Reposting - Am now watching via YT today's blue plate special served up by latest Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry grilling.
Barrister for the Inquiry is quite good. As with other Inquiry lawyers, his manner is polite, restrained, focused, relentless.
In contrast, the solicitor for firm of law-mongers hired by the buffon's then (and now?) the PO is about as hopeless as the local yokel lawyer in "My Cousin Vinnie".
That is, crap. Wouldn't hire him to notarize a pet license, let alone furnish legal advice above AI standard.
Fairliered comment on above:
FR: The Post Office chose lawyers that would make their management look competent by comparison.
SSI - Didn't work, hell no!
It is remarkable how that solicitor (from an external legal firm hired by the PO) began confident and articulate, but within a couple of hours was reduced to a gibbering wreck who could barely understand what he was being asked.
Indeed. The Inquiry inquisitioner's technique was very interesting, and highly effective.
Kept ratcheting up the temperature from room temperature VERY slowly . . . slowly . . . until before the toad realized what was happening, he was hopping about in a pot of boiling water . . .
It is becoming increasingly apparent that not only did the PO employ poor quality staff for the persecution of its Subpostmasters, it used pound-shop lawyers too.
Presumably decent ones would have been too dear, and too inclined to tell the PO the truth about their shitty systems.
A good time to start a political career is at the nadir of a parties fortunes, as that is when the recovery starts.
I think that I wouldn't be successful in politics. My views are too idiosyncratic for party politics.
Not quite. I am standing for election to be a trustee of a heritage engineering & railway trust.
I had a couple of informal preliminary interviews, and then had to go in front of their Nominations Committee - which was tough - after which I had a 2-hour 1:1 meeting with the CEO. They approved my application last week.
I've just written my election statement, and now have to speak at the AGM in February where I will hopefully be elected by the members.
There are 3,000 of them. Hopefully, they won't all turn up!
What is your position on heritage diesels?
And, for inclusivity, installing overhead wiring and pantographs?
Third rail is much less visually obtrusive!
And can't be extended on health and safety grounds.
The great hope of the left exposed in the searchlight of a simple question
That clip sums up in a nutshell why I am probably the only one on this website who thinks SKS will not win and the Tories have a fighting chance.
You can get away with such a duff answer when the electorate is not really thinking about you as next PM and hates the Government.
It’s another thing when it swings into an election campaign and then everyone is suddenly forced into having to make a choice.
Chances are SKS will get eviscerated in a campaign. Give him any slightly off centre question - ‘define working class’, ‘define a woman etc’ - and he waffles and sounds vacuous.
He’s got 2017 Theresa May vintage written all over him.
The trouble is, Sunak's got collapse of May era written all over him. Constant relaunches, reboots, podia. Tears outside number 10 can't be too far off. So it's May vs. May.
Sounds ripe for an ‘I agree with Nick’ moment.
Perhaps ‘I agree with Nigel’ this time? Perish the thought.
Seems to be happening. Here’s Sir Keir’s latest U-turn on Brexit; could be Farage talking (apart from the Labour bit obviously)
“ Brexit was a vote for lower immigration – of course it was […] If, in short, you want lower migration and higher wages […] Then I say again, this is what a changed Labour Party will deliver”
On the Tories
“ every time they run-up against a choice between raising skills and working conditions or issuing more visas, they choose the higher migration option. And that’s not an accident, it’s who they are”
Mass immigration means low wages, and a damning critique of politicians who give out jobs to foreigners. Whoever would have thought it?
To be honest, this is exactly what I voted Leave for - so politicians had to make speeches like this rather than say they wished they could do something about it, but their hands were tied by FOM
Better PM Starmer and the UK out of the EU than PM Cameron and us still in it
And in return, if Brexit was about stopping the neocolonialist practice of nicking all the skilled brown and black people once a government much less rich than ours has spent public money training them, I’d have been more inclined to vote for Brexit too. (I realise this is far from the actual purpose of Brexit, but doesn’t sound a million miles from what SKS is saying in the speech).
Though nothing in the idea of raising domestic skills required Brexit, it has always been in the hands of domestic government.
Brexit has been a distraction from addressing the problems of this nation, not the solution to the problem.
Starmers speech is interesting and gives some idea of how he plans to campaign. Not gimmicks like the Rwanda groundnut scheme, but addressing the comprehensive failure of public services.
The only way he can "address the comprehensive failure of public services" is a) speak truth to the management structure about their massive and long-standing delivery failures - and then sack the underperformers; or b) throw a lot of money at the problem.
Labour, owned by the unions, will ALWAYS go route b). So the question is - are they lying when they say they will address the comprehensive failures, or lying when they say they won't significantly put up taxes in order to throw a lot of money at the problem.
Probably both. Starmer will raise taxes but not turn around public services.
Not a very effective attack line by the Tories because:
1) the "useless management structures" have been devised and run by Conservatives over the last 13 years.
2) the argument accepts that public services are failing.
Why would anyone want to continue with this government's policy on public services which we all agree now are poorly run and failing?
They were poorly run and failing during the Wilson/ Callaghan era. They were poorly run and failing during the Blair/Brown era. The idea there was some golden age of public services during previous Labour administraions is nonsense.
What this country needs is the Conservatives and Labour working together on a 10 or 20 year programme for public services. One that would survive a change in administration, where there would be a great political price to be paid if one party or the other tried to backslide. One that would take difficult decisons and follow through on them.
There should be a common aim to deliver this, because any government is going to struggle to provide services that don't massively disappoint. Waiting lists won't notably imporve under a new Labour government. The bare minimum will be all that gets delivered, without any advance on the level of service. There isn't funding available, there aren't the trained staff. Labour is deeply dishonest to suggets otherwise.
A Labour government will spend its term tinkering, to very little effect. But hey, it will be better than the Tories. (Spoiler: it won't....)
I understand the negativity of the Tory message on this, but it doesn't actually match reality.
The graph of public satisfaction is pretty much the inverse, with satisfaction with the NHS peaking at 70% in 2010 and now down in the twenties.
I do hope Labour have the sense to slap this as a poster on every available bill board in the country.
Sure, Tories will wail "it's not fair, Covid, GFC hangover, 'reasons', etc, etc..." but their wailing will be pointless against the power of this chart.
And, going back to the earlier but of the conversation -
If the British economy is doing fine, why is almost everything around us so rubbish?
A good time to start a political career is at the nadir of a parties fortunes, as that is when the recovery starts.
I think that I wouldn't be successful in politics. My views are too idiosyncratic for party politics.
Not quite. I am standing for election to be a trustee of a heritage engineering & railway trust.
I had a couple of informal preliminary interviews, and then had to go in front of their Nominations Committee - which was tough - after which I had a 2-hour 1:1 meeting with the CEO. They approved my application last week.
I've just written my election statement, and now have to speak at the AGM in February where I will hopefully be elected by the members.
There are 3,000 of them. Hopefully, they won't all turn up!
What is your position on heritage diesels?
And, for inclusivity, installing overhead wiring and pantographs?
Third rail is much less visually obtrusive!
And can't be extended on health and safety grounds.
Now we're talking wokery! Health and safety just an excuse!
The great hope of the left exposed in the searchlight of a simple question
That clip sums up in a nutshell why I am probably the only one on this website who thinks SKS will not win and the Tories have a fighting chance.
You can get away with such a duff answer when the electorate is not really thinking about you as next PM and hates the Government.
It’s another thing when it swings into an election campaign and then everyone is suddenly forced into having to make a choice.
Chances are SKS will get eviscerated in a campaign. Give him any slightly off centre question - ‘define working class’, ‘define a woman etc’ - and he waffles and sounds vacuous.
He’s got 2017 Theresa May vintage written all over him.
The trouble is, Sunak's got collapse of May era written all over him. Constant relaunches, reboots, podia. Tears outside number 10 can't be too far off. So it's May vs. May.
Sounds ripe for an ‘I agree with Nick’ moment.
Perhaps ‘I agree with Nigel’ this time? Perish the thought.
Seems to be happening. Here’s Sir Keir’s latest U-turn on Brexit; could be Farage talking (apart from the Labour bit obviously)
“ Brexit was a vote for lower immigration – of course it was […] If, in short, you want lower migration and higher wages […] Then I say again, this is what a changed Labour Party will deliver”
On the Tories
“ every time they run-up against a choice between raising skills and working conditions or issuing more visas, they choose the higher migration option. And that’s not an accident, it’s who they are”
Mass immigration means low wages, and a damning critique of politicians who give out jobs to foreigners. Whoever would have thought it?
To be honest, this is exactly what I voted Leave for - so politicians had to make speeches like this rather than say they wished they could do something about it, but their hands were tied by FOM
Better PM Starmer and the UK out of the EU than PM Cameron and us still in it
And in return, if Brexit was about stopping the neocolonialist practice of nicking all the skilled brown and black people once a government much less rich than ours has spent public money training them, I’d have been more inclined to vote for Brexit too. (I realise this is far from the actual purpose of Brexit, but doesn’t sound a million miles from what SKS is saying in the speech).
Though nothing in the idea of raising domestic skills required Brexit, it has always been in the hands of domestic government.
Brexit has been a distraction from addressing the problems of this nation, not the solution to the problem.
Starmers speech is interesting and gives some idea of how he plans to campaign. Not gimmicks like the Rwanda groundnut scheme, but addressing the comprehensive failure of public services.
The only way he can "address the comprehensive failure of public services" is a) speak truth to the management structure about their massive and long-standing delivery failures - and then sack the underperformers; or b) throw a lot of money at the problem.
Labour, owned by the unions, will ALWAYS go route b). So the question is - are they lying when they say they will address the comprehensive failures, or lying when they say they won't significantly put up taxes in order to throw a lot of money at the problem.
Probably both. Starmer will raise taxes but not turn around public services.
Not a very effective attack line by the Tories because:
1) the "useless management structures" have been devised and run by Conservatives over the last 13 years.
2) the argument accepts that public services are failing.
Why would anyone want to continue with this government's policy on public services which we all agree now are poorly run and failing?
You missed one out:
3) The Tories have "put up taxes to throw a lot of money at the problem"
We're paying record levels of peacetime tax. We've just had a big tax hike branded as a tax cut as it wasn't quite as big as originally billed, and the spend on public services like the NHS is at an all time high.
The Tories are both tax and spend, and wasting the money. Which is what they accuse Labour of.
I remain to be convinced that Starmer has any clear vision of what he wants to do. He wants to do things better. Well, yes. He wants the state to deliver for people. Good luck with that. He wants people to get on. Which is rather up to them. It is so vague, so amorphous and capable of changing into anything that I don’t see a coherent agenda, a driver for change.
I really hope that I am wrong. I really and genuinely hope that he surprises us on the upside. God knows the country needs an improvement.
There is a lot to be said for competent, professional management and disciplined delivery of public services, but that should be a bare minimum.
It is something that has been sorely lacking in recent years, and not just at Westminster. Scotland and the other devolved nations have been no better at it, indeed often even worse.
It should be a bare minimum, Fox, but it would nevertheless be a massive improvement.
Starmer is extraordinarily lucky. No Government in my lifetime has set the bar so low in terms of sound administration.
This is true. The economy is also going to slowly creak back to life during 2024. People will very gradually start to feel a little bit better off. Put it all together and if Labour does get into power, it will have to perform quite spectacularly badly for things not to be looking more positive domestically (internationally is a very different story) in four or five years than they do now. Add a further Tory lurch to the right in oppositions and you are probably looking at two terms.
