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I agree with Tory MP Alexander Stafford – politicalbetting.com
I agree with Tory MP Alexander Stafford – politicalbetting.com
Betting markets aren't so sure…April – Jun 2024 Election now 2/1 (from 5/2 this morning) https://t.co/FOE68IWCLt
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If the right reasons were being used, we'd have never closed schools in the first place.
The first lockdown was perhaps excusable, people didn't know what was going on. But by the second lockdown onwards, we knew children weren't at any great risk themselves - so sacrificing their education in order to prolong the lives of others was a sick and twisted choice.
I have a modest bet on it being May.
https://twitter.com/Alex_Stafford/status/1739991409565028456
Sunak won’t call an election before he can say he’s ticked those boxes , if of course the flights take off and the next ONS update shows a big drop .
Trying to keep them fully open was impossible. And looked impossible even before
OmicronDelta hit. We would have needed not merely to double the education budget but mobilise all qualified teachers on something akin to a military footing, taking over office blocks as nightingale schools.The real mistake was in not flexing from October onwards, to move to blended learning with the aim of trying to keep most people in school most of the time. It might not have been enough, but what was attempted was always going to lead to a collapse.
As an aside, one of the really bad mistakes was not realising again in October that the 2021 exams wouldn't be going ahead. It was obvious that was out of the question and only a retard who hated children would think it possible. Unfortunately, we had Acland-Hood and Nick Gibb in charge.
Other crazy things. OFSTED inspections continued. One actually forced a school to shut because they infected the entire SLT. They learned nothing from that, but justified the continued employment of 1700 people, most of whom, it now emerges, have not been trained in safeguarding. What was the point of that?
If he doesn't believe the second, he's lying.
So he's either deranged or lying.
Everything is currently pointing to May.
Given my track record, @Northern_Al needs to remortgage his house and put the lot on October.
And my goodness, India are falling apart faster than a Post Office witness now.
As I highlighted last month, the scale of final year recovery the Conservatives need to even lose the next election narrowly has been achieved once - Labour ahead of 1970. I don't look at Sunak and think 'he's a Wilson-level operator'.
https://twitter.com/Dylan_Difford/status/1734613079135326508
But if a feel good (or more accurately, feel less bad) budget doesn't do the trick, what does he do? Any budget bounce will have dissipated by October.
Shows how much time I had to pay attention to things!
Are we sure they're not England in disguise?
No, they're not England.
It all becomes rather a blur, but was horrible to be part of.
Didn't enjoy trying to keep schools open under impossible condition and I know you had it worse.
Nice beer for Foxy day?
(Unless it’s your idea to abolish planning altogether ?)
(Now there's an obscure pun!)
Planning gain comes because there's a differential between the value of land with consent and land without it.
Make planning automatic, go to a coded system, so that nobody requires to get consent anymore and the planning gain associated with getting consent vanishes.
Nations that have done this have seen stable house prices rather than surging ones, because there's no artificial constraints on construction and no planning windfalls that cause gains - also reform taxation so that sitting on land is less than worthless because its taxed automatically all along whether its built on or not just the same.
That's a thrashing.
Especially since the Saffers were down to ten men and had to be led by a random senior pro.
There’s pretty well no chance of your idea, whatever its merits, being adopted by either party. Certainly not the Tories.
Unofficially, I'm sure there are a lot of "The Minister is very keen to ensure that this issue is resolved by the middle of March" comments all over government.
And May has a lot going for it. It's probably a less bad defeat than in the autumn, with all the ticking timebombs around government. It's not quite the last minute. It probably saves a decent slew of Conservative councillors (cf 1997).
So, does Sunak press the big red button in March and go down to a bad defeat, or hold on until September and probably go down to a worse one? The first is probably more rational, and what the spreadsheet will advise.
But when push comes to shove, will he do it?
(As ever, I make a pre-vaccine / post vaccine distinction here. Pre vaccine lockdowns appear to have been necessary, post-vaccine ones less so.)
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/dec/28/may-election-is-worst-kept-secret-in-westminster-says-senior-labour-mp
Labour is talking up the prospect of a May 2024 general election, with the shadow cabinet minister Emily Thornberry saying it was “the worst kept secret in Westminster” that a contest would be called then.
Thornberry told Sky News on Thursday that the government’s decision to announce a budget in early March – the earliest date in 13 years apart from during the pandemic – “seems to confirm” that May is the most likely date.
