"The Royal Navy has been forced to use LinkedIn to advertise for a Rear-Admiral to be responsible for the nation’s nuclear deterrent amid a growing recruitment crisis.
Well now: I can drive to Barrow in 30 minutes, know quite a few people working in BaE and am not going to sexually harass anyone. So .....
What do you mean, I have no relevant knowledge or experience and get seasick. This is Britain in 2024. Since when have such things mattered at all? Also my son is a nuclear graduate so he can tell me about any techie stuff.
I'd rather not be a Rear-Admiral, though. A Dame Admiral sounds much more fun.
Also the opportunity to boss a few of the Dura Ace's of the future is too delicious to resist.
So long as they don’t appoint Dura himself, we should be OK.
Rear-Admiral Dura would be ace.
I’m sure he would. I’d just be a bit worried about what he might do with our deterrent. Part it out ?
He could replace it. Anyone threatening the UK with nuclear obliteration could be at risk of a withering Dura Ace dressing down, complete with their own soubriquet.
Considerably cheaper than the current setup, even if you factor in the spare motor parts.
Whether the Tories win an election again within a decade or not depends on how Labour handle the economy. Handle it reasonably well as New Labour did and like post 1997 the Tories can expect to be in Opposition for 10 years or more.
Handle it poorly as previous Labour governments did and the swingback to the Tories would be much more rapid. Remember after landslide defeat in 1945 the Tories were back in government in 1951, after losing power in 1964 they were back in power in 1970 ie within 10 years. Thatcher of course took the party back to government in 1979, just 5 years after Heath had lost the 1974 general elections to Wilson's Labour
Obviously anything's possible and one shouldn't rule out a Tory comeback, but it may be very optimistic about the hole the Tories are in with a large swathe of the public. Even a fairly dud Labour government could plausibly lay most of its economic difficulties at the door of the previous government's failures and a wasted decade.
You can see it in polling where the Tories figures among those of working age are pitiful (and that includes those in the past who'd be moving to vote solidly Tory). It may be in a doom loop whereby its route to recovery is blocked by the fact it's increasingly reliant on the wealthy old, so can't propose growth-friendly policies that irk them. But without doing so cater to a base with diminishing returns and further cement their reputation as the party of economic decline.
What we may witness is something like 1979, a generational sea change whereby for a lot of people of a certain generation, Labour gained a reputation for economic mismanagement and supporting a broken model it arguably hasn't shaken off with those of that age. With the one era of success coming when Blair and Brown made clear the party had moved away from that.
The next successful Tory leader may well have to prove that similarly, they're not wedded to the right of the party's failed approach, and their ostensibly liberal wing's weakness in appeasing them.
Remember by the end of 1980 even Michael Foot led Thatcher in the polls as unemployment rose, indeed Thatcher would probably have lost in 1983 had she not got unemployment as well as inflation down and cut strikes by then and won in the Falklands.
If economy is poor and frequent strikes and high inflation under a Starmer government even a rightwinger as Tory leader could wing much as the supposedly 'unelectable' Thatcher won as a rightwinger against the 1979 Labour government after only 5 years of the Tories in opposition
But that's kind of the point. Thatcher won in 83 and then 87 despite some serious difficulties and rough patches, in part because there had been an underlying shift in perceptions that Labour struggled to grasp and run with because a whole tranche of people had lost faith in its ideas.
Similarly, doubt Starmer's govt will have its issues, but even after a mediocre four or five years the Tories may face an uphill battle because they're simply toxic, like really toxic, to generations whose votes will only grow in importance.
And there's probably an underestimation of quite how toxic they are. I know people who in terms of income level and general "meh" attitude to politics should be Tory voters. They regard the party with a contempt usually reserved for those residing in high-security medical facilities, having spent the past decade making decisions that have made lives more difficult or just been insulting.
It's going to take a lot for the Tories to reverse that, in a way that's rather different I think to those conducive to a changing of perceptions or a quick return. Especially given they seem completely unwilling or unable to realise the depth of their predicament with those who aren't retired or getting there.
If you're under 50, you're roughly as likely to believe the moon landings are faked as plan to vote Tory. That's not a party with a bright future, unless it can address the reasons why and change. Clue: It's part economics, part their flagship political project being catastrophically unpopular in a way few policies ever are.
