I can't help feeling that this "the government is totally useless" meme is somewhat overdone. Yes, we are bored to tears with them, yes their priorities tend towards the weird, yes piss ups and breweries come to mind along with shortages of drink, but actually things are nowhere near as bad as people seem to think.
We have very low unemployment, we have rapidly falling inflation, we have moderate growth rather than the forecast recession, the living wage is rising quite quickly in nominal and real terms reducing income disparities, the government has finally taken a modest step towards reducing the penalisation of earned income, things are just not as bad as they are being painted.
We were briefly discussing the same phenomenon last week in the context of Biden who has an extremely hostile press despite having an even better economic record. Our media both in the US as well as here have lost any sense of proportion and I rather think that some on this site have also.
If you're right, and the government is getting little or no credit for an improving economic situation, why is this?
Could it possibly be because all they seem to talk or care about is ******* SMALL BOATS?
I think it's possible to have the government almost asleep at the wheel and for the ship to be sailing along without hitting any obvious rocks, for a while. Nonetheless, I don't think an impartial observer would think that Sunak is in charge of events - rather, some factors (e.g. inflation) change according to external developments. Basic structural damage (e.g. two-year waiting lists) are being almost entirely ignored.
I can't help feeling that this "the government is totally useless" meme is somewhat overdone. Yes, we are bored to tears with them, yes their priorities tend towards the weird, yes piss ups and breweries come to mind along with shortages of drink, but actually things are nowhere near as bad as people seem to think.
We have very low unemployment, we have rapidly falling inflation, we have moderate growth rather than the forecast recession, the living wage is rising quite quickly in nominal and real terms reducing income disparities, the government has finally taken a modest step towards reducing the penalisation of earned income, things are just not as bad as they are being painted.
We were briefly discussing the same phenomenon last week in the context of Biden who has an extremely hostile press despite having an even better economic record. Our media both in the US as well as here have lost any sense of proportion and I rather think that some on this site have also.
If you're right, and the government is getting little or no credit for an improving economic situation, why is this?
Could it possibly be because all they seem to talk or care about is ******* SMALL BOATS?
Yes, as I said their priorities are weird. Rwanda was always a ridiculous and morally offensive policy, seeking to penalise desperate people in a frankly absurd way. You would have thought that a rational government would have been grateful that the Supreme Court let them off the hook they were so determined to impale themselves on and that getting rid of Braverman was a welcome bonus. But no, on they go looking ever more absurd and ineffective as well as cruel and heartless. Its baffling.
I can't help feeling that this "the government is totally useless" meme is somewhat overdone. Yes, we are bored to tears with them, yes their priorities tend towards the weird, yes piss ups and breweries come to mind along with shortages of drink, but actually things are nowhere near as bad as people seem to think.
We have very low unemployment, we have rapidly falling inflation, we have moderate growth rather than the forecast recession, the living wage is rising quite quickly in nominal and real terms reducing income disparities, the government has finally taken a modest step towards reducing the penalisation of earned income, things are just not as bad as they are being painted.
We were briefly discussing the same phenomenon last week in the context of Biden who has an extremely hostile press despite having an even better economic record. Our media both in the US as well as here have lost any sense of proportion and I rather think that some on this site have also.
I'd say the government has got the energy price issue decisions pretty good as well in the balance between helping people generally, helping the disadvantaged in particular and encouraging energy efficiency.
A big increase in NHS employment as well - though it doesn't seem to realise it has achieved something the public want.
I personally thought that the government spent too much on subsidising the cost of energy and any relief should have been more focused on the poor. I am also seeing very little sign that the large increase in employment and spending on the NHS is helping that benighted institution improve its performance. I am not suggesting that things are great, just that this wall to wall gloom and despondency is overdone.
Seeing as I was on a fixed contract throughout the period of aid I'd have to agree ;D
Are the Tories going to yield on reparations for slavery to commonwealth nations. Interesting comment from the PM of tiny island nation, Barbados who are demanding just under 5 Trillion USD.
"Mottley met David Cameron earlier on Tuesday but would not give details of the foreign secretary’s thoughts on the UK’s slavery-related debt.
“I’m not going to get into the details of our conversation but suffice to say I think the foreign secretary will take his lead from his majesty,” she said."
One bizarre thing are claims that slaves never received compensation.
The West Indies are now a collection of mostly independent black republics - effectively West African colonies which are far more affluent and developed than West Africa itself.
The descendants of the slaves got the countries.
I suspect a few politicians are just jumping on a bandwaggon eyeing up a potential payday on the back of guilt shaming western nations.
The President of Guyana was making such demands recently. Now he may need our help I wonder if he will change his tune.
Telling taxpayers they have to cough up twice the UK’s GDP so that a bunch of grifters can live in luxury would be a bold move on the part of any government.
Yet there are several labour backbenchers who demand exactly that. And their number will increase after the next election.
So we may end up doing it, irrespective of the views of the taxpayers who have to fund it.
I can't help feeling that this "the government is totally useless" meme is somewhat overdone. Yes, we are bored to tears with them, yes their priorities tend towards the weird, yes piss ups and breweries come to mind along with shortages of drink, but actually things are nowhere near as bad as people seem to think.
We have very low unemployment, we have rapidly falling inflation, we have moderate growth rather than the forecast recession, the living wage is rising quite quickly in nominal and real terms reducing income disparities, the government has finally taken a modest step towards reducing the penalisation of earned income, things are just not as bad as they are being painted.
We were briefly discussing the same phenomenon last week in the context of Biden who has an extremely hostile press despite having an even better economic record. Our media both in the US as well as here have lost any sense of proportion and I rather think that some on this site have also.
If you're right, and the government is getting little or no credit for an improving economic situation, why is this?
Could it possibly be because all they seem to talk or care about is ******* SMALL BOATS?
It doesn't matter if people want to give them credit or not.
Because people just want at end of the Conservatives sleaze and psychodrama.
Why would they want to run on this issue? It seems to be unpopular amongst most voters, and not a unifying policy for the Tory base? The only polling I can find is from back in April, but it was 45% against and 35% for - and I can only imagine as it doesn't work fewer people like it.
People don't care about this specific immigration policy - they want to feel like immigration is being "dealt with". And that feeling has very little to do with the actual statistics about immigration or Channel crossings - and everything to do with front pages from the right wing rags winding them up. People are much more concerned about cost of living, which they blame on the Tories, and the state of healthcare, which they blame on the Tories.
I do want an early GE, though - this lot need slinging out and it would be preferable (from a purely selfish point of view) for the GE to not be held on the same day as the locals to give my local cllrs a better chance at reelection (GE turnout levels would make it very hard for Greens to keep certain seats in the country).
I can't help feeling that this "the government is totally useless" meme is somewhat overdone. Yes, we are bored to tears with them, yes their priorities tend towards the weird, yes piss ups and breweries come to mind along with shortages of drink, but actually things are nowhere near as bad as people seem to think.
We have very low unemployment, we have rapidly falling inflation, we have moderate growth rather than the forecast recession, the living wage is rising quite quickly in nominal and real terms reducing income disparities, the government has finally taken a modest step towards reducing the penalisation of earned income, things are just not as bad as they are being painted.
We were briefly discussing the same phenomenon last week in the context of Biden who has an extremely hostile press despite having an even better economic record. Our media both in the US as well as here have lost any sense of proportion and I rather think that some on this site have also.
I suspect even felix would blush before giving that one a 'like'
I will manfully struggle on without your "like" Roger, it won't be easy but you know, I'll cope. sob.
Struggling to see exactly what Roger finds so egregious about David's fairly measured and considered post there. I'll give it a 'like' if Roger won't. Oh, it appears several people already have.
If we all agreed this would be a really boring site. I always enjoy @Roger's contributions.
Are the Tories going to yield on reparations for slavery to commonwealth nations. Interesting comment from the PM of tiny island nation, Barbados who are demanding just under 5 Trillion USD.
"Mottley met David Cameron earlier on Tuesday but would not give details of the foreign secretary’s thoughts on the UK’s slavery-related debt.
“I’m not going to get into the details of our conversation but suffice to say I think the foreign secretary will take his lead from his majesty,” she said."
One bizarre thing are claims that slaves never received compensation.
The West Indies are now a collection of mostly independent black republics - effectively West African colonies which are far more affluent and developed than West Africa itself.
The descendants of the slaves got the countries.
I suspect a few politicians are just jumping on a bandwaggon eyeing up a potential payday on the back of guilt shaming western nations.
The President of Guyana was making such demands recently. Now he may need our help I wonder if he will change his tune.
Descendants of Brits enslaved by the Romans, Vikings and Barbary Corsairs can presumably also claim compensation from Italy, Denmark and Tunisia?
Can you name a single one of those descendants? Otoh all you'd need is a Carribean phone directory to identify the descendants of our 'commercial activities'.
Not sure about the name, but I do have a Roman nose.
I think one can assert with some confidence that the entirety of the populations of the Faroes and Iceland are the descendants of slaves (and their masters). It is very likely that the same would be true of the inhabitants of Orkney, Shetland, Man, and much of Northern and Eastern England.
Trump Whistleblower Cassidy Hutchinson Says She’ll ‘Do Whatever it Takes’ to Keep Him Out of the White House
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/cassidy-hutchinson-says-she-ll-194743019.html Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson will do everything in her power to keep former President Donald Trump far away from the White House — with the exception of his upcoming appearances at a Washington, D.C. federal courthouse.
“I will do whatever it takes to make sure that Donald Trump is never near the Oval Office ever again — except the Prettyman Federal Courthouse in Washington D.C.,” Hutchinson said at TheWrap’s Power Women Summit on Tuesday during a conversation moderated by journalism professor and director of USC’s Annenberg Media Center Christina Bellantoni.
For Hutchinson, who is a conservative Republican, the upcoming 2024 presidential election goes beyond partisanship, as she noted that the fallout from Trump’s tenure has “greater consequences” that prevent the country’s leaders from debating productively on traditional Republican and Democratic issues.
“A vote for Trump is a vote for fascism; it’s a vote to start marching our country towards a dictatorship,” she said. “If we want to keep our constitutional republic and if we want to keep our democratic institutions in place, we need to have conversations with people to make sure that every vote goes to the candidate that promises to keep those institutions intact.”..
I can't help feeling that this "the government is totally useless" meme is somewhat overdone.
Would you like me to try to find Suella Braverman's email address for you?
No, her (and Jenrick) not being a part of the government any longer was definitely a step in the right direction. Nock Robinson got that bang on, she is poisonous.
Indeed, but what I meant is that some of the people most actively promoting that meme are Tory politicians.
I can't help feeling that this "the government is totally useless" meme is somewhat overdone. Yes, we are bored to tears with them, yes their priorities tend towards the weird, yes piss ups and breweries come to mind along with shortages of drink, but actually things are nowhere near as bad as people seem to think.
We have very low unemployment, we have rapidly falling inflation, we have moderate growth rather than the forecast recession, the living wage is rising quite quickly in nominal and real terms reducing income disparities, the government has finally taken a modest step towards reducing the penalisation of earned income, things are just not as bad as they are being painted.
We were briefly discussing the same phenomenon last week in the context of Biden who has an extremely hostile press despite having an even better economic record. Our media both in the US as well as here have lost any sense of proportion and I rather think that some on this site have also.
If you're right, and the government is getting little or no credit for an improving economic situation, why is this?
Could it possibly be because all they seem to talk or care about is ******* SMALL BOATS?
As an example look at Tuesday - good news about education in England / Wales completely lost because the Home Secretary visited Rwanda for no good reason and blocked out other news.
Small boats is an issue the Tory party can’t win on yet they waste time and media on it
Are the Tories going to yield on reparations for slavery to commonwealth nations. Interesting comment from the PM of tiny island nation, Barbados who are demanding just under 5 Trillion USD.
"Mottley met David Cameron earlier on Tuesday but would not give details of the foreign secretary’s thoughts on the UK’s slavery-related debt.
“I’m not going to get into the details of our conversation but suffice to say I think the foreign secretary will take his lead from his majesty,” she said."
One bizarre thing are claims that slaves never received compensation.
The West Indies are now a collection of mostly independent black republics - effectively West African colonies which are far more affluent and developed than West Africa itself.
The descendants of the slaves got the countries.
I suspect a few politicians are just jumping on a bandwaggon eyeing up a potential payday on the back of guilt shaming western nations.
The President of Guyana was making such demands recently. Now he may need our help I wonder if he will change his tune.
Telling taxpayers they have to cough up twice the UK’s GDP so that a bunch of grifters can live in luxury would be a bold move on the part of any government.
Yet there are several labour backbenchers who demand exactly that. And their number will increase after the next election.
So we may end up doing it, irrespective of the views of the taxpayers who have to fund it.
Come the next election someone will sit down with them and point out that they need to change their tune and focus on their constituents because the money isn’t there and what is being asked for is utterly insane
Are the Tories going to yield on reparations for slavery to commonwealth nations. Interesting comment from the PM of tiny island nation, Barbados who are demanding just under 5 Trillion USD.
"Mottley met David Cameron earlier on Tuesday but would not give details of the foreign secretary’s thoughts on the UK’s slavery-related debt.
“I’m not going to get into the details of our conversation but suffice to say I think the foreign secretary will take his lead from his majesty,” she said."
One bizarre thing are claims that slaves never received compensation.
The West Indies are now a collection of mostly independent black republics - effectively West African colonies which are far more affluent and developed than West Africa itself.
The descendants of the slaves got the countries.
I suspect a few politicians are just jumping on a bandwaggon eyeing up a potential payday on the back of guilt shaming western nations.
The President of Guyana was making such demands recently. Now he may need our help I wonder if he will change his tune.
Telling taxpayers they have to cough up twice the UK’s GDP so that a bunch of grifters can live in luxury would be a bold move on the part of any government.
Yet there are several labour backbenchers who demand exactly that. And their number will increase after the next election.
So we may end up doing it, irrespective of the views of the taxpayers who have to fund it.