The party has been preparing for a May contest, despite most of Westminster expecting Rishi Sunak to wait until the autumn or winter. Leaving it to the latest possible time would give the Conservatives more hope of recovering in the polls, where they trail Labour by 15-20 points.
The decision to call a budget on 6 March with hefty tax cuts still leaves open the option of a May election should the prime minister’s fortunes improve.
If he fails to call an election in May, Labour may start to spread the narrative that Sunak is a “bottler” and “squatting” in Downing Street, which were the tactics used by the Conservatives against Gordon Brown in 2009 and 2010.
Thornberry said Labour would be ready for an election. The Guardian reported this week that the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, has told shadow ministers to have their policy proposals ready by mid-January, in time for the manifesto to be completed by 8 February...
Seems a right prat.
Other governments in other countries have - and Labour claim to acknowledge that housing costs are a great barrier to inequality and claim to be in favour of improving opportunities for all, so why not remove that barrier?
There's no divine reason for planning consent, prior to its introduction England was building sufficient houses and the cost of land was only about 2% of the cost of housing - and the cost of housing was not the largest part of people's budgets.
Since the introduction of planning regimes there have never been sufficient new houses built, and our housing crisis has got worse and worse.
What's stopping Labour from embracing serious root and branch reform and fixing the problem at source?
Sure it will piss off landlords who want to extract rent from tenants and see their wealth go up, but that's neither relevant nor Labour's target market for votes.
Abolish planning gain and the housing crisis would be rapidly resolved. With house costs down, the cost of living crisis would be resolved, the inequalities between the well off and poor would rapidly shrink, and the cost to the Exchequer of housing support etc would plummet.
What's Labour's problem with any of that?
It was called one of the 'worst miscarriages of justice in British history'. Here's what you need to know
In 1999, the Post Office introduced a brand-new way of cataloguing payments: the Horizon IT system. It was intended to be a way to modernise the organisation, moving it from paper-based records into the upcoming 21st century.
What unfolded instead was a disaster. The Horizon IT system was faulty, prone to glitches which incorrectly exhibited shortfalls of cash that were blamed on the subpostmasters in charge of their branches, leading to twenty years of legal disputes, hundreds of wrongful convictions and untold lives destroyed."
https://www.standard.co.uk/culture/tvfilm/mr-bates-vs-the-post-office-the-real-story-post-office-scandal-b1128473.html
Announcing such policies would guarantee AnybodyButLabour as the next MP
.. Stafford described himself as belonging to the political tribe of David Cameron and was a supporter of Cameron's Big Society policy "as things like Free Schools give power to local bodies. People know best how to run their own lives." One of Stafford's contributions at Prime Minister's Questions in 2021 was described as that "of a proper old-school Law and Order Tory: tough on crime and anti-social behaviour."..
And a fan of hydrogen.
An oddity.
There will be a May election when the trees are green = you need to be green on Theresa May making a comeback as PM.
In countries where this has been done, governments have been re-elected.
The problem with NIMBYism is its like many things, the exaggerated fear of a non-existent problem. By making permission political, it means people are constantly pitchforks at the ready to fight against developments, even if they're the right thing to do.
And if they're not the right thing to do, they won't be happening, so there's no problems anyway.
Take away the politics and NIMBYism ceases to be as potent a force. Developments are either happening, or not, but there's no great political debate about it as its no longer politicised. It loses its currency. And as its no longer politicised, competition can spring up and we cease to see monolithic Barratt-style developments and instead more organic consumer-led developments of what people want and need, where they want it and need it.
But if Labour's too afraid of doing the right thing, because they're worried about the election after next, then they're no better and no more fit for office than the Tories.
Go on Rishi, it would be so very very funny.
I've argued before that she would have been a better PM than Cameron from 2010-16 so it would be nice to see them in a role reversal.
https://x.com/sked03/status/1740381627094827220?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
Planning gain accrues to the state, not the company or landowner.
Whether you think this is moral probably depends very strongly on your politics, but since in BR’s world there wouldn’t be any planning gain anyway he ought to be entirely in favour of this system, surely
One obvious flaw is that it gives the state an incentive not to give out “too much” planning permission as this would reduce the income from planning gain. Perhaps one can make the transaction mandatory, so that planning in such circumstances cannot be refused?
"If I'm really honest with myself I have not enjoyed it as much and I just do not think I'm as good at it as I was at my other job. I'm not having second best in a job as important as this."
