not sacked her, it's pretty likely that Suella would have kept upping the ante until he had to.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,372
    Leon said:

    Morning


    You survived the turbulence you were complaining about then?

    And your flight seems to have got there too...
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,372
    Sean_F said:

    Another excellent header.

    The management may be second rate (is that too kind?), but they have first rate egos, and draw first rate salaries.

    Very unkind.

    To second rate people.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 49,859
    edited November 2023
    Sean_F said:

    Another excellent header.

    The management may be second rate (is that too kind?), but they have first rate egos, and draw first rate salaries.

    Ironic, since as a bastion of the public sector, the GPO, then the PO and then Royal Mail, had a long tradition of breeding and training its own and promoting through the ranks. Even the graduate entry scheme, introduced in the early 80s with my good self as one of the early participants, was seen as revolutionary and strongly resisted, and resented, within the company. The jobs were secure with good benefits but salary packages nowhere near private sector levels, and the general view of management was that it was solid and honest but conservative and unimaginative; the advantage of having managers with a deep career-long understanding of what is a surprisingly complex business was never fully appreciated.

    With moves toward privatisation, first under new Labour and eventually delivered by the coalition, came a desire to parachute in senior managers with private sector experience, who supposedly knew how to manage and would cut through all the ‘civil service culture’ that the politicians thought was holding the company back. Hence the likes of Vennells, brought in for her private sector experience, trained by Unilever and having worked for a stack of private sector retailers. To attract these people, the £££ for the senior pay packages exploded. These were supposed to be people who knew what they were doing, and how to manage, and would show the rest of us how it should be done. With the drawback that they didn’t really understand what they were managing, because in the private sector a deep understanding and experience of what you are managing isn’t assumed to be important, management seen as a generic skill that you can learn in an MBA classroom.



  • Sean_F said:

    Another excellent header.

    The management may be second rate (is that too kind?), but they have first rate egos, and draw first rate salaries.

    I think the Post Office had/have the same problem as Suella Braverman.

    They are both arrogant and ignorant, that's a toxic mix.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 54,582

    An interesting chart on healthcare. Is NHS really the 'envy of the world' ?

    https://twitter.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1724368034343641598

    Although it does show that we do not want a US-style system...

    No-one who’s ever lived in another OECD country, would describe the NHS as such.

    Sounds like Israel is the place to be for healthcare, although I suspect that their very young population skew distorts the figure a little.

    Has anybody actually taken to time to go and look at what Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Korea, are doing right?

    Yes, the US is a outlier in the other direction. Massive spending for very average outcomes. But we all knew that, and no-one wants to replicate the Amercian system anywhere either. It’s a useful bogeyman for defenders of the NHS though.
  • IanB2 said:

    Our lame duck prime minister has made his most irrational move yet
    The fabric of Britain has fallen into disrepair and foreign ownership makes it much harder to reverse

    The consequences of this country’s naive help-yourself attitude to foreign takeovers are everywhere.

    The pipes that carry the nation’s water to our homes are leaking millions of litres of water every day.

    Car manufacturers have repeatedly threatened to pack up and leave unless the state hands over hundreds of millions of pounds in subsidies, and thousands of steel workers have become pawns in this Government’s yearning for a post-Brexit trade deal with India.

    Meanwhile, strategic assets such as our airports, ports and even the pipeline that sends gas around the UK are traded like pieces on a Monopoly board without a thought for the wider national interest.

    Swathes of this country’s vital infrastructure and key industries have ended up in the hands of unaccountable overseas investors, and private equity companies, who have routinely prioritised dividend payments and executive bonuses over basic yet necessary capital investment.

    As a result, the fabric of Britain has fallen into disrepair and foreign ownership makes it much harder to reverse.

    Elsewhere, some of the most promising firms in high-growth sectors such as engineering, software, and cyber-security have vanished abroad without so much as a whimper.

    Unforgivably, in some instances such as telecoms and attempts to replace our aging fleet of nuclear power stations, we’ve rolled out the red carpet to regimes that are outwardly hostile to Britain and actively seek to harm our interests.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/11/14/british-industry-foreign-investment-national-security-china/ (£££)

    The government (in the shape of Oliver Dowden) is now planning to weaken what little protection we have against foreign takeovers, just months after telling us how well its new takeover regime was performing.

    It is certainly remarkable how different our attitude is from, well, almost everywhere else. Even the home of global free capitalism the US protects its economic national interests more doggedly.
    Once you understand that our "natural party of government" is a wholly owned subsidiary of footloose global capital everything else that happens here makes a lot more sense.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,263
    edited November 2023
    Sean_F said:

    On the polling, I'd be surprised if the reshuffle moved the dial much.

    I thought on Sunday a move for Suella wasn't happening because of the ruckus it would cause in the party - I couldn't see a political advantage.

    David Cameron coming back is actually a good move - he benefited from Hague's experience in the run up to 2010, as did Brown from Mandelson - but giving an impression of surrendering the right flank is dangerous.

    She had become wildly unpopular with voters in general, and she saw it as her role to make increasingly offensive comments, rather than get on with her job.
    I think that’s bollocks

    How many people really knew who she was until yesterday? Not many

    Sunak got taken in my duplicitous liberal hysteria
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 42,572
    Sandpit said:

    An interesting chart on healthcare. Is NHS really the 'envy of the world' ?

    https://twitter.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1724368034343641598

    Although it does show that we do not want a US-style system...

    No-one who’s ever lived in another OECD country, would describe the NHS as such.

    Sounds like Israel is the place to be for healthcare, although I suspect that their very young population skew distorts the figure a little.

    Has anybody actually taken to time to go and look at what Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Korea, are doing right?

    Yes, the US is a outlier in the other direction. Massive spending for very average outcomes. But we all knew that, and no-one wants to replicate the Amercian system anywhere either. It’s a useful bogeyman for defenders of the NHS though.
    The problem is it won't just be about healthcare, as you indicate wrt Israel. Demographics and lifestyle choices all impact on the left-hand axis, as well as healthcare. If we killed everyone reaching 65, we'd probably look really, really good on that chart (not that I'm advocating that, obvs...)
  • Inflation down to 4.6%.

    A good start to the day for Sunak.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,263

    Leon said:

    Sean_F said:

    On the polling, I'd be surprised if the reshuffle moved the dial much.

    I thought on Sunday a move for Suella wasn't happening because of the ruckus it would cause in the party - I couldn't see a political advantage.

    David Cameron coming back is actually a good move - he benefited from Hague's experience in the run up to 2010, as did Brown from Mandelson - but giving an impression of surrendering the right flank is dangerous.

    She had become wildly unpopular with voters in general, and she saw it as her role to make increasingly offensive comments, rather than get on with her job.
    I think that’s bollocks

    How many people really knew who she was until yesterday? Not many

    Sunak got taken in my duplicitous liberal hysteria
    Freudian typo.