However, Labour has to win the first GE and, despite the poll leads, that remains far from a done deal. Refugees on planes to Rwanda, further tax cuts and that general slow economic improvement could yet salvage the Tories. I'd hate that, of course, but I can see some tiny silver lining in that it may mean the further Tory lurch to the right is avoided.
Labour overall majority currently trading at 1.3. The Billy Bunters are not stupid.
I remain to be convinced that Starmer has any clear vision of what he wants to do. He wants to do things better. Well, yes. He wants the state to deliver for people. Good luck with that. He wants people to get on. Which is rather up to them. It is so vague, so amorphous and capable of changing into anything that I don’t see a coherent agenda, a driver for change.
I really hope that I am wrong. I really and genuinely hope that he surprises us on the upside. God knows the country needs an improvement.
An except from Keith Donkey's forthcoming speech where he sets out what he wants to do:
"we wanna be free, we wanna be free to do what we wanna do And we wanna get loaded and we wanna have a good time And that's what we're gonna do"
The great hope of the left exposed in the searchlight of a simple question
That clip sums up in a nutshell why I am probably the only one on this website who thinks SKS will not win and the Tories have a fighting chance.
You can get away with such a duff answer when the electorate is not really thinking about you as next PM and hates the Government.
It’s another thing when it swings into an election campaign and then everyone is suddenly forced into having to make a choice.
Chances are SKS will get eviscerated in a campaign. Give him any slightly off centre question - ‘define working class’, ‘define a woman etc’ - and he waffles and sounds vacuous.
He’s got 2017 Theresa May vintage written all over him.
The trouble is, Sunak's got collapse of May era written all over him. Constant relaunches, reboots, podia. Tears outside number 10 can't be too far off. So it's May vs. May.
Sounds ripe for an ‘I agree with Nick’ moment.
Perhaps ‘I agree with Nigel’ this time? Perish the thought.
Seems to be happening. Here’s Sir Keir’s latest U-turn on Brexit; could be Farage talking (apart from the Labour bit obviously)
“ Brexit was a vote for lower immigration – of course it was […] If, in short, you want lower migration and higher wages […] Then I say again, this is what a changed Labour Party will deliver”
On the Tories
“ every time they run-up against a choice between raising skills and working conditions or issuing more visas, they choose the higher migration option. And that’s not an accident, it’s who they are”
Mass immigration means low wages, and a damning critique of politicians who give out jobs to foreigners. Whoever would have thought it?
To be honest, this is exactly what I voted Leave for - so politicians had to make speeches like this rather than say they wished they could do something about it, but their hands were tied by FOM
Better PM Starmer and the UK out of the EU than PM Cameron and us still in it
And in return, if Brexit was about stopping the neocolonialist practice of nicking all the skilled brown and black people once a government much less rich than ours has spent public money training them, I’d have been more inclined to vote for Brexit too. (I realise this is far from the actual purpose of Brexit, but doesn’t sound a million miles from what SKS is saying in the speech).
Though nothing in the idea of raising domestic skills required Brexit, it has always been in the hands of domestic government.
Brexit has been a distraction from addressing the problems of this nation, not the solution to the problem.
Starmers speech is interesting and gives some idea of how he plans to campaign. Not gimmicks like the Rwanda groundnut scheme, but addressing the comprehensive failure of public services.
The only way he can "address the comprehensive failure of public services" is a) speak truth to the management structure about their massive and long-standing delivery failures - and then sack the underperformers; or b) throw a lot of money at the problem.
Labour, owned by the unions, will ALWAYS go route b). So the question is - are they lying when they say they will address the comprehensive failures, or lying when they say they won't significantly put up taxes in order to throw a lot of money at the problem.
Probably both. Starmer will raise taxes but not turn around public services.
Not a very effective attack line by the Tories because:
1) the "useless management structures" have been devised and run by Conservatives over the last 13 years.
2) the argument accepts that public services are failing.
Why would anyone want to continue with this government's policy on public services which we all agree now are poorly run and failing?
They were poorly run and failing during the Wilson/ Callaghan era. They were poorly run and failing during the Blair/Brown era. The idea there was some golden age of public services during previous Labour administraions is nonsense.
What this country needs is the Conservatives and Labour working together on a 10 or 20 year programme for public services. One that would survive a change in administration, where there would be a great political price to be paid if one party or the other tried to backslide. One that would take difficult decisons and follow through on them.
There should be a common aim to deliver this, because any government is going to struggle to provide services that don't massively disappoint. Waiting lists won't notably imporve under a new Labour government. The bare minimum will be all that gets delivered, without any advance on the level of service. There isn't funding available, there aren't the trained staff. Labour is deeply dishonest to suggets otherwise.
A Labour government will spend its term tinkering, to very little effect. But hey, it will be better than the Tories. (Spoiler: it won't....)
I understand the negativity of the Tory message on this, but it doesn't actually match reality.
The graph of public satisfaction is pretty much the inverse, with satisfaction with the NHS peaking at 70% in 2010 and now down in the twenties.
I’ve been wondering why Labour don’t quote that chart endlessly between now and the election. It’s surely an election winner alone. No more persuasive chart.
But I wonder if Labour fear that chart. It sets expectations they may not be able to meet.
The great hope of the left exposed in the searchlight of a simple question
That clip sums up in a nutshell why I am probably the only one on this website who thinks SKS will not win and the Tories have a fighting chance.
You can get away with such a duff answer when the electorate is not really thinking about you as next PM and hates the Government.
It’s another thing when it swings into an election campaign and then everyone is suddenly forced into having to make a choice.
Chances are SKS will get eviscerated in a campaign. Give him any slightly off centre question - ‘define working class’, ‘define a woman etc’ - and he waffles and sounds vacuous.
He’s got 2017 Theresa May vintage written all over him.
The trouble is, Sunak's got collapse of May era written all over him. Constant relaunches, reboots, podia. Tears outside number 10 can't be too far off. So it's May vs. May.
Sounds ripe for an ‘I agree with Nick’ moment.
Perhaps ‘I agree with Nigel’ this time? Perish the thought.
Seems to be happening. Here’s Sir Keir’s latest U-turn on Brexit; could be Farage talking (apart from the Labour bit obviously)
“ Brexit was a vote for lower immigration – of course it was […] If, in short, you want lower migration and higher wages […] Then I say again, this is what a changed Labour Party will deliver”
On the Tories
“ every time they run-up against a choice between raising skills and working conditions or issuing more visas, they choose the higher migration option. And that’s not an accident, it’s who they are”
Mass immigration means low wages, and a damning critique of politicians who give out jobs to foreigners. Whoever would have thought it?
To be honest, this is exactly what I voted Leave for - so politicians had to make speeches like this rather than say they wished they could do something about it, but their hands were tied by FOM
Better PM Starmer and the UK out of the EU than PM Cameron and us still in it
And in return, if Brexit was about stopping the neocolonialist practice of nicking all the skilled brown and black people once a government much less rich than ours has spent public money training them, I’d have been more inclined to vote for Brexit too. (I realise this is far from the actual purpose of Brexit, but doesn’t sound a million miles from what SKS is saying in the speech).
Though nothing in the idea of raising domestic skills required Brexit, it has always been in the hands of domestic government.
Brexit has been a distraction from addressing the problems of this nation, not the solution to the problem.
Starmers speech is interesting and gives some idea of how he plans to campaign. Not gimmicks like the Rwanda groundnut scheme, but addressing the comprehensive failure of public services.
The only way he can "address the comprehensive failure of public services" is a) speak truth to the management structure about their massive and long-standing delivery failures - and then sack the underperformers; or b) throw a lot of money at the problem.
Labour, owned by the unions, will ALWAYS go route b). So the question is - are they lying when they say they will address the comprehensive failures, or lying when they say they won't significantly put up taxes in order to throw a lot of money at the problem.
Probably both. Starmer will raise taxes but not turn around public services.
Not a very effective attack line by the Tories because:
1) the "useless management structures" have been devised and run by Conservatives over the last 13 years.
2) the argument accepts that public services are failing.
Why would anyone want to continue with this government's policy on public services which we all agree now are poorly run and failing?
They were poorly run and failing during the Wilson/ Callaghan era. They were poorly run and failing during the Blair/Brown era. The idea there was some golden age of public services during previous Labour administraions is nonsense.
What this country needs is the Conservatives and Labour working together on a 10 or 20 year programme for public services. One that would survive a change in administration, where there would be a great political price to be paid if one party or the other tried to backslide. One that would take difficult decisons and follow through on them.
There should be a common aim to deliver this, because any government is going to struggle to provide services that don't massively disappoint. Waiting lists won't notably imporve under a new Labour government. The bare minimum will be all that gets delivered, without any advance on the level of service. There isn't funding available, there aren't the trained staff. Labour is deeply dishonest to suggets otherwise.
A Labour government will spend its term tinkering, to very little effect. But hey, it will be better than the Tories. (Spoiler: it won't....)
I understand the negativity of the Tory message on this, but it doesn't actually match reality.
The graph of public satisfaction is pretty much the inverse, with satisfaction with the NHS peaking at 70% in 2010 and now down in the twenties.
I do hope Labour have the sense to slap this as a poster on every available bill board in the country.
Sure, Tories will wail "it's not fair, Covid, GFC hangover, 'reasons', etc, etc..." but their wailing will be pointless against the power of this chart.
And anyone who wants to engage with that wailing can just cover up the bit post-covid and ask if it looks any better?
A good time to start a political career is at the nadir of a parties fortunes, as that is when the recovery starts.
I think that I wouldn't be successful in politics. My views are too idiosyncratic for party politics.
Not quite. I am standing for election to be a trustee of a heritage engineering & railway trust.
I had a couple of informal preliminary interviews, and then had to go in front of their Nominations Committee - which was tough - after which I had a 2-hour 1:1 meeting with the CEO. They approved my application last week.
I've just written my election statement, and now have to speak at the AGM in February where I will hopefully be elected by the members.
There are 3,000 of them. Hopefully, they won't all turn up!
What is your position on heritage diesels?
Steam trains cause pollution!
OO gauge is crap cos it combines 1:76 scale train bodies with 1:87 scale track!
I've got an idea to resolve that one: steam trains with an electric boiler. Sorted!
The great hope of the left exposed in the searchlight of a simple question
That clip sums up in a nutshell why I am probably the only one on this website who thinks SKS will not win and the Tories have a fighting chance.
You can get away with such a duff answer when the electorate is not really thinking about you as next PM and hates the Government.
It’s another thing when it swings into an election campaign and then everyone is suddenly forced into having to make a choice.
Chances are SKS will get eviscerated in a campaign. Give him any slightly off centre question - ‘define working class’, ‘define a woman etc’ - and he waffles and sounds vacuous.
He’s got 2017 Theresa May vintage written all over him.
The trouble is, Sunak's got collapse of May era written all over him. Constant relaunches, reboots, podia. Tears outside number 10 can't be too far off. So it's May vs. May.
Sounds ripe for an ‘I agree with Nick’ moment.
Perhaps ‘I agree with Nigel’ this time? Perish the thought.
Seems to be happening. Here’s Sir Keir’s latest U-turn on Brexit; could be Farage talking (apart from the Labour bit obviously)
“ Brexit was a vote for lower immigration – of course it was […] If, in short, you want lower migration and higher wages […] Then I say again, this is what a changed Labour Party will deliver”
On the Tories
“ every time they run-up against a choice between raising skills and working conditions or issuing more visas, they choose the higher migration option. And that’s not an accident, it’s who they are”
Mass immigration means low wages, and a damning critique of politicians who give out jobs to foreigners. Whoever would have thought it?