In which case Labour would face an election result, which would make the one the Conservatives are now facing, look pretty good, by comparison.
I can't help feeling that this "the government is totally useless" meme is somewhat overdone. Yes, we are bored to tears with them, yes their priorities tend towards the weird, yes piss ups and breweries come to mind along with shortages of drink, but actually things are nowhere near as bad as people seem to think.
We have very low unemployment, we have rapidly falling inflation, we have moderate growth rather than the forecast recession, the living wage is rising quite quickly in nominal and real terms reducing income disparities, the government has finally taken a modest step towards reducing the penalisation of earned income, things are just not as bad as they are being painted.
We were briefly discussing the same phenomenon last week in the context of Biden who has an extremely hostile press despite having an even better economic record. Our media both in the US as well as here have lost any sense of proportion and I rather think that some on this site have also.
If you're right, and the government is getting little or no credit for an improving economic situation, why is this?
Could it possibly be because all they seem to talk or care about is ******* SMALL BOATS?
As an example look at Tuesday - good news about education in England / Wales completely lost because the Home Secretary visited Rwanda for no good reason and blocked out other news.
Small boats is an issue the Tory party can’t win on yet they waste time and media on it
They're focussed on looking inwards to Conservative party obsessions rather than outwards to the country's interests.
Are the Tories going to yield on reparations for slavery to commonwealth nations. Interesting comment from the PM of tiny island nation, Barbados who are demanding just under 5 Trillion USD.
"Mottley met David Cameron earlier on Tuesday but would not give details of the foreign secretary’s thoughts on the UK’s slavery-related debt.
“I’m not going to get into the details of our conversation but suffice to say I think the foreign secretary will take his lead from his majesty,” she said."
One bizarre thing are claims that slaves never received compensation.
The West Indies are now a collection of mostly independent black republics - effectively West African colonies which are far more affluent and developed than West Africa itself.
The descendants of the slaves got the countries.
I suspect a few politicians are just jumping on a bandwaggon eyeing up a potential payday on the back of guilt shaming western nations.
The President of Guyana was making such demands recently. Now he may need our help I wonder if he will change his tune.
Descendants of Brits enslaved by the Romans, Vikings and Barbary Corsairs can presumably also claim compensation from Italy, Denmark and Tunisia?
Can you name a single one of those descendants? Otoh all you'd need is a Carribean phone directory to identify the descendants of our 'commercial activities'.
Not sure about the name, but I do have a Roman nose.
Pretty well anyone in the Faroes or Iceland, and in all likelihood, any area of Scandinavian settlement, is the the descendant of slaves.
Are the Tories going to yield on reparations for slavery to commonwealth nations. Interesting comment from the PM of tiny island nation, Barbados who are demanding just under 5 Trillion USD.
"Mottley met David Cameron earlier on Tuesday but would not give details of the foreign secretary’s thoughts on the UK’s slavery-related debt.
“I’m not going to get into the details of our conversation but suffice to say I think the foreign secretary will take his lead from his majesty,” she said."
One bizarre thing are claims that slaves never received compensation.
The West Indies are now a collection of mostly independent black republics - effectively West African colonies which are far more affluent and developed than West Africa itself.
The descendants of the slaves got the countries.
I suspect a few politicians are just jumping on a bandwaggon eyeing up a potential payday on the back of guilt shaming western nations.
The President of Guyana was making such demands recently. Now he may need our help I wonder if he will change his tune.
Descendants of Brits enslaved by the Romans, Vikings and Barbary Corsairs can presumably also claim compensation from Italy, Denmark and Tunisia?
Can you name a single one of those descendants? Otoh all you'd need is a Carribean phone directory to identify the descendants of our 'commercial activities'.
The entire white* population of Europe will be descended from Roman slaves. Working on a generous 30-year generation, a person born in 1970 has ten thousand million million ancestors as at AD410, and obviously, exponentially more going back further. Given the churn in populations in the 1600 years since and the lengthy social instability in several of those periods, it's inconceivable that each one of us isn't the descendant of slaves - and indeed, the descendant of emperors.
* Probably a surprisingly large proportion of the non-white population too.
Are the Tories going to yield on reparations for slavery to commonwealth nations. Interesting comment from the PM of tiny island nation, Barbados who are demanding just under 5 Trillion USD.
"Mottley met David Cameron earlier on Tuesday but would not give details of the foreign secretary’s thoughts on the UK’s slavery-related debt.
“I’m not going to get into the details of our conversation but suffice to say I think the foreign secretary will take his lead from his majesty,” she said."
One bizarre thing are claims that slaves never received compensation.
The West Indies are now a collection of mostly independent black republics - effectively West African colonies which are far more affluent and developed than West Africa itself.
The descendants of the slaves got the countries.
I suspect a few politicians are just jumping on a bandwaggon eyeing up a potential payday on the back of guilt shaming western nations.
The President of Guyana was making such demands recently. Now he may need our help I wonder if he will change his tune.
Perhaps reparations in the form of military aid?
Bear in mind that the person organising this would be Shappsie.
In theory this type of caper ("Operational Partnering") is exactly the putative purpose of the new Ranger Regiment with its brilliant American name. In practice, it would be tricky to define the scope/ROE of the mission. Are they supposed to start shooting if the Venezuelans come over the border or exercise "courageous restraint", legging it to Georgetown airport?
Are the Tories going to yield on reparations for slavery to commonwealth nations. Interesting comment from the PM of tiny island nation, Barbados who are demanding just under 5 Trillion USD.
"Mottley met David Cameron earlier on Tuesday but would not give details of the foreign secretary’s thoughts on the UK’s slavery-related debt.
“I’m not going to get into the details of our conversation but suffice to say I think the foreign secretary will take his lead from his majesty,” she said."
One bizarre thing are claims that slaves never received compensation.
The West Indies are now a collection of mostly independent black republics - effectively West African colonies which are far more affluent and developed than West Africa itself.
The descendants of the slaves got the countries.
I suspect a few politicians are just jumping on a bandwaggon eyeing up a potential payday on the back of guilt shaming western nations.
The President of Guyana was making such demands recently. Now he may need our help I wonder if he will change his tune.
Telling taxpayers they have to cough up twice the UK’s GDP so that a bunch of grifters can live in luxury would be a bold move on the part of any government.
Yet there are several labour backbenchers who demand exactly that. And their number will increase after the next election.
So we may end up doing it, irrespective of the views of the taxpayers who have to fund it.
Don't be silly. There is substantial body of opinion in Labour that we should return to 0.7% aid ASAP and stop pretending that part of that can be spent on migrant hotels. There is nobody with any influence who argues that we should pay vast reparations., and even if there were the chance of Starmer and Reeves agreeing is zero.
Are the Tories going to yield on reparations for slavery to commonwealth nations. Interesting comment from the PM of tiny island nation, Barbados who are demanding just under 5 Trillion USD.
"Mottley met David Cameron earlier on Tuesday but would not give details of the foreign secretary’s thoughts on the UK’s slavery-related debt.
“I’m not going to get into the details of our conversation but suffice to say I think the foreign secretary will take his lead from his majesty,” she said."
One bizarre thing are claims that slaves never received compensation.
The West Indies are now a collection of mostly independent black republics - effectively West African colonies which are far more affluent and developed than West Africa itself.
The descendants of the slaves got the countries.
I suspect a few politicians are just jumping on a bandwaggon eyeing up a potential payday on the back of guilt shaming western nations.
The President of Guyana was making such demands recently. Now he may need our help I wonder if he will change his tune.
Descendants of Brits enslaved by the Romans, Vikings and Barbary Corsairs can presumably also claim compensation from Italy, Denmark and Tunisia?
Can you name a single one of those descendants? Otoh all you'd need is a Carribean phone directory to identify the descendants of our 'commercial activities'.
The entire white* population of Europe will be descended from Roman slaves. Working on a generous 30-year generation, a person born in 1970 has ten thousand million million ancestors as at AD410, and obviously, exponentially more going back further. Given the churn in populations in the 1600 years since and the lengthy social instability in several of those periods, it's inconceivable that each one of us isn't the descendant of slaves - and indeed, the descendant of emperors.
* Probably a surprisingly large proportion of the non-white population too.
Surprisingly, perhaps, but Muhammed is a common ancestor to most white Europeans, due to his descendants marrying Visigothic nobles who converted to Islam in Spain.
On topic, there won't be an 'early' (ie pre-autumn 2024) election; there might be a leadership confidence vote in Sunak; if there is, he'll probably survive on the cling-to-nurse-for-fear-of-worse principle.
We're now clearly in the fag-end of the government. There are any number of similarities with the late Major / late Brown eras, although this one's worse at governing than either of those. MPs, commentators and other 'supporters' will come up with all sorts of nonsensical suggestions on how to fix the Tories' problems. None will work because they won't, and can't, address the fundamental problem in time, which is that the country is broken and they did a large amount of the breaking.
Are the Tories going to yield on reparations for slavery to commonwealth nations. Interesting comment from the PM of tiny island nation, Barbados who are demanding just under 5 Trillion USD.
"Mottley met David Cameron earlier on Tuesday but would not give details of the foreign secretary’s thoughts on the UK’s slavery-related debt.
“I’m not going to get into the details of our conversation but suffice to say I think the foreign secretary will take his lead from his majesty,” she said."
One bizarre thing are claims that slaves never received compensation.
The West Indies are now a collection of mostly independent black republics - effectively West African colonies which are far more affluent and developed than West Africa itself.
The descendants of the slaves got the countries.
I suspect a few politicians are just jumping on a bandwaggon eyeing up a potential payday on the back of guilt shaming western nations.
The President of Guyana was making such demands recently. Now he may need our help I wonder if he will change his tune.
Descendants of Brits enslaved by the Romans, Vikings and Barbary Corsairs can presumably also claim compensation from Italy, Denmark and Tunisia?
Can you name a single one of those descendants? Otoh all you'd need is a Carribean phone directory to identify the descendants of our 'commercial activities'.
Not sure about the name, but I do have a Roman nose.
I think one can assert with some confidence that the entirety of the populations of the Faroes and Iceland are the descendants of slaves (and their masters). It is very likely that the same would be true of the inhabitants of Orkney, Shetland, Man, and much of Northern and Eastern England.
eg Orkney has 25% of its gene pool descended from Norsemen, so that shows where confident assertions about the entirety of populations gets you.
On topic, there won't be an 'early' (ie pre-autumn 2024) election; there might be a leadership confidence vote in Sunak; if there is, he'll probably survive on the cling-to-nurse-for-fear-of-worse principle.
We're now clearly in the fag-end of the government. There are any number of similarities with the late Major / late Brown eras, although this one's worse at governing than either of those. MPs, commentators and other 'supporters' will come up with all sorts of nonsensical suggestions on how to fix the Tories' problems. None will work because they won't, and can't, address the fundamental problem in time, which is that the country is broken and they did a large amount of the breaking.
Most of them prefer to bloviate, rather than to govern, in any case.
For most of my adult lifetime, the Conservative Party has resembled a circular firing squad.
Are the Tories going to yield on reparations for slavery to commonwealth nations. Interesting comment from the PM of tiny island nation, Barbados who are demanding just under 5 Trillion USD.
"Mottley met David Cameron earlier on Tuesday but would not give details of the foreign secretary’s thoughts on the UK’s slavery-related debt.
“I’m not going to get into the details of our conversation but suffice to say I think the foreign secretary will take his lead from his majesty,” she said."
One bizarre thing are claims that slaves never received compensation.
The West Indies are now a collection of mostly independent black republics - effectively West African colonies which are far more affluent and developed than West Africa itself.
The descendants of the slaves got the countries.
I suspect a few politicians are just jumping on a bandwaggon eyeing up a potential payday on the back of guilt shaming western nations.
The President of Guyana was making such demands recently. Now he may need our help I wonder if he will change his tune.
Telling taxpayers they have to cough up twice the UK’s GDP so that a bunch of grifters can live in luxury would be a bold move on the part of any government.
Yet there are several labour backbenchers who demand exactly that. And their number will increase after the next election.
So we may end up doing it, irrespective of the views of the taxpayers who have to fund it.
The Tories travails on Rwanda will soon be forgotten by the electorate if Labour decide we need to give Barbados a Billion quid (Let alone $5T) for reparations.
Are the Tories going to yield on reparations for slavery to commonwealth nations. Interesting comment from the PM of tiny island nation, Barbados who are demanding just under 5 Trillion USD.
"Mottley met David Cameron earlier on Tuesday but would not give details of the foreign secretary’s thoughts on the UK’s slavery-related debt.
“I’m not going to get into the details of our conversation but suffice to say I think the foreign secretary will take his lead from his majesty,” she said."
One bizarre thing are claims that slaves never received compensation.
The West Indies are now a collection of mostly independent black republics - effectively West African colonies which are far more affluent and developed than West Africa itself.
The descendants of the slaves got the countries.
I suspect a few politicians are just jumping on a bandwaggon eyeing up a potential payday on the back of guilt shaming western nations.
The President of Guyana was making such demands recently. Now he may need our help I wonder if he will change his tune.
Descendants of Brits enslaved by the Romans, Vikings and Barbary Corsairs can presumably also claim compensation from Italy, Denmark and Tunisia?
Can you name a single one of those descendants? Otoh all you'd need is a Carribean phone directory to identify the descendants of our 'commercial activities'.
The entire white* population of Europe will be descended from Roman slaves. Working on a generous 30-year generation, a person born in 1970 has ten thousand million million ancestors as at AD410, and obviously, exponentially more going back further. Given the churn in populations in the 1600 years since and the lengthy social instability in several of those periods, it's inconceivable that each one of us isn't the descendant of slaves - and indeed, the descendant of emperors.
* Probably a surprisingly large proportion of the non-white population too.
Shame that there's not a surviving Roman (or Norse or Barbary for that matter) nation state from which reparations can be claimed.