    Utterly magnificent.
    I think I’ve seen more entertaining typos. But if it pleases you, be my guest
  • El_CapitanoEl_Capitano Posts: 4,239
    Heathener said:

    Putting the People Polling raw data into Electoral Calculus, without any tactical voting, produces a Labour majority of 458.

    :p

    People Polling and Electoral Calculus? You may as well use a random number generator.
  • Leon said:

    Sean_F said:

    On the polling, I'd be surprised if the reshuffle moved the dial much.

    I thought on Sunday a move for Suella wasn't happening because of the ruckus it would cause in the party - I couldn't see a political advantage.

    David Cameron coming back is actually a good move - he benefited from Hague's experience in the run up to 2010, as did Brown from Mandelson - but giving an impression of surrendering the right flank is dangerous.

    She had become wildly unpopular with voters in general, and she saw it as her role to make increasingly offensive comments, rather than get on with her job.
    I think that’s bollocks

    How many people really knew who she was until yesterday? Not many

    Sunak got taken in my duplicitous liberal hysteria
    76% of the public have heard of her and only 15% have a positive opinion of her according to YouGov. So you're wrong.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,263
    Sandpit said:

    An interesting chart on healthcare. Is NHS really the 'envy of the world' ?

    https://twitter.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1724368034343641598

    Although it does show that we do not want a US-style system...

    No-one who’s ever lived in another OECD country, would describe the NHS as such.

    Sounds like Israel is the place to be for healthcare, although I suspect that their very young population skew distorts the figure a little.

    Has anybody actually taken to time to go and look at what Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Korea, are doing right?

    Yes, the US is an outlier in the other direction. Massive spending for very average outcomes. But we all knew that, and no-one wants to replicate the Amercian system anywhere either. It’s a useful bogeyman for defenders of the NHS though.
    Its a graph of good diets and lifestyles versus bad diets and lifestyles

  • ChrisChris Posts: 11,748

    Heathener said:

    Putting the People Polling raw data into Electoral Calculus, without any tactical voting, produces a Labour majority of 458.

    :p

    You are reading too much into a pollster that doesn't adhere to BPC rules and may be removed from the BPC if they don't change.
    Do they even do regular voting intention polls? The "Polls" link on their website produces a 404 error. The most recent "Selected media coverage" link led to a poll from December last year (which also had the Tories on 19%, incidentally).
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 42,572
    Leon said:

    Sean_F said:

    On the polling, I'd be surprised if the reshuffle moved the dial much.

    I thought on Sunday a move for Suella wasn't happening because of the ruckus it would cause in the party - I couldn't see a political advantage.

    David Cameron coming back is actually a good move - he benefited from Hague's experience in the run up to 2010, as did Brown from Mandelson - but giving an impression of surrendering the right flank is dangerous.

    She had become wildly unpopular with voters in general, and she saw it as her role to make increasingly offensive comments, rather than get on with her job.
    I think that’s bollocks

    How many people really knew who she was until yesterday? Not many

    Sunak got taken in my duplicitous liberal hysteria
    PB's biggest hysteric claiming someone else is hysterical...

    With the added bonus of LIBERAL !
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,263

    Leon said:

    Sean_F said:

    On the polling, I'd be surprised if the reshuffle moved the dial much.

    I thought on Sunday a move for Suella wasn't happening because of the ruckus it would cause in the party - I couldn't see a political advantage.

    David Cameron coming back is actually a good move - he benefited from Hague's experience in the run up to 2010, as did Brown from Mandelson - but giving an impression of surrendering the right flank is dangerous.

    She had become wildly unpopular with voters in general, and she saw it as her role to make increasingly offensive comments, rather than get on with her job.
    I think that’s bollocks

    How many people really knew who she was until yesterday? Not many

    Sunak got taken in my duplicitous liberal hysteria
    76% of the public have heard of her and only 15% have a positive opinion of her according to YouGov. So you're wrong.
    But I say “really” knew

    Somebody on PB yesterday described her as a panto villain. I think that’s right. The average punter - I suspect - feels he’s meant to hiss when he sees that person coz others hiss. But he doesn’t really know why

    I don’t think Sunak would have sustained much political damage if he’d kept her on and told the guardian to do one. And he would have gained on the right

    However he sacked her - idiotically - and now he’s got open civil war. But it’s ok coz he’s elevated David Cameron to the lords so Dave can take more taxpayers money, that should be popular
  • HeathenerHeathener Posts: 7,084
    Nigelb said:

    Heathener said:

    Good morning all. The P.O. scandal is disgraceful and well done for keeping on it.

    However, my attention is inevitably drawn this morning to the civil war in the Conservative party....

    That unfortunately illustrates the sort of response which has helped perpetuate this kind of behaviour in government.

    If a change of government is to mean anything, a little more attention to issues, and less to party politics is necessary.
    Well, to be fair I made clear that my attention was drawn to today’s opinion poll. I thought I was rather reasonable in acknowledging the importance of the P.O. issue but that I personally found, and still do, the internal wranglings of the government to be interesting.

    As this is a political betting site and I was commenting on an opinion poll I’m not sure your attack was particularly appropriate but chacun a son gout

    x
  • Inflation down to 4.6%.

    A good start to the day for Sunak.

    Further progress towards 2% will be hard and slow though, so interest rates not likely to fall significantly until late 2025.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,372

    Sean_F said:

    Another excellent header.

    The management may be second rate (is that too kind?), but they have first rate egos, and draw first rate salaries.

    I think the Post Office had/have the same problem as Suella Braverman.

    They are both arrogant and ignorant, that's a toxic mix.
    Could also be said of the DfE, DfT, OFQUAL, OFSTED, the Treasury, the DoH, Oxford University's History faculty, the people running the MA in public policy at Birkbeck...

    It's a long list of people involved in running our country and not in a good way.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,248
    ydoethur said:

    Sean_F said:

    Another excellent header.

    The management may be second rate (is that too kind?), but they have first rate egos, and draw first rate salaries.

    I think the Post Office had/have the same problem as Suella Braverman.

    They are both arrogant and ignorant, that's a toxic mix.
    Could also be said of the DfE, DfT, OFQUAL, OFSTED, the Treasury, the DoH, Oxford University's History faculty, the people running the MA in public policy at Birkbeck...

    It's a long list of people involved in running our country and not in a good way.
    Must finish header.

    Has anyone else noticed what these people worship, and why?
  • Sandpit said:

    An interesting chart on healthcare. Is NHS really the 'envy of the world' ?

    https://twitter.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1724368034343641598

    Although it does show that we do not want a US-style system...

    No-one who’s ever lived in another OECD country, would describe the NHS as such.

    Sounds like Israel is the place to be for healthcare, although I suspect that their very young population skew distorts the figure a little.

    Has anybody actually taken to time to go and look at what Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Korea, are doing right?