To be honest, this is exactly what I voted Leave for - so politicians had to make speeches like this rather than say they wished they could do something about it, but their hands were tied by FOM
Better PM Starmer and the UK out of the EU than PM Cameron and us still in it
And in return, if Brexit was about stopping the neocolonialist practice of nicking all the skilled brown and black people once a government much less rich than ours has spent public money training them, I’d have been more inclined to vote for Brexit too. (I realise this is far from the actual purpose of Brexit, but doesn’t sound a million miles from what SKS is saying in the speech).
Though nothing in the idea of raising domestic skills required Brexit, it has always been in the hands of domestic government.
Brexit has been a distraction from addressing the problems of this nation, not the solution to the problem.
Starmers speech is interesting and gives some idea of how he plans to campaign. Not gimmicks like the Rwanda groundnut scheme, but addressing the comprehensive failure of public services.
The only way he can "address the comprehensive failure of public services" is a) speak truth to the management structure about their massive and long-standing delivery failures - and then sack the underperformers; or b) throw a lot of money at the problem.
Labour, owned by the unions, will ALWAYS go route b). So the question is - are they lying when they say they will address the comprehensive failures, or lying when they say they won't significantly put up taxes in order to throw a lot of money at the problem.
Probably both. Starmer will raise taxes but not turn around public services.
Not a very effective attack line by the Tories because:
1) the "useless management structures" have been devised and run by Conservatives over the last 13 years.
2) the argument accepts that public services are failing.
Why would anyone want to continue with this government's policy on public services which we all agree now are poorly run and failing?
They were poorly run and failing during the Wilson/ Callaghan era. They were poorly run and failing during the Blair/Brown era. The idea there was some golden age of public services during previous Labour administraions is nonsense.
What this country needs is the Conservatives and Labour working together on a 10 or 20 year programme for public services. One that would survive a change in administration, where there would be a great political price to be paid if one party or the other tried to backslide. One that would take difficult decisons and follow through on them.
There should be a common aim to deliver this, because any government is going to struggle to provide services that don't massively disappoint. Waiting lists won't notably imporve under a new Labour government. The bare minimum will be all that gets delivered, without any advance on the level of service. There isn't funding available, there aren't the trained staff. Labour is deeply dishonest to suggets otherwise.
A Labour government will spend its term tinkering, to very little effect. But hey, it will be better than the Tories. (Spoiler: it won't....)
I understand the negativity of the Tory message on this, but it doesn't actually match reality.
The graph of public satisfaction is pretty much the inverse, with satisfaction with the NHS peaking at 70% in 2010 and now down in the twenties.
I’ve been wondering why Labour don’t quote that chart endlessly between now and the election. It’s surely an election winner alone. No more persuasive chart.
But I wonder if Labour fear that chart. It sets expectations they may not be able to meet.
Reposting - Am now watching via YT today's blue plate special served up by latest Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry grilling.
Barrister for the Inquiry is quite good. As with other Inquiry lawyers, his manner is polite, restrained, focused, relentless.
In contrast, the solicitor for firm of law-mongers hired by the buffon's then (and now?) the PO is about as hopeless as the local yokel lawyer in "My Cousin Vinnie".
That is, crap. Wouldn't hire him to notarize a pet license, let alone furnish legal advice above AI standard.
Fairliered comment on above:
FR: The Post Office chose lawyers that would make their management look competent by comparison.
SSI - Didn't work, hell no!
It is remarkable how that solicitor (from an external legal firm hired by the PO) began confident and articulate, but within a couple of hours was reduced to a gibbering wreck who could barely understand what he was being asked.
Indeed. The Inquiry inquisitioner's technique was very interesting, and highly effective.
Kept ratcheting up the temperature from room temperature VERY slowly . . . slowly . . . until before the toad realized what was happening, he was hopping about in a pot of boiling water . . .
It is becoming increasingly apparent that not only did the PO employ poor quality staff for the persecution of its Subpostmasters, it used pound-shop lawyers too.
Presumably decent ones would have been too dear, and too inclined to tell the PO the truth about their shitty systems.
The ideal Yes man, a very cheap one who saves you even more time and money by not asking questions..
I remain to be convinced that Starmer has any clear vision of what he wants to do. He wants to do things better. Well, yes. He wants the state to deliver for people. Good luck with that. He wants people to get on. Which is rather up to them. It is so vague, so amorphous and capable of changing into anything that I don’t see a coherent agenda, a driver for change.
I really hope that I am wrong. I really and genuinely hope that he surprises us on the upside. God knows the country needs an improvement.
An except from Keith Donkey's forthcoming speech where he sets out what he wants to do:
"we wanna be free, we wanna be free to do what we wanna do And we wanna get loaded and we wanna have a good time And that's what we're gonna do"
If *all* Labour achieve is one or two small things that they said they would do in their manifesto, without sounding like they enjoy torturing baby animals as they do so, they will be "successful" by comparison with what we are experiencing now.
This is possibly the way in which Starmer is luckiest. The baseline for subsequent success has been lowered more than ever before.
A good time to start a political career is at the nadir of a parties fortunes, as that is when the recovery starts.
I think that I wouldn't be successful in politics. My views are too idiosyncratic for party politics.
Not quite. I am standing for election to be a trustee of a heritage engineering & railway trust.
I had a couple of informal preliminary interviews, and then had to go in front of their Nominations Committee - which was tough - after which I had a 2-hour 1:1 meeting with the CEO. They approved my application last week.
I've just written my election statement, and now have to speak at the AGM in February where I will hopefully be elected by the members.
There are 3,000 of them. Hopefully, they won't all turn up!
What is your position on heritage diesels?
And, for inclusivity, installing overhead wiring and pantographs?
Third rail is much less visually obtrusive!
And can't be extended on health and safety grounds.
Now we're talking wokery! Health and safety just an excuse!
Obviously I know naff all about the railways, and equally obviously that's not going to stop me:
I assume the 3rd rail system is consider dangerous because of the exposed live rail. Why don't we implement a segmented ground-level power supply, where each segment is electrified only while covered by a vehicle which is using its power?
RIP A QUESTION OF SPORT. according to GB breaking news. The BBC were mad to axe Sue Barker
Yet another reason not to pay the BBC license
It is the below-inflation (and pledge-breaking) licence fee increase announced this week that has made the BBC look to axe expensive but failing shows like A Question of Sport. iirc they have a £90 million funding gap to fill.
Why is QoS expensive? I'd expect it to be quite cheap to make - unless the panelists earn an f'load.
They pay Linekar millions to talk shit on a Saturday, so what do you think.
The great hope of the left exposed in the searchlight of a simple question
That clip sums up in a nutshell why I am probably the only one on this website who thinks SKS will not win and the Tories have a fighting chance.
You can get away with such a duff answer when the electorate is not really thinking about you as next PM and hates the Government.
It’s another thing when it swings into an election campaign and then everyone is suddenly forced into having to make a choice.
Chances are SKS will get eviscerated in a campaign. Give him any slightly off centre question - ‘define working class’, ‘define a woman etc’ - and he waffles and sounds vacuous.
He’s got 2017 Theresa May vintage written all over him.
The trouble is, Sunak's got collapse of May era written all over him. Constant relaunches, reboots, podia. Tears outside number 10 can't be too far off. So it's May vs. May.
Sounds ripe for an ‘I agree with Nick’ moment.
Perhaps ‘I agree with Nigel’ this time? Perish the thought.
Seems to be happening. Here’s Sir Keir’s latest U-turn on Brexit; could be Farage talking (apart from the Labour bit obviously)
“ Brexit was a vote for lower immigration – of course it was […] If, in short, you want lower migration and higher wages […] Then I say again, this is what a changed Labour Party will deliver”
On the Tories
“ every time they run-up against a choice between raising skills and working conditions or issuing more visas, they choose the higher migration option. And that’s not an accident, it’s who they are”
Mass immigration means low wages, and a damning critique of politicians who give out jobs to foreigners. Whoever would have thought it?
To be honest, this is exactly what I voted Leave for - so politicians had to make speeches like this rather than say they wished they could do something about it, but their hands were tied by FOM
Better PM Starmer and the UK out of the EU than PM Cameron and us still in it
And in return, if Brexit was about stopping the neocolonialist practice of nicking all the skilled brown and black people once a government much less rich than ours has spent public money training them, I’d have been more inclined to vote for Brexit too. (I realise this is far from the actual purpose of Brexit, but doesn’t sound a million miles from what SKS is saying in the speech).
Though nothing in the idea of raising domestic skills required Brexit, it has always been in the hands of domestic government.
Brexit has been a distraction from addressing the problems of this nation, not the solution to the problem.
Starmers speech is interesting and gives some idea of how he plans to campaign. Not gimmicks like the Rwanda groundnut scheme, but addressing the comprehensive failure of public services.
The only way he can "address the comprehensive failure of public services" is a) speak truth to the management structure about their massive and long-standing delivery failures - and then sack the underperformers; or b) throw a lot of money at the problem.
Labour, owned by the unions, will ALWAYS go route b). So the question is - are they lying when they say they will address the comprehensive failures, or lying when they say they won't significantly put up taxes in order to throw a lot of money at the problem.
Probably both. Starmer will raise taxes but not turn around public services.
Not a very effective attack line by the Tories because:
1) the "useless management structures" have been devised and run by Conservatives over the last 13 years.
2) the argument accepts that public services are failing.
Why would anyone want to continue with this government's policy on public services which we all agree now are poorly run and failing?
They were poorly run and failing during the Wilson/ Callaghan era. They were poorly run and failing during the Blair/Brown era. The idea there was some golden age of public services during previous Labour administraions is nonsense.
What this country needs is the Conservatives and Labour working together on a 10 or 20 year programme for public services. One that would survive a change in administration, where there would be a great political price to be paid if one party or the other tried to backslide. One that would take difficult decisons and follow through on them.
There should be a common aim to deliver this, because any government is going to struggle to provide services that don't massively disappoint. Waiting lists won't notably imporve under a new Labour government. The bare minimum will be all that gets delivered, without any advance on the level of service. There isn't funding available, there aren't the trained staff. Labour is deeply dishonest to suggets otherwise.
A Labour government will spend its term tinkering, to very little effect. But hey, it will be better than the Tories. (Spoiler: it won't....)
I understand the negativity of the Tory message on this, but it doesn't actually match reality.
The graph of public satisfaction is pretty much the inverse, with satisfaction with the NHS peaking at 70% in 2010 and now down in the twenties.
I’ve been wondering why Labour don’t quote that chart endlessly between now and the election. It’s surely an election winner alone. No more persuasive chart.
But I wonder if Labour fear that chart. It sets expectations they may not be able to meet.
F*ck expectations - win power first!
Ideally Labour could find 3 or 4 charts of different things showing a similar pattern.
The economy doesn’t work as a chart, because it was growing rapidly in the mid 90s before the 97 victory and shrunk in the financial crisis. So whilst it grew well under Blair the inflection points don’t match the elections. For the economy the better stat is average growth under Labour vs average growth since 2010.
Housebuilding doesn’t work. Just as bad under Labour.
The other promising one for them is crime, particularly violent crime. It peaked just before 1997 and the graphs fall rapidly in the first couple of terms of Labour, then start to flatten (but still fall a little) thereafter. But violent crime is now bouncing up again. So that would work as a chart.
Others: cost of higher education. Water pollution: falls off a cliff from 1997 until 2010, then flat (not actually rising now despite water company failings, just not getting better).
Rough sleeping: can’t find a chart but I think it would show clear reductions under Labour then increases under the Tories.
A good time to start a political career is at the nadir of a parties fortunes, as that is when the recovery starts.
I think that I wouldn't be successful in politics. My views are too idiosyncratic for party politics.
Not quite. I am standing for election to be a trustee of a heritage engineering & railway trust.