For now, add in rising unemployment, strikes, rising inflation and high interest rates and sluggish growth under a Starmer government and the middle aged swing voters ie those 35-65, would certainly consider voting Tory again even if under 35s voted Labour still.
Remember in 2019 the median age more voters voted Conservative than Labour was 39 not 59 and most Conservative voters were voting to get Brexit done as most of them had voted for it!
Of course the median age where people were more likely to live in their own home than rent was also around 39 too. Which is shockingly bad and nothing for you to be pleased with.
Set aside Brexit and one thing that Thatcher, Cameron, Osborne, Johnson and Gove all had in common is they all wanted to get more on the housing ladder, they understood that it is only because of people being able to move on in life that people become more Tory as they age, its not a simple automatic fact of ageing that happens.
Unfortunately Johnson's moderate housing reforms were defeated by the likes of May, cheered on by the likes of you, and then Sunak has torn up any measures to see more housing built to alleviate the crisis that is causing those in their 20s and 30s to have to rent.
As a result you and they deserve to be nowhere near office, and do not deserve to be elected.
Conservativism should be about ensuring as many people as possible can support themselves, paying for their own home, out of their own wages.
Unfortunately its been taken over by a cargo cult who believe that other people paying for their homes, out of their wages, is a better way to live.
Until the Conservatives return back to solid Conservative principles, they deserve to be in Opposition.
I have always wondered why the most anti development, the Greens are the ones the youngster seem to think deserve their vote. Got a lib dem councillor round our way who has opposed at every juncture the building of a couple of hundred houses by an RSL (registered social landlord = council housing) but in their efforts to become the local MP has 'affordable housing' as second on his list of priorities for the constituency.
This is a timeless feature of local politics - one of the ways to get elected is to jump on to some planning controversy. Every party is guilty of this but the greens/lib dems are consistently the worst offenders.
Extraordinarily short sighted comment. Most Greens and LDs aren't anti-development - what they are opposed to is developments purely designed to maximise profit for housebuilders and property developers. Simply chucking a huge block of flats or a vast estate of houses on a site without considering the impact on the surrounding communities and infrastructure seems entirely desireable.
Any and all developments of houses ease the housing shortage and should be supported. That they make a profit for housebuilders and developers is neither here nor there, that's the purpose of them, they're providing a valuable service (increasing housing supply) so should be entitled to a profit just the same as every other business.
The impact of surrounding communities and infrastructure should never stand in the way of housing developments, nor be the responsibility of developers. It should be the responsibility of those in charge of communities and infrastructure to respond to increased development by investing in more infrastructure if that is what is required.
Standing in the way of required development of housing because of a shortage of infrastructure solves neither the infrastructure shortage, nor the housing shortage.
Fortunately, our planning and development process isn't as chaotic as you would like.
Section 106 either provides for the developers to pay for infrastructure projects to improve the wider community or, as a condition of approval, the developer might offer to provide a new school or a health centre or a community facility which is fine to a point.
If you have a village with 500 houses and a development proposal for 500 new houses, it's going to impact the village (I don't disagree the impacts are broadly positive) and the impacts have to be taken into account. That doesn't stop the 500 being built but recognises the impact they will have on the surrounding community.
Section 106 along with our planning system should be abolished.
If you have a population of 1200 people living in 500 homes and the population develops to 2400 people then its going to impact the village, whether those 2400 are living now in 1000 homes or the same 500.
Population growth is happening whether you like it or not, standing in the way of development to stick your head in the sand and pretend that alleviates consequences or impact is a dismal failure that's just resulted in a chronic housing shortage, failure to invest in infrastructure, collapsing infrastructure and dismal services.
The system isn't working.
Abolishing the requirement for developers to provide appropriate infrastructure with new housing via s106 ie new schools, GPs etc would just see an even bigger surge in Nimbyism.
The population is rising mainly because of immigration which the government has finally taken measures to control, the UK birth rate is below replacement level
Screw the NIMBYs, abolish the planning system and the NIMBYs can go f*** themselves for all I care. JFDI the developments.
New schools, GPs etc are required because of population, not houses. Standing in the way of houses because you want schools does not work, if thanks to population growth we need more public services then the entire population not just new builds should be paying for those public services.
Get this: now MAGA-maniac GOPers are contesting their own internal GOP elections . . .