In 1968 and 1969 Labour were massively behind, by 1970 the polls had changed and Labour were expected to win (which is all that seems to be remembered in folklore), but that hadn't been the case a year earlier.
December 1968 Gallup had the Tories on 55%, Labour on 28% for instance.
So yeah, not my preferred model.
Why not just abolish planning gain in the first place?
It lowers inequality, lowers housing costs, lowers the need for housing benefits which are a glorified incentive to landlords.
What's not to like for Labour?
(Source: https://www.markpack.org.uk/opinion-polls/ Oddly, there doesn't seem to be a wiki page for the '66-'70 polling)
You're right that Wilson started the campaign itself with a big lead, which then vanished by election day.
https://twitter.com/sked03/status/1740381627094827220
I see Israel are showing their humanity once more here too acknowledging when they make mistakes and saying that they were wrong to use a particular munition when doing a strike against Hamas as it caused more than necessary collateral damage: http://tinyurl.com/whf8efea
Everyone makes mistakes, not everyone admits them, acknowledges them and seeks to learn from them to avoid them in the future. Kudos to Israel for admitting when they make a mistake and hopefully they continue to do what they can to minimise collateral damage in this existential war for the complete destruction of Hamas.
Loads of reporters are asking to use that footage. My money is on it being a wind up
Remember, Nicky Morgan thought Amanda Spielman was the right person to lead OFSTED.
And even if we discount that one since it's now more or less universally accepted Morgan was wrong, there are still people out there who think Trump would be a good President.
DENVER (AP) — Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert announced Wednesday she is switching congressional districts, avoiding a likely rematch against a Democrat who has far outraised her and following an embarrassing moment of groping and vaping that shook even loyal supporters.
In a Facebook video Wednesday evening, Boebert announced she would enter the crowded Republican primary in retiring Rep. Ken Buck’s seat in the eastern side of the state, leaving the more competitive 3rd District seat she barely won last year — and which she was in peril of losing next year as some in her party have soured on her controversial style.
Boebert implied in the video that her departure from the district would help Republicans retain the seat, saying, “I will not allow dark money that is directed at destroying me personally to steal this seat. It’s not fair to the 3rd District and the conservatives there who have fought so hard for our victories.”
“The Aspen donors, George Soros and Hollywood actors that are trying to buy this seat, well they can go pound sand,” she said.
Boebert called it “a fresh start,” acknowledging the rough year following a divorce with her husband and video of her misbehaving with a date at a performance of the musical “Beetlejuice” in Denver. The scandal in September rocked some of her faithful supporters, who saw it as a transgression of conservative, Christian values and for which Boebert apologized at events throughout her district.
She already faced a primary challenge in her district, as well as a general election face-off with Democrat Adam Frisch, a former Aspen city council member who came within a few hundred votes of beating her in 2022. A rematch was expected, with Frisch raising at least $7.7 million to Boebert’s $2.4 million.
Instead, if Boebert wins the primary to succeed Buck she will run in the state’s most conservative district, which former President Donald Trump won by about 20 percentage points in 2020, in contrast to his margin of about 8 percentage points in her district. While it’s not required that a representative live in the congressional district they represent, only the state the district is in, Boebert said she would be moving — a shift from Colorado’s western Rocky Mountain peaks and high desert mesas to its eastern expanse of prairie grass and ranching enclaves.
A year earlier, it was anything but the case.
Just watch Sunak call an election for then, he’s an absolute tosspot.
That's a significant issue for 'green' issues: many people are so keen on their own 'solution' that they denigrate other people's. In reality we are likely to have a very mixed green economy.
And its irrelevant, they could have caused 100x as more deaths as Hamas and so long as all those deaths followed the rules of proportionality (which means targeting Hamas, and trying to minimise collateral damage) then they'd be entirely legitimate.
Proportionality in war has absolutely nothing to do with a 1:1 death ratio.
President Joe Biden has made it clear he’s running for a second term, arguing he’s the best bet the Democrats have to once again beat Donald Trump. . . .
Still, some Washington Democrats are seeking a choice — or, a backup plan — just in case.
They’re pushing to get Minnesota Congressman Dean Phillips on Washington’s Democratic presidential primary ballot on March 12.
“The problem isn’t just that Biden is low in the polls. It’s that he is very, very old and a lot can happen in six months,” said Richard May, a Blaine city council member who is leading the volunteer effort. “This isn’t about negativity. It’s good to have options.”