I had a couple of informal preliminary interviews, and then had to go in front of their Nominations Committee - which was tough - after which I had a 2-hour 1:1 meeting with the CEO. They approved my application last week.
I've just written my election statement, and now have to speak at the AGM in February where I will hopefully be elected by the members.
There are 3,000 of them. Hopefully, they won't all turn up!
What is your position on heritage diesels?
My position is flailing out of the front droplight window.
A good time to start a political career is at the nadir of a parties fortunes, as that is when the recovery starts.
I think that I wouldn't be successful in politics. My views are too idiosyncratic for party politics.
Not quite. I am standing for election to be a trustee of a heritage engineering & railway trust.
I had a couple of informal preliminary interviews, and then had to go in front of their Nominations Committee - which was tough - after which I had a 2-hour 1:1 meeting with the CEO. They approved my application last week.
I've just written my election statement, and now have to speak at the AGM in February where I will hopefully be elected by the members.
There are 3,000 of them. Hopefully, they won't all turn up!
A good time to start a political career is at the nadir of a parties fortunes, as that is when the recovery starts.
I think that I wouldn't be successful in politics. My views are too idiosyncratic for party politics.
Not quite. I am standing for election to be a trustee of a heritage engineering & railway trust.
I had a couple of informal preliminary interviews, and then had to go in front of their Nominations Committee - which was tough - after which I had a 2-hour 1:1 meeting with the CEO. They approved my application last week.
I've just written my election statement, and now have to speak at the AGM in February where I will hopefully be elected by the members.
There are 3,000 of them. Hopefully, they won't all turn up!
Sunak had a much easier ride to become PM!
True, but for the post Casino is seeking I expect you have to actually know what you are talking about.
I remain to be convinced that Starmer has any clear vision of what he wants to do. He wants to do things better. Well, yes. He wants the state to deliver for people. Good luck with that. He wants people to get on. Which is rather up to them. It is so vague, so amorphous and capable of changing into anything that I don’t see a coherent agenda, a driver for change.
I really hope that I am wrong. I really and genuinely hope that he surprises us on the upside. God knows the country needs an improvement.
An except from Keith Donkey's forthcoming speech where he sets out what he wants to do:
"we wanna be free, we wanna be free to do what we wanna do And we wanna get loaded and we wanna have a good time And that's what we're gonna do"
An excellent program for government. I’d vote for that.
I remain to be convinced that Starmer has any clear vision of what he wants to do. He wants to do things better. Well, yes. He wants the state to deliver for people. Good luck with that. He wants people to get on. Which is rather up to them. It is so vague, so amorphous and capable of changing into anything that I don’t see a coherent agenda, a driver for change.
I really hope that I am wrong. I really and genuinely hope that he surprises us on the upside. God knows the country needs an improvement.
An except from Keith Donkey's forthcoming speech where he sets out what he wants to do:
"we wanna be free, we wanna be free to do what we wanna do And we wanna get loaded and we wanna have a good time And that's what we're gonna do"
A good time to start a political career is at the nadir of a parties fortunes, as that is when the recovery starts.
I think that I wouldn't be successful in politics. My views are too idiosyncratic for party politics.
Not quite. I am standing for election to be a trustee of a heritage engineering & railway trust.
I had a couple of informal preliminary interviews, and then had to go in front of their Nominations Committee - which was tough - after which I had a 2-hour 1:1 meeting with the CEO. They approved my application last week.
I've just written my election statement, and now have to speak at the AGM in February where I will hopefully be elected by the members.
There are 3,000 of them. Hopefully, they won't all turn up!
Sunak had a much easier ride to become PM!
True, but for the post Casino is seeking I expect you have to actually know what you are talking about.
The speech should be simple though. He just has to make a lot of good points, and not go off the rails.
I’ve ordered some smart plugs. If I can’t drink, do heroin or go whoring all the long day, I can at least sit in a chair and order a machine to turn lights on
I’ve ordered some smart plugs. If I can’t drink, do heroin or go whoring all the long day, I can at least sit in a chair and order a machine to turn lights on
I remain to be convinced that Starmer has any clear vision of what he wants to do. He wants to do things better. Well, yes. He wants the state to deliver for people. Good luck with that. He wants people to get on. Which is rather up to them. It is so vague, so amorphous and capable of changing into anything that I don’t see a coherent agenda, a driver for change.
I really hope that I am wrong. I really and genuinely hope that he surprises us on the upside. God knows the country needs an improvement.
An except from Keith Donkey's forthcoming speech where he sets out what he wants to do:
"we wanna be free, we wanna be free to do what we wanna do And we wanna get loaded and we wanna have a good time And that's what we're gonna do"
If *all* Labour achieve is one or two small things that they said they would do in their manifesto, without sounding like they enjoy torturing baby animals as they do so, they will be "successful" by comparison with what we are experiencing now.
This is possibly the way in which Starmer is luckiest. The baseline for subsequent success has been lowered more than ever before.
In some ways but not in others.
Things which are now taken for granted - full employment, affluence for oldies, ever increasing NHS workforce - can change and when they do the government of the time will be blamed.
A good time to start a political career is at the nadir of a parties fortunes, as that is when the recovery starts.
I think that I wouldn't be successful in politics. My views are too idiosyncratic for party politics.
Not quite. I am standing for election to be a trustee of a heritage engineering & railway trust.
I had a couple of informal preliminary interviews, and then had to go in front of their Nominations Committee - which was tough - after which I had a 2-hour 1:1 meeting with the CEO. They approved my application last week.
I've just written my election statement, and now have to speak at the AGM in February where I will hopefully be elected by the members.
There are 3,000 of them. Hopefully, they won't all turn up!
What is your position on heritage diesels?
Normally seated.
Get a Deltic over for the Diesel Gala and you'll get my vote.
I remain to be convinced that Starmer has any clear vision of what he wants to do. He wants to do things better. Well, yes. He wants the state to deliver for people. Good luck with that. He wants people to get on. Which is rather up to them. It is so vague, so amorphous and capable of changing into anything that I don’t see a coherent agenda, a driver for change.
I really hope that I am wrong. I really and genuinely hope that he surprises us on the upside. God knows the country needs an improvement.
There is a lot to be said for competent, professional management and disciplined delivery of public services, but that should be a bare minimum.
It is something that has been sorely lacking in recent years, and not just at Westminster. Scotland and the other devolved nations have been no better at it, indeed often even worse.
It should be a bare minimum, Fox, but it would nevertheless be a massive improvement.
Starmer is extraordinarily lucky. No Government in my lifetime has set the bar so low in terms of sound administration.
This is true. The economy is also going to slowly creak back to life during 2024. People will very gradually start to feel a little bit better off. Put it all together and if Labour does get into power, it will have to perform quite spectacularly badly for things not to be looking more positive domestically (internationally is a very different story) in four or five years than they do now. Add a further Tory lurch to the right in oppositions and you are probably looking at two terms.
However, Labour has to win the first GE and, despite the poll leads, that remains far from a done deal. Refugees on planes to Rwanda, further tax cuts and that general slow economic improvement could yet salvage the Tories. I'd hate that, of course, but I can see some tiny silver lining in that it may mean the further Tory lurch to the right is avoided.
Labour overall majority currently trading at 1.3. The Billy Bunters are not stupid.
Given that NOM was 1.1 in 2015, Remain was 1.08 in 2016, and Tory Maj was 1.17 in 2017, I don’t think being big odds on is necessarily a slam dunk, difficult as it is to see any other result.
I’ve ordered some smart plugs. If I can’t drink, do heroin or go whoring all the long day, I can at least sit in a chair and order a machine to turn lights on
I’ve just ordered my wife a 255mm mitre saw and stand for her Christmas present. And they say romance is dead.
A good time to start a political career is at the nadir of a parties fortunes, as that is when the recovery starts.
I think that I wouldn't be successful in politics. My views are too idiosyncratic for party politics.
Not quite. I am standing for election to be a trustee of a heritage engineering & railway trust.
I had a couple of informal preliminary interviews, and then had to go in front of their Nominations Committee - which was tough - after which I had a 2-hour 1:1 meeting with the CEO. They approved my application last week.
I've just written my election statement, and now have to speak at the AGM in February where I will hopefully be elected by the members.
There are 3,000 of them. Hopefully, they won't all turn up!
Sunak had a much easier ride to become PM!
True, but for the post Casino is seeking I expect you have to actually know what you are talking about.
The speech should be simple though. He just has to make a lot of good points, and not go off the rails.
Reposting - Am now watching via YT today's blue plate special served up by latest Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry grilling.
Barrister for the Inquiry is quite good. As with other Inquiry lawyers, his manner is polite, restrained, focused, relentless.
In contrast, the solicitor for firm of law-mongers hired by the buffon's then (and now?) the PO is about as hopeless as the local yokel lawyer in "My Cousin Vinnie".
That is, crap. Wouldn't hire him to notarize a pet license, let alone furnish legal advice above AI standard.
Fairliered comment on above:
FR: The Post Office chose lawyers that would make their management look competent by comparison.
SSI - Didn't work, hell no!
It is remarkable how that solicitor (from an external legal firm hired by the PO) began confident and articulate, but within a couple of hours was reduced to a gibbering wreck who could barely understand what he was being asked.
Indeed. The Inquiry inquisitioner's technique was very interesting, and highly effective.
Kept ratcheting up the temperature from room temperature VERY slowly . . . slowly . . . until before the toad realized what was happening, he was hopping about in a pot of boiling water . . .
It is becoming increasingly apparent that not only did the PO employ poor quality staff for the persecution of its Subpostmasters, it used pound-shop lawyers too.
Presumably decent ones would have been too dear, and too inclined to tell the PO the truth about their shitty systems.
Not many firms do private criminal prosecution work and the ones that do are not exactly top notch. Due respect to Wombles. It’s not remunerative - the client gets nothing at the end of it except watching someone go to jail. Talented litigators go into commercial litigation or arbitration where the money is.
A good time to start a political career is at the nadir of a parties fortunes, as that is when the recovery starts.
I think that I wouldn't be successful in politics. My views are too idiosyncratic for party politics.
Not quite. I am standing for election to be a trustee of a heritage engineering & railway trust.
I had a couple of informal preliminary interviews, and then had to go in front of their Nominations Committee - which was tough - after which I had a 2-hour 1:1 meeting with the CEO. They approved my application last week.
I've just written my election statement, and now have to speak at the AGM in February where I will hopefully be elected by the members.
There are 3,000 of them. Hopefully, they won't all turn up!
Sunak had a much easier ride to become PM!
True, but for the post Casino is seeking I expect you have to actually know what you are talking about.
The speech should be simple though. He just has to make a lot of good points, and not go off the rails.
I’ve ordered some smart plugs. If I can’t drink, do heroin or go whoring all the long day, I can at least sit in a chair and order a machine to turn lights on
No one’s stopping you drinking all day, whatever its length. Although, judging by your output on here, perhaps someone should.
A good time to start a political career is at the nadir of a parties fortunes, as that is when the recovery starts.
I think that I wouldn't be successful in politics. My views are too idiosyncratic for party politics.
Not quite. I am standing for election to be a trustee of a heritage engineering & railway trust.
I had a couple of informal preliminary interviews, and then had to go in front of their Nominations Committee - which was tough - after which I had a 2-hour 1:1 meeting with the CEO. They approved my application last week.
I've just written my election statement, and now have to speak at the AGM in February where I will hopefully be elected by the members.
There are 3,000 of them. Hopefully, they won't all turn up!
Sunak had a much easier ride to become PM!
True, but for the post Casino is seeking I expect you have to actually know what you are talking about.