AP (via Seattle Times) - Michigan Republicans set to vote on chair Karamo’s removal as she promises not to accept result
LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Michigan Republicans plan to discuss the removal of state GOP Chairwoman Kristina Karamo during a meeting Saturday after many of the party’s leaders have called for her resignation following a year of leadership plagued by debt and infighting.
Karamo has made it clear she will not recognize the vote if removed Saturday, claiming the meeting is not official and has been illegally organized. The unfolding situation could set the stage for a court fight to determine control of the highest position within the Michigan GOP.
The internal dispute takes place as Michigan Republicans look to rebound from 2022 midterms in which they suffered historic losses. The party is aiming this year to flip an open U.S. Senate seat while also helping the Republican presidential nominee win the battleground state.
Michigan is among several swing states where parties overtaken by far-right leadership have struggled to overcome infighting and money issues. Similar situations have unfolded in Georgia and Arizona, which pose a significant issue in the 2024 presidential election where those states are poised to play pivotal roles.
Karamo, a former community college instructor, rose through Michigan’s Republican ranks by spreading election conspiracies after the 2020 presidential election. She eventually was backed by former President Donald Trump in her run for secretary of state in 2022, losing by 14 percentage points in a result that she still refuses to concede. . . .
Eight of the state party’s 13 congressional district chairs called on Karamo to resign last week, citing financial instability stemming from insufficient fundraising and asking Karamo to “put an end to the chaos in our party” by stepping down.
Karamo has refused to resign and promised not to leave if ousted at the meeting, calling the gathering “illegal” in a recent podcast posted on the Michigan GOP website. It’s unclear whether enough party members will attend for the Saturday afternoon gathering to be official.
Karamo did not respond to multiple requests for comment by The Associated Press.
SSI - The Revolution always eats its own, as their hero, Young(ish) Bolshevik Mad Vlad, could have told em . . .
It’s always heartwarming to see that some folk who have never worked in the public sector are so skilled they can instantly diagnose all the issues (which, mysteriously, always manage to conform to their personal prejudices) and propose a solution which usually involves a change to “the culture”.
Sigh…
The public sector is roughly as good (and as bad) at doing things as the private sector (with some minor variances, generally based on being able to offer market pay). The big difference is that mistakes in the public sector have to be declared in full, whilst in the public sector they can usually be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of accountants and auditors.
"The big difference is that mistakes in the public sector have to be declared in full, whilst in the public sector they can usually be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of accountants and auditors."
Didn't you mean the second "public sector" in that sentence to read "private sector"?
I would cite the Post Office as a riposte to that sentiment but you know that already. Plus listed companies have to make market announcement - I pile cite a few examples there too.
But the Post Office during the key period (and since) was run by people brought in for their private sector expertise, who didn’t really understand what they were managing.
What we are looking at is a tragic confluence of private sector people focused on their key objective whilst not interested, or understanding, the environment they are in, supported by a load of career long public sector people trained to follow instructions and otherwise keep their heads down.
That is part of the explanation and an important factor. But I was responding to the claim that because it was in the public sector it had to declare its mistakes in full.
That has certainly not happened in the PO's case. If anything, partly to avoid embarrassing Ministers or at least Ministerial decisions and partly to permit the privatisation of Royal Mail, the unfolding problems were kept as quiet as possible for as long as possible, even to the extent of misleading courts and Parliament.
My read is that when Vennells arrives she was genuinely willing to try and sort the situation out. But she surely unappreciated the scale of the disaster, assuming they were dealing with a small number of anomalies that could be resolved without diverting her from her course. Which is what she will have been told, up the line. But at some point - pretty obviously shortly before Second Sight were sacked - she realised the scale of the catastrophe she was sitting on.
We can all see what the right thing to have done would have been. And I’m sure that 95% of us would swear that that’s what we would have done, in her position.
She will have found herself in a room full of senior people - long serving PO managers who understood things a lot better than her, maybe someone senior from Fuitisu still sowing misinformation, and - critically - some top lawyers who must have thought that they had a better than 50:50 chance of making the catastrophe go away with some disgraceful legal shenanigans, bankrupting the other party before the case got to a conclusion. As we can see, from both Wallis’s detailed account and the summary version dramatised by ITV, they very nearly succeeded. As it is, most of the money won by Bates and others went on legal costs.
Both the financial position of her business and her own personal reputation would have been trashed, had she come clean at that point - already being on record at the BIS SC and in the media as defending the PO position. So she had the choice between being honest and facing certain ordure, or gambling that she might make the whole thing go away.