Are the Tories going to yield on reparations for slavery to commonwealth nations. Interesting comment from the PM of tiny island nation, Barbados who are demanding just under 5 Trillion USD.
"Mottley met David Cameron earlier on Tuesday but would not give details of the foreign secretary’s thoughts on the UK’s slavery-related debt.
“I’m not going to get into the details of our conversation but suffice to say I think the foreign secretary will take his lead from his majesty,” she said."
One bizarre thing are claims that slaves never received compensation.
The West Indies are now a collection of mostly independent black republics - effectively West African colonies which are far more affluent and developed than West Africa itself.
The descendants of the slaves got the countries.
I suspect a few politicians are just jumping on a bandwaggon eyeing up a potential payday on the back of guilt shaming western nations.
The President of Guyana was making such demands recently. Now he may need our help I wonder if he will change his tune.
Descendants of Brits enslaved by the Romans, Vikings and Barbary Corsairs can presumably also claim compensation from Italy, Denmark and Tunisia?
Can you name a single one of those descendants? Otoh all you'd need is a Carribean phone directory to identify the descendants of our 'commercial activities'.
Not sure about the name, but I do have a Roman nose.
I think one can assert with some confidence that the entirety of the populations of the Faroes and Iceland are the descendants of slaves (and their masters). It is very likely that the same would be true of the inhabitants of Orkney, Shetland, Man, and much of Northern and Eastern England.
eg Orkney has 25% of its gene pool descended from Norsemen, so that shows where confident assertions about the entirety of populations gets you.
It's the female line DNA that tells its own story. So, in the Faroes, that is very largely Irish, not Norse. Maybe lots of Irish women migrated voluntarily to those islands, but I do not think that likely.
A snap Rwanda themed election is magnificently bonkers even by the standards of the 2016+ tories but I can't see it ending in anything other than a cataract of delicious blue tears. At some point in the election campaign they are going to be asked why they are allowing in 1.5m legal immigrants but pissing iron filings over a few thousand caminantes.
Big Rish would be better off having a military adventure in Guyana. Commonwealth country, Anglophone and all that. There is a 1 in 40 chance that it would all work out just fine with a bloodless victory.
At the end of the day most voters want to stop the boats crossing the Channel. The new £38k minimum salary cap will help control immigration too.
They don't want British troops lives lost for a nation that is not even a Commonwealth realm now without a UN mandate
Really - I doubt 90% of the country care about immigrants on boats - albeit it’s definitely an issue for Kent and surrounding counties.
On the other point you are equally wrong - the last country I want invading somewhere else to claim that areas oil is Venezuela - for multiple reasons, one of which is they are crap at extracting it
The Govt is doing a great job of conflating boat crossings with immigration and that stopping boat crossings will sort out immigration. Trouble is they are crap at both. It does however help the right wing of the party and I suspect a lot of those electors (idiots) who support them think immigration and boat crossings are one and the same thing.
I think there will be flights to Rwanda before the general election because I do not see how the Tories win even 150 seats without them. They have to find a way and it will probably involve putting people on flights knowing that it is illegal to do so. But it is utter insanity they have got themselves into this position. It is proof they are entirely unfit to govern.
Are the Tories going to yield on reparations for slavery to commonwealth nations. Interesting comment from the PM of tiny island nation, Barbados who are demanding just under 5 Trillion USD.
"Mottley met David Cameron earlier on Tuesday but would not give details of the foreign secretary’s thoughts on the UK’s slavery-related debt.
“I’m not going to get into the details of our conversation but suffice to say I think the foreign secretary will take his lead from his majesty,” she said."
One bizarre thing are claims that slaves never received compensation.
The West Indies are now a collection of mostly independent black republics - effectively West African colonies which are far more affluent and developed than West Africa itself.
The descendants of the slaves got the countries.
I suspect a few politicians are just jumping on a bandwaggon eyeing up a potential payday on the back of guilt shaming western nations.
The President of Guyana was making such demands recently. Now he may need our help I wonder if he will change his tune.
Descendants of Brits enslaved by the Romans, Vikings and Barbary Corsairs can presumably also claim compensation from Italy, Denmark and Tunisia?
Can you name a single one of those descendants? Otoh all you'd need is a Carribean phone directory to identify the descendants of our 'commercial activities'.
The entire white* population of Europe will be descended from Roman slaves. Working on a generous 30-year generation, a person born in 1970 has ten thousand million million ancestors as at AD410, and obviously, exponentially more going back further. Given the churn in populations in the 1600 years since and the lengthy social instability in several of those periods, it's inconceivable that each one of us isn't the descendant of slaves - and indeed, the descendant of emperors.
* Probably a surprisingly large proportion of the non-white population too.
Shame that there's not a surviving Roman (or Norse or Barbary for that matter) nation state from which reparations can be claimed.
Turkey is very definitely the successor state of the Ottoman Empire, so anyone enslaved by them - several million black people, and a million or two whites - can apply to Ankara
I can't help feeling that this "the government is totally useless" meme is somewhat overdone. Yes, we are bored to tears with them, yes their priorities tend towards the weird, yes piss ups and breweries come to mind along with shortages of drink, but actually things are nowhere near as bad as people seem to think.
We have very low unemployment, we have rapidly falling inflation, we have moderate growth rather than the forecast recession, the living wage is rising quite quickly in nominal and real terms reducing income disparities, the government has finally taken a modest step towards reducing the penalisation of earned income, things are just not as bad as they are being painted.
We were briefly discussing the same phenomenon last week in the context of Biden who has an extremely hostile press despite having an even better economic record. Our media both in the US as well as here have lost any sense of proportion and I rather think that some on this site have also.
Whilst this is true and a welcome counterpoint, it has to be pointed out that "the Government" is not just "the Prime Minister", nor just "the Cabinet", but also "the Civil Service", and that a lot of the governing is done by a large mass of decent people just doing stuff day-in-and-day-out, whilst the famous ones act out.
As for Biden, another explanation for his unpopularity is the focus on metrics based on abstract nouns (eg "growth" of "the economy") instead of person-based ones (eg "median household income" of "a family"). The former is doing well: I think the latter are not.
Are the Tories going to yield on reparations for slavery to commonwealth nations. Interesting comment from the PM of tiny island nation, Barbados who are demanding just under 5 Trillion USD.
"Mottley met David Cameron earlier on Tuesday but would not give details of the foreign secretary’s thoughts on the UK’s slavery-related debt.
“I’m not going to get into the details of our conversation but suffice to say I think the foreign secretary will take his lead from his majesty,” she said."
One bizarre thing are claims that slaves never received compensation.
The West Indies are now a collection of mostly independent black republics - effectively West African colonies which are far more affluent and developed than West Africa itself.
The descendants of the slaves got the countries.
I suspect a few politicians are just jumping on a bandwaggon eyeing up a potential payday on the back of guilt shaming western nations.
The President of Guyana was making such demands recently. Now he may need our help I wonder if he will change his tune.
Descendants of Brits enslaved by the Romans, Vikings and Barbary Corsairs can presumably also claim compensation from Italy, Denmark and Tunisia?
Can you name a single one of those descendants? Otoh all you'd need is a Carribean phone directory to identify the descendants of our 'commercial activities'.
Not sure about the name, but I do have a Roman nose.
Well give it back to him them. He smells terrible.
Are the Tories going to yield on reparations for slavery to commonwealth nations. Interesting comment from the PM of tiny island nation, Barbados who are demanding just under 5 Trillion USD.
"Mottley met David Cameron earlier on Tuesday but would not give details of the foreign secretary’s thoughts on the UK’s slavery-related debt.
“I’m not going to get into the details of our conversation but suffice to say I think the foreign secretary will take his lead from his majesty,” she said."
One bizarre thing are claims that slaves never received compensation.
The West Indies are now a collection of mostly independent black republics - effectively West African colonies which are far more affluent and developed than West Africa itself.
The descendants of the slaves got the countries.
I suspect a few politicians are just jumping on a bandwaggon eyeing up a potential payday on the back of guilt shaming western nations.
The President of Guyana was making such demands recently. Now he may need our help I wonder if he will change his tune.
Descendants of Brits enslaved by the Romans, Vikings and Barbary Corsairs can presumably also claim compensation from Italy, Denmark and Tunisia?
Can you name a single one of those descendants? Otoh all you'd need is a Carribean phone directory to identify the descendants of our 'commercial activities'.
The entire white* population of Europe will be descended from Roman slaves. Working on a generous 30-year generation, a person born in 1970 has ten thousand million million ancestors as at AD410, and obviously, exponentially more going back further. Given the churn in populations in the 1600 years since and the lengthy social instability in several of those periods, it's inconceivable that each one of us isn't the descendant of slaves - and indeed, the descendant of emperors.
* Probably a surprisingly large proportion of the non-white population too.
An understanding of the type/token distinction is needed to comprehend that figure, otherwise the population in the past tends towards infinity.
There is precedent for a February election, and on an important issue. Sunak could call one now for February and fight on controlling immigration. I'm pretty sure the last time the PM did it, it worked really well................
A snap Rwanda themed election is magnificently bonkers even by the standards of the 2016+ tories but I can't see it ending in anything other than a cataract of delicious blue tears. At some point in the election campaign they are going to be asked why they are allowing in 1.5m legal immigrants but pissing iron filings over a few thousand caminantes.
Big Rish would be better off having a military adventure in Guyana. Commonwealth country, Anglophone and all that. There is a 1 in 40 chance that it would all work out just fine with a bloodless victory.
At the end of the day most voters want to stop the boats crossing the Channel. The new £38k minimum salary cap will help control immigration too.
They don't want British troops lives lost for a nation that is not even a Commonwealth realm now without a UN mandate
Really - I doubt 90% of the country care about immigrants on boats - albeit it’s definitely an issue for Kent and surrounding counties.
On the other point you are equally wrong - the last country I want invading somewhere else to claim that areas oil is Venezuela - for multiple reasons, one of which is they are crap at extracting it
The Govt is doing a great job of conflating boat crossings with immigration and that stopping boat crossings will sort out immigration. Trouble is they are crap at both. It does however help the right wing of the party and I suspect a lot of those electors (idiots) who support them think immigration and boat crossings are one and the same thing.
It would be fun to do a survey asking: How many people do you think have come across the channel illegally by boats in the past year?
Are the Tories going to yield on reparations for slavery to commonwealth nations. Interesting comment from the PM of tiny island nation, Barbados who are demanding just under 5 Trillion USD.
"Mottley met David Cameron earlier on Tuesday but would not give details of the foreign secretary’s thoughts on the UK’s slavery-related debt.
“I’m not going to get into the details of our conversation but suffice to say I think the foreign secretary will take his lead from his majesty,” she said."
One bizarre thing are claims that slaves never received compensation.
The West Indies are now a collection of mostly independent black republics - effectively West African colonies which are far more affluent and developed than West Africa itself.
The descendants of the slaves got the countries.
I suspect a few politicians are just jumping on a bandwaggon eyeing up a potential payday on the back of guilt shaming western nations.
The President of Guyana was making such demands recently. Now he may need our help I wonder if he will change his tune.
Descendants of Brits enslaved by the Romans, Vikings and Barbary Corsairs can presumably also claim compensation from Italy, Denmark and Tunisia?
Can you name a single one of those descendants? Otoh all you'd need is a Carribean phone directory to identify the descendants of our 'commercial activities'.
The entire white* population of Europe will be descended from Roman slaves. Working on a generous 30-year generation, a person born in 1970 has ten thousand million million ancestors as at AD410, and obviously, exponentially more going back further. Given the churn in populations in the 1600 years since and the lengthy social instability in several of those periods, it's inconceivable that each one of us isn't the descendant of slaves - and indeed, the descendant of emperors.
* Probably a surprisingly large proportion of the non-white population too.
Shame that there's not a surviving Roman (or Norse or Barbary for that matter) nation state from which reparations can be claimed.
Turkey is very definitely the successor state of the Ottoman Empire, so anyone enslaved by them - several million black people, and a million or two whites - can apply to Ankara
And seeing as we had an area of the UK England labelled "The Danelaw", there might be a reasonably obvious successor state to that particular wrinkle of UK history..
Are the Tories going to yield on reparations for slavery to commonwealth nations. Interesting comment from the PM of tiny island nation, Barbados who are demanding just under 5 Trillion USD.
"Mottley met David Cameron earlier on Tuesday but would not give details of the foreign secretary’s thoughts on the UK’s slavery-related debt.
“I’m not going to get into the details of our conversation but suffice to say I think the foreign secretary will take his lead from his majesty,” she said."
One bizarre thing are claims that slaves never received compensation.
The West Indies are now a collection of mostly independent black republics - effectively West African colonies which are far more affluent and developed than West Africa itself.
The descendants of the slaves got the countries.
I suspect a few politicians are just jumping on a bandwaggon eyeing up a potential payday on the back of guilt shaming western nations.
The President of Guyana was making such demands recently. Now he may need our help I wonder if he will change his tune.
Descendants of Brits enslaved by the Romans, Vikings and Barbary Corsairs can presumably also claim compensation from Italy, Denmark and Tunisia?
Can you name a single one of those descendants? Otoh all you'd need is a Carribean phone directory to identify the descendants of our 'commercial activities'.
The entire white* population of Europe will be descended from Roman slaves. Working on a generous 30-year generation, a person born in 1970 has ten thousand million million ancestors as at AD410, and obviously, exponentially more going back further. Given the churn in populations in the 1600 years since and the lengthy social instability in several of those periods, it's inconceivable that each one of us isn't the descendant of slaves - and indeed, the descendant of emperors.
* Probably a surprisingly large proportion of the non-white population too.
Shame that there's not a surviving Roman (or Norse or Barbary for that matter) nation state from which reparations can be claimed.
Turkey is very definitely the successor state of the Ottoman Empire, so anyone enslaved by them - several million black people, and a million or two whites - can apply to Ankara
The Kingdoms of Morocco, Norway and Denmark have been around for quite a while.