    Yes, the US is a outlier in the other direction. Massive spending for very average outcomes. But we all knew that, and no-one wants to replicate the Amercian system anywhere either. It’s a useful bogeyman for defenders of the NHS though.
    The great success of American healthcare is innovation in treatment and diagnosis, paid for by all that money sloshing around.
  • HeathenerHeathener Posts: 7,084
    edited November 2023

    Heathener said:

    Putting the People Polling raw data into Electoral Calculus, without any tactical voting, produces a Labour majority of 458.

    :p

    People Polling and Electoral Calculus? You may as well use a random number generator.
    Ah yes. If you don’t like a national opinion poll, blame the pollster.

    I’m sure @MikeSmithson has chided on this many times.
  • RattersRatters Posts: 1,076

    Inflation down to 4.6%.

    A good start to the day for Sunak.

    Further progress towards 2% will be hard and slow though, so interest rates not likely to fall significantly until late 2025.
    I'm not sure it'll take quite that long. Inflation has risen cumulatively 0.5% over the last 5 months, so well below a 2% annual rate. So, while progress may be slow in the next few months, w3 may well be close to target by the summer of next year if recent trends continue.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,248
    ajb said:

    Sandpit said:

    An interesting chart on healthcare. Is NHS really the 'envy of the world' ?

    https://twitter.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1724368034343641598

    Although it does show that we do not want a US-style system...

    No-one who’s ever lived in another OECD country, would describe the NHS as such.

    Sounds like Israel is the place to be for healthcare, although I suspect that their very young population skew distorts the figure a little.

    Has anybody actually taken to time to go and look at what Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Korea, are doing right?

    Yes, the US is a outlier in the other direction. Massive spending for very average outcomes. But we all knew that, and no-one wants to replicate the Amercian system anywhere either. It’s a useful bogeyman for defenders of the NHS though.
    Unfortunately it's not true that no-one wants to replicate the American system elsewhere. The companies that run it, and their shareholders would love to do so, and they have plenty of money for bribeslobbying.
    IIRC if you take the money that the US gov spends on healthcare (Medicare, Medicare, VA, State level spending etc etc) it is more than the NHS. Per head of population.
  • HeathenerHeathener Posts: 7,084

    Inflation down to 4.6%.

    A good start to the day for Sunak.

    Well after he choked on the 30% Labour opinion poll lead.

    It’s good it is coming down but I fear that the damage to the tories on the economy is done and for a good generation. Black Wednesday was very similar.

    Once you’ve Ratnered your brand it sticks.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 49,859
    edited November 2023

    Leon said:

    Sean_F said:

    On the polling, I'd be surprised if the reshuffle moved the dial much.

    I thought on Sunday a move for Suella wasn't happening because of the ruckus it would cause in the party - I couldn't see a political advantage.

    David Cameron coming back is actually a good move - he benefited from Hague's experience in the run up to 2010, as did Brown from Mandelson - but giving an impression of surrendering the right flank is dangerous.

    She had become wildly unpopular with voters in general, and she saw it as her role to make increasingly offensive comments, rather than get on with her job.
    I think that’s bollocks

    How many people really knew who she was until yesterday? Not many

    Sunak got taken in my duplicitous liberal hysteria
    Freudian typo.

    Utterly magnificent.
    A wonderful typo. Clearly it should have read, ‘illiberal hysteria…’
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 28,368
    ...

    Inflation down to 4.6%.

    A good start to the day for Sunak.

    If he loses the Rwanda ruling (a stunt costing circa £170,000 per asylum seeker) he will have had an excellent week.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 54,582

    Sandpit said:

    An interesting chart on healthcare. Is NHS really the 'envy of the world' ?

    https://twitter.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1724368034343641598

    Although it does show that we do not want a US-style system...

    No-one who’s ever lived in another OECD country, would describe the NHS as such.

    Sounds like Israel is the place to be for healthcare, although I suspect that their very young population skew distorts the figure a little.

    Has anybody actually taken to time to go and look at what Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Korea, are doing right?

    Yes, the US is a outlier in the other direction. Massive spending for very average outcomes. But we all knew that, and no-one wants to replicate the Amercian system anywhere either. It’s a useful bogeyman for defenders of the NHS though.
    The great success of American healthcare is innovation in treatment and diagnosis, paid for by all that money sloshing around.
    Yes it’s fair to say that everyone else’s drugs would be a lot more expensive, if the US had a different healthcare system.

    Although a decent chunk of the money pot ends up in the pockets of lawyers and TV companies, rather than staying within the healthcare industry.
  • IanB2 said:

    Our lame duck prime minister has made his most irrational move yet
    The fabric of Britain has fallen into disrepair and foreign ownership makes it much harder to reverse

    The consequences of this country’s naive help-yourself attitude to foreign takeovers are everywhere.

    The pipes that carry the nation’s water to our homes are leaking millions of litres of water every day.

    Car manufacturers have repeatedly threatened to pack up and leave unless the state hands over hundreds of millions of pounds in subsidies, and thousands of steel workers have become pawns in this Government’s yearning for a post-Brexit trade deal with India.

    Meanwhile, strategic assets such as our airports, ports and even the pipeline that sends gas around the UK are traded like pieces on a Monopoly board without a thought for the wider national interest.

    Swathes of this country’s vital infrastructure and key industries have ended up in the hands of unaccountable overseas investors, and private equity companies, who have routinely prioritised dividend payments and executive bonuses over basic yet necessary capital investment.

    As a result, the fabric of Britain has fallen into disrepair and foreign ownership makes it much harder to reverse.

    Elsewhere, some of the most promising firms in high-growth sectors such as engineering, software, and cyber-security have vanished abroad without so much as a whimper.

    Unforgivably, in some instances such as telecoms and attempts to replace our aging fleet of nuclear power stations, we’ve rolled out the red carpet to regimes that are outwardly hostile to Britain and actively seek to harm our interests.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/11/14/british-industry-foreign-investment-national-security-china/ (£££)

    The government (in the shape of Oliver Dowden) is now planning to weaken what little protection we have against foreign takeovers, just months after telling us how well its new takeover regime was performing.

    It is certainly remarkable how different our attitude is from, well, almost everywhere else. Even the home of global free capitalism the US protects its economic national interests more doggedly.
    Once you understand that our "natural party of government" is a wholly owned subsidiary of footloose global capital everything else that happens here makes a lot more sense.
    It is cartoon Thatcherism. You can't buck the markets. Both parties now worship markets without ever taking the trouble to understand how markets behave and evolve, or the need to regulate them.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,263
    I want you all to admire my bath. It’s out on the porch




    Pop by for cocktails later. I’ve got my own bar








  • felixfelix Posts: 15,164
    Sandpit said:

    An interesting chart on healthcare. Is NHS really the 'envy of the world' ?

    https://twitter.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1724368034343641598

    Although it does show that we do not want a US-style system...

    No-one who’s ever lived in another OECD country, would describe the NHS as such.