We all know what the morally right thing to do was. But I’d bet that significantly less than 95% of us would have opted for the right path, put in her position.
Off topic, it’s like collaboration. Most Brits imagine none of us would. Yet in every occupied country, including the Channel Islands, many did.
Whether the Tories win an election again within a decade or not depends on how Labour handle the economy. Handle it reasonably well as New Labour did and like post 1997 the Tories can expect to be in Opposition for 10 years or more.
Handle it poorly as previous Labour governments did and the swingback to the Tories would be much more rapid. Remember after landslide defeat in 1945 the Tories were back in government in 1951, after losing power in 1964 they were back in power in 1970 ie within 10 years. Thatcher of course took the party back to government in 1979, just 5 years after Heath had lost the 1974 general elections to Wilson's Labour
Obviously anything's possible and one shouldn't rule out a Tory comeback, but it may be very optimistic about the hole the Tories are in with a large swathe of the public. Even a fairly dud Labour government could plausibly lay most of its economic difficulties at the door of the previous government's failures and a wasted decade.
You can see it in polling where the Tories figures among those of working age are pitiful (and that includes those in the past who'd be moving to vote solidly Tory). It may be in a doom loop whereby its route to recovery is blocked by the fact it's increasingly reliant on the wealthy old, so can't propose growth-friendly policies that irk them. But without doing so cater to a base with diminishing returns and further cement their reputation as the party of economic decline.
What we may witness is something like 1979, a generational sea change whereby for a lot of people of a certain generation, Labour gained a reputation for economic mismanagement and supporting a broken model it arguably hasn't shaken off with those of that age. With the one era of success coming when Blair and Brown made clear the party had moved away from that.
The next successful Tory leader may well have to prove that similarly, they're not wedded to the right of the party's failed approach, and their ostensibly liberal wing's weakness in appeasing them.
Remember by the end of 1980 even Michael Foot led Thatcher in the polls as unemployment rose, indeed Thatcher would probably have lost in 1983 had she not got unemployment as well as inflation down and cut strikes by then and won in the Falklands.
If economy is poor and frequent strikes and high inflation under a Starmer government even a rightwinger as Tory leader could wing much as the supposedly 'unelectable' Thatcher won as a rightwinger against the 1979 Labour government after only 5 years of the Tories in opposition
But that's kind of the point. Thatcher won in 83 and then 87 despite some serious difficulties and rough patches, in part because there had been an underlying shift in perceptions that Labour struggled to grasp and run with because a whole tranche of people had lost faith in its ideas.
Similarly, doubt Starmer's govt will have its issues, but even after a mediocre four or five years the Tories may face an uphill battle because they're simply toxic, like really toxic, to generations whose votes will only grow in importance.
And there's probably an underestimation of quite how toxic they are. I know people who in terms of income level and general "meh" attitude to politics should be Tory voters. They regard the party with a contempt usually reserved for those residing in high-security medical facilities, having spent the past decade making decisions that have made lives more difficult or just been insulting.
It's going to take a lot for the Tories to reverse that, in a way that's rather different I think to those conducive to a changing of perceptions or a quick return. Especially given they seem completely unwilling or unable to realise the depth of their predicament with those who aren't retired or getting there.
If you're under 50, you're roughly as likely to believe the moon landings are faked as plan to vote Tory. That's not a party with a bright future, unless it can address the reasons why and change. Clue: It's part economics, part their flagship political project being catastrophically unpopular in a way few policies ever are.
For now, add in rising unemployment, strikes, rising inflation and high interest rates and sluggish growth under a Starmer government and the middle aged swing voters ie those 35-65, would certainly consider voting Tory again even if under 35s voted Labour still.
Remember in 2019 the median age more voters voted Conservative than Labour was 39 not 59 and most Conservative voters were voting to get Brexit done as most of them had voted for it!
Of course the median age where people were more likely to live in their own home than rent was also around 39 too. Which is shockingly bad and nothing for you to be pleased with.
Set aside Brexit and one thing that Thatcher, Cameron, Osborne, Johnson and Gove all had in common is they all wanted to get more on the housing ladder, they understood that it is only because of people being able to move on in life that people become more Tory as they age, its not a simple automatic fact of ageing that happens.