On topic, there won't be an 'early' (ie pre-autumn 2024) election; there might be a leadership confidence vote in Sunak; if there is, he'll probably survive on the cling-to-nurse-for-fear-of-worse principle.
We're now clearly in the fag-end of the government. There are any number of similarities with the late Major / late Brown eras, although this one's worse at governing than either of those. MPs, commentators and other 'supporters' will come up with all sorts of nonsensical suggestions on how to fix the Tories' problems. None will work because they won't, and can't, address the fundamental problem in time, which is that the country is broken and they did a large amount of the breaking.
Fag-end of the government, you say? Maybe that's why Rishi's determined to put an end to smoking.
Are the Tories going to yield on reparations for slavery to commonwealth nations. Interesting comment from the PM of tiny island nation, Barbados who are demanding just under 5 Trillion USD.
"Mottley met David Cameron earlier on Tuesday but would not give details of the foreign secretary’s thoughts on the UK’s slavery-related debt.
“I’m not going to get into the details of our conversation but suffice to say I think the foreign secretary will take his lead from his majesty,” she said."
One bizarre thing are claims that slaves never received compensation.
The West Indies are now a collection of mostly independent black republics - effectively West African colonies which are far more affluent and developed than West Africa itself.
The descendants of the slaves got the countries.
I suspect a few politicians are just jumping on a bandwaggon eyeing up a potential payday on the back of guilt shaming western nations.
The President of Guyana was making such demands recently. Now he may need our help I wonder if he will change his tune.
Descendants of Brits enslaved by the Romans, Vikings and Barbary Corsairs can presumably also claim compensation from Italy, Denmark and Tunisia?
Can you name a single one of those descendants? Otoh all you'd need is a Carribean phone directory to identify the descendants of our 'commercial activities'.
The entire white* population of Europe will be descended from Roman slaves. Working on a generous 30-year generation, a person born in 1970 has ten thousand million million ancestors as at AD410, and obviously, exponentially more going back further. Given the churn in populations in the 1600 years since and the lengthy social instability in several of those periods, it's inconceivable that each one of us isn't the descendant of slaves - and indeed, the descendant of emperors.
* Probably a surprisingly large proportion of the non-white population too.
Shame that there's not a surviving Roman (or Norse or Barbary for that matter) nation state from which reparations can be claimed.
Turkey is very definitely the successor state of the Ottoman Empire, so anyone enslaved by them - several million black people, and a million or two whites - can apply to Ankara
You should have a crack. It would make an article for the Knappers' Weekly.
Very interesting article by Peter Kellner questioning RefUK polling strength by comparing Ipsos polling with the others. I'm in the camp that believes Ref polling is well overstated. Interesting take on the Greens in there though, as I had felt they are also overstated.
Backed up by actual elections too. "However, recent evidence from actual elections tilts the debate in favour of Ipsos. In this May’s local elections, the Greens gained 241 council seats, Reform just two. In parliamentary byelections in the past two years, Reform’s best result was 5.4 per cent in Tamworth. The Greens won almost twice that in Somerton and Frome: 10.2 per cent."
This is important because polling performance can have a positive feedback effect. You rise in the polls, at least apparently, and it raises your profile and potentially makes more people choose you.
Savanta also relegates ReformUK to a second list, it has ReformUK on 7 which is lower than the average 9 points.
I agree with Peter's broad stance that the ReformUK vote is a protest vote and may well be a bit flakely, whilst the Green vote is more definite. However that does not mean that the ReformUK voters would go back to the Conservatives - looking at the underlying policy issues views of current ReformUK voters it is more likely that they would just not vote.
I think there will be flights to Rwanda before the general election because I do not see how the Tories win even 150 seats without them. They have to find a way and it will probably involve putting people on flights knowing that it is illegal to do so. But it is utter insanity they have got themselves into this position. It is proof they are entirely unfit to govern.
You mean they would defy the existing Supreme Court judgment, even in the absence of further legislation?
That sounds more like a coup d'état than an election gimmick. Pretty dangerous stuff.
On topic, there won't be an 'early' (ie pre-autumn 2024) election; there might be a leadership confidence vote in Sunak; if there is, he'll probably survive on the cling-to-nurse-for-fear-of-worse principle.
We're now clearly in the fag-end of the government. There are any number of similarities with the late Major / late Brown eras, although this one's worse at governing than either of those. MPs, commentators and other 'supporters' will come up with all sorts of nonsensical suggestions on how to fix the Tories' problems. None will work because they won't, and can't, address the fundamental problem in time, which is that the country is broken and they did a large amount of the breaking.
Most of them prefer to bloviate, rather than to govern, in any case.
For most of my adult lifetime, the Conservative Party has resembled a circular firing squad.
🚨NEW: Rishi Sunak is considering making next week's vote on the Rwanda bill a *confidence vote* so right-wing Tory MPs would lose the whip if they vote against with Labour
& straight back to the pub after hes finished his err "challenge". Liver disease for social clout, what a trade.
An acquaintance of mine in first year at uni did a bet where he could not drink 100 units of alcohol in a week. He won the first week, but on the second got taken to hospital with liver problems. He did not finish the year.
I think there will be flights to Rwanda before the general election because I do not see how the Tories win even 150 seats without them. They have to find a way and it will probably involve putting people on flights knowing that it is illegal to do so. But it is utter insanity they have got themselves into this position. It is proof they are entirely unfit to govern.
As Starmer pointed out at PMQs, there have already been at least three flights to Rwanda. Patel, Braverman and Cleverley.
Are the Tories going to yield on reparations for slavery to commonwealth nations. Interesting comment from the PM of tiny island nation, Barbados who are demanding just under 5 Trillion USD.
"Mottley met David Cameron earlier on Tuesday but would not give details of the foreign secretary’s thoughts on the UK’s slavery-related debt.
“I’m not going to get into the details of our conversation but suffice to say I think the foreign secretary will take his lead from his majesty,” she said."
One bizarre thing are claims that slaves never received compensation.
The West Indies are now a collection of mostly independent black republics - effectively West African colonies which are far more affluent and developed than West Africa itself.
The descendants of the slaves got the countries.
I suspect a few politicians are just jumping on a bandwaggon eyeing up a potential payday on the back of guilt shaming western nations.
The President of Guyana was making such demands recently. Now he may need our help I wonder if he will change his tune.
Descendants of Brits enslaved by the Romans, Vikings and Barbary Corsairs can presumably also claim compensation from Italy, Denmark and Tunisia?
Can you name a single one of those descendants? Otoh all you'd need is a Carribean phone directory to identify the descendants of our 'commercial activities'.
Not sure about the name, but I do have a Roman nose.
I think one can assert with some confidence that the entirety of the populations of the Faroes and Iceland are the descendants of slaves (and their masters). It is very likely that the same would be true of the inhabitants of Orkney, Shetland, Man, and much of Northern and Eastern England.
eg Orkney has 25% of its gene pool descended from Norsemen, so that shows where confident assertions about the entirety of populations gets you.
It's the female line DNA that tells its own story. So, in the Faroes, that is very largely Irish, not Norse. Maybe lots of Irish women migrated voluntarily to those islands, but I do not think that likely.
Perhaps they tried to move to Spain, but Spain had implemented a Faroes Island processing policy at the time?
One Tory minister messages to say that the Airbus 320 has the capacity and range to take the entire Conservative Parliamentary Party to Rwanda
Oh and Tobias Ellwood has been in touch. He says - on the record - at this rate after the election it will be a Cessna.
One Tory minister is getting confused between an A320 and an A350.
Back in the day the British were world beating at transporting human cargo, I believe. The entire PCP could be fitted into the hold of an eighteenth century sailing ship to do one leg of the triangular trade with an acceptable rate of depreciation in transit. No doubt in the future their descendents will line up to thank us for our munuficence.
On topic, there won't be an 'early' (ie pre-autumn 2024) election; there might be a leadership confidence vote in Sunak; if there is, he'll probably survive on the cling-to-nurse-for-fear-of-worse principle.
We're now clearly in the fag-end of the government. There are any number of similarities with the late Major / late Brown eras, although this one's worse at governing than either of those. MPs, commentators and other 'supporters' will come up with all sorts of nonsensical suggestions on how to fix the Tories' problems. None will work because they won't, and can't, address the fundamental problem in time, which is that the country is broken and they did a large amount of the breaking.
Fag-end of the government, you say? Maybe that's why Rishi's determined to put an end to smoking.
Which is of itself another stupid, unnecessary, illiberal and unachievable goal.
I can't help feeling that this "the government is totally useless" meme is somewhat overdone. Yes, we are bored to tears with them, yes their priorities tend towards the weird, yes piss ups and breweries come to mind along with shortages of drink, but actually things are nowhere near as bad as people seem to think.
We have very low unemployment, we have rapidly falling inflation, we have moderate growth rather than the forecast recession, the living wage is rising quite quickly in nominal and real terms reducing income disparities, the government has finally taken a modest step towards reducing the penalisation of earned income, things are just not as bad as they are being painted.
We were briefly discussing the same phenomenon last week in the context of Biden who has an extremely hostile press despite having an even better economic record. Our media both in the US as well as here have lost any sense of proportion and I rather think that some on this site have also.
Not convinced for two big reasons.
Firstly they have been culturally useless. They have been handed the opportunity to handle a massive shift because of Brexit, and have failed in both leadership and optics. They have been handed crises, especially Covid and have led so badly that a PM, who has flawed genius qualities, had to resign over multiple issues including Covid related ones. They have presented as a divided party, divided not over statesmanship issues but as competing populists. (Note today's evisceration of Braverman by Nick Robinson). Not even the Speccie or DTel will let you know what the Tory core principles are because there are none. good leadership conveys hope and principle, not rats in a sack.
Secondly, NHS, debt, interest rates, inflation, housing, transport, migration where the fails are hard facts, known personally to most.
Are the Tories going to yield on reparations for slavery to commonwealth nations. Interesting comment from the PM of tiny island nation, Barbados who are demanding just under 5 Trillion USD.
"Mottley met David Cameron earlier on Tuesday but would not give details of the foreign secretary’s thoughts on the UK’s slavery-related debt.
“I’m not going to get into the details of our conversation but suffice to say I think the foreign secretary will take his lead from his majesty,” she said."
One bizarre thing are claims that slaves never received compensation.
The West Indies are now a collection of mostly independent black republics - effectively West African colonies which are far more affluent and developed than West Africa itself.
The descendants of the slaves got the countries.
I suspect a few politicians are just jumping on a bandwaggon eyeing up a potential payday on the back of guilt shaming western nations.
The President of Guyana was making such demands recently. Now he may need our help I wonder if he will change his tune.
Descendants of Brits enslaved by the Romans, Vikings and Barbary Corsairs can presumably also claim compensation from Italy, Denmark and Tunisia?
Can you name a single one of those descendants? Otoh all you'd need is a Carribean phone directory to identify the descendants of our 'commercial activities'.
The entire white* population of Europe will be descended from Roman slaves. Working on a generous 30-year generation, a person born in 1970 has ten thousand million million ancestors as at AD410, and obviously, exponentially more going back further. Given the churn in populations in the 1600 years since and the lengthy social instability in several of those periods, it's inconceivable that each one of us isn't the descendant of slaves - and indeed, the descendant of emperors.
* Probably a surprisingly large proportion of the non-white population too.
Shame that there's not a surviving Roman (or Norse or Barbary for that matter) nation state from which reparations can be claimed.
Turkey is very definitely the successor state of the Ottoman Empire, so anyone enslaved by them - several million black people, and a million or two whites - can apply to Ankara
Successor state means piss all, the UK is the actual state that did all that v. profitable C18th slavering.
There are of course many reasons to despise the right but their current spasm of victimy self pity is one of the bigger ones. ‘BUT WE WERE SLAVES TOOOOO!’ sounds so pathetic.
Are the Tories going to yield on reparations for slavery to commonwealth nations. Interesting comment from the PM of tiny island nation, Barbados who are demanding just under 5 Trillion USD.
"Mottley met David Cameron earlier on Tuesday but would not give details of the foreign secretary’s thoughts on the UK’s slavery-related debt.
“I’m not going to get into the details of our conversation but suffice to say I think the foreign secretary will take his lead from his majesty,” she said."
One bizarre thing are claims that slaves never received compensation.
The West Indies are now a collection of mostly independent black republics - effectively West African colonies which are far more affluent and developed than West Africa itself.
The descendants of the slaves got the countries.
I suspect a few politicians are just jumping on a bandwaggon eyeing up a potential payday on the back of guilt shaming western nations.
The President of Guyana was making such demands recently. Now he may need our help I wonder if he will change his tune.
Descendants of Brits enslaved by the Romans, Vikings and Barbary Corsairs can presumably also claim compensation from Italy, Denmark and Tunisia?
Can you name a single one of those descendants? Otoh all you'd need is a Carribean phone directory to identify the descendants of our 'commercial activities'.
The entire white* population of Europe will be descended from Roman slaves. Working on a generous 30-year generation, a person born in 1970 has ten thousand million million ancestors as at AD410, and obviously, exponentially more going back further. Given the churn in populations in the 1600 years since and the lengthy social instability in several of those periods, it's inconceivable that each one of us isn't the descendant of slaves - and indeed, the descendant of emperors.
* Probably a surprisingly large proportion of the non-white population too.
Shame that there's not a surviving Roman (or Norse or Barbary for that matter) nation state from which reparations can be claimed.
Turkey is very definitely the successor state of the Ottoman Empire, so anyone enslaved by them - several million black people, and a million or two whites - can apply to Ankara
You should have a crack. It would make an article for the Knappers' Weekly.
Personally, I'd apply to the Moroccan King in Rabat
There are well documented examples of Cornish people being taken as slaves and put to work building the royal palaces of Morocco, from 1500 to as late as 1815
The present Moroccan royal dynasty dates back to the 17th century, so there is clear culpability, and a villain still in situ. And absolutely no different from black slaves in the Caribbean
& straight back to the pub after hes finished his err "challenge". Liver disease for social clout, what a trade.