    Sounds like Israel is the place to be for healthcare, although I suspect that their very young population skew distorts the figure a little.

    Has anybody actually taken to time to go and look at what Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Korea, are doing right?

    Yes, the US is a outlier in the other direction. Massive spending for very average outcomes. But we all knew that, and no-one wants to replicate the Amercian system anywhere either. It’s a useful bogeyman for defenders of the NHS though.
    In Spain and Portugal salaries are much lower. In Spain there can also be long waits and there is a large, relatively cheap, private healthcare sector.
  • Nigelb said:

    Heathener said:

    Good morning all. The P.O. scandal is disgraceful and well done for keeping on it.

    However, my attention is inevitably drawn this morning to the civil war in the Conservative party....

    That unfortunately illustrates the sort of response which has helped perpetuate this kind of behaviour in government.

    If a change of government is to mean anything, a little more attention to issues, and less to party politics is necessary.

    Read the header again - successive governments of all political stripes did absolutely nothing about this.
    Absolutely, Nigel. The PO Scandal is serious, and at its core is the question of government. Suella is froth.

    All governments have failed on this and similar scandals, so it isn't simply a Party Political matter. Maybe that's why it's a bit of a yawn for some people. It doesn't matter who is in charge. We have to find a way of making accountable those responsible for such iniquities. Sure, there are plenty of middle managers, IT consultants, lawyers, senior executives and Board Members who could and should be banged up on the evidence available to date (and it grows more damning daily.)

    Nevertheless if these fiascos are to become less common (and they are alarmingly so at present) we need a better model, greater accountability, and greater transparency in the management of large public institutions. Who will deliver this?

    Starmer could, but are there enough votes in it to attract his attention? It's not as if he isn't going to have enough on his plate when he moves into No 10. And my impression of the Labour Party is that it enjoys 'froth' rather than real action just as much as the current ruling crew and its supporters. So I'm not holding my breath.

    If he or anyone were serious about rectifying the present lamentable situation they could do worse than appoint Lord Arbuthnot as Commissar in charge of Government control of its major Institutions. He has the experience of the Mull of Kintyre scandal, as well as the PO. He knows how and why things go wrong. He has immense political experience, nous, and endless goodwill.

    But would Starmer, or any other PM, actually want someone in Government telling them things they'd rather not hear?

    Your guess is as good as mine.
  • ajb said:

    Sandpit said:

    An interesting chart on healthcare. Is NHS really the 'envy of the world' ?

    https://twitter.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1724368034343641598

    Although it does show that we do not want a US-style system...

    No-one who’s ever lived in another OECD country, would describe the NHS as such.

    Sounds like Israel is the place to be for healthcare, although I suspect that their very young population skew distorts the figure a little.

    Has anybody actually taken to time to go and look at what Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Korea, are doing right?

    Yes, the US is a outlier in the other direction. Massive spending for very average outcomes. But we all knew that, and no-one wants to replicate the Amercian system anywhere either. It’s a useful bogeyman for defenders of the NHS though.
    Unfortunately it's not true that no-one wants to replicate the American system elsewhere. The companies that run it, and their shareholders would love to do so, and they have plenty of money for bribeslobbying.
    IIRC if you take the money that the US gov spends on healthcare (Medicare, Medicare, VA, State level spending etc etc) it is more than the NHS. Per head of population.
    Yes, I think Jim_Miller has been writing about this lately. Incidentally, the same may be true in some of the European insurance-based systems.
  • Chris said:

    Heathener said:

    Putting the People Polling raw data into Electoral Calculus, without any tactical voting, produces a Labour majority of 458.

    :p

    You are reading too much into a pollster that doesn't adhere to BPC rules and may be removed from the BPC if they don't change.
    Do they even do regular voting intention polls? The "Polls" link on their website produces a 404 error. The most recent "Selected media coverage" link led to a poll from December last year (which also had the Tories on 19%, incidentally).
    This is the thing, which is in violation of BPC rules, we don't know because they seldom publish their data tables within the two working days rule, if at all.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,263
    felix said:

    Sandpit said:

    An interesting chart on healthcare. Is NHS really the 'envy of the world' ?

    https://twitter.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1724368034343641598

    Although it does show that we do not want a US-style system...

    No-one who’s ever lived in another OECD country, would describe the NHS as such.

    Sounds like Israel is the place to be for healthcare, although I suspect that their very young population skew distorts the figure a little.

    Has anybody actually taken to time to go and look at what Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Korea, are doing right?

    Yes, the US is a outlier in the other direction. Massive spending for very average outcomes. But we all knew that, and no-one wants to replicate the Amercian system anywhere either. It’s a useful bogeyman for defenders of the NHS though.
    In Spain and Portugal salaries are much lower. In Spain there can also be long waits and there is a large, relatively cheap, private healthcare sector.
    There is one downside to club med health systems

    The price of basic pills like aspirin or ibuprofen (at least in Italy last month). You can’t buy them cheap and generic in big supermarkets so you have to go to actual pharmacies where they charge you £10 for 8 paracetamol or whatever

    I’ve noticed this in several places in the EU. Presumably it’s to keep local pharmacies solvent but it’s quite irritating
  • StillWatersStillWaters Posts: 8,241
    Heathener said:

    Heathener said:

    Good morning all. The P.O. scandal is disgraceful and well done for keeping on it.

    However, my attention is inevitably drawn this morning to the civil war in the Conservative party. Good lord, I’ve seen the GB News People Polling opinion poll giving Labour a 30 point lead

    Labour 49%
    Cons 19%
    LibDems 9%

    This is the first poll properly conducted after the, erm, ‘reshuffle’ and Braverman’s onslaught against Sunak. Dates conducted were yesterday.

    However, I would suggest some caution. Although internal party civil war never looks good, and although this may reflect Red Wall anger, it may be a rogue poll.

    IMV it's definitely a rogue poll.

    […]
    Good morning JJ.

    definitely?

    I’m not sure you are right about this. There seems to be genuine fury on the right. 11% for Reform UK is probably not to be dismissed too lightly.

    I’m not really paying a lot of attention to Labour at the moment and I don’t think the electorate are either. When the governing party are monopolising the UK news, for good or ill, the opposition parties don’t tend to get a look in. If Keir Starmer is sorting out his lefties then it’s probably not going to make much of a splash.

    It’s not plausible either. Probably not “rogue” but an outlier.

    Reform won’t get 11% in an election. Where those votes go, if anywhere, is an open question
  • HeathenerHeathener Posts: 7,084
    edited November 2023
    I’m not sure a political betting site should really be claiming that Suella v Sunak is ‘froth’.

    It really isn’t. Neither for the fortunes of the Conservative Party, nor for those of us who bet on politics.

    Which is not to denigrate the importance of the P.O. scandal either.

    It’s possible to engage with either without denigration of the other.

