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That he should be so lucky – politicalbetting.com
That he should be so lucky – politicalbetting.com
When I first moved into project management I asked my boss what he thought the top attribute of a successful project manager was. He said: ‘be lucky’, which is undoubtedly correct but hardly actionable.
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There's no colour bar on us, I am not sure he and I would have succeeded quite the way we have if we were born in say France.
The BBC are hyping up whether a government with a majority of roughly 80 can get a bill through second reading today: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-67689442
Even jollies to the West Indies have apparently been cancelled (which will at least mean MPs don't have to watch England getting beat again).
It's a working majority of 56.
But Sunak doesn’t strike me as the sort of person who’s wracked with self doubt. He’ll flame out at the next election, shrug his shoulders, resign his seat and go and work for Elon Musk.
Dave learned in the most heartbreaking way that things doesn't always fall his way in life.
Chap needs a sense of humour to deal with these things.
Its actually curious that there are so many "independent" MPs, currently 18. The same happened in the last Parliament but I do not recall it happening on any scale before that. Party discipline is not what it was.
It's the problem with the new meritocrats compared with the old aristocrats.
The old top one percent tended to recognise, at some level, their fortune and their duty to pay it forward and outward. Rarely well enough, but at some level.
The new one percent find it easier to believe that success is down to their talent, rather than just being down to being the ones who had the coin come up heads seven times in a row.
Past performance does not guarantee future returns, as the adverts say.
Like so many things in life it's chance but can be managed by taking action to maximise the number and type of "chances" you get.
Sunak knows he has an Impossible wicket. But he's become PM and has a chance to make a stamp, and that's the way I'd look at it.
However, I am able to look myself in the eye in the mirror every day, which I don't think you can put a price on.
So, the nominal majority is 71.
It's no good telling someone with a thin-skin to get a thicker one, even though they'd love to have it.
Are not the independent MPs, quite a mixed bunch? There are two or three nominally Labout, one Plaid Cymru and some SNP, if I remember correctly. Some are former Conservatives if I remember rightly again, at least one has been told to stay away from the House.
So who is the political equivalent of Unlucky Alf?
https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1986/apr/14/business-of-the-house
https://youtu.be/pV27Xhv0G2g?si=G7OaPMuui_6b9sco&t=47
But in general, junior cabinet ministers now or in 2009. Their political prime will be/was spent in Opposition, through no real fault of their own. Claire Coutinho, say.
Just lately, he's turned lucky again, it seems.
Rishi will win his vote, claim some massive victory for his brave leadership taking on the right . The bill will eventually pass and Rwanda will continue to be challenged. He will claim culture war headlines. He will then deploy all the force of the British state to contrive a single flight to Rwanda with some poor soul on it. He will claim another massive victory despite not achieving a sustainable policy, let alone something that helps anyone . He will be delighted because the Mail will give him his headline, which was what the whole exercise was about all along.
Things really went stratospheric when Rishi moved into the world of the super rich financial speculators.
Good thing too, or we would be even shorter of teachers and police officers than we are.
Rishi's problem is that he has never developed those skills because he's never had to. And now he probably has the face he deserves and it's too late for him to learn new tricks.
It's probably a lot more difficult in later life, though.
What he lacks in buckets is judgement and emotional intelligence.
Which begs a question for PB's IQ expert: what's the point of an IQ or 163 if you lack judgement?
To have been born in North London in the 1960s to two aspirational working class parents was to have been born as a window had just been opened and before it was shut again. I am not sure there will ever be a luckier generation than mine.
That he doesn't realise it reinforces every stereotype about him makes me wonder.
[Dinner in the officers' mess. The captain is inebriated, but asks apparently seriously]
Capt. Jack Aubrey : Do you see those two weevils doctor?
Dr. Stephen Maturin : I do.
Capt. Jack Aubrey : Which would you choose?
Dr. Stephen Maturin : [sighs annoyed] Neither; there is not a scrap a difference between them. They are the same species of Curculio.
Capt. Jack Aubrey : If you had to choose. If you were forced to make a choice. If there was no other response...