An acquaintance of mine in first year at uni did a bet where he could not drink 100 units of alcohol in a week. He won the first week, but on the second got taken to hospital with liver problems. He did not finish the year.
He was only a tiny lad, as well.
The trick with that, is not to try and do it in beers. Half a bottle of vodka a day is just about doable as a 19yo.
On topic, there won't be an 'early' (ie pre-autumn 2024) election; there might be a leadership confidence vote in Sunak; if there is, he'll probably survive on the cling-to-nurse-for-fear-of-worse principle.
We're now clearly in the fag-end of the government. There are any number of similarities with the late Major / late Brown eras, although this one's worse at governing than either of those. MPs, commentators and other 'supporters' will come up with all sorts of nonsensical suggestions on how to fix the Tories' problems. None will work because they won't, and can't, address the fundamental problem in time, which is that the country is broken and they did a large amount of the breaking.
Fag-end of the government, you say? Maybe that's why Rishi's determined to put an end to smoking.
Which is of itself another stupid, unnecessary, illiberal and unachievable goal.
Something that came out of bloody nowhere, for no compelling reason.
On the subject of descent from slaves - we all are.
Any slave who lived in Europe over 2,000 years ago and who has any descendents alive today will be the ancestor of all people of European descent, and the same applies to the other major regions of the world.
Adam Rutherford explains it all in his excellent book: A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived
Are the Tories going to yield on reparations for slavery to commonwealth nations. Interesting comment from the PM of tiny island nation, Barbados who are demanding just under 5 Trillion USD.
"Mottley met David Cameron earlier on Tuesday but would not give details of the foreign secretary’s thoughts on the UK’s slavery-related debt.
“I’m not going to get into the details of our conversation but suffice to say I think the foreign secretary will take his lead from his majesty,” she said."
One bizarre thing are claims that slaves never received compensation.
The West Indies are now a collection of mostly independent black republics - effectively West African colonies which are far more affluent and developed than West Africa itself.
The descendants of the slaves got the countries.
I suspect a few politicians are just jumping on a bandwaggon eyeing up a potential payday on the back of guilt shaming western nations.
The President of Guyana was making such demands recently. Now he may need our help I wonder if he will change his tune.
Descendants of Brits enslaved by the Romans, Vikings and Barbary Corsairs can presumably also claim compensation from Italy, Denmark and Tunisia?
Can you name a single one of those descendants? Otoh all you'd need is a Carribean phone directory to identify the descendants of our 'commercial activities'.
The entire white* population of Europe will be descended from Roman slaves. Working on a generous 30-year generation, a person born in 1970 has ten thousand million million ancestors as at AD410, and obviously, exponentially more going back further. Given the churn in populations in the 1600 years since and the lengthy social instability in several of those periods, it's inconceivable that each one of us isn't the descendant of slaves - and indeed, the descendant of emperors.
* Probably a surprisingly large proportion of the non-white population too.
An understanding of the type/token distinction is needed to comprehend that figure, otherwise the population in the past tends towards infinity.
You'll have noticed that I didn't say *distinct* ancestors!
Obviously, geography and social barriers limit the speed of distinct ancestor numbers well before the constraints of overall population size kick in. However, go far enough back and there's enough movement and social mobility (not to mention illegitimate offspring) that the laws of large numbers do their work.
Last nights Republican debate. CNN have another group of Republican Iowa voters together and of the 8, 1 said Trump won, 1 De-Santis and 6 Haley. 4 said they will vote for her in the Caucus. Haley has come out on top the last 3 debates by ever increasing margins, I would put money on her to win the Caucus in January, then South Carolina. With her as the candidate the Republicans would probably sweep the General Election in November.
I can't help feeling that this "the government is totally useless" meme is somewhat overdone. Yes, we are bored to tears with them, yes their priorities tend towards the weird, yes piss ups and breweries come to mind along with shortages of drink, but actually things are nowhere near as bad as people seem to think.
We have very low unemployment, we have rapidly falling inflation, we have moderate growth rather than the forecast recession, the living wage is rising quite quickly in nominal and real terms reducing income disparities, the government has finally taken a modest step towards reducing the penalisation of earned income, things are just not as bad as they are being painted.
We were briefly discussing the same phenomenon last week in the context of Biden who has an extremely hostile press despite having an even better economic record. Our media both in the US as well as here have lost any sense of proportion and I rather think that some on this site have also.
Yes, except that there’s a large disconnect between the economic statistics and how the average person is feeling.
To paraphrase Mr Reagan, the average person very much doesn’t feel better off than they did four years ago, something that’s true for both the US and UK.
Normally that is because people have a bias that way but in this case its absolutely true. Although real wages are rising now there is a long way to go before the loss in real terms over the last 4 years is recovered and even longer until that increase in enough to pay the additional tax imposed on those earnings. But that is the price of a pandemic and a slightly overblown response to it. We are poorer because we spent £400bn dealing with Covid and the cost of that debt is increasing.
Most people on here wanted more restrictions and for lockdowns to continue; I said at the time that they’d be grizzling when we all have to pay for it in the years to come, and here they are
Are the Tories going to yield on reparations for slavery to commonwealth nations. Interesting comment from the PM of tiny island nation, Barbados who are demanding just under 5 Trillion USD.
"Mottley met David Cameron earlier on Tuesday but would not give details of the foreign secretary’s thoughts on the UK’s slavery-related debt.
“I’m not going to get into the details of our conversation but suffice to say I think the foreign secretary will take his lead from his majesty,” she said."
One bizarre thing are claims that slaves never received compensation.
The West Indies are now a collection of mostly independent black republics - effectively West African colonies which are far more affluent and developed than West Africa itself.
The descendants of the slaves got the countries.
I suspect a few politicians are just jumping on a bandwaggon eyeing up a potential payday on the back of guilt shaming western nations.
The President of Guyana was making such demands recently. Now he may need our help I wonder if he will change his tune.
Descendants of Brits enslaved by the Romans, Vikings and Barbary Corsairs can presumably also claim compensation from Italy, Denmark and Tunisia?
Can you name a single one of those descendants? Otoh all you'd need is a Carribean phone directory to identify the descendants of our 'commercial activities'.
The entire white* population of Europe will be descended from Roman slaves. Working on a generous 30-year generation, a person born in 1970 has ten thousand million million ancestors as at AD410, and obviously, exponentially more going back further. Given the churn in populations in the 1600 years since and the lengthy social instability in several of those periods, it's inconceivable that each one of us isn't the descendant of slaves - and indeed, the descendant of emperors.
* Probably a surprisingly large proportion of the non-white population too.
An understanding of the type/token distinction is needed to comprehend that figure, otherwise the population in the past tends towards infinity.
You'll have noticed that I didn't say *distinct* ancestors!
Obviously, geography and social barriers limit the speed of distinct ancestor numbers well before the constraints of overall population size kick in. However, go far enough back and there's enough movement and social mobility (not to mention illegitimate offspring) that the laws of large numbers do their work.
Slaves would have had much lower birthrates than free people, but as you say, the laws of large numbers do their work.
Are the Tories going to yield on reparations for slavery to commonwealth nations. Interesting comment from the PM of tiny island nation, Barbados who are demanding just under 5 Trillion USD.
"Mottley met David Cameron earlier on Tuesday but would not give details of the foreign secretary’s thoughts on the UK’s slavery-related debt.
“I’m not going to get into the details of our conversation but suffice to say I think the foreign secretary will take his lead from his majesty,” she said."
One bizarre thing are claims that slaves never received compensation.
The West Indies are now a collection of mostly independent black republics - effectively West African colonies which are far more affluent and developed than West Africa itself.
The descendants of the slaves got the countries.
I suspect a few politicians are just jumping on a bandwaggon eyeing up a potential payday on the back of guilt shaming western nations.
The President of Guyana was making such demands recently. Now he may need our help I wonder if he will change his tune.
Descendants of Brits enslaved by the Romans, Vikings and Barbary Corsairs can presumably also claim compensation from Italy, Denmark and Tunisia?
Can you name a single one of those descendants? Otoh all you'd need is a Carribean phone directory to identify the descendants of our 'commercial activities'.
The entire white* population of Europe will be descended from Roman slaves. Working on a generous 30-year generation, a person born in 1970 has ten thousand million million ancestors as at AD410, and obviously, exponentially more going back further. Given the churn in populations in the 1600 years since and the lengthy social instability in several of those periods, it's inconceivable that each one of us isn't the descendant of slaves - and indeed, the descendant of emperors.
* Probably a surprisingly large proportion of the non-white population too.
Shame that there's not a surviving Roman (or Norse or Barbary for that matter) nation state from which reparations can be claimed.
Turkey is very definitely the successor state of the Ottoman Empire, so anyone enslaved by them - several million black people, and a million or two whites - can apply to Ankara
Successor state means piss all, the UK is the actual state that did all that v. profitable C18th slavering.
There are of course many reasons to despise the right but their current spasm of victimy self pity is one of the bigger ones. ‘BUT WE WERE SLAVES TOOOOO!’ sounds so pathetic.
lol. You're so determined that Britain must be to blame, and ONLY Britain (and somehow not Scotland, natch)
Read Giles Milton's White Gold. The Barbary Slave trade was very real, and very cruel, and inflicted awful wounds on west country England, esp Cornwall and Devon. And, as I note below. this was done by the Moroccan monarchy which still exists today, indeed you can visit the Moroccan palaces built by British slaves
On topic, there won't be an 'early' (ie pre-autumn 2024) election; there might be a leadership confidence vote in Sunak; if there is, he'll probably survive on the cling-to-nurse-for-fear-of-worse principle.
We're now clearly in the fag-end of the government. There are any number of similarities with the late Major / late Brown eras, although this one's worse at governing than either of those. MPs, commentators and other 'supporters' will come up with all sorts of nonsensical suggestions on how to fix the Tories' problems. None will work because they won't, and can't, address the fundamental problem in time, which is that the country is broken and they did a large amount of the breaking.
Fag-end of the government, you say? Maybe that's why Rishi's determined to put an end to smoking.
Which is of itself another stupid, unnecessary, illiberal and unachievable goal.
Something that came out of bloody nowhere, for no compelling reason.
You can't help but think that Rishi is using his time as PM to pursue his personal whims and bugbears: extra Maths, banning smoking, transporting people he doesn't like, curtailing high-speed trains, bashing recycling...
I would say he's losing his marbles but no, he's told the Greeks he's keeping those.
On the subject of descent from slaves - we all are.
Any slave who lived in Europe over 2,000 years ago and who has any descendents alive today will be the ancestor of all people of European descent, and the same applies to the other major regions of the world.
Adam Rutherford explains it all in his excellent book: A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived
So we should be suing ourselves for what our ancestors did to our ancestors to produce our ancestors? Have the Liberal Democrats got a policy on this?
Are the Tories going to yield on reparations for slavery to commonwealth nations. Interesting comment from the PM of tiny island nation, Barbados who are demanding just under 5 Trillion USD.
"Mottley met David Cameron earlier on Tuesday but would not give details of the foreign secretary’s thoughts on the UK’s slavery-related debt.
“I’m not going to get into the details of our conversation but suffice to say I think the foreign secretary will take his lead from his majesty,” she said."
One bizarre thing are claims that slaves never received compensation.
The West Indies are now a collection of mostly independent black republics - effectively West African colonies which are far more affluent and developed than West Africa itself.
The descendants of the slaves got the countries.
I suspect a few politicians are just jumping on a bandwaggon eyeing up a potential payday on the back of guilt shaming western nations.
The President of Guyana was making such demands recently. Now he may need our help I wonder if he will change his tune.
Descendants of Brits enslaved by the Romans, Vikings and Barbary Corsairs can presumably also claim compensation from Italy, Denmark and Tunisia?
Can you name a single one of those descendants? Otoh all you'd need is a Carribean phone directory to identify the descendants of our 'commercial activities'.
The entire white* population of Europe will be descended from Roman slaves. Working on a generous 30-year generation, a person born in 1970 has ten thousand million million ancestors as at AD410, and obviously, exponentially more going back further. Given the churn in populations in the 1600 years since and the lengthy social instability in several of those periods, it's inconceivable that each one of us isn't the descendant of slaves - and indeed, the descendant of emperors.
* Probably a surprisingly large proportion of the non-white population too.
An understanding of the type/token distinction is needed to comprehend that figure, otherwise the population in the past tends towards infinity.
You'll have noticed that I didn't say *distinct* ancestors!
Obviously, geography and social barriers limit the speed of distinct ancestor numbers well before the constraints of overall population size kick in. However, go far enough back and there's enough movement and social mobility (not to mention illegitimate offspring) that the laws of large numbers do their work.
Slaves would have had much lower birthrates than free people, but as you say, the laws of large numbers do their work.
And of course Muslim slavers made sure that the birthrates of THEIR black slaves were phenomenally low - by the brutal expedient of castrating all the males, a surgery which only 10% survived
The Muslim slave trade was the biggest, the cruellest, and the longest, in the historical record. Only outlawed in the late 20th century in some places
Are the Tories going to yield on reparations for slavery to commonwealth nations. Interesting comment from the PM of tiny island nation, Barbados who are demanding just under 5 Trillion USD.
"Mottley met David Cameron earlier on Tuesday but would not give details of the foreign secretary’s thoughts on the UK’s slavery-related debt.
“I’m not going to get into the details of our conversation but suffice to say I think the foreign secretary will take his lead from his majesty,” she said."
One bizarre thing are claims that slaves never received compensation.
The West Indies are now a collection of mostly independent black republics - effectively West African colonies which are far more affluent and developed than West Africa itself.
The descendants of the slaves got the countries.
I suspect a few politicians are just jumping on a bandwaggon eyeing up a potential payday on the back of guilt shaming western nations.
The President of Guyana was making such demands recently. Now he may need our help I wonder if he will change his tune.