    Right, I’m off to a National Trust property with my tory-voting friend and A.N. Other floating voter. Should be fun :smiley:

    Have a nice day

    xx
  • El_CapitanoEl_Capitano Posts: 4,239
    Heathener said:

    Heathener said:

    Putting the People Polling raw data into Electoral Calculus, without any tactical voting, produces a Labour majority of 458.

    :p

    People Polling and Electoral Calculus? You may as well use a random number generator.
    Ah yes. If you don’t like a national opinion poll, blame the pollster.

    I’m sure @MikeSmithson has chided on this many times.
    PP has no serious track record and figures that are out of kilter with other well established pollsters. At the most generous I think you could describe them as “not proven”.

    Electoral Calculus, as I have posted repeatedly, is voodoo. Very erudite voodoo, but voodoo nonetheless. Its individual seat projections don’t pass the most basic of smell tests. It may arrive at an accurate overall figure but so may “Pin the Tail on the Donkey” if you’re lucky enough.

    Whether I like the poll or not has nothing to do with it.
  • ydoethur said:

    Sean_F said:

    Another excellent header.

    The management may be second rate (is that too kind?), but they have first rate egos, and draw first rate salaries.

    I think the Post Office had/have the same problem as Suella Braverman.

    They are both arrogant and ignorant, that's a toxic mix.
    Could also be said of the DfE, DfT, OFQUAL, OFSTED, the Treasury, the DoH, Oxford University's History faculty, the people running the MA in public policy at Birkbeck...

    It's a long list of people involved in running our country and not in a good way.
    I am coming to the conclusion the biggest problem in this country is people vastly overestimate their abilities, particularly those in senior positions.
  • Heathener said:

    Heathener said:

    Putting the People Polling raw data into Electoral Calculus, without any tactical voting, produces a Labour majority of 458.

    :p

    People Polling and Electoral Calculus? You may as well use a random number generator.
    Ah yes. If you don’t like a national opinion poll, blame the pollster.

    I’m sure @MikeSmithson has chided on this many times.
    PP has no serious track record and figures that are out of kilter with other well established pollsters. At the most generous I think you could describe them as “not proven”.

    Electoral Calculus, as I have posted repeatedly, is voodoo. Very erudite voodoo, but voodoo nonetheless. Its individual seat projections don’t pass the most basic of smell tests. It may arrive at an accurate overall figure but so may “Pin the Tail on the Donkey” if you’re lucky enough.

    Whether I like the poll or not has nothing to do with it.
    If you put that People's Polling into electoral calculus it shows a Tory gain from the SNP.

    I will eat a pizza with pineapple on it if the Tories poll 19% at a GE and make a gain from any party.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 48,631

    ydoethur said:

    Sean_F said:

    Another excellent header.

    The management may be second rate (is that too kind?), but they have first rate egos, and draw first rate salaries.

    I think the Post Office had/have the same problem as Suella Braverman.

    They are both arrogant and ignorant, that's a toxic mix.
    Could also be said of the DfE, DfT, OFQUAL, OFSTED, the Treasury, the DoH, Oxford University's History faculty, the people running the MA in public policy at Birkbeck...

    It's a long list of people involved in running our country and not in a good way.
    I am coming to the conclusion the biggest problem in this country is people vastly overestimate their abilities, particularly those in senior positions.
    That's because they mostly went to private schools. The rot starts there.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,263
    I believe I’m staying in the only hotel in the world where you arrive at Reception by a 500m long zip wire through a world famous rainforest. No joke




  • Foxy said:

    ydoethur said:

    Sean_F said:

    Another excellent header.

    The management may be second rate (is that too kind?), but they have first rate egos, and draw first rate salaries.

    I think the Post Office had/have the same problem as Suella Braverman.

    They are both arrogant and ignorant, that's a toxic mix.
    Could also be said of the DfE, DfT, OFQUAL, OFSTED, the Treasury, the DoH, Oxford University's History faculty, the people running the MA in public policy at Birkbeck...

    It's a long list of people involved in running our country and not in a good way.
    I am coming to the conclusion the biggest problem in this country is people vastly overestimate their abilities, particularly those in senior positions.
    That's because they mostly went to private schools. The rot starts there.
    Nonsense.
  • HeathenerHeathener Posts: 7,084

    Heathener said:

    Heathener said:

    Good morning all. The P.O. scandal is disgraceful and well done for keeping on it.

    However, my attention is inevitably drawn this morning to the civil war in the Conservative party. Good lord, I’ve seen the GB News People Polling opinion poll giving Labour a 30 point lead

    Labour 49%
    Cons 19%
    LibDems 9%

    This is the first poll properly conducted after the, erm, ‘reshuffle’ and Braverman’s onslaught against Sunak. Dates conducted were yesterday.

    However, I would suggest some caution. Although internal party civil war never looks good, and although this may reflect Red Wall anger, it may be a rogue poll.

    IMV it's definitely a rogue poll.

    […]
    Good morning JJ.

    definitely?

    I’m not sure you are right about this. There seems to be genuine fury on the right. 11% for Reform UK is probably not to be dismissed too lightly.

    I’m not really paying a lot of attention to Labour at the moment and I don’t think the electorate are either. When the governing party are monopolising the UK news, for good or ill, the opposition parties don’t tend to get a look in. If Keir Starmer is sorting out his lefties then it’s probably not going to make much of a splash.

    Reform won’t get 11% in an election. Where those votes go, if anywhere, is an open question
    That’s not actually what an opinion poll is about though.

    It doesn’t predict voting at the General Election. It asks how you would vote if there were an election today, which there isn’t. So it’s a litmus test of the now.

    I shall have a wry smile if other pollsters reflect a comparable shift towards Labour. Or an embarrassed flush if they don’t.

    Off out.

    x
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 28,368
    Leon said:

    I believe I’m staying in the only hotel in the world where you arrive at Reception by a 500m long zip wire through a world famous rainforest. No joke




    Ooh, are you a contestant on I'm a Celebrity?
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 48,631

    Heathener said:

    Heathener said:

    Putting the People Polling raw data into Electoral Calculus, without any tactical voting, produces a Labour majority of 458.

    :p

    People Polling and Electoral Calculus? You may as well use a random number generator.
    Ah yes. If you don’t like a national opinion poll, blame the pollster.

    I’m sure @MikeSmithson has chided on this many times.
    PP has no serious track record and figures that are out of kilter with other well established pollsters. At the most generous I think you could describe them as “not proven”.

    Electoral Calculus, as I have posted repeatedly, is voodoo. Very erudite voodoo, but voodoo nonetheless. Its individual seat projections don’t pass the most basic of smell tests. It may arrive at an accurate overall figure but so may “Pin the Tail on the Donkey” if you’re lucky enough.

    Whether I like the poll or not has nothing to do with it.
    If you put that People's Polling into electoral calculus it shows a Tory gain from the SNP.