The speech should be simple though. He just has to make a lot of good points, and not go off the rails.
A good time to start a political career is at the nadir of a parties fortunes, as that is when the recovery starts.
I think that I wouldn't be successful in politics. My views are too idiosyncratic for party politics.
Not quite. I am standing for election to be a trustee of a heritage engineering & railway trust.
I had a couple of informal preliminary interviews, and then had to go in front of their Nominations Committee - which was tough - after which I had a 2-hour 1:1 meeting with the CEO. They approved my application last week.
I've just written my election statement, and now have to speak at the AGM in February where I will hopefully be elected by the members.
There are 3,000 of them. Hopefully, they won't all turn up!
Sunak had a much easier ride to become PM!
True, but for the post Casino is seeking I expect you have to actually know what you are talking about.
The speech should be simple though. He just has to make a lot of good points, and not go off the rails.
A good time to start a political career is at the nadir of a parties fortunes, as that is when the recovery starts.
I think that I wouldn't be successful in politics. My views are too idiosyncratic for party politics.
Not quite. I am standing for election to be a trustee of a heritage engineering & railway trust.
I had a couple of informal preliminary interviews, and then had to go in front of their Nominations Committee - which was tough - after which I had a 2-hour 1:1 meeting with the CEO. They approved my application last week.
I've just written my election statement, and now have to speak at the AGM in February where I will hopefully be elected by the members.
There are 3,000 of them. Hopefully, they won't all turn up!
Sunak had a much easier ride to become PM!
True, but for the post Casino is seeking I expect you have to actually know what you are talking about.
The speech should be simple though. He just has to make a lot of good points, and not go off the rails.
A good time to start a political career is at the nadir of a parties fortunes, as that is when the recovery starts.
I think that I wouldn't be successful in politics. My views are too idiosyncratic for party politics.
Not quite. I am standing for election to be a trustee of a heritage engineering & railway trust.
I had a couple of informal preliminary interviews, and then had to go in front of their Nominations Committee - which was tough - after which I had a 2-hour 1:1 meeting with the CEO. They approved my application last week.
I've just written my election statement, and now have to speak at the AGM in February where I will hopefully be elected by the members.
There are 3,000 of them. Hopefully, they won't all turn up!
Sunak had a much easier ride to become PM!
True, but for the post Casino is seeking I expect you have to actually know what you are talking about.
The speech should be simple though. He just has to make a lot of good points, and not go off the rails.
The great hope of the left exposed in the searchlight of a simple question
That clip sums up in a nutshell why I am probably the only one on this website who thinks SKS will not win and the Tories have a fighting chance.
You can get away with such a duff answer when the electorate is not really thinking about you as next PM and hates the Government.
It’s another thing when it swings into an election campaign and then everyone is suddenly forced into having to make a choice.
Chances are SKS will get eviscerated in a campaign. Give him any slightly off centre question - ‘define working class’, ‘define a woman etc’ - and he waffles and sounds vacuous.
He’s got 2017 Theresa May vintage written all over him.
The trouble is, Sunak's got collapse of May era written all over him. Constant relaunches, reboots, podia. Tears outside number 10 can't be too far off. So it's May vs. May.
Sounds ripe for an ‘I agree with Nick’ moment.
Perhaps ‘I agree with Nigel’ this time? Perish the thought.
Seems to be happening. Here’s Sir Keir’s latest U-turn on Brexit; could be Farage talking (apart from the Labour bit obviously)
“ Brexit was a vote for lower immigration – of course it was […] If, in short, you want lower migration and higher wages […] Then I say again, this is what a changed Labour Party will deliver”
On the Tories
“ every time they run-up against a choice between raising skills and working conditions or issuing more visas, they choose the higher migration option. And that’s not an accident, it’s who they are”
Mass immigration means low wages, and a damning critique of politicians who give out jobs to foreigners. Whoever would have thought it?
To be honest, this is exactly what I voted Leave for - so politicians had to make speeches like this rather than say they wished they could do something about it, but their hands were tied by FOM
Better PM Starmer and the UK out of the EU than PM Cameron and us still in it
And in return, if Brexit was about stopping the neocolonialist practice of nicking all the skilled brown and black people once a government much less rich than ours has spent public money training them, I’d have been more inclined to vote for Brexit too. (I realise this is far from the actual purpose of Brexit, but doesn’t sound a million miles from what SKS is saying in the speech).
Though nothing in the idea of raising domestic skills required Brexit, it has always been in the hands of domestic government.
Brexit has been a distraction from addressing the problems of this nation, not the solution to the problem.
Starmers speech is interesting and gives some idea of how he plans to campaign. Not gimmicks like the Rwanda groundnut scheme, but addressing the comprehensive failure of public services.
The only way he can "address the comprehensive failure of public services" is a) speak truth to the management structure about their massive and long-standing delivery failures - and then sack the underperformers; or b) throw a lot of money at the problem.
Labour, owned by the unions, will ALWAYS go route b). So the question is - are they lying when they say they will address the comprehensive failures, or lying when they say they won't significantly put up taxes in order to throw a lot of money at the problem.
Probably both. Starmer will raise taxes but not turn around public services.
Not a very effective attack line by the Tories because:
1) the "useless management structures" have been devised and run by Conservatives over the last 13 years.
2) the argument accepts that public services are failing.
Why would anyone want to continue with this government's policy on public services which we all agree now are poorly run and failing?
They were poorly run and failing during the Wilson/ Callaghan era. They were poorly run and failing during the Blair/Brown era. The idea there was some golden age of public services during previous Labour administraions is nonsense.
What this country needs is the Conservatives and Labour working together on a 10 or 20 year programme for public services. One that would survive a change in administration, where there would be a great political price to be paid if one party or the other tried to backslide. One that would take difficult decisons and follow through on them.
There should be a common aim to deliver this, because any government is going to struggle to provide services that don't massively disappoint. Waiting lists won't notably imporve under a new Labour government. The bare minimum will be all that gets delivered, without any advance on the level of service. There isn't funding available, there aren't the trained staff. Labour is deeply dishonest to suggets otherwise.
A Labour government will spend its term tinkering, to very little effect. But hey, it will be better than the Tories. (Spoiler: it won't....)
I understand the negativity of the Tory message on this, but it doesn't actually match reality.
The graph of public satisfaction is pretty much the inverse, with satisfaction with the NHS peaking at 70% in 2010 and now down in the twenties.
I’ve been wondering why Labour don’t quote that chart endlessly between now and the election. It’s surely an election winner alone. No more persuasive chart.
But I wonder if Labour fear that chart. It sets expectations they may not be able to meet.
F*ck expectations - win power first!
Ideally Labour could find 3 or 4 charts of different things showing a similar pattern.
The economy doesn’t work as a chart, because it was growing rapidly in the mid 90s before the 97 victory and shrunk in the financial crisis. So whilst it grew well under Blair the inflection points don’t match the elections. For the economy the better stat is average growth under Labour vs average growth since 2010.
Housebuilding doesn’t work. Just as bad under Labour.
The other promising one for them is crime, particularly violent crime. It peaked just before 1997 and the graphs fall rapidly in the first couple of terms of Labour, then start to flatten (but still fall a little) thereafter. But violent crime is now bouncing up again. So that would work as a chart.
Others: cost of higher education. Water pollution: falls off a cliff from 1997 until 2010, then flat (not actually rising now despite water company failings, just not getting better).
Rough sleeping: can’t find a chart but I think it would show clear reductions under Labour then increases under the Tories.
Real incomes might be a good one - would need to check
I’ve ordered some smart plugs. If I can’t drink, do heroin or go whoring all the long day, I can at least sit in a chair and order a machine to turn lights on
You need to think ahead.
In the not too distant future the highlight of the day might well be getting out of your chair to flick a switch or turn on the kettle.
The great hope of the left exposed in the searchlight of a simple question
That clip sums up in a nutshell why I am probably the only one on this website who thinks SKS will not win and the Tories have a fighting chance.
You can get away with such a duff answer when the electorate is not really thinking about you as next PM and hates the Government.
It’s another thing when it swings into an election campaign and then everyone is suddenly forced into having to make a choice.
Chances are SKS will get eviscerated in a campaign. Give him any slightly off centre question - ‘define working class’, ‘define a woman etc’ - and he waffles and sounds vacuous.
He’s got 2017 Theresa May vintage written all over him.
The trouble is, Sunak's got collapse of May era written all over him. Constant relaunches, reboots, podia. Tears outside number 10 can't be too far off. So it's May vs. May.
Sounds ripe for an ‘I agree with Nick’ moment.
Perhaps ‘I agree with Nigel’ this time? Perish the thought.
Seems to be happening. Here’s Sir Keir’s latest U-turn on Brexit; could be Farage talking (apart from the Labour bit obviously)
“ Brexit was a vote for lower immigration – of course it was […] If, in short, you want lower migration and higher wages […] Then I say again, this is what a changed Labour Party will deliver”
On the Tories
“ every time they run-up against a choice between raising skills and working conditions or issuing more visas, they choose the higher migration option. And that’s not an accident, it’s who they are”
Mass immigration means low wages, and a damning critique of politicians who give out jobs to foreigners. Whoever would have thought it?
To be honest, this is exactly what I voted Leave for - so politicians had to make speeches like this rather than say they wished they could do something about it, but their hands were tied by FOM
Better PM Starmer and the UK out of the EU than PM Cameron and us still in it
And in return, if Brexit was about stopping the neocolonialist practice of nicking all the skilled brown and black people once a government much less rich than ours has spent public money training them, I’d have been more inclined to vote for Brexit too. (I realise this is far from the actual purpose of Brexit, but doesn’t sound a million miles from what SKS is saying in the speech).
Though nothing in the idea of raising domestic skills required Brexit, it has always been in the hands of domestic government.
Brexit has been a distraction from addressing the problems of this nation, not the solution to the problem.
Starmers speech is interesting and gives some idea of how he plans to campaign. Not gimmicks like the Rwanda groundnut scheme, but addressing the comprehensive failure of public services.
The only way he can "address the comprehensive failure of public services" is a) speak truth to the management structure about their massive and long-standing delivery failures - and then sack the underperformers; or b) throw a lot of money at the problem.
Labour, owned by the unions, will ALWAYS go route b). So the question is - are they lying when they say they will address the comprehensive failures, or lying when they say they won't significantly put up taxes in order to throw a lot of money at the problem.
Probably both. Starmer will raise taxes but not turn around public services.
Not a very effective attack line by the Tories because:
1) the "useless management structures" have been devised and run by Conservatives over the last 13 years.
2) the argument accepts that public services are failing.
Why would anyone want to continue with this government's policy on public services which we all agree now are poorly run and failing?
They were poorly run and failing during the Wilson/ Callaghan era. They were poorly run and failing during the Blair/Brown era. The idea there was some golden age of public services during previous Labour administraions is nonsense.
What this country needs is the Conservatives and Labour working together on a 10 or 20 year programme for public services. One that would survive a change in administration, where there would be a great political price to be paid if one party or the other tried to backslide. One that would take difficult decisons and follow through on them.
There should be a common aim to deliver this, because any government is going to struggle to provide services that don't massively disappoint. Waiting lists won't notably imporve under a new Labour government. The bare minimum will be all that gets delivered, without any advance on the level of service. There isn't funding available, there aren't the trained staff. Labour is deeply dishonest to suggets otherwise.
A Labour government will spend its term tinkering, to very little effect. But hey, it will be better than the Tories. (Spoiler: it won't....)
I understand the negativity of the Tory message on this, but it doesn't actually match reality.
The graph of public satisfaction is pretty much the inverse, with satisfaction with the NHS peaking at 70% in 2010 and now down in the twenties.