Descendants of Brits enslaved by the Romans, Vikings and Barbary Corsairs can presumably also claim compensation from Italy, Denmark and Tunisia?
Can you name a single one of those descendants? Otoh all you'd need is a Carribean phone directory to identify the descendants of our 'commercial activities'.
The entire white* population of Europe will be descended from Roman slaves. Working on a generous 30-year generation, a person born in 1970 has ten thousand million million ancestors as at AD410, and obviously, exponentially more going back further. Given the churn in populations in the 1600 years since and the lengthy social instability in several of those periods, it's inconceivable that each one of us isn't the descendant of slaves - and indeed, the descendant of emperors.
* Probably a surprisingly large proportion of the non-white population too.
Shame that there's not a surviving Roman (or Norse or Barbary for that matter) nation state from which reparations can be claimed.
Turkey is very definitely the successor state of the Ottoman Empire, so anyone enslaved by them - several million black people, and a million or two whites - can apply to Ankara
Successor state means piss all, the UK is the actual state that did all that v. profitable C18th slavering.
There are of course many reasons to despise the right but their current spasm of victimy self pity is one of the bigger ones. ‘BUT WE WERE SLAVES TOOOOO!’ sounds so pathetic.
Nobody is responsible for the actions of evil ancestors, not even you for yours. Nor does anyone inherit virtue, or victim status, from their ancestors.
Are the Tories going to yield on reparations for slavery to commonwealth nations. Interesting comment from the PM of tiny island nation, Barbados who are demanding just under 5 Trillion USD.
"Mottley met David Cameron earlier on Tuesday but would not give details of the foreign secretary’s thoughts on the UK’s slavery-related debt.
“I’m not going to get into the details of our conversation but suffice to say I think the foreign secretary will take his lead from his majesty,” she said."
One bizarre thing are claims that slaves never received compensation.
The West Indies are now a collection of mostly independent black republics - effectively West African colonies which are far more affluent and developed than West Africa itself.
The descendants of the slaves got the countries.
I suspect a few politicians are just jumping on a bandwaggon eyeing up a potential payday on the back of guilt shaming western nations.
The President of Guyana was making such demands recently. Now he may need our help I wonder if he will change his tune.
Descendants of Brits enslaved by the Romans, Vikings and Barbary Corsairs can presumably also claim compensation from Italy, Denmark and Tunisia?
Can you name a single one of those descendants? Otoh all you'd need is a Carribean phone directory to identify the descendants of our 'commercial activities'.
The entire white* population of Europe will be descended from Roman slaves. Working on a generous 30-year generation, a person born in 1970 has ten thousand million million ancestors as at AD410, and obviously, exponentially more going back further. Given the churn in populations in the 1600 years since and the lengthy social instability in several of those periods, it's inconceivable that each one of us isn't the descendant of slaves - and indeed, the descendant of emperors.
* Probably a surprisingly large proportion of the non-white population too.
Shame that there's not a surviving Roman (or Norse or Barbary for that matter) nation state from which reparations can be claimed.
Turkey is very definitely the successor state of the Ottoman Empire, so anyone enslaved by them - several million black people, and a million or two whites - can apply to Ankara
You should have a crack. It would make an article for the Knappers' Weekly.
Personally, I'd apply to the Moroccan King in Rabat
There are well documented examples of Cornish people being taken as slaves and put to work building the royal palaces of Morocco, from 1500 to as late as 1815
The present Moroccan royal dynasty dates back to the 17th century, so there is clear culpability, and a villain still in situ. And absolutely no different from black slaves in the Caribbean
Moving towards completeness, have we noted slavery in the empire of Mali?
Are the Tories going to yield on reparations for slavery to commonwealth nations. Interesting comment from the PM of tiny island nation, Barbados who are demanding just under 5 Trillion USD.
"Mottley met David Cameron earlier on Tuesday but would not give details of the foreign secretary’s thoughts on the UK’s slavery-related debt.
“I’m not going to get into the details of our conversation but suffice to say I think the foreign secretary will take his lead from his majesty,” she said."
One bizarre thing are claims that slaves never received compensation.
The West Indies are now a collection of mostly independent black republics - effectively West African colonies which are far more affluent and developed than West Africa itself.
The descendants of the slaves got the countries.
I suspect a few politicians are just jumping on a bandwaggon eyeing up a potential payday on the back of guilt shaming western nations.
The President of Guyana was making such demands recently. Now he may need our help I wonder if he will change his tune.
Descendants of Brits enslaved by the Romans, Vikings and Barbary Corsairs can presumably also claim compensation from Italy, Denmark and Tunisia?
Can you name a single one of those descendants? Otoh all you'd need is a Carribean phone directory to identify the descendants of our 'commercial activities'.
The entire white* population of Europe will be descended from Roman slaves. Working on a generous 30-year generation, a person born in 1970 has ten thousand million million ancestors as at AD410, and obviously, exponentially more going back further. Given the churn in populations in the 1600 years since and the lengthy social instability in several of those periods, it's inconceivable that each one of us isn't the descendant of slaves - and indeed, the descendant of emperors.
* Probably a surprisingly large proportion of the non-white population too.
Shame that there's not a surviving Roman (or Norse or Barbary for that matter) nation state from which reparations can be claimed.
Turkey is very definitely the successor state of the Ottoman Empire, so anyone enslaved by them - several million black people, and a million or two whites - can apply to Ankara
Successor state means piss all, the UK is the actual state that did all that v. profitable C18th slavering.
There are of course many reasons to despise the right but their current spasm of victimy self pity is one of the bigger ones. ‘BUT WE WERE SLAVES TOOOOO!’ sounds so pathetic.
lol. You're so determined that Britain must be to blame, and ONLY Britain (and somehow not Scotland, natch)
Read Giles Milton's White Gold. The Barbary Slave trade was very real, and very cruel, and inflicted awful wounds on west country England, esp Cornwall and Devon. And, as I note below. this was done by the Moroccan monarchy which still exists today, indeed you can visit the Moroccan palaces built by British slaves
Whiney whitey syndrome in all its glory.
I’m all for Scotland accepting its part in the great British Empire slaving project, but the descendants of the movers and shakers of the time are awfy touchy about any references to it.
Last nights Republican debate. CNN have another group of Republican Iowa voters together and of the 8, 1 said Trump won, 1 De-Santis and 6 Haley. 4 said they will vote for her in the Caucus. Haley has come out on top the last 3 debates by ever increasing margins, I would put money on her to win the Caucus in January, then South Carolina. With her as the candidate the Republicans would probably sweep the General Election in November.
That's an interesting result, as she was comparatively lacklustre.
Are you jealous that they now have Brooklyn Beckham doing travel writing ?
I take my computer with me wherever I go because Nicola and I love watching TV shows and always have a series on the go. If we’re staying in a hotel then we’ll get room service — my go-to order is chicken and chips with an ice water; Nicola goes for fruit and ice cream — and binge-watch something like Sex and the City or Gilmore Girls in the evening.
Are the Tories going to yield on reparations for slavery to commonwealth nations. Interesting comment from the PM of tiny island nation, Barbados who are demanding just under 5 Trillion USD.
"Mottley met David Cameron earlier on Tuesday but would not give details of the foreign secretary’s thoughts on the UK’s slavery-related debt.
“I’m not going to get into the details of our conversation but suffice to say I think the foreign secretary will take his lead from his majesty,” she said."
One bizarre thing are claims that slaves never received compensation.
The West Indies are now a collection of mostly independent black republics - effectively West African colonies which are far more affluent and developed than West Africa itself.
The descendants of the slaves got the countries.
I suspect a few politicians are just jumping on a bandwaggon eyeing up a potential payday on the back of guilt shaming western nations.
The President of Guyana was making such demands recently. Now he may need our help I wonder if he will change his tune.
Descendants of Brits enslaved by the Romans, Vikings and Barbary Corsairs can presumably also claim compensation from Italy, Denmark and Tunisia?
Can you name a single one of those descendants? Otoh all you'd need is a Carribean phone directory to identify the descendants of our 'commercial activities'.
The entire white* population of Europe will be descended from Roman slaves. Working on a generous 30-year generation, a person born in 1970 has ten thousand million million ancestors as at AD410, and obviously, exponentially more going back further. Given the churn in populations in the 1600 years since and the lengthy social instability in several of those periods, it's inconceivable that each one of us isn't the descendant of slaves - and indeed, the descendant of emperors.
* Probably a surprisingly large proportion of the non-white population too.
Shame that there's not a surviving Roman (or Norse or Barbary for that matter) nation state from which reparations can be claimed.
Turkey is very definitely the successor state of the Ottoman Empire, so anyone enslaved by them - several million black people, and a million or two whites - can apply to Ankara
Successor state means piss all, the UK is the actual state that did all that v. profitable C18th slavering.
There are of course many reasons to despise the right but their current spasm of victimy self pity is one of the bigger ones. ‘BUT WE WERE SLAVES TOOOOO!’ sounds so pathetic.
lol. You're so determined that Britain must be to blame, and ONLY Britain (and somehow not Scotland, natch)
Read Giles Milton's White Gold. The Barbary Slave trade was very real, and very cruel, and inflicted awful wounds on west country England, esp Cornwall and Devon. And, as I note below. this was done by the Moroccan monarchy which still exists today, indeed you can visit the Moroccan palaces built by British slaves
Whiney whitey syndrome in all its glory.
I’m all for Scotland accepting its part in the great British Empire slaving project, but the descendants of the movers and shakers of the time are awfy touchy about any references to it.
You are severely embittered, these days. But I can see why, when I look at the cause of independence, drifting over the horizon and far into an impossible future
You have my genune sympathies. To burn for a wild poliical ambition, and to come so close, only for it to drift out of reach, and then to basically vanish, must be quite hard to deal with
Are the Tories going to yield on reparations for slavery to commonwealth nations. Interesting comment from the PM of tiny island nation, Barbados who are demanding just under 5 Trillion USD.
"Mottley met David Cameron earlier on Tuesday but would not give details of the foreign secretary’s thoughts on the UK’s slavery-related debt.
“I’m not going to get into the details of our conversation but suffice to say I think the foreign secretary will take his lead from his majesty,” she said."
One bizarre thing are claims that slaves never received compensation.
The West Indies are now a collection of mostly independent black republics - effectively West African colonies which are far more affluent and developed than West Africa itself.
The descendants of the slaves got the countries.
I suspect a few politicians are just jumping on a bandwaggon eyeing up a potential payday on the back of guilt shaming western nations.
The President of Guyana was making such demands recently. Now he may need our help I wonder if he will change his tune.
Descendants of Brits enslaved by the Romans, Vikings and Barbary Corsairs can presumably also claim compensation from Italy, Denmark and Tunisia?
Can you name a single one of those descendants? Otoh all you'd need is a Carribean phone directory to identify the descendants of our 'commercial activities'.
The entire white* population of Europe will be descended from Roman slaves. Working on a generous 30-year generation, a person born in 1970 has ten thousand million million ancestors as at AD410, and obviously, exponentially more going back further. Given the churn in populations in the 1600 years since and the lengthy social instability in several of those periods, it's inconceivable that each one of us isn't the descendant of slaves - and indeed, the descendant of emperors.
* Probably a surprisingly large proportion of the non-white population too.
Shame that there's not a surviving Roman (or Norse or Barbary for that matter) nation state from which reparations can be claimed.
Turkey is very definitely the successor state of the Ottoman Empire, so anyone enslaved by them - several million black people, and a million or two whites - can apply to Ankara
Successor state means piss all, the UK is the actual state that did all that v. profitable C18th slavering.
There are of course many reasons to despise the right but their current spasm of victimy self pity is one of the bigger ones. ‘BUT WE WERE SLAVES TOOOOO!’ sounds so pathetic.
lol. You're so determined that Britain must be to blame, and ONLY Britain (and somehow not Scotland, natch)
Read Giles Milton's White Gold. The Barbary Slave trade was very real, and very cruel, and inflicted awful wounds on west country England, esp Cornwall and Devon. And, as I note below. this was done by the Moroccan monarchy which still exists today, indeed you can visit the Moroccan palaces built by British slaves
Whiney whitey syndrome in all its glory.
I’m all for Scotland accepting its part in the great British Empire slaving project, but the descendants of the movers and shakers of the time are awfy touchy about any references to it.
Are you jealous that they now have Brooklyn Beckham doing travel writing ?
I take my computer with me wherever I go because Nicola and I love watching TV shows and always have a series on the go. If we’re staying in a hotel then we’ll get room service — my go-to order is chicken and chips with an ice water; Nicola goes for fruit and ice cream — and binge-watch something like Sex and the City or Gilmore Girls in the evening.
Are the Tories going to yield on reparations for slavery to commonwealth nations. Interesting comment from the PM of tiny island nation, Barbados who are demanding just under 5 Trillion USD.
"Mottley met David Cameron earlier on Tuesday but would not give details of the foreign secretary’s thoughts on the UK’s slavery-related debt.
“I’m not going to get into the details of our conversation but suffice to say I think the foreign secretary will take his lead from his majesty,” she said."
One bizarre thing are claims that slaves never received compensation.
The West Indies are now a collection of mostly independent black republics - effectively West African colonies which are far more affluent and developed than West Africa itself.
The descendants of the slaves got the countries.
I suspect a few politicians are just jumping on a bandwaggon eyeing up a potential payday on the back of guilt shaming western nations.
The President of Guyana was making such demands recently. Now he may need our help I wonder if he will change his tune.
Descendants of Brits enslaved by the Romans, Vikings and Barbary Corsairs can presumably also claim compensation from Italy, Denmark and Tunisia?
Can you name a single one of those descendants? Otoh all you'd need is a Carribean phone directory to identify the descendants of our 'commercial activities'.
The entire white* population of Europe will be descended from Roman slaves. Working on a generous 30-year generation, a person born in 1970 has ten thousand million million ancestors as at AD410, and obviously, exponentially more going back further. Given the churn in populations in the 1600 years since and the lengthy social instability in several of those periods, it's inconceivable that each one of us isn't the descendant of slaves - and indeed, the descendant of emperors.