Dr. Stephen Maturin : [Exasperated] Well then if you are going to *push* me...
[the doctor studies the weevils briefly]
Dr. Stephen Maturin : ...I would choose the right hand weevil; it has... significant advantage in both length and breadth.
[the captain thumps his fist in the table]
Capt. Jack Aubrey : There, I have you! You're completely dished! Do you not know that in the service...
[pauses]
Capt. Jack Aubrey : ...one must always choose the lesser of two weevils.
[the officers burst out in laughter]
:'D I love these books
If the member has decided to break with their party (eg, Dominic Grieve as an example) then the chances of them voting with the party again are probably slim and the whips don't even bother.
However, if the suspension is due to other reasons (eg, investigation into sexual assault, financial irregulaties and the like) I could easily see a situation where the member is told that whilst they HAVE to have the whip removed, if they want to 'help clear their name' etc etc, then they had still better vote with the party.... or else (ie, they're whipped in all but name).
This may slightly depend on government majorities. I could see a early 2019 situation, where suspended members are basically told they're still whipped and should treat it as such; and a post 1997 situation, where the PM doesn't care as his majority is bigger than the Conservative seat total and so tells them to do whatever.
Presumably as well, some members may still feel 'whipped' to support a party if they actually align with most of their values anyway.
AI will summarise reports despite the technology being prone to making up bogus cases
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/12/12/judges-given-green-light-use-chatgpt-legal-rulings/ (£££)
https://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2023/08/13/rishi-sunaks-chopper-is-going-to-get-him-into-a-lot-of-trouble/
Generational health paradox: Millennials are aging faster than boomers
https://m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.asp?newsIdx=364956
About 15 Conservative MPs just arrived for crucial breakfast with Rishi Sunak, including Lee Anderson, Danny Kruger, Miriam Cates, Neil O’Brien
If you are doing Breakfast meetings at 7:30am you have a big problem
Since 2010 the decline in state- school budgets has meant the state education system denies children the "luck" generations up to 2010 enjoyed. Still, I suppose it keeps the riff-raff out of the university system and off prestige career pathways.
Have Kylie and Gary Player ever featured together in a PB thread header before today?
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/4354860-texas-supreme-court-rules-against-kate-cox-in-abortion-case/
The Texas Supreme Court has ruled against a lower court order that allowed Kate Cox, a pregnant woman whose fetus was diagnosed with a fatal condition, from having an abortion.
In a seven-page ruling on Monday, the state Supreme Court said that Travis County District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble’s decision to issue a temporary restraining order last week to allow Cox to have the abortion was a mistake.
Gamble’s decision on Cox’s medical emergency was put on hold by Texas state Attorney General Ken Paxton (R), who asked the state Supreme Court to intervene in the matter. The Supreme Court temporarily blocked the lower court’s ruling on Friday.
“A woman who meets the medical-necessity exception need not seek a court order to obtain an abortion,” the court ruling says. “Under the law, it is a doctor who must decide that a woman is suffering from a life-threatening condition during a pregnancy, raising the necessity for an abortion to save her life or to prevent impairment of a major bodily function.”
“The law leaves to physicians—not judges—both the discretion and the responsibility to exercise their reasonable medical judgment, given the unique facts and circumstances of each patient.”
The court also found that Cox’s doctor – Damla Karsan – “asked a court to pre-authorize the abortion yet she could not, or at least did not, attest to the court that Ms. Cox’s condition poses the risks the exception requires.”
“These laws reflect the policy choice that the Legislature has made, and the courts must respect that choice,” the court said in its ruling.
According to state law, a doctor who performed an abortion procedure could be sentenced to life in prison...
No.
Is a president immune from prosecution? The Supreme Court will decide
https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/4354639-is-a-president-immune-from-prosecution-the-supreme-court-will-decide/
The most promising criminal case against former President Trump is the election interference case in Washington, D.C., before Judge Tanya Chutkan. The judge is committed to a March 4 trial date, one day before the Super Tuesday primaries. Chutkan has already made the first moves toward jury selection, imposed a gag order (now essentially affirmed on appeal), and rejected on grounds of presidential immunity and double jeopardy Trump’s bid to dismiss the indictment.