    I will eat a pizza with pineapple on it if the Tories poll 19% at a GE and make a gain from any party.
    The individual seats on EC are a bit odd, but Universal Swing ain't dead yet. The overall picture is fairly accurate.

    MRP pseudopolls are probably better for individual seats.
  • Good article as always Cyclefree.

    Sandpit said:

    Another excellent piece @Cyclefree, one of the biggest scandals in living memory.

    Notable in that the decisions were made deliberately and over a number of years, under governments of all colours, rather than as a reaction to a single tragic event. So much more like the Rotherham child abuse scandal, as opposed to Hillsborough or Aberfan.

    Have you thought about writing a book on the Post Office and other scandals over the years?

    This is an excellent idea, if she's interested. 👍
    She could doubtless do it. Meanwhile Nick Wallis's account is pretty good, and very readable.
  • Our lame duck prime minister has made his most irrational move yet
    The fabric of Britain has fallen into disrepair and foreign ownership makes it much harder to reverse

    The consequences of this country’s naive help-yourself attitude to foreign takeovers are everywhere.

    The pipes that carry the nation’s water to our homes are leaking millions of litres of water every day.

    Car manufacturers have repeatedly threatened to pack up and leave unless the state hands over hundreds of millions of pounds in subsidies, and thousands of steel workers have become pawns in this Government’s yearning for a post-Brexit trade deal with India.

    Meanwhile, strategic assets such as our airports, ports and even the pipeline that sends gas around the UK are traded like pieces on a Monopoly board without a thought for the wider national interest.

    Swathes of this country’s vital infrastructure and key industries have ended up in the hands of unaccountable overseas investors, and private equity companies, who have routinely prioritised dividend payments and executive bonuses over basic yet necessary capital investment.

    As a result, the fabric of Britain has fallen into disrepair and foreign ownership makes it much harder to reverse.

    Elsewhere, some of the most promising firms in high-growth sectors such as engineering, software, and cyber-security have vanished abroad without so much as a whimper.

    Unforgivably, in some instances such as telecoms and attempts to replace our aging fleet of nuclear power stations, we’ve rolled out the red carpet to regimes that are outwardly hostile to Britain and actively seek to harm our interests.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/11/14/british-industry-foreign-investment-national-security-china/ (£££)

    The government (in the shape of Oliver Dowden) is now planning to weaken what little protection we have against foreign takeovers, just months after telling us how well its new takeover regime was performing.

    The national interest is keeping the Conservative Party in government. What the article misses out is that so many Tory spivs have made so much money flogging off all our things and have then donated so much money to the Conservative Party.

    Ordinary decent people don't use peon things like water pipes, and can't see that they are leaking from their house in the Dordogne. So what does it matter?
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 37,347
    Foxy said:

    ydoethur said:

    Sean_F said:

    Another excellent header.

    The management may be second rate (is that too kind?), but they have first rate egos, and draw first rate salaries.

    I think the Post Office had/have the same problem as Suella Braverman.

    They are both arrogant and ignorant, that's a toxic mix.
    Could also be said of the DfE, DfT, OFQUAL, OFSTED, the Treasury, the DoH, Oxford University's History faculty, the people running the MA in public policy at Birkbeck...

    It's a long list of people involved in running our country and not in a good way.
    I am coming to the conclusion the biggest problem in this country is people vastly overestimate their abilities, particularly those in senior positions.
    That's because they mostly went to private schools. The rot starts there.
    I doubt if they *mostly* went there. Certainly not the boneheads of the NCB, mentioned in the header.

    More, the problem is unwillingness to take responsibility. When something goes wrong, the official response is (a) deny responsibility (b) organise the cover up.



  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 54,582

    Heathener said:

    Heathener said:

    Putting the People Polling raw data into Electoral Calculus, without any tactical voting, produces a Labour majority of 458.

    :p

    People Polling and Electoral Calculus? You may as well use a random number generator.
    Ah yes. If you don’t like a national opinion poll, blame the pollster.

    I’m sure @MikeSmithson has chided on this many times.
    PP has no serious track record and figures that are out of kilter with other well established pollsters. At the most generous I think you could describe them as “not proven”.

    Electoral Calculus, as I have posted repeatedly, is voodoo. Very erudite voodoo, but voodoo nonetheless. Its individual seat projections don’t pass the most basic of smell tests. It may arrive at an accurate overall figure but so may “Pin the Tail on the Donkey” if you’re lucky enough.

    Whether I like the poll or not has nothing to do with it.
    If you put that People's Polling into electoral calculus it shows a Tory gain from the SNP.

    I will eat a pizza with pineapple on it if the Tories poll 19% at a GE and make a gain from any party.
    There’s always a couple of random outliers though. Labour gained three seats in 2010.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,263

    Leon said:

    I believe I’m staying in the only hotel in the world where you arrive at Reception by a 500m long zip wire through a world famous rainforest. No joke




    Ooh, are you a contestant on I'm a Celebrity?
    Sadly not. It would be even better if I was making £1.5m like Farage. Just my normal Knappers Gazette fee I’m afraid

    The hotel is bloody amazing tho

    Here. Shinta Mani Wild in the Cardamom mountains. Supposedly the best hotel in Cambodia

    Rooms are only £2200 a night so it’s also a bit of a bargain right now

    https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Hotel_Review-g16701391-d15791874-Reviews-Shinta_Mani_Wild_Bensley_Collection-Ou_Bak_Roteh_Sihanoukville_Province.html
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 49,859
    edited November 2023

    rkrkrk said:

    This private eye report is a helpful explainer: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.private-eye.co.uk/pictures/special_reports/justice-lost-in-the-post.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjd_Yz8qsWCAxUjWkEAHWNtC8o4FBAWegQIFRAB&usg=AOvVaw26vsqdJSjMliH866DoEdhS

    One thing which comes out to me is that individual MPs, through the constituency system raised concerns - and seem to have been crucial to getting things out into the open.

    Investigative journalism also has really proved its worth.

    The system hasn't worked... but I suspect this never would have come to light without them.

    Yes, some come out of it very well. It's worth naming them:

    Constituency MPs
    Lord Arbuthnot
    Investigative journalists (Nick Wallis et al)
    Computer weekly
    Panorama
    Private Eye
    Second Sight
    Mr Justice Fraser

    Apolgies for those I may have missed. They are doubtless numerous.
    When I first moved to East London, Arbuthnot was the local MP, and he was useless, sitting in his then safe seat but living out in Hampshire, doing the bare minimum merely wafting in for the occasional photo opportunity. Even the local Tories spent much of the time slagging him off. When the seat got carved up in the 1990s boundary review, and with Blair incoming, he did the chicken run and landed himself a safe seat in Hampshire where he had lived all along. For him to emerge as one of the heroes of this story, sitting now in the Lords, is most surprising.

    Wallis deserves much of the credit, for digging into the story and starting the ball rolling on bringing it to wider attention. His earlier work on shared-appreciation mortgages, which also led to compensation, was of similar vein.
  • ydoethur said:

    Sean_F said:

    Another excellent header.

