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What a difference a year makes – politicalbetting.com
What a difference a year makes – politicalbetting.com
After the 2022 Autumn Statement, Rishi Sunak led Keir Starmer by 9% as the person voters thought best embodied the characteristic ‘Can build a strong economy (42% vs 33).One year on, Starmer now leads on the same characteristic by 5% (38% vs 33%).https://t.co/b0t3CQWdky pic.twitter.com/ttXnlr7JUn
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Let us not forget, they appointed Dumbinic Cummings to several senior roles, Amanda Spielman as Head of OFSTED and Simon Case as Head of the Civil Service.
And that’s even before we mention Johnson, Truss, Zahawi, Hancock, Williamson, Dorries…
Please god NO
That said, I agree there is no great love for Starmer’s Labour, more a desire for change.
FPT....
My impression of him - and I think I met a number like him in my professional career - is that he had very limited abilities but was good at bullshitting his way through life and made himself useful to others by doing what they wanted without questioning the worth or morality of his actions.
It speaks volumes of the Post Office that it would actually employ such an individual in a position of authority.
Admittedly, that's a low bar.
Single line working was put in place at Retford with 10mph trundling through the affected section happening very slowly, trying to clear several in each direction at at time.
My boss was on a train which finally arrived into York at 03:49 - a mere 392 minutes late. And that wasn’t even his booked train (which should have been earlier away from London and was cancelled).
That train was full and standing! Another southbound was terminated into Retford gone 1am as the driver was out of hours. Another full and standing train turfed out onto Platform 2 at 01:bungle into -2. Barely enough room to stand on the platform - which was the only open track in both directions.
So their train had to be cleared so anything else could run. Meanwhile there is an awful lot of people barely able to find space to stand in sub-zero temperatures for over half an hour until the train behind them could pick them up.
I’m sure the LNER and NR staff were doing everything they could and were being creative about how to work the problem. But instead of cancelling the lot and sticking people in nice warm hotels they tried to push through because today is a strike day…
The wiring on the east coast route appears to increasingly be made of cheese. Notoriously done on the cheap and unreliable ever since, these dewiring incidents happen with increasing frequency. What can be done?
Something else going round?
This gremlin just won't budge.
Not sure what it is, he says. Now, my guess is it is just winter bugs re-emerging but we can all be forgiven the odd PTSD flashback
And, from previous thread, what an appalling situation at the post office enquiry! It’s already gone from bad to worse; now, as I say, it’s gone to appalling.
I really wonder what we going to see when the top brass gets into the witness box!
And after all that, good morning, one at all! (Except any of the post office top brass who read this!)
I see Humza is getting good publicity at COP meeting
BTW, good to see your use of "01:bungle". Wor Lass always fails to comprehend when I use this terminology.
No the Tories need to go for their own good, but mainly for ours.
I can see 5 delayed services arriving overnight into Kings Cross. 02:15, 02:54, 03:05, 03;46, 04:17. Network Rail manage the station which is closed overnight. And yep - they kept it closed.
5 trains of exhausted people arriving painfully late (more than 6 hours in 1 case), being first locked inside the station and then thrown out onto the street by security. Including the refugees who had ben thrown out onto the platform at Retford earlier.
This country is broken.
Incidentally, and much more worryingly, there have been a spate of broken rails over the last few weeks.
And secondly, we don't really want them in the witness box. As a country we need to see them in the dock. But that won't happen either.
There are loads of inept, arrogant scofflaws with the intellectual capacity of roast potatoes in positions of power who got there through their connections and stay there because nobody who can get rid of them wants to.
And the country suffers for it.
So despite evidence of being surrounded by utter dereliction and destitution, we take on board much loved Rishi Sunak's PMQs proclamations that everything is going gangbusters on his watch, and what little bad stuff remains from the fiasco that went before (from Attlee through to Truss) it is the fault of somebody else, notably Starmer.
It might work. But what does another 5 years of listless, directionless, pointless and corrupt populist Government look like? Much like the last fourteen months I suspect.
Have also heard about the broken rail incidents which suggests Railtrakean levels of maintenance by Network Rail. Failtrack weren't interested in infrastructure, only shopping. NR is run / ruined by the DfT muppets, so I have to assume that budget constraints will be part of the fun there.
Two basic fails last night from what I can read - and yes I know its what I am reading on X but there are multiple sources and photos.
One: the decision to keep buggering on regardless of how long it would take. Strike day today so I understand the rationale. Its just that the delays became utterly ludicrous as NR had to trundle services through on their donkey engine. Where they could do the Lincoln direct they had done so, but a single engine on an 801 is not going to manage that.