I’ve been wondering why Labour don’t quote that chart endlessly between now and the election. It’s surely an election winner alone. No more persuasive chart.
But I wonder if Labour fear that chart. It sets expectations they may not be able to meet.
It's the sole feature of a leaflet that all CLPs were sent in the autumn and we put it out enthusiastically - I remember feeling "yes, I'm doing the right thing!", which tbh I don't always feel so definitely when putting out a routine leaflet.
I remain to be convinced that Starmer has any clear vision of what he wants to do. He wants to do things better. Well, yes. He wants the state to deliver for people. Good luck with that. He wants people to get on. Which is rather up to them. It is so vague, so amorphous and capable of changing into anything that I don’t see a coherent agenda, a driver for change.
I really hope that I am wrong. I really and genuinely hope that he surprises us on the upside. God knows the country needs an improvement.
I'm somewhat in "we'd better wait and see" mode myself. But I have a cousin who is a longstanding personal friend (from the Bar) - she and her husband are not always Labour, but they do think he's a coherent, solid social democrat who is simply keen not to give hostages to fortune.
I’ve ordered some smart plugs. If I can’t drink, do heroin or go whoring all the long day, I can at least sit in a chair and order a machine to turn lights on
You need to think ahead.
In the not too distant future the highlight of the day might well be getting out of your chair to flick a switch or turn on the kettle.
The great hope of the left exposed in the searchlight of a simple question
That clip sums up in a nutshell why I am probably the only one on this website who thinks SKS will not win and the Tories have a fighting chance.
You can get away with such a duff answer when the electorate is not really thinking about you as next PM and hates the Government.
It’s another thing when it swings into an election campaign and then everyone is suddenly forced into having to make a choice.
Chances are SKS will get eviscerated in a campaign. Give him any slightly off centre question - ‘define working class’, ‘define a woman etc’ - and he waffles and sounds vacuous.
He’s got 2017 Theresa May vintage written all over him.
The trouble is, Sunak's got collapse of May era written all over him. Constant relaunches, reboots, podia. Tears outside number 10 can't be too far off. So it's May vs. May.
Sounds ripe for an ‘I agree with Nick’ moment.
Perhaps ‘I agree with Nigel’ this time? Perish the thought.
Seems to be happening. Here’s Sir Keir’s latest U-turn on Brexit; could be Farage talking (apart from the Labour bit obviously)
“ Brexit was a vote for lower immigration – of course it was […] If, in short, you want lower migration and higher wages […] Then I say again, this is what a changed Labour Party will deliver”
On the Tories
“ every time they run-up against a choice between raising skills and working conditions or issuing more visas, they choose the higher migration option. And that’s not an accident, it’s who they are”
Mass immigration means low wages, and a damning critique of politicians who give out jobs to foreigners. Whoever would have thought it?
To be honest, this is exactly what I voted Leave for - so politicians had to make speeches like this rather than say they wished they could do something about it, but their hands were tied by FOM
Better PM Starmer and the UK out of the EU than PM Cameron and us still in it
And in return, if Brexit was about stopping the neocolonialist practice of nicking all the skilled brown and black people once a government much less rich than ours has spent public money training them, I’d have been more inclined to vote for Brexit too. (I realise this is far from the actual purpose of Brexit, but doesn’t sound a million miles from what SKS is saying in the speech).
Though nothing in the idea of raising domestic skills required Brexit, it has always been in the hands of domestic government.
Brexit has been a distraction from addressing the problems of this nation, not the solution to the problem.
Starmers speech is interesting and gives some idea of how he plans to campaign. Not gimmicks like the Rwanda groundnut scheme, but addressing the comprehensive failure of public services.
The only way he can "address the comprehensive failure of public services" is a) speak truth to the management structure about their massive and long-standing delivery failures - and then sack the underperformers; or b) throw a lot of money at the problem.
Labour, owned by the unions, will ALWAYS go route b). So the question is - are they lying when they say they will address the comprehensive failures, or lying when they say they won't significantly put up taxes in order to throw a lot of money at the problem.
Probably both. Starmer will raise taxes but not turn around public services.
Not a very effective attack line by the Tories because:
1) the "useless management structures" have been devised and run by Conservatives over the last 13 years.
2) the argument accepts that public services are failing.
Why would anyone want to continue with this government's policy on public services which we all agree now are poorly run and failing?
They were poorly run and failing during the Wilson/ Callaghan era. They were poorly run and failing during the Blair/Brown era. The idea there was some golden age of public services during previous Labour administraions is nonsense.
What this country needs is the Conservatives and Labour working together on a 10 or 20 year programme for public services. One that would survive a change in administration, where there would be a great political price to be paid if one party or the other tried to backslide. One that would take difficult decisons and follow through on them.
There should be a common aim to deliver this, because any government is going to struggle to provide services that don't massively disappoint. Waiting lists won't notably imporve under a new Labour government. The bare minimum will be all that gets delivered, without any advance on the level of service. There isn't funding available, there aren't the trained staff. Labour is deeply dishonest to suggets otherwise.
A Labour government will spend its term tinkering, to very little effect. But hey, it will be better than the Tories. (Spoiler: it won't....)
I understand the negativity of the Tory message on this, but it doesn't actually match reality.
The graph of public satisfaction is pretty much the inverse, with satisfaction with the NHS peaking at 70% in 2010 and now down in the twenties.
I’ve been wondering why Labour don’t quote that chart endlessly between now and the election. It’s surely an election winner alone. No more persuasive chart.
But I wonder if Labour fear that chart. It sets expectations they may not be able to meet.
It's the sole feature of a leaflet that all CLPs were sent in the autumn and we put it out enthusiastically - I remember feeling "yes, I'm doing the right thing!", which tbh I don't always feel so definitely when putting out a routine leaflet.
If doing a delivery on an organised event (ie I haven't seen the leaflet beforehand) after I have stuffed about 100 doors it usually dawns on me that it might be prudent to read what I'm putting through the letterboxes. Haven't yet resorted to abandoning a delivery in disgust, although occasionally I have been uninspired.
The great hope of the left exposed in the searchlight of a simple question
That clip sums up in a nutshell why I am probably the only one on this website who thinks SKS will not win and the Tories have a fighting chance.
You can get away with such a duff answer when the electorate is not really thinking about you as next PM and hates the Government.
It’s another thing when it swings into an election campaign and then everyone is suddenly forced into having to make a choice.
Chances are SKS will get eviscerated in a campaign. Give him any slightly off centre question - ‘define working class’, ‘define a woman etc’ - and he waffles and sounds vacuous.
He’s got 2017 Theresa May vintage written all over him.
The trouble is, Sunak's got collapse of May era written all over him. Constant relaunches, reboots, podia. Tears outside number 10 can't be too far off. So it's May vs. May.
Sounds ripe for an ‘I agree with Nick’ moment.
Perhaps ‘I agree with Nigel’ this time? Perish the thought.
Seems to be happening. Here’s Sir Keir’s latest U-turn on Brexit; could be Farage talking (apart from the Labour bit obviously)
“ Brexit was a vote for lower immigration – of course it was […] If, in short, you want lower migration and higher wages […] Then I say again, this is what a changed Labour Party will deliver”
On the Tories
“ every time they run-up against a choice between raising skills and working conditions or issuing more visas, they choose the higher migration option. And that’s not an accident, it’s who they are”
Mass immigration means low wages, and a damning critique of politicians who give out jobs to foreigners. Whoever would have thought it?
To be honest, this is exactly what I voted Leave for - so politicians had to make speeches like this rather than say they wished they could do something about it, but their hands were tied by FOM
Better PM Starmer and the UK out of the EU than PM Cameron and us still in it
And in return, if Brexit was about stopping the neocolonialist practice of nicking all the skilled brown and black people once a government much less rich than ours has spent public money training them, I’d have been more inclined to vote for Brexit too. (I realise this is far from the actual purpose of Brexit, but doesn’t sound a million miles from what SKS is saying in the speech).
Though nothing in the idea of raising domestic skills required Brexit, it has always been in the hands of domestic government.
Brexit has been a distraction from addressing the problems of this nation, not the solution to the problem.
Starmers speech is interesting and gives some idea of how he plans to campaign. Not gimmicks like the Rwanda groundnut scheme, but addressing the comprehensive failure of public services.
The only way he can "address the comprehensive failure of public services" is a) speak truth to the management structure about their massive and long-standing delivery failures - and then sack the underperformers; or b) throw a lot of money at the problem.
Labour, owned by the unions, will ALWAYS go route b). So the question is - are they lying when they say they will address the comprehensive failures, or lying when they say they won't significantly put up taxes in order to throw a lot of money at the problem.
Probably both. Starmer will raise taxes but not turn around public services.
Not a very effective attack line by the Tories because:
1) the "useless management structures" have been devised and run by Conservatives over the last 13 years.
2) the argument accepts that public services are failing.
Why would anyone want to continue with this government's policy on public services which we all agree now are poorly run and failing?
They were poorly run and failing during the Wilson/ Callaghan era. They were poorly run and failing during the Blair/Brown era. The idea there was some golden age of public services during previous Labour administraions is nonsense.
What this country needs is the Conservatives and Labour working together on a 10 or 20 year programme for public services. One that would survive a change in administration, where there would be a great political price to be paid if one party or the other tried to backslide. One that would take difficult decisons and follow through on them.
There should be a common aim to deliver this, because any government is going to struggle to provide services that don't massively disappoint. Waiting lists won't notably imporve under a new Labour government. The bare minimum will be all that gets delivered, without any advance on the level of service. There isn't funding available, there aren't the trained staff. Labour is deeply dishonest to suggets otherwise.
A Labour government will spend its term tinkering, to very little effect. But hey, it will be better than the Tories. (Spoiler: it won't....)
I understand the negativity of the Tory message on this, but it doesn't actually match reality.
The graph of public satisfaction is pretty much the inverse, with satisfaction with the NHS peaking at 70% in 2010 and now down in the twenties.
I’ve been wondering why Labour don’t quote that chart endlessly between now and the election. It’s surely an election winner alone. No more persuasive chart.
But I wonder if Labour fear that chart. It sets expectations they may not be able to meet.
It's the sole feature of a leaflet that all CLPs were sent in the autumn and we put it out enthusiastically - I remember feeling "yes, I'm doing the right thing!", which tbh I don't always feel so definitely when putting out a routine leaflet.
All I’ve had from Labour recently is a Christmas card. Haven’t had a campaigning leaflet for years. Get regular statements on the local Facebook page from our Independent District and Green Councillors, who often work together. Which is a lot more than we got from the Conservatives whom they replaced.
I remain to be convinced that Starmer has any clear vision of what he wants to do. He wants to do things better. Well, yes. He wants the state to deliver for people. Good luck with that. He wants people to get on. Which is rather up to them. It is so vague, so amorphous and capable of changing into anything that I don’t see a coherent agenda, a driver for change.
I really hope that I am wrong. I really and genuinely hope that he surprises us on the upside. God knows the country needs an improvement.
An except from Keith Donkey's forthcoming speech where he sets out what he wants to do:
"we wanna be free, we wanna be free to do what we wanna do And we wanna get loaded and we wanna have a good time And that's what we're gonna do"
If *all* Labour achieve is one or two small things that they said they would do in their manifesto, without sounding like they enjoy torturing baby animals as they do so, they will be "successful" by comparison with what we are experiencing now.
This is possibly the way in which Starmer is luckiest. The baseline for subsequent success has been lowered more than ever before.
In some ways but not in others.
Things which are now taken for granted - full employment, affluence for oldies, ever increasing NHS workforce - can change and when they do the government of the time will be blamed.