But Trump is trying everything he can to delay the trial until after the 2024 election. He vowed to take the case to the Supreme Court, where two justices lean way to the right and three more were appointed by Trump himself.
In a stunning and risky gambit, special counsel Jack Smith today asked the Supreme Court to decide this issue of presidential immunity right away, choosing to leapfrog the D.C. Circuit in the interests of speed and go directly to the court of last resort, following the scenario that occurred in the famous 1974 former President Nixon tapes case...
Now ...
I was interested to see that the current campaigning against the closure of all Aberdeen UNiversity's modern languages (bar a rump for little more than support of other schools) is in part because so many students live at home for often economic reasons, so taking out the School makes a big hole in educational provision in that area. And that's in Scotland with tuition fees usually paid.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/publicsectorpersonnel/timeseries/c9lg/pse
Up 28k on the quarter
Up 84k on the year
Up 258k on GE2019
Up 400k on 2016 referendum
Up 431k on GE2010
If the Conservatives had the slightest bit of political sense they would be repeating that at every opportunity.
If he tells them he will call an election, and they will have no influence over the next Government (if they keep their seats), then maybe.
William Hague in The Times today
Tory rebels should beware what they wish for
Opposition is miserable but that is where the Conservatives are heading unless they prioritise functioning government
Does Scott paste this information?
Also, the databse for the NHS is meaningless without including also contractors and agency staff.
You hit the bulls-eye.
The full time equivalent numbers are lower but show a similar rise:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/publicsectorpersonnel/timeseries/g7gl/pse
For the right if you fail you only have yourself to blame, a lifestyle choice if you will. Whereas the left see luck and connections playing a big, often decisive part.
He's totally lying about his WhatsApp messages, anyway, the slippery toad.
Streeting had better look and learn, tipped as he is so strongly as next Labour Leader without yet having done any sort of heavyweight job.
If the FTPA had been strictly applied, they would have been forgotten about by 2020.
Lords report says there is too much learning by rote and many key Tory changes should be reversed
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/dec/12/peers-call-urgent-overhaul-secondary-education-england
https://youtu.be/cgoZV2yRo54
*Fisher must have been one of the few people ever told by an Archbishop of Canterbury to attend church… less.
As for luckier prime ministers? Well, how about Blair? A gilded path to No 10 is a huge advantage but what you inherit - both in party and country - matters even more. And Sunak has a right pile of manure on both counts.
Often described as “Mad Jack” Fisher.
He would, as a junior Admiral, walk round the building, wearing as sign saying “I have no work to do”
His work on productivity was notable.
When told it would take a week to change one main armament gun barrel on a battleship, he had his desk and papers setup on the quarterdeck of the ship, facing the work.
Sat there through the day - had lunch served there etc. When the job was completed in the one day, he sent a signal round the fleet congratulating the ship’s crew for their hard work.
New @IpsosUK polling out today to show just how positively or negatively the government is viewed among its own voters on #Immigration…. This whole campaign has blown up in their faces….
One rebel source tells me that over the bacon butties, PM was “pointing finger at Boris, Liz, Suella and Rob” over past failures. “Didn’t go that well.”
Excl: Migrants could delay their deportation to Rwanda by more than a year, according to a leaked Home Office assessment.
Document prepared for a meeting in September assesses how many days each legal stage could delay flights.
Ranges from 17-420 days:
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/dec/12/peers-call-urgent-overhaul-secondary-education-england
Can anyone point to a single success of the prevailing Conservative political hegemony since the coalition that hasn't turned into ash in their hands? Even many Brexiteers are unhappy with the outcomes of us leaving the EU; either because it isn't "real Brexit" or because there is a distinct lack of sunlit uplands!
ERG will meet this evening to formally decide position on the Rwanda vote
Discussions still ongoing but general feeling is that it will abstain rather than vote against
But there's a world in which mass abstentions/ opposition from ERG, New Conservatives & Common sense group tips over 59-vote threshold needed to kill the bill...