Two: lack of coordination with stations. Of course all the lounges and waiting rooms were closed. Why wouldn't they be? I respect the out of hours cancellation of the train at Retford - you can't drive out of hours, its unsafe. But dumping everyone out into sub-zero temps is lunacy, especially where they are crush loaded onto the only operational platform which then has services running past it.
That the same passengers were then abandoned on arrival into Kings Cross is just ludicrous.
There are variants, sometimes it's about more time to complete a change etc, but that's really it.
Truss wanted to pitch the party as time for a change despite 10 years in government, whilst Rishi has tried both without really confirming either until recently.
Still, I did sixteen or so, which I'm quite pleased with.
Snowing quite heavily now.
Not ideal for driving to Cardiff.
There's immediate crises to address, but I don't get a sense that there's agreement on a narrative. To reduce the deficit, to transform the country etc. Some might get mentioned but haphazardly. Its just 'please, we want more time in power'.
I've seen that argued, and I've also seen the opposite argued: that it's okay. Both by experts. But it's still orders of magnitude better than the *9* miles of line electrified in 13 years under Blair and Brown... (Kidsgrove to Crewe).
Compare with the GWML, which seems to be overdesigned to withstand a thermonuclear weapons, and which still has dewirements and was ugly as f***.
https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/12/a-bitter-pill-amazon-calls-on-rival-spacex-to-launch-internet-satellites/
If nothing else, that makes SpaceX bulletproof in any antitrust stuff - they have launched or are going to launch satellites for pretty much all their rivals in the internet-from-space game.
This is a trial order, partly to placate shareholders and also to try and get good will from the FCC when Amazon miss their deployment deadline.
Starmer may not have Blair's charisma and Reeves is not as heavyweight as Brown but for voters in the mood for change from an unpopular Tory government they seem safe enough for now
I know a fair bit about this subject. Under Thatcher, the ECML was electrified - at the time, I believe it was the biggest construction project in Europe. BedPan (Bedford to St Pancras) was also electrified under her government. Bishop's Stortford to Cambridge occurred under her, and it was extended to King's Lynn under Major. London to Shoeburyness was electrified under Thatcher. Cross-city line in Birmingham under Major. Various local routes around Edinburgh and Leeds were also electrified under Thatcher.
That's hundreds of miles electrified, including major routes. Between 1997 and 2010, under Blair and Brown, precisely nine miles were electrified.
I'll praise Thatcher and Major's governments for electrifying those routes and lines, as I think it was the right thing to do. I'll criticise Sunak's government over HS2, because cancelling was the *wrong* thing.
And I'll excoriate Blair for shouting about the WCML Upgrade (which was a failure on its own terms) and ignoring the rest of the network.
But facts, eh?
You and your fellow Conservatives will then have about four years to sort yourselves into a decent alternative.
Good luck.
It was covid that precipitated my DVT and present health problems
Having previously had covid twice, and our 7th vaccine 2 weeks before, i felt a bit off and went to rest in bed following a negative covid test
The following morning I woke with what my medics called a massive DVT, was admitted to hospital, where other issues came to the fore resulting in 3 different consultants with ongoing testing and treatment appointments
The point I would make is I did not test positive for covid until 4 days later when my wife did, and my nurse asked me to check again when a feint line showed indicating I had had covid and apparently DVT's can be associated with covid
Ironically I am pleased that all this has come out and my medical team are dealing with it, and in time I hope to make a good recovery
I remain politically disinterested, though Sunak is a disappointment and Starmer is heading into no 10 with a good majority but facing an extraordinary number of near insoluble problems
Behave! She looks barely legal, certainly for old men of our age. She's young enough to be your granddaughter.
Meanwhile, had he forgotten that the King is half Greek?
I really don't see any Tory recovery before the next GE, we are simply sick of the sight of them. As more chickens come home to roost, I think the odds on recovery are possibly about the same as them facing an ELE... extinction level event.
I do wonder what kind of guy will have the cullions to chat her up. Phenomenally beautiful, phenomenally intelligent, and if you don’t amuse her she could take you out with an uppercut
Daunting
It used to be a fairly basic rule in the King’ing business to get immigrants to do the job. In fact, when they get a bit nativised, it’s often a good idea to do a replacement with cheaper immigrant labour.
I would have thought you have easy access to 21 year old chess players in you current location. " One night in Bangkok..."
I repeat: my hunch is that it’s normal winter bugs but everyone’s paranoid
PS curiously my wife who got ill just after me, with the similar symptoms, never tested positive with a LFT.
Two bugs or are the tests missing some people?