The hurdles to get Phillips on the ballot in Washington are not high. His supporters just need to gather 1,000 signatures from registered voters by Jan. 5 and pay a $2,500 fee, according to the state Democratic Party.
May said volunteers have already gathered more than 1,000 signatures, but are still getting some more to make sure they have a cushion in case some are invalid.
Under state law, it’s up to the Republican and Democratic parties to tell the state by Jan. 9 which candidates will be placed on the March 12 presidential primary ballots. (Voters can choose to participate in one party’s primary or the other — but not both — by signing an attestation declaring their party preference.) . . . .
Some states have made it more difficult for would-be Biden challengers to participate in primaries or caucuses ballot, with Florida, for example, canceling its Democratic primary altogether.
Such obstacles haven’t been erected in Washington.
Shasti Conrad, the state Democratic Party chair, said Phillips will be submitted for the ballot if his campaign gets the required signatures.
Conrad said she’s also heard rumblings about self-help author Marianne Williamson trying to get on Washington’s ballot, but hasn’t been contacted by anyone with the campaign.
On the Republican side, some in Washington have backed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and have jumped through the hoops required to get him on the state’s ballot along with Trump, said Reagan Dunn, the Metropolitan King County Councilmember who is among the local DeSantis supporters. The GOP ballot qualifications include getting a dozen signatures from members of the party’s state committee and paying a $20,000 filing fee, Dunn said.
A state GOP spokesperson did not respond by Wednesday afternoon with which other candidates might qualify for the ballot here, though former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s recent polling and fundraising surge would make her another likely contender.
Washington’s presidential primary could be largely irrelevant by the time it rolls around.
The state’s March 12 vote will come one week after Super Tuesday’s contests in 16 states, so it’s possible both parties’ nominations will largely be sewn up by then. . . .
"A new study from Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Public Communications found that just 3.4% of American journalists are Republicans.
. . . .
When the first iteration of the study came out over 50 years ago, 35.5% of respondents said they were Democrats, 25.7% said they were Republicans, and 32.5% said they were Independents. The percentage that call themselves Democrats or independents have bounced around over the years, with the proportion of Democrats reaching a high of 44.1% in 1992."
source: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/study-finds-that-just-3-4-of-american-journalists-are-republicans/ar-AA1m6Tf6?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=41d2edafd0ec40a09c509a2a259194a1&ei=175
Humans being what we are, you should not expect unbiased coverage of American politics from most American journalists.
(As it happens, our local monopoly newspaper, the Seattle Times, provides many good examples of this problem. From time to time I see pieces in the newspaper that read like satires, they are so far into current leftist thinking.)
Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, yes prolonging lives is good if it has no cost, but not at any cost. That's why we have things like NICE which will say no to life prolonging medicines if they're too expensive - and the cost of damaging education should have been factored in as prohibitively expensive.
The problem is that splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen requires oodles of energy. From vague memory, it takes slightly less energy to split 20 grams of water than it does to boil over a kg (litre) of water. And boiling water requires a lot of energy.
But if you had an excess of green energy, say solar or wind, with no sink destination nearby, it may be worth splitting the water into green hydrogen.
All from vague memory, so treat with care
https://x.com/skysportsnews/status/1740387026514358425?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
An interesting piece about how Powers of Attorney can be abused.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67773394
(Trailing a Radio Programme due to broadcast on Sunday)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001tbbk
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-67832513
Cher has reportedly filed for a conservatorship of her son Elijah Blue Allman due to his alleged substance abuse and mental health issues.
Court documents seen by US media, such as People and TMZ, reportedly claim Mr Allman, 47, is "substantially unable to manage his financial resources".
https://www.wsj.com/us-news/jeffrey-epstein-sexual-abuse-women-vip-connections-f5451078
He never stopped abusing women (and girls) -- even after he had been convicted.
It's behind their pay wall, but I imagine you could find it in a good university library, or in other ways.
(Incidentally, the article supplies some evidence for a theory I've had for some time: Almost all of his victims did not have fathers in their lives.)
The briefing papers on this from government I saw, when working for an oil company that was big on going Green, were fascinating. Hydrogen was the right solution because of tax, legacy industry (oil companies would become hydrogen producers) etc etc
The problem was that hydrogen is unsuitable for a number of things for technical reasons. 5 minutes with the handling and hazards rules for hydrogen will tell you a lot.
https://news.sky.com/story/blackpool-tower-on-fire-13038705