    The management may be second rate (is that too kind?), but they have first rate egos, and draw first rate salaries.

    I think the Post Office had/have the same problem as Suella Braverman.

    They are both arrogant and ignorant, that's a toxic mix.
    Could also be said of the DfE, DfT, OFQUAL, OFSTED, the Treasury, the DoH, Oxford University's History faculty, the people running the MA in public policy at Birkbeck...

    It's a long list of people involved in running our country and not in a good way.
    I am coming to the conclusion the biggest problem in this country is people vastly overestimate their abilities, particularly those in senior positions.
    Upmarket version of celebrity culture.

    For as long as I can remember, we've seen the path to national redemption as finding a genius to save us. Churchill, Attlee, Maggie, Blair. If only we can find them, and let them do what they know is right, all will be well. Johnson, Corbyn.

    My hunch is that it's rubbish, there are no genius shortcuts and we're not that much smarter than each other.

    But that means that those at the top aren't worth orders of magnitude more than those at the bottom. And if we want a nicer world, it depends on all of us doing more of the right sort of work.

    Much easier to hold out for a hero.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 53,805
    Sandpit said:

    IanB2 said:

    Our lame duck prime minister has made his most irrational move yet
    The fabric of Britain has fallen into disrepair and foreign ownership makes it much harder to reverse

    The consequences of this country’s naive help-yourself attitude to foreign takeovers are everywhere.

    The pipes that carry the nation’s water to our homes are leaking millions of litres of water every day.

    Car manufacturers have repeatedly threatened to pack up and leave unless the state hands over hundreds of millions of pounds in subsidies, and thousands of steel workers have become pawns in this Government’s yearning for a post-Brexit trade deal with India.

    Meanwhile, strategic assets such as our airports, ports and even the pipeline that sends gas around the UK are traded like pieces on a Monopoly board without a thought for the wider national interest.

    Swathes of this country’s vital infrastructure and key industries have ended up in the hands of unaccountable overseas investors, and private equity companies, who have routinely prioritised dividend payments and executive bonuses over basic yet necessary capital investment.

    As a result, the fabric of Britain has fallen into disrepair and foreign ownership makes it much harder to reverse.

    Elsewhere, some of the most promising firms in high-growth sectors such as engineering, software, and cyber-security have vanished abroad without so much as a whimper.

    Unforgivably, in some instances such as telecoms and attempts to replace our aging fleet of nuclear power stations, we’ve rolled out the red carpet to regimes that are outwardly hostile to Britain and actively seek to harm our interests.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/11/14/british-industry-foreign-investment-national-security-china/ (£££)

    The government (in the shape of Oliver Dowden) is now planning to weaken what little protection we have against foreign takeovers, just months after telling us how well its new takeover regime was performing.

    It is certainly remarkable how different our attitude is from, well, almost everywhere else. Even the home of global free capitalism the US protects its economic national interests more doggedly.
    As someone said on here the other day, it all started to go wrong when the balance of payments figures stopped being reported as front page news.

    We need to export more as a country, otherwise the incoming money starts buying up shares and property instead.
    Yep, those that lament our infrastructure and our companies being in foreign ownership with all the detriments of a branch economy that means simply refuse to accept that this is a consequence of having a massive and ongoing trade deficit creating the need to sell capital assets to balance the books.

    Those who condemn the lack of regulation of those foreign owners fail to acknowledge that this was a buyers market and it was not for us, as distressed sellers, to set the terms.

    The fact that those who complain about this also complain about supposed "austerity" means that they have failed to understand the consequences of the ruinous policies operated in the 1990s and early 2000s.

    If we want control of our assets and our futures we need to stop borrowing from abroad and start paying that mountain of debt back. The economic consequences of reducing our standard of living to our actual earnings would be severe but we are running out of road.
  • IanB2 said:

    rkrkrk said:

    This private eye report is a helpful explainer: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.private-eye.co.uk/pictures/special_reports/justice-lost-in-the-post.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjd_Yz8qsWCAxUjWkEAHWNtC8o4FBAWegQIFRAB&usg=AOvVaw26vsqdJSjMliH866DoEdhS

    One thing which comes out to me is that individual MPs, through the constituency system raised concerns - and seem to have been crucial to getting things out into the open.

    Investigative journalism also has really proved its worth.

    The system hasn't worked... but I suspect this never would have come to light without them.

    Yes, some come out of it very well. It's worth naming them:

    Constituency MPs
    Lord Arbuthnot
    Investigative journalists (Nick Wallis et al)
    Computer weekly
    Panorama
    Private Eye
    Second Sight
    Mr Justice Fraser

    Apolgies for those I may have missed. They are doubtless numerous.
    When I first moved to East London, Arbuthnot was the local MP, and he was useless, sitting in his then safe seat but living out in Hampshire, doing the bare minimum merely wafting in for the occasional photo opportunity. Even the local Tories spent much of the time slagging him off. When the seat got carved up in the 1990s boundary review, and with Blair incoming, he did the chicken run and landed himself a safe seat in Hampshire where he had lived all along. For him to emerge as one of the heroes of this story, sitting now in the Lords, is most surprising.

    Wallis deserves much of the credit, for digging into the story and starting the ball rolling on bringing it to wider attention. His earlier work on shared-appreciation mortgages, which also led to compensation, was of similar vein.
    He was my MP too, Ian. (Wanstead, since you ask.)

    I thought he was an ok sort in a tradition that is in decline in the Tory Party these days.

    Judge as you find. Without his efforts, it is doubtful the truth about Chinook and the PO would have come out as fully as it has.

    Maybe he found his vocation.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 49,859
    edited November 2023

    ydoethur said:

    Sean_F said:

    Another excellent header.

    The management may be second rate (is that too kind?), but they have first rate egos, and draw first rate salaries.

    I think the Post Office had/have the same problem as Suella Braverman.

    They are both arrogant and ignorant, that's a toxic mix.
    Could also be said of the DfE, DfT, OFQUAL, OFSTED, the Treasury, the DoH, Oxford University's History faculty, the people running the MA in public policy at Birkbeck...

    It's a long list of people involved in running our country and not in a good way.
    I am coming to the conclusion the biggest problem in this country is people vastly overestimate their abilities, particularly those in senior positions.
    It's more fundamental than that, since people widely mistake confidence for competence, and confidence is the main quality needed to get selected at an interview. Overestimating their abililities is how many of those people got their senior positions in the first place. Plus a bit of pure luck, which with hindsight always gets discounted.

    The career of one (indeed two) recently departed Prime Minister is a case in point.
  • AlanbrookeAlanbrooke Posts: 25,404
    DavidL said:

    Sandpit said:

    IanB2 said:

    Our lame duck prime minister has made his most irrational move yet
    The fabric of Britain has fallen into disrepair and foreign ownership makes it much harder to reverse

    The consequences of this country’s naive help-yourself attitude to foreign takeovers are everywhere.