Similarly, I was chatting to a politically-informed friend living alone and we were both surprised that we'd had £500 winter allowances, wasn't it £200? Turns out the Tories topped it up by £300 "cost of living allowance" and neither of us even noticed. Are we unusual? I suppose it'll disappear next year whoever is in power, unless the parties get into an annoying auction for "who can bribe voting pensioners most".
We were due to hear recently from the extremely interesting witness Gareth Jenkins, who was the Expert Witness Fujitsu presented to reassure everyone that the Horizon system was 'robust'. Shortly before he was due up, the PO dumped thousands of emails on the Inquiry which it had just somehow discovered. Since some of these related to Mr J, his appearance had to be postponed to next year.
I doubt the Inquiry will conclude before this time next year, by which time we will probably have a new Government. It will have its hands full, so I am not sure how much time and attention the results of the Inquiry will receive. Maybe that's what they would want. The origins of the scandal go back to Blair/Harman.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/dec/01/the-parthenon-marbles-row-is-about-nationalist-politics-the-sculptures-are-just-a-facade
When the Greek PM was told that discussion of the Marbles was off the agenda why did he not cancel his meeting at that point? If you are invited to someone’s house and they ask you not to mention something problematic during the visit you can be polite and accept however much you disagree or you can make it a point of principle and refuse the invitation. You certainly don’t accept the terms then renege and cause greater damage.
These do not include why flights from China continued after it had gone into maximum lockdown or why holidays were allowed in covid rife Spain in summer 2020 or why the delta variant was casually allowed to enter from India in the spring of 2021.
Any mention of border control really is forbidden.
There is no money and both main parties have very exposed flanks.
There's at least four banks in Northallerton - the largest town in Richmond constituency.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67583574
Grim - but essential - reading.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/whys-the-metoo-crowd-silent-on-hamas-rape-g8m5mkpf9
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/dec/01/israel-hamas-war-rape-israelis-palestinians
An absolute winter wonderland here now.
It is going to sweep away all our economic and political norms within a decade, max, and might be impacting - hugely - within the next 3-5 years
Don’t bother putting money in a pension. It will either be worthless or everyone will be rich anyway
It’s in no one’s interest to find out what happened. Well, no one who *matters*
#NU10K
The Conservative hope was that Sunak would pull up the ratings of his party; what's happened is that the party has dragged him down. There was always a decent chance of that, even if Sunak hadn't been as disappointing as he has turned out to be.
I fear the government really don't want to deal with another Covid wave, so they're ignoring the fact we've got one. It's yet another head-in-the-sand moment from Sunak.
Prison is too good for the likes of Singh. He should be stripped of his pension and struck off. An utter weasel.
You’ll get either:
£500 if you were born between 25 September 1943 and 24 September 1957
£600 if you were born before 25 September 1943
https://www.gov.uk/winter-fuel-payment/how-much-youll-get
Apparently, JFK Jr (dead for nearly a quarter of a century) is about to make himself known to the people and become Trump's running mate. I've just waded through a Facebook post that popped up on my feed, it was over 3k comments. Right wing religious fruitcakery at its finest, all certain that it's happening, quoting "facts" and praising Jesus and God, blaming the Clintons, Obama, Gates, George Clooney.. then it swung into flat earth, NASA and even welcomed back Princess Diana (who is apparently very much alive and well and a close friend of JFK Jr and is saving children from adrenochrome harvesting)
If this is a fair representation of a large chunk of the US, they probably need nuking from orbit.
I had no idea that Italy had more than one leaning tower:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-67599067
Whereas London used to have the Leaning Tower of South Woodford, where you could stand near the top floor and look down on the roofs of cars on the North Circular (*)
(*) Slightly exaggerated. But only slightly.
The one thing Singh was good at was blathering and wasting time, which is presumably what the PO (and the Government) wants witnesses to do. I should think it won't help Singh himself though. On his Inquiry performance alone (and yes, Beer was brilliant) I should say there is a strong prima facie case for a charge of conspiring to pervert the course of justice.
If it ever gets to the Old Bailey, I'll be in the gallery.
I have literally seen that argument. Hamas are hard fighters but also heroic resisters, sure they shoot prople, but rape??? No no no. They’re good Muslim boys
It’s grotesque
But there is a worrying amount of religiosity and ignoring science around, especially, it seems, in parts of the US. When combined with an inability to deal with the world as it is, rather than how they'd like it, it can be a dangerously heady mix.
Those women's groups who do not speak up about this because the victims are Jews are utterly beyond the pale. Misogyny and anti-semitism: a disgusting combination.
https://www.facebook.com/NickPalmerNottingham
The square mile of really ancient Bologna is one of my favourite places in Italy.