Reducing affluence for oldies is going to be a significant long term change - but I think that is already priced in to GenX (and younger) thinking.
The Tories have already got the blame for NHS workforce issues. That will attach to them for a long time whatever the statistics.
But the big one, and one which is going to take a huge act of political bravery to resolve (via UBI and a 4 day week) is "full employment".
Unemployment is a deep hole into which unimaginative Governments are going to fall.
Who could have predicted that binning Sue Barker and co for Paddy no talent and non sports people, making it a piss poor version of Sky own show would lead to this....but anothwr £10 a year for failure.
A BBC spokesman insisted the show was "not being cancelled - it is just not in production at the moment".
I remain to be convinced that Starmer has any clear vision of what he wants to do. He wants to do things better. Well, yes. He wants the state to deliver for people. Good luck with that. He wants people to get on. Which is rather up to them. It is so vague, so amorphous and capable of changing into anything that I don’t see a coherent agenda, a driver for change.
I really hope that I am wrong. I really and genuinely hope that he surprises us on the upside. God knows the country needs an improvement.
I'm somewhat in "we'd better wait and see" mode myself. But I have a cousin who is a longstanding personal friend (from the Bar) - she and her husband are not always Labour, but they do think he's a coherent, solid social democrat who is simply keen not to give hostages to fortune.
Does he think FOM and migrants rights should be protected, as he pledged when running for leader, or does he associate mass immigration with lower wages for the working class, as he insinuated this week?
Saturday morning and while our youngest is in dance class I have the choice of a coffee and read of the papers at the centrist dad Browns of Brockley or the woke lefty gender-fluid Broca, and today it was the turn of the Broca.
I wonder if today’s headline in the non-woke, Cameroonian Times signals the start of a new political topic du jour.
Journalists must be getting bored of Rwanda by now. If so, then it’s bad news for the Tories. More opportunities for that waiting list chart. Playing Labour on the NHS is like facing the Windies fast bowlers in Barbados in the early 1980s, or Liverpool at Anfield in the same era.
I remain to be convinced that Starmer has any clear vision of what he wants to do. He wants to do things better. Well, yes. He wants the state to deliver for people. Good luck with that. He wants people to get on. Which is rather up to them. It is so vague, so amorphous and capable of changing into anything that I don’t see a coherent agenda, a driver for change.
I really hope that I am wrong. I really and genuinely hope that he surprises us on the upside. God knows the country needs an improvement.
I'm somewhat in "we'd better wait and see" mode myself. But I have a cousin who is a longstanding personal friend (from the Bar) - she and her husband are not always Labour, but they do think he's a coherent, solid social democrat who is simply keen not to give hostages to fortune.
A friend of mine was chair of the Holborn & St Pancras CLP. Starmer keeps his cards very close to his chest as a matter of course. That means he will always give as little away as possible.
I don’t think we’ll get any real clue as to what a Labour government will be like until we get one - except to say it will be a very tight ship. His party management makes that clear.
However, there’ll be some things he’ll find it extremely hard to keep a lid on if he does become PM. I think the relationship with the EU is one. Ministers, MPs and Labour members will all want much closer ties. Whoever succeeds him as leader will do so having not ruled out rejoining.
I worked with a sports agent about 20 years ago and was privy to the fees earned by the panellists on QoS… the cost of all six presenters per show was about £10k. That would have been well before Sky starting pushing up rates but certainly in those days it wasn’t an f’load of a cost
Saturday morning and while our youngest is in dance class I have the choice of a coffee and read of the papers at the centrist dad Browns of Brockley or the woke lefty gender-fluid Broca, and today it was the turn of the Broca.
I wonder if today’s headline in the non-woke, Cameroonian Times signals the start of a new political topic du jour.
Journalists must be getting bored of Rwanda by now. If so, then it’s bad news for the Tories. More opportunities for that waiting list chart. Playing Labour on the NHS is like facing the Windies fast bowlers in Barbados in the early 1980s, or Liverpool at Anfield in the same era.
It's not terrible news, if immigration is a strength for them (which remains to be seen), as it feeds into that issue.
The great hope of the left exposed in the searchlight of a simple question
That clip sums up in a nutshell why I am probably the only one on this website who thinks SKS will not win and the Tories have a fighting chance.
You can get away with such a duff answer when the electorate is not really thinking about you as next PM and hates the Government.
It’s another thing when it swings into an election campaign and then everyone is suddenly forced into having to make a choice.
Chances are SKS will get eviscerated in a campaign. Give him any slightly off centre question - ‘define working class’, ‘define a woman etc’ - and he waffles and sounds vacuous.
He’s got 2017 Theresa May vintage written all over him.
The trouble is, Sunak's got collapse of May era written all over him. Constant relaunches, reboots, podia. Tears outside number 10 can't be too far off. So it's May vs. May.
Sounds ripe for an ‘I agree with Nick’ moment.
Perhaps ‘I agree with Nigel’ this time? Perish the thought.
Seems to be happening. Here’s Sir Keir’s latest U-turn on Brexit; could be Farage talking (apart from the Labour bit obviously)
“ Brexit was a vote for lower immigration – of course it was […] If, in short, you want lower migration and higher wages […] Then I say again, this is what a changed Labour Party will deliver”
On the Tories
“ every time they run-up against a choice between raising skills and working conditions or issuing more visas, they choose the higher migration option. And that’s not an accident, it’s who they are”
Mass immigration means low wages, and a damning critique of politicians who give out jobs to foreigners. Whoever would have thought it?
To be honest, this is exactly what I voted Leave for - so politicians had to make speeches like this rather than say they wished they could do something about it, but their hands were tied by FOM
Better PM Starmer and the UK out of the EU than PM Cameron and us still in it
And in return, if Brexit was about stopping the neocolonialist practice of nicking all the skilled brown and black people once a government much less rich than ours has spent public money training them, I’d have been more inclined to vote for Brexit too. (I realise this is far from the actual purpose of Brexit, but doesn’t sound a million miles from what SKS is saying in the speech).
Though nothing in the idea of raising domestic skills required Brexit, it has always been in the hands of domestic government.
Brexit has been a distraction from addressing the problems of this nation, not the solution to the problem.
Starmers speech is interesting and gives some idea of how he plans to campaign. Not gimmicks like the Rwanda groundnut scheme, but addressing the comprehensive failure of public services.
The only way he can "address the comprehensive failure of public services" is a) speak truth to the management structure about their massive and long-standing delivery failures - and then sack the underperformers; or b) throw a lot of money at the problem.
Labour, owned by the unions, will ALWAYS go route b). So the question is - are they lying when they say they will address the comprehensive failures, or lying when they say they won't significantly put up taxes in order to throw a lot of money at the problem.
Probably both. Starmer will raise taxes but not turn around public services.
Not a very effective attack line by the Tories because:
1) the "useless management structures" have been devised and run by Conservatives over the last 13 years.
2) the argument accepts that public services are failing.
Why would anyone want to continue with this government's policy on public services which we all agree now are poorly run and failing?
They were poorly run and failing during the Wilson/ Callaghan era. They were poorly run and failing during the Blair/Brown era. The idea there was some golden age of public services during previous Labour administraions is nonsense.
What this country needs is the Conservatives and Labour working together on a 10 or 20 year programme for public services. One that would survive a change in administration, where there would be a great political price to be paid if one party or the other tried to backslide. One that would take difficult decisons and follow through on them.
There should be a common aim to deliver this, because any government is going to struggle to provide services that don't massively disappoint. Waiting lists won't notably imporve under a new Labour government. The bare minimum will be all that gets delivered, without any advance on the level of service. There isn't funding available, there aren't the trained staff. Labour is deeply dishonest to suggets otherwise.
A Labour government will spend its term tinkering, to very little effect. But hey, it will be better than the Tories. (Spoiler: it won't....)
I understand the negativity of the Tory message on this, but it doesn't actually match reality.
The graph of public satisfaction is pretty much the inverse, with satisfaction with the NHS peaking at 70% in 2010 and now down in the twenties.
I do hope Labour have the sense to slap this as a poster on every available bill board in the country.
Sure, Tories will wail "it's not fair, Covid, GFC hangover, 'reasons', etc, etc..." but their wailing will be pointless against the power of this chart.
And, going back to the earlier but of the conversation -
If the British economy is doing fine, why is almost everything around us so rubbish?
My frequent point about focussing on "the economy" (an abstraction) instead of the people (a concrete noun). I think the economy is doing OK: things are being bought and sold. But the support structures are creaking and some of them (courts and prisons!) are barely functioning. Our personal experience (exaggerated by social media) is that things are getting worse.
Who could have predicted that binning Sue Barker and co for Paddy no talent and non sports people, making it a piss poor version of Sky own show would lead to this....but anothwr £10 a year for failure.
I barely watched it for the last decade, but when I did, even in the Sue Barker years, it seemed like they were trying too hard to be funny all the time, I guess no doubt to keep up with A League of Their Own. When she left it felt unrecognisable as AQOS.
I think it’s a shame, it’s never nice to see old fashioned institutions try to get down with the kids and end up pleasing no one. Top of the Pops went the same way, although when I watch the reruns of BBC4 it really does seem like another world; grown ups miming while the audience whoop! So old fashioned
Saturday morning and while our youngest is in dance class I have the choice of a coffee and read of the papers at the centrist dad Browns of Brockley or the woke lefty gender-fluid Broca, and today it was the turn of the Broca.
I wonder if today’s headline in the non-woke, Cameroonian Times signals the start of a new political topic du jour.
Journalists must be getting bored of Rwanda by now. If so, then it’s bad news for the Tories. More opportunities for that waiting list chart. Playing Labour on the NHS is like facing the Windies fast bowlers in Barbados in the early 1980s, or Liverpool at Anfield in the same era.
I thought they had the Times of Cameroon in there then! That would be Uber trendy
I remain to be convinced that Starmer has any clear vision of what he wants to do. He wants to do things better. Well, yes. He wants the state to deliver for people. Good luck with that. He wants people to get on. Which is rather up to them. It is so vague, so amorphous and capable of changing into anything that I don’t see a coherent agenda, a driver for change.
I really hope that I am wrong. I really and genuinely hope that he surprises us on the upside. God knows the country needs an improvement.
I'm somewhat in "we'd better wait and see" mode myself. But I have a cousin who is a longstanding personal friend (from the Bar) - she and her husband are not always Labour, but they do think he's a coherent, solid social democrat who is simply keen not to give hostages to fortune.
A friend of mine was chair of the Holborn & St Pancras CLP. Starmer keeps his cards very close to his chest as a matter of course. That means he will always give as little away as possible.
I don’t think we’ll get any real clue as to what a Labour government will be like until we get one - except to say it will be a very tight ship. His party management makes that clear.
However, there’ll be some things he’ll find it extremely hard to keep a lid on if he does become PM. I think the relationship with the EU is one. Ministers, MPs and Labour members will all want much closer ties. Whoever succeeds him as leader will do so having not ruled out rejoining.
Scotland too. There are major divergences between long-established Slab and SKS (so far as one can tell, as you say) policies, as shown by the Ru'glen candidate as good as being being a SNP candidate in certain aspects policy-wise in the by-election.
Saturday morning and while our youngest is in dance class I have the choice of a coffee and read of the papers at the centrist dad Browns of Brockley or the woke lefty gender-fluid Broca, and today it was the turn of the Broca.
I wonder if today’s headline in the non-woke, Cameroonian Times signals the start of a new political topic du jour.
Journalists must be getting bored of Rwanda by now. If so, then it’s bad news for the Tories. More opportunities for that waiting list chart. Playing Labour on the NHS is like facing the Windies fast bowlers in Barbados in the early 1980s, or Liverpool at Anfield in the same era.