* Probably a surprisingly large proportion of the non-white population too.
Shame that there's not a surviving Roman (or Norse or Barbary for that matter) nation state from which reparations can be claimed.
Turkey is very definitely the successor state of the Ottoman Empire, so anyone enslaved by them - several million black people, and a million or two whites - can apply to Ankara
Successor state means piss all, the UK is the actual state that did all that v. profitable C18th slavering.
There are of course many reasons to despise the right but their current spasm of victimy self pity is one of the bigger ones. ‘BUT WE WERE SLAVES TOOOOO!’ sounds so pathetic.
lol. You're so determined that Britain must be to blame, and ONLY Britain (and somehow not Scotland, natch)
Read Giles Milton's White Gold. The Barbary Slave trade was very real, and very cruel, and inflicted awful wounds on west country England, esp Cornwall and Devon. And, as I note below. this was done by the Moroccan monarchy which still exists today, indeed you can visit the Moroccan palaces built by British slaves
Whiney whitey syndrome in all its glory.
I’m all for Scotland accepting its part in the great British Empire slaving project, but the descendants of the movers and shakers of the time are awfy touchy about any references to it.
Are the Tories going to yield on reparations for slavery to commonwealth nations. Interesting comment from the PM of tiny island nation, Barbados who are demanding just under 5 Trillion USD.
"Mottley met David Cameron earlier on Tuesday but would not give details of the foreign secretary’s thoughts on the UK’s slavery-related debt.
“I’m not going to get into the details of our conversation but suffice to say I think the foreign secretary will take his lead from his majesty,” she said."
One bizarre thing are claims that slaves never received compensation.
The West Indies are now a collection of mostly independent black republics - effectively West African colonies which are far more affluent and developed than West Africa itself.
The descendants of the slaves got the countries.
Don't even send us a Christmas Tree to say thanks.
Are the Tories going to yield on reparations for slavery to commonwealth nations. Interesting comment from the PM of tiny island nation, Barbados who are demanding just under 5 Trillion USD.
"Mottley met David Cameron earlier on Tuesday but would not give details of the foreign secretary’s thoughts on the UK’s slavery-related debt.
“I’m not going to get into the details of our conversation but suffice to say I think the foreign secretary will take his lead from his majesty,” she said."
One bizarre thing are claims that slaves never received compensation.
The West Indies are now a collection of mostly independent black republics - effectively West African colonies which are far more affluent and developed than West Africa itself.
The descendants of the slaves got the countries.
I suspect a few politicians are just jumping on a bandwaggon eyeing up a potential payday on the back of guilt shaming western nations.
The President of Guyana was making such demands recently. Now he may need our help I wonder if he will change his tune.
Descendants of Brits enslaved by the Romans, Vikings and Barbary Corsairs can presumably also claim compensation from Italy, Denmark and Tunisia?
Can you name a single one of those descendants? Otoh all you'd need is a Carribean phone directory to identify the descendants of our 'commercial activities'.
The entire white* population of Europe will be descended from Roman slaves. Working on a generous 30-year generation, a person born in 1970 has ten thousand million million ancestors as at AD410, and obviously, exponentially more going back further. Given the churn in populations in the 1600 years since and the lengthy social instability in several of those periods, it's inconceivable that each one of us isn't the descendant of slaves - and indeed, the descendant of emperors.
* Probably a surprisingly large proportion of the non-white population too.
Shame that there's not a surviving Roman (or Norse or Barbary for that matter) nation state from which reparations can be claimed.
Turkey is very definitely the successor state of the Ottoman Empire, so anyone enslaved by them - several million black people, and a million or two whites - can apply to Ankara
Successor state means piss all, the UK is the actual state that did all that v. profitable C18th slavering.
There are of course many reasons to despise the right but their current spasm of victimy self pity is one of the bigger ones. ‘BUT WE WERE SLAVES TOOOOO!’ sounds so pathetic.
lol. You're so determined that Britain must be to blame, and ONLY Britain (and somehow not Scotland, natch)
Read Giles Milton's White Gold. The Barbary Slave trade was very real, and very cruel, and inflicted awful wounds on west country England, esp Cornwall and Devon. And, as I note below. this was done by the Moroccan monarchy which still exists today, indeed you can visit the Moroccan palaces built by British slaves
Whiney whitey syndrome in all its glory.
I’m all for Scotland accepting its part in the great British Empire slaving project, but the descendants of the movers and shakers of the time are awfy touchy about any references to it.
Are the Tories going to yield on reparations for slavery to commonwealth nations. Interesting comment from the PM of tiny island nation, Barbados who are demanding just under 5 Trillion USD.
"Mottley met David Cameron earlier on Tuesday but would not give details of the foreign secretary’s thoughts on the UK’s slavery-related debt.
“I’m not going to get into the details of our conversation but suffice to say I think the foreign secretary will take his lead from his majesty,” she said."
One bizarre thing are claims that slaves never received compensation.
The West Indies are now a collection of mostly independent black republics - effectively West African colonies which are far more affluent and developed than West Africa itself.
The descendants of the slaves got the countries.
I suspect a few politicians are just jumping on a bandwaggon eyeing up a potential payday on the back of guilt shaming western nations.
The President of Guyana was making such demands recently. Now he may need our help I wonder if he will change his tune.
Descendants of Brits enslaved by the Romans, Vikings and Barbary Corsairs can presumably also claim compensation from Italy, Denmark and Tunisia?
Can you name a single one of those descendants? Otoh all you'd need is a Carribean phone directory to identify the descendants of our 'commercial activities'.
The entire white* population of Europe will be descended from Roman slaves. Working on a generous 30-year generation, a person born in 1970 has ten thousand million million ancestors as at AD410, and obviously, exponentially more going back further. Given the churn in populations in the 1600 years since and the lengthy social instability in several of those periods, it's inconceivable that each one of us isn't the descendant of slaves - and indeed, the descendant of emperors.
* Probably a surprisingly large proportion of the non-white population too.
Shame that there's not a surviving Roman (or Norse or Barbary for that matter) nation state from which reparations can be claimed.
Turkey is very definitely the successor state of the Ottoman Empire, so anyone enslaved by them - several million black people, and a million or two whites - can apply to Ankara
Successor state means piss all, the UK is the actual state that did all that v. profitable C18th slavering.
There are of course many reasons to despise the right but their current spasm of victimy self pity is one of the bigger ones. ‘BUT WE WERE SLAVES TOOOOO!’ sounds so pathetic.
lol. You're so determined that Britain must be to blame, and ONLY Britain (and somehow not Scotland, natch)
Read Giles Milton's White Gold. The Barbary Slave trade was very real, and very cruel, and inflicted awful wounds on west country England, esp Cornwall and Devon. And, as I note below. this was done by the Moroccan monarchy which still exists today, indeed you can visit the Moroccan palaces built by British slaves
Whiney whitey syndrome in all its glory.
I’m all for Scotland accepting its part in the great British Empire slaving project, but the descendants of the movers and shakers of the time are awfy touchy about any references to it.
You are severely embittered, these days. But I can see why, when I look at the cause of independence, drifting over the horizon and far into an impossible future
You have my genune sympathies. To burn for a wild poliical ambition, and to come so close, only for it to drift out of reach, and then to basically vanish, must be quite hard to deal with
Even more painful when Brexiteers got their dream delivered.
Are the Tories going to yield on reparations for slavery to commonwealth nations. Interesting comment from the PM of tiny island nation, Barbados who are demanding just under 5 Trillion USD.
"Mottley met David Cameron earlier on Tuesday but would not give details of the foreign secretary’s thoughts on the UK’s slavery-related debt.
“I’m not going to get into the details of our conversation but suffice to say I think the foreign secretary will take his lead from his majesty,” she said."
One bizarre thing are claims that slaves never received compensation.
The West Indies are now a collection of mostly independent black republics - effectively West African colonies which are far more affluent and developed than West Africa itself.
The descendants of the slaves got the countries.
I suspect a few politicians are just jumping on a bandwaggon eyeing up a potential payday on the back of guilt shaming western nations.
The President of Guyana was making such demands recently. Now he may need our help I wonder if he will change his tune.
Descendants of Brits enslaved by the Romans, Vikings and Barbary Corsairs can presumably also claim compensation from Italy, Denmark and Tunisia?
Can you name a single one of those descendants? Otoh all you'd need is a Carribean phone directory to identify the descendants of our 'commercial activities'.
The entire white* population of Europe will be descended from Roman slaves. Working on a generous 30-year generation, a person born in 1970 has ten thousand million million ancestors as at AD410, and obviously, exponentially more going back further. Given the churn in populations in the 1600 years since and the lengthy social instability in several of those periods, it's inconceivable that each one of us isn't the descendant of slaves - and indeed, the descendant of emperors.
* Probably a surprisingly large proportion of the non-white population too.
Shame that there's not a surviving Roman (or Norse or Barbary for that matter) nation state from which reparations can be claimed.
Turkey is very definitely the successor state of the Ottoman Empire, so anyone enslaved by them - several million black people, and a million or two whites - can apply to Ankara
Successor state means piss all, the UK is the actual state that did all that v. profitable C18th slavering.
There are of course many reasons to despise the right but their current spasm of victimy self pity is one of the bigger ones. ‘BUT WE WERE SLAVES TOOOOO!’ sounds so pathetic.
lol. You're so determined that Britain must be to blame, and ONLY Britain (and somehow not Scotland, natch)
Read Giles Milton's White Gold. The Barbary Slave trade was very real, and very cruel, and inflicted awful wounds on west country England, esp Cornwall and Devon. And, as I note below. this was done by the Moroccan monarchy which still exists today, indeed you can visit the Moroccan palaces built by British slaves
Whiney whitey syndrome in all its glory.
I’m all for Scotland accepting its part in the great British Empire slaving project, but the descendants of the movers and shakers of the time are awfy touchy about any references to it.
You are severely embittered, these days. But I can see why, when I look at the cause of independence, drifting over the horizon and far into an impossible future
You have my genune sympathies. To burn for a wild poliical ambition, and to come so close, only for it to drift out of reach, and then to basically vanish, must be quite hard to deal with
If only the Conservatives would show the same magnanimity as Indy supporters, who are largely accepting that the chance has slipped (for now).
Sensible politics too. It would be tempting for the SNP to descend into the conspiracy theory fever dream that gripped Corbynite Labour after 2019.
Instead the Conservatives have Jenrick resigning over Rwanda. The wilderness (or the jungle) beckons.
Are the Tories going to yield on reparations for slavery to commonwealth nations. Interesting comment from the PM of tiny island nation, Barbados who are demanding just under 5 Trillion USD.
"Mottley met David Cameron earlier on Tuesday but would not give details of the foreign secretary’s thoughts on the UK’s slavery-related debt.
“I’m not going to get into the details of our conversation but suffice to say I think the foreign secretary will take his lead from his majesty,” she said."
One bizarre thing are claims that slaves never received compensation.
The West Indies are now a collection of mostly independent black republics - effectively West African colonies which are far more affluent and developed than West Africa itself.
The descendants of the slaves got the countries.
I suspect a few politicians are just jumping on a bandwaggon eyeing up a potential payday on the back of guilt shaming western nations.
The President of Guyana was making such demands recently. Now he may need our help I wonder if he will change his tune.
Descendants of Brits enslaved by the Romans, Vikings and Barbary Corsairs can presumably also claim compensation from Italy, Denmark and Tunisia?
Can you name a single one of those descendants? Otoh all you'd need is a Carribean phone directory to identify the descendants of our 'commercial activities'.
The entire white* population of Europe will be descended from Roman slaves. Working on a generous 30-year generation, a person born in 1970 has ten thousand million million ancestors as at AD410, and obviously, exponentially more going back further. Given the churn in populations in the 1600 years since and the lengthy social instability in several of those periods, it's inconceivable that each one of us isn't the descendant of slaves - and indeed, the descendant of emperors.
* Probably a surprisingly large proportion of the non-white population too.
Shame that there's not a surviving Roman (or Norse or Barbary for that matter) nation state from which reparations can be claimed.
Turkey is very definitely the successor state of the Ottoman Empire, so anyone enslaved by them - several million black people, and a million or two whites - can apply to Ankara
Successor state means piss all, the UK is the actual state that did all that v. profitable C18th slavering.
There are of course many reasons to despise the right but their current spasm of victimy self pity is one of the bigger ones. ‘BUT WE WERE SLAVES TOOOOO!’ sounds so pathetic.
lol. You're so determined that Britain must be to blame, and ONLY Britain (and somehow not Scotland, natch)
Read Giles Milton's White Gold. The Barbary Slave trade was very real, and very cruel, and inflicted awful wounds on west country England, esp Cornwall and Devon. And, as I note below. this was done by the Moroccan monarchy which still exists today, indeed you can visit the Moroccan palaces built by British slaves
Whiney whitey syndrome in all its glory.
I’m all for Scotland accepting its part in the great British Empire slaving project, but the descendants of the movers and shakers of the time are awfy touchy about any references to it.
You are severely embittered, these days. But I can see why, when I look at the cause of independence, drifting over the horizon and far into an impossible future
You have my genune sympathies. To burn for a wild poliical ambition, and to come so close, only for it to drift out of reach, and then to basically vanish, must be quite hard to deal with
Even more painful when Brexiteers got their dream delivered.
Although ScotNats can continue to believe that independence, even though unobtainable, would be a good thing.
In contrast Brexiteers have to face the fact that their dream turned out to be utter shite.
On topic, there won't be an 'early' (ie pre-autumn 2024) election; there might be a leadership confidence vote in Sunak; if there is, he'll probably survive on the cling-to-nurse-for-fear-of-worse principle.
We're now clearly in the fag-end of the government. There are any number of similarities with the late Major / late Brown eras, although this one's worse at governing than either of those. MPs, commentators and other 'supporters' will come up with all sorts of nonsensical suggestions on how to fix the Tories' problems. None will work because they won't, and can't, address the fundamental problem in time, which is that the country is broken and they did a large amount of the breaking.