    The pipes that carry the nation’s water to our homes are leaking millions of litres of water every day.

    Car manufacturers have repeatedly threatened to pack up and leave unless the state hands over hundreds of millions of pounds in subsidies, and thousands of steel workers have become pawns in this Government’s yearning for a post-Brexit trade deal with India.

    Meanwhile, strategic assets such as our airports, ports and even the pipeline that sends gas around the UK are traded like pieces on a Monopoly board without a thought for the wider national interest.

    Swathes of this country’s vital infrastructure and key industries have ended up in the hands of unaccountable overseas investors, and private equity companies, who have routinely prioritised dividend payments and executive bonuses over basic yet necessary capital investment.

    As a result, the fabric of Britain has fallen into disrepair and foreign ownership makes it much harder to reverse.

    Elsewhere, some of the most promising firms in high-growth sectors such as engineering, software, and cyber-security have vanished abroad without so much as a whimper.

    Unforgivably, in some instances such as telecoms and attempts to replace our aging fleet of nuclear power stations, we’ve rolled out the red carpet to regimes that are outwardly hostile to Britain and actively seek to harm our interests.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/11/14/british-industry-foreign-investment-national-security-china/ (£££)

    The government (in the shape of Oliver Dowden) is now planning to weaken what little protection we have against foreign takeovers, just months after telling us how well its new takeover regime was performing.

    It is certainly remarkable how different our attitude is from, well, almost everywhere else. Even the home of global free capitalism the US protects its economic national interests more doggedly.
    As someone said on here the other day, it all started to go wrong when the balance of payments figures stopped being reported as front page news.

    We need to export more as a country, otherwise the incoming money starts buying up shares and property instead.
    Yep, those that lament our infrastructure and our companies being in foreign ownership with all the detriments of a branch economy that means simply refuse to accept that this is a consequence of having a massive and ongoing trade deficit creating the need to sell capital assets to balance the books.

    Those who condemn the lack of regulation of those foreign owners fail to acknowledge that this was a buyers market and it was not for us, as distressed sellers, to set the terms.

    The fact that those who complain about this also complain about supposed "austerity" means that they have failed to understand the consequences of the ruinous policies operated in the 1990s and early 2000s.

    If we want control of our assets and our futures we need to stop borrowing from abroad and start paying that mountain of debt back. The economic consequences of reducing our standard of living to our actual earnings would be severe but we are running out of road.
    splutter

    are you saving we might have to work for a living ?
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,263
    edited November 2023

    ydoethur said:

    Sean_F said:

    Another excellent header.

    The management may be second rate (is that too kind?), but they have first rate egos, and draw first rate salaries.

    I think the Post Office had/have the same problem as Suella Braverman.

    They are both arrogant and ignorant, that's a toxic mix.
    Could also be said of the DfE, DfT, OFQUAL, OFSTED, the Treasury, the DoH, Oxford University's History faculty, the people running the MA in public policy at Birkbeck...

    It's a long list of people involved in running our country and not in a good way.
    I am coming to the conclusion the biggest problem in this country is people vastly overestimate their abilities, particularly those in senior positions.
    Upmarket version of celebrity culture.

    For as long as I can remember, we've seen the path to national redemption as finding a genius to save us. Churchill, Attlee, Maggie, Blair. If only we can find them, and let them do what they know is right, all will be well. Johnson, Corbyn.

    My hunch is that it's rubbish, there are no genius shortcuts and we're not that much smarter than each other.

    But that means that those at the top aren't worth orders of magnitude more than those at the bottom. And if we want a nicer world, it depends on all of us doing more of the right sort of work.

    Much easier to hold out for a hero.
    I’ve often wondered this. Are the people that make squillions really worth squillions?

    The best place to measure it might be football clubs. There must be some way of analysing whether Messi, Kane, Bellingham, Haaland etc are REALLY worth £200k a week to their respective clubs in terms of profits generated by victories and trophies?

    One arena where high pay is definitely verifiable and justifiable is literature. Because you are paid royalties. If you sell 10m books you make about £2m from a percentage of each book. Simples. And if you don’t sell that many you don’t get paid so much

    I am much more doubtful about local government bigwigs or bbc managers making £400k
  • Foxy said:

    ydoethur said:

    Sean_F said:

    Another excellent header.

    The management may be second rate (is that too kind?), but they have first rate egos, and draw first rate salaries.

    I think the Post Office had/have the same problem as Suella Braverman.

    They are both arrogant and ignorant, that's a toxic mix.
    Could also be said of the DfE, DfT, OFQUAL, OFSTED, the Treasury, the DoH, Oxford University's History faculty, the people running the MA in public policy at Birkbeck...

    It's a long list of people involved in running our country and not in a good way.
    I am coming to the conclusion the biggest problem in this country is people vastly overestimate their abilities, particularly those in senior positions.
    That's because they mostly went to private schools. The rot starts there.
    This is just blind prejudice.

    You could wipe out every private school in the country (and bear in mind there are many different types, specialist, international, progressive, religious and traditional) and it wouldn't change this one jot.
  • Sean_F said:

    On the polling, I'd be surprised if the reshuffle moved the dial much.

    I thought on Sunday a move for Suella wasn't happening because of the ruckus it would cause in the party - I couldn't see a political advantage.

    David Cameron coming back is actually a good move - he benefited from Hague's experience in the run up to 2010, as did Brown from Mandelson - but giving an impression of surrendering the right flank is dangerous.

    She had become wildly unpopular with voters in general, and she saw it as her role to make increasingly offensive comments, rather than get on with her job.
    She's not my cup of tea, but that didn't mean Sunak needed to walk straight into the trap.

    She talks for a large chunk of the Conservative base, and that needs to be managed.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 48,631
    Sean_F said:

    Foxy said:

    ydoethur said:

    Sean_F said:

    Another excellent header.

    The management may be second rate (is that too kind?), but they have first rate egos, and draw first rate salaries.

    I think the Post Office had/have the same problem as Suella Braverman.

    They are both arrogant and ignorant, that's a toxic mix.
    Could also be said of the DfE, DfT, OFQUAL, OFSTED, the Treasury, the DoH, Oxford University's History faculty, the people running the MA in public policy at Birkbeck...

    It's a long list of people involved in running our country and not in a good way.
    I am coming to the conclusion the biggest problem in this country is people vastly overestimate their abilities, particularly those in senior positions.
    That's because they mostly went to private schools. The rot starts there.
    I doubt if they *mostly* went there. Certainly not the boneheads of the NCB, mentioned in the header.

    More, the problem is unwillingness to take responsibility. When something goes wrong, the official response is (a) deny responsibility (b) organise the cover up.
    No, the Privately educated dominate our establishment, including the medical profession.




This discussion has been closed.