I recently tried to book an appointment with my local surgery using the online system. It said there were no appointments available. So I called in at the surgery and was told by the receptionist to use e-consult. Did as told and received a phone call the same day - given date and time for 5 days hence.
I’ve ordered some smart plugs. If I can’t drink, do heroin or go whoring all the long day, I can at least sit in a chair and order a machine to turn lights on
You would probably be better off with a Cherry 2000
I worked with a sports agent about 20 years ago and was privy to the fees earned by the panellists on QoS… the cost of all six presenters per show was about £10k. That would have been well before Sky starting pushing up rates but certainly in those days it wasn’t an f’load of a cost
Ok, but a grand per show isn't bad if the captains and presenters do 26 shows a year, particularly if their overnight accom and travel is paid. It's a nice earner to augment their other earnings and will stimulate their after-dinner speech fees.
(Sorry this is a silly reply of mine. ☹️ But I'm on the tablet and can't delete it. Vanilla really needs a cancel button and a delete draft button)
I worked with a sports agent about 20 years ago and was privy to the fees earned by the panellists on QoS… the cost of all six presenters per show was about £10k. That would have been well before Sky starting pushing up rates but certainly in those days it wasn’t an f’load of a cost
It’s some of the cheapest television to make, which is why we see so many panel shows on ITV and C4.
Comedians have said that they pay about a grand for half a day (they normally film for at least a couple of hours then heavily edit down), most other ‘celebrity’ (B/C list) guests will be in the same ballpark, or even available free if they’re trying to promote something. The host gets quite a bit more as they’re also involved in the writing, and make a commitment to the schedule for the whole series. A producer or two, an editor, a couple of researchers, a couple of writers, plus the studio hire and set design, and most of these programmes come in at mid-high five figures per episode if you’re doing a dozen or so.
The one exception is apparently HIGNFY; where Merton, Hislop, and the guest host each get five figures per episode, £20k has been reported.
Saturday morning and while our youngest is in dance class I have the choice of a coffee and read of the papers at the centrist dad Browns of Brockley or the woke lefty gender-fluid Broca, and today it was the turn of the Broca.
I wonder if today’s headline in the non-woke, Cameroonian Times signals the start of a new political topic du jour.
Journalists must be getting bored of Rwanda by now. If so, then it’s bad news for the Tories. More opportunities for that waiting list chart. Playing Labour on the NHS is like facing the Windies fast bowlers in Barbados in the early 1980s, or Liverpool at Anfield in the same era.
I recently tried to book an appointment with my local surgery using the online system. It said there were no appointments available. So I called in at the surgery and was told by the receptionist to use e-consult. Did as told and received a phone call the same day - given date and time for 5 days hence.
This is reminiscent of the Major years when ministers would tell us how much they were putting into the NHS and voters knew how long were the waiting lists and how many were the closed wards. Now we have the government boasting of more hospitals and more NHS staff but voters know how hard it is even to make an appointment.
Reposting - Am now watching via YT today's blue plate special served up by latest Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry grilling.
Barrister for the Inquiry is quite good. As with other Inquiry lawyers, his manner is polite, restrained, focused, relentless.
In contrast, the solicitor for firm of law-mongers hired by the buffon's then (and now?) the PO is about as hopeless as the local yokel lawyer in "My Cousin Vinnie".
That is, crap. Wouldn't hire him to notarize a pet license, let alone furnish legal advice above AI standard.
Fairliered comment on above:
FR: The Post Office chose lawyers that would make their management look competent by comparison.
SSI - Didn't work, hell no!
It is remarkable how that solicitor (from an external legal firm hired by the PO) began confident and articulate, but within a couple of hours was reduced to a gibbering wreck who could barely understand what he was being asked.
Indeed. The Inquiry inquisitioner's technique was very interesting, and highly effective.
Kept ratcheting up the temperature from room temperature VERY slowly . . . slowly . . . until before the toad realized what was happening, he was hopping about in a pot of boiling water . . .
It is becoming increasingly apparent that not only did the PO employ poor quality staff for the persecution of its Subpostmasters, it used pound-shop lawyers too.
Presumably decent ones would have been too dear, and too inclined to tell the PO the truth about their shitty systems.
Not many firms do private criminal prosecution work and the ones that do are not exactly top notch. Due respect to Wombles. It’s not remunerative - the client gets nothing at the end of it except watching someone go to jail. Talented litigators go into commercial litigation or arbitration where the money is.
I worked with a sports agent about 20 years ago and was privy to the fees earned by the panellists on QoS… the cost of all six presenters per show was about £10k. That would have been well before Sky starting pushing up rates but certainly in those days it wasn’t an f’load of a cost
Ok, but a grand per show isn't bad if the captains and presenters do 26 shows a year, particularly if their overnight accom and travel is paid. It's a nice earner to augment their other earnings and will stimulate their after-dinner speech fees.
(Sorry this is a silly reply of mine. ☹️ But I'm on the tablet and can't delete it. Vanilla really needs a cancel button and a delete draft button)
Who could have predicted that binning Sue Barker and co for Paddy no talent and non sports people, making it a piss poor version of Sky own show would lead to this....but anothwr £10 a year for failure.
I barely watched it for the last decade, but when I did, even in the Sue Barker years, it seemed like they were trying too hard to be funny all the time, I guess no doubt to keep up with A League of Their Own. When she left it felt unrecognisable as AQOS.
I think it’s a shame, it’s never nice to see old fashioned institutions try to get down with the kids and end up pleasing no one. Top of the Pops went the same way, although when I watch the reruns of BBC4 it really does seem like another world; grown ups miming while the audience whoop! So old fashioned
enough shit on screen with that appalling shit still be shown just to fund has beens.
I’ve ordered some smart plugs. If I can’t drink, do heroin or go whoring all the long day, I can at least sit in a chair and order a machine to turn lights on
You need to think ahead.
In the not too distant future the highlight of the day might well be getting out of your chair to flick a switch or turn on the kettle.
A good time to start a political career is at the nadir of a parties fortunes, as that is when the recovery starts.
I think that I wouldn't be successful in politics. My views are too idiosyncratic for party politics.
Not quite. I am standing for election to be a trustee of a heritage engineering & railway trust.
I had a couple of informal preliminary interviews, and then had to go in front of their Nominations Committee - which was tough - after which I had a 2-hour 1:1 meeting with the CEO. They approved my application last week.
I've just written my election statement, and now have to speak at the AGM in February where I will hopefully be elected by the members.
There are 3,000 of them. Hopefully, they won't all turn up!
What is your position on heritage diesels?
Steam trains cause pollution!
OO gauge is crap cos it combines 1:76 scale train bodies with 1:87 scale track!
I've got an idea to resolve that one: steam trains with an electric boiler. Sorted!
Distinctly unambitious. What's wrong with a small modular reactor ?
Comments
Presumably decent ones would have been too dear, and too inclined to tell the PO the truth about their shitty systems.
If the British economy is doing fine, why is almost everything around us so rubbish?
3) The Tories have "put up taxes to throw a lot of money at the problem"
We're paying record levels of peacetime tax. We've just had a big tax hike branded as a tax cut as it wasn't quite as big as originally billed, and the spend on public services like the NHS is at an all time high.
The Tories are both tax and spend, and wasting the money. Which is what they accuse Labour of.
"we wanna be free, we wanna be free to do what we wanna do
And we wanna get loaded and we wanna have a good time
And that's what we're gonna do"
But I wonder if Labour fear that chart. It sets expectations they may not be able to meet.
The very best of luck. I always say that about people who run, whatever the party. Too many people just complain. Not happy? DO SOMETHING!
This is possibly the way in which Starmer is luckiest. The baseline for subsequent success has been lowered more than ever before.
I assume the 3rd rail system is consider dangerous because of the exposed live rail. Why don't we implement a segmented ground-level power supply, where each segment is electrified only while covered by a vehicle which is using its power?
The economy doesn’t work as a chart, because it was growing rapidly in the mid 90s before the 97 victory and shrunk in the financial crisis. So whilst it grew well under Blair the inflection points don’t match the elections. For the economy the better stat is average growth under Labour vs average growth since 2010.
Housebuilding doesn’t work. Just as bad under Labour.
The other promising one for them is crime, particularly violent crime. It peaked just before 1997 and the graphs fall rapidly in the first couple of terms of Labour, then start to flatten (but still fall a little) thereafter. But violent crime is now bouncing up again. So that would work as a chart.
Others: cost of higher education. Water pollution: falls off a cliff from 1997 until 2010, then flat (not actually rising now despite water company failings, just not getting better).
Rough sleeping: can’t find a chart but I think it would show clear reductions under Labour then increases under the Tories.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAT6VtnPNV8
https://youtube.com/watch?v=BqbEMmI78HY&si=NT56916wWcIrERFa
(Start at 1.02)
Things which are now taken for granted - full employment, affluence for oldies, ever increasing NHS workforce - can change and when they do the government of the time will be blamed.
In the not too distant future the highlight of the day might well be getting out of your chair to flick a switch or turn on the kettle.
Get regular statements on the local Facebook page from our Independent District and Green Councillors, who often work together. Which is a lot more than we got from the Conservatives whom they replaced.
The Tories have already got the blame for NHS workforce issues. That will attach to them for a long time whatever the statistics.
But the big one, and one which is going to take a huge act of political bravery to resolve (via UBI and a 4 day week) is "full employment".
Unemployment is a deep hole into which unimaginative Governments are going to fall.
I wonder if today’s headline in the non-woke, Cameroonian Times signals the start of a new political topic du jour.
Journalists must be getting bored of Rwanda by now. If so, then it’s bad news for the Tories. More opportunities for that waiting list chart. Playing Labour on the NHS is like facing the Windies fast bowlers in Barbados in the early 1980s, or Liverpool at Anfield in the same era.
I don’t think we’ll get any real clue as to what a Labour government will be like until we get one - except to say it will be a very tight ship. His party management makes that clear.
However, there’ll be some things he’ll find it extremely hard to keep a lid on if he does become PM. I think the relationship with the EU is one. Ministers, MPs and Labour members will all want much closer ties. Whoever succeeds him as leader will do so having not ruled out rejoining.
I think it’s a shame, it’s never nice to see old fashioned institutions try to get down with the kids and end up pleasing no one. Top of the Pops went the same way, although when I watch the reruns of BBC4 it really does seem like another world; grown ups miming while the audience whoop! So old fashioned
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/rishi-sunak-tory-campaign-questionnaire-b2464963.html
Conservative Party leaflets disguised as government surveys (share your views with the Prime Minister).
News anchor Maryam Moshiri said she was glad the footage showed she was joking with crew
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/dec/16/full-clip-bbc-news-presenter-maryam-moshiri-middle-finger-countdown-released
(Sorry this is a silly reply of mine. ☹️ But I'm on the tablet and can't delete it. Vanilla really needs a cancel button and a delete draft button)
Comedians have said that they pay about a grand for half a day (they normally film for at least a couple of hours then heavily edit down), most other ‘celebrity’ (B/C list) guests will be in the same ballpark, or even available free if they’re trying to promote something. The host gets quite a bit more as they’re also involved in the writing, and make a commitment to the schedule for the whole series. A producer or two, an editor, a couple of researchers, a couple of writers, plus the studio hire and set design, and most of these programmes come in at mid-high five figures per episode if you’re doing a dozen or so.
The one exception is apparently HIGNFY; where Merton, Hislop, and the guest host each get five figures per episode, £20k has been reported.
Yay.
What's wrong with a small modular reactor ?