Fag-end of the government, you say? Maybe that's why Rishi's determined to put an end to smoking.
Which is of itself another stupid, unnecessary, illiberal and unachievable goal.
Something that came out of bloody nowhere, for no compelling reason.
You can't help but think that Rishi is using his time as PM to pursue his personal whims and bugbears: extra Maths, banning smoking, transporting people he doesn't like, curtailing high-speed trains, bashing recycling...
I would say he's losing his marbles but no, he's told the Greeks he's keeping those.
Hmm. Maybe the reason he's so keen to hang on to other people's marbles is that he realises he's lost his own?
Are the Tories going to yield on reparations for slavery to commonwealth nations. Interesting comment from the PM of tiny island nation, Barbados who are demanding just under 5 Trillion USD.
"Mottley met David Cameron earlier on Tuesday but would not give details of the foreign secretary’s thoughts on the UK’s slavery-related debt.
“I’m not going to get into the details of our conversation but suffice to say I think the foreign secretary will take his lead from his majesty,” she said."
One bizarre thing are claims that slaves never received compensation.
The West Indies are now a collection of mostly independent black republics - effectively West African colonies which are far more affluent and developed than West Africa itself.
The descendants of the slaves got the countries.
I suspect a few politicians are just jumping on a bandwaggon eyeing up a potential payday on the back of guilt shaming western nations.
The President of Guyana was making such demands recently. Now he may need our help I wonder if he will change his tune.
Descendants of Brits enslaved by the Romans, Vikings and Barbary Corsairs can presumably also claim compensation from Italy, Denmark and Tunisia?
Can you name a single one of those descendants? Otoh all you'd need is a Carribean phone directory to identify the descendants of our 'commercial activities'.
The entire white* population of Europe will be descended from Roman slaves. Working on a generous 30-year generation, a person born in 1970 has ten thousand million million ancestors as at AD410, and obviously, exponentially more going back further. Given the churn in populations in the 1600 years since and the lengthy social instability in several of those periods, it's inconceivable that each one of us isn't the descendant of slaves - and indeed, the descendant of emperors.
* Probably a surprisingly large proportion of the non-white population too.
Shame that there's not a surviving Roman (or Norse or Barbary for that matter) nation state from which reparations can be claimed.
Turkey is very definitely the successor state of the Ottoman Empire, so anyone enslaved by them - several million black people, and a million or two whites - can apply to Ankara
Successor state means piss all, the UK is the actual state that did all that v. profitable C18th slavering.
There are of course many reasons to despise the right but their current spasm of victimy self pity is one of the bigger ones. ‘BUT WE WERE SLAVES TOOOOO!’ sounds so pathetic.
lol. You're so determined that Britain must be to blame, and ONLY Britain (and somehow not Scotland, natch)
Read Giles Milton's White Gold. The Barbary Slave trade was very real, and very cruel, and inflicted awful wounds on west country England, esp Cornwall and Devon. And, as I note below. this was done by the Moroccan monarchy which still exists today, indeed you can visit the Moroccan palaces built by British slaves
Whiney whitey syndrome in all its glory.
I’m all for Scotland accepting its part in the great British Empire slaving project, but the descendants of the movers and shakers of the time are awfy touchy about any references to it.
You are severely embittered, these days. But I can see why, when I look at the cause of independence, drifting over the horizon and far into an impossible future
You have my genune sympathies. To burn for a wild poliical ambition, and to come so close, only for it to drift out of reach, and then to basically vanish, must be quite hard to deal with
Even more painful when Brexiteers got their dream delivered.
I have been very busy working so have missed everything.
And, yes, the Investigations Webinar was a triumph. Thank you for asking. In a few hours I will be the star attraction (no, really) at a French bank's training session.
"I never got anywhere near it (thank god), but from the evidence given by multiple people at the inquiry, it seems like the PO got the routine accounting output routinely, but if they wanted to run any sort of query to extract background data from the system, someone had to ring up Fujitsu and then pay for the privilege. Which does seem bizarre - if true, that the PO people couldn’t interrogate their own system and had to jump through hoops and incur cost to dig deeper into their own data, is surely a major contributor to what happened?"
And he is absolutely right. The fundamental problem was that there was never any - or any proper - investigation into what caused the discrepancies at branches. So there was never any basis for saying these were caused by fraud or theft. From that flaw - caused by a flawed contract between the Post Office and Fujitsu, all else followed: the unjustified and malicious prosecutions, the unjustified claims for monies, the unjustified civil litigation, the disclosure failings. And the repeated and prolonged cover ups.
Worth reminding everyone what an experienced IT Professor said - the poor understanding of IT by many bodies, of its complexity and risks leads to “lax legislation, lax regulation and lax procurement”. The first and third certainly happened here.
How many similar contractual provisions are there in other PFI contracts in other parts of the public sector? Someone should be asking this question and looking hard for the answers. I bet no-one is and - worse - no-one ever will.
Comments
A 110% increase.
Don’t they know I’m a single parent?
One Tory minister messages to say that the Airbus 320 has the capacity and range to take the entire Conservative Parliamentary Party to Rwanda
Oh and Tobias Ellwood has been in touch. He says - on the record - at this rate after the election it will be a Cessna.
So we may end up doing it, irrespective of the views of the taxpayers who have to fund it.
Because people just want at end of the Conservatives sleaze and psychodrama.
People don't care about this specific immigration policy - they want to feel like immigration is being "dealt with". And that feeling has very little to do with the actual statistics about immigration or Channel crossings - and everything to do with front pages from the right wing rags winding them up. People are much more concerned about cost of living, which they blame on the Tories, and the state of healthcare, which they blame on the Tories.
I do want an early GE, though - this lot need slinging out and it would be preferable (from a purely selfish point of view) for the GE to not be held on the same day as the locals to give my local cllrs a better chance at reelection (GE turnout levels would make it very hard for Greens to keep certain seats in the country).
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/cassidy-hutchinson-says-she-ll-194743019.html
Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson will do everything in her power to keep former President Donald Trump far away from the White House — with the exception of his upcoming appearances at a Washington, D.C. federal courthouse.
“I will do whatever it takes to make sure that Donald Trump is never near the Oval Office ever again — except the Prettyman Federal Courthouse in Washington D.C.,” Hutchinson said at TheWrap’s Power Women Summit on Tuesday during a conversation moderated by journalism professor and director of USC’s Annenberg Media Center Christina Bellantoni.
For Hutchinson, who is a conservative Republican, the upcoming 2024 presidential election goes beyond partisanship, as she noted that the fallout from Trump’s tenure has “greater consequences” that prevent the country’s leaders from debating productively on traditional Republican and Democratic issues.
“A vote for Trump is a vote for fascism; it’s a vote to start marching our country towards a dictatorship,” she said. “If we want to keep our constitutional republic and if we want to keep our democratic institutions in place, we need to have conversations with people to make sure that every vote goes to the candidate that promises to keep those institutions intact.”..
Small boats is an issue the Tory party can’t win on yet they waste time and media on it
* Probably a surprisingly large proportion of the non-white population too.
In theory this type of caper ("Operational Partnering") is exactly the putative purpose of the new Ranger Regiment with its brilliant American name. In practice, it would be tricky to define the scope/ROE of the mission. Are they supposed to start shooting if the Venezuelans come over the border or exercise "courageous restraint", legging it to Georgetown airport?
Awesome job, lads.
We're now clearly in the fag-end of the government. There are any number of similarities with the late Major / late Brown eras, although this one's worse at governing than either of those. MPs, commentators and other 'supporters' will come up with all sorts of nonsensical suggestions on how to fix the Tories' problems. None will work because they won't, and can't, address the fundamental problem in time, which is that the country is broken and they did a large amount of the breaking.
For most of my adult lifetime, the Conservative Party has resembled a circular firing squad.
Nothing has changed.
https://twitter.com/ScottHoward78/status/1730730348089057659
As for Biden, another explanation for his unpopularity is the focus on metrics based on abstract nouns (eg "growth" of "the economy") instead of person-based ones (eg "median household income" of "a family"). The former is doing well: I think the latter are not.
https://www.ladbible.com/community/weird/jon-may-2000-pints-finished-challenge-104895-20231021
2000 pints in 200 days...
& straight back to the pub after hes finished his err "challenge". Liver disease for social clout, what a trade.
Sunak could call one now for February and fight on controlling immigration.
I'm pretty sure the last time the PM did it, it worked really well................
Maybe that's why Rishi's determined to put an end to smoking.
It would make an article for the Knappers' Weekly.
I agree with Peter's broad stance that the ReformUK vote is a protest vote and may well be a bit flakely, whilst the Green vote is more definite. However that does not mean that the ReformUK voters would go back to the Conservatives - looking at the underlying policy issues views of current ReformUK voters it is more likely that they would just not vote.
"It’s over for this Conservative Party: too many Tory MPs hate their own voters"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/12/06/iover-for-tory-party-too-many-tory-mps-hate-own-voters/
Tory MP: “Rishi Sunak will not lead us into a general election”.
That sounds more like a coup d'état than an election gimmick. Pretty dangerous stuff.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dm5agHWW4AE33u6?format=jpg&name=large
🚨NEW: Rishi Sunak is considering making next week's vote on the Rwanda bill a *confidence vote* so right-wing Tory MPs would lose the whip if they vote against with Labour
[@BBCNews]
This is denied by No10
@HugoGye
NEW
Rishi Sunak will hold a Downing Street press conference in around an hour's time.
He's expected to defend his Rwanda migration plans after the resignation of Robert Jenrick
He was only a tiny lad, as well.
Patel, Braverman and Cleverley.
Firstly they have been culturally useless. They have been handed the opportunity to handle a massive shift because of Brexit, and have failed in both leadership and optics. They have been handed crises, especially Covid and have led so badly that a PM, who has flawed genius qualities, had to resign over multiple issues including Covid related ones. They have presented as a divided party, divided not over statesmanship issues but as competing populists. (Note today's evisceration of Braverman by Nick Robinson). Not even the Speccie or DTel will let you know what the Tory core principles are because there are none. good leadership conveys hope and principle, not rats in a sack.
Secondly, NHS, debt, interest rates, inflation, housing, transport, migration where the fails are hard facts, known personally to most.
There are of course many reasons to despise the right but their current spasm of victimy self pity is one of the bigger ones. ‘BUT WE WERE SLAVES TOOOOO!’ sounds so pathetic.
There are well documented examples of Cornish people being taken as slaves and put to work building the royal palaces of Morocco, from 1500 to as late as 1815
https://www.cornwalllive.com/news/cornwall-news/cornish-generations-victimised-barbary-slave-4231738
The present Moroccan royal dynasty dates back to the 17th century, so there is clear culpability, and a villain still in situ. And absolutely no different from black slaves in the Caribbean
Any slave who lived in Europe over 2,000 years ago and who has any descendents alive today will be the ancestor of all people of European descent, and the same applies to the other major regions of the world.
Adam Rutherford explains it all in his excellent book: A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived
They hate each other, which is more pertinent. Like the hotel in The Shining, the Palace of Westminster drives them mad.
Obviously, geography and social barriers limit the speed of distinct ancestor numbers well before the constraints of overall population size kick in. However, go far enough back and there's enough movement and social mobility (not to mention illegitimate offspring) that the laws of large numbers do their work.
Read Giles Milton's White Gold. The Barbary Slave trade was very real, and very cruel, and inflicted awful wounds on west country England, esp Cornwall and Devon. And, as I note below. this was done by the Moroccan monarchy which still exists today, indeed you can visit the Moroccan palaces built by British slaves
I would say he's losing his marbles but no, he's told the Greeks he's keeping those.
The Muslim slave trade was the biggest, the cruellest, and the longest, in the historical record. Only outlawed in the late 20th century in some places
I’m all for Scotland accepting its part in the great British Empire slaving project, but the descendants of the movers and shakers of the time are awfy touchy about any references to it.
‘Hurtful to our family’
Ffs.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-64823151
You have my genune sympathies. To burn for a wild poliical ambition, and to come so close, only for it to drift out of reach, and then to basically vanish, must be quite hard to deal with
It’s true I don’t give a toss about your views on anything much.
Sensible politics too. It would be tempting for the SNP to descend into the conspiracy theory fever dream that gripped Corbynite Labour after 2019.
Instead the Conservatives have Jenrick resigning over Rwanda. The wilderness (or the jungle) beckons.
In contrast Brexiteers have to face the fact that their dream turned out to be utter shite.
February election anyone?
And, yes, the Investigations Webinar was a triumph. Thank you for asking. In a few hours I will be the star attraction (no, really) at a French bank's training session.
On that note I caught this from @IanB2 -
"I never got anywhere near it (thank god), but from the evidence given by multiple people at the inquiry, it seems like the PO got the routine accounting output routinely, but if they wanted to run any sort of query to extract background data from the system, someone had to ring up Fujitsu and then pay for the privilege. Which does seem bizarre - if true, that the PO people couldn’t interrogate their own system and had to jump through hoops and incur cost to dig deeper into their own data, is surely a major contributor to what happened?"
And he is absolutely right. The fundamental problem was that there was never any - or any proper - investigation into what caused the discrepancies at branches. So there was never any basis for saying these were caused by fraud or theft. From that flaw - caused by a flawed contract between the Post Office and Fujitsu, all else followed: the unjustified and malicious prosecutions, the unjustified claims for monies, the unjustified civil litigation, the disclosure failings. And the repeated and prolonged cover ups.
Worth reminding everyone what an experienced IT Professor said - the poor understanding of IT by many bodies, of its complexity and risks leads to “lax legislation, lax regulation and lax procurement”. The first and third certainly happened here.
How many similar contractual provisions are there in other PFI contracts in other parts of the public sector? Someone should be asking this question and looking hard for the answers. I bet no-one is and - worse - no-one ever will.