Unfortunately Johnson's moderate housing reforms were defeated by the likes of May, cheered on by the likes of you, and then Sunak has torn up any measures to see more housing built to alleviate the crisis that is causing those in their 20s and 30s to have to rent.
As a result you and they deserve to be nowhere near office, and do not deserve to be elected.
Conservativism should be about ensuring as many people as possible can support themselves, paying for their own home, out of their own wages.
Unfortunately its been taken over by a cargo cult who believe that other people paying for their homes, out of their wages, is a better way to live.
Until the Conservatives return back to solid Conservative principles, they deserve to be in Opposition.
I have always wondered why the most anti development, the Greens are the ones the youngster seem to think deserve their vote. Got a lib dem councillor round our way who has opposed at every juncture the building of a couple of hundred houses by an RSL (registered social landlord = council housing) but in their efforts to become the local MP has 'affordable housing' as second on his list of priorities for the constituency.
This is a timeless feature of local politics - one of the ways to get elected is to jump on to some planning controversy. Every party is guilty of this but the greens/lib dems are consistently the worst offenders.
Extraordinarily short sighted comment. Most Greens and LDs aren't anti-development - what they are opposed to is developments purely designed to maximise profit for housebuilders and property developers. Simply chucking a huge block of flats or a vast estate of houses on a site without considering the impact on the surrounding communities and infrastructure seems entirely desireable.
Sure, but what this means is that the Government and its regulators should act to ensure that the housing market is tight, competitive, open to new entrants, and that profits are made by meeting consumer demand effectively. The should also act to ensure that new dwellings are beautiful, and accompanied by sufficient facilities. Markets need to be chopped, changed, and regulated to ensure that they're working properly - Adam Smith himself acknowledged this. Markets where a vast profit is being made but consumer demands aren't being met are dysfunctional. The energy market is another. That doesn't mean replacing the market with the Government as client - then you just get housing provided like the NHS.
Whether the Tories win an election again within a decade or not depends on how Labour handle the economy. Handle it reasonably well as New Labour did and like post 1997 the Tories can expect to be in Opposition for 10 years or more.
Handle it poorly as previous Labour governments did and the swingback to the Tories would be much more rapid. Remember after landslide defeat in 1945 the Tories were back in government in 1951, after losing power in 1964 they were back in power in 1970 ie within 10 years. Thatcher of course took the party back to government in 1979, just 5 years after Heath had lost the 1974 general elections to Wilson's Labour
Obviously anything's possible and one shouldn't rule out a Tory comeback, but it may be very optimistic about the hole the Tories are in with a large swathe of the public. Even a fairly dud Labour government could plausibly lay most of its economic difficulties at the door of the previous government's failures and a wasted decade.
You can see it in polling where the Tories figures among those of working age are pitiful (and that includes those in the past who'd be moving to vote solidly Tory). It may be in a doom loop whereby its route to recovery is blocked by the fact it's increasingly reliant on the wealthy old, so can't propose growth-friendly policies that irk them. But without doing so cater to a base with diminishing returns and further cement their reputation as the party of economic decline.
What we may witness is something like 1979, a generational sea change whereby for a lot of people of a certain generation, Labour gained a reputation for economic mismanagement and supporting a broken model it arguably hasn't shaken off with those of that age. With the one era of success coming when Blair and Brown made clear the party had moved away from that.
The next successful Tory leader may well have to prove that similarly, they're not wedded to the right of the party's failed approach, and their ostensibly liberal wing's weakness in appeasing them.
Remember by the end of 1980 even Michael Foot led Thatcher in the polls as unemployment rose, indeed Thatcher would probably have lost in 1983 had she not got unemployment as well as inflation down and cut strikes by then and won in the Falklands.
If economy is poor and frequent strikes and high inflation under a Starmer government even a rightwinger as Tory leader could wing much as the supposedly 'unelectable' Thatcher won as a rightwinger against the 1979 Labour government after only 5 years of the Tories in opposition
But that's kind of the point. Thatcher won in 83 and then 87 despite some serious difficulties and rough patches, in part because there had been an underlying shift in perceptions that Labour struggled to grasp and run with because a whole tranche of people had lost faith in its ideas.
Similarly, doubt Starmer's govt will have its issues, but even after a mediocre four or five years the Tories may face an uphill battle because they're simply toxic, like really toxic, to generations whose votes will only grow in importance.
And there's probably an underestimation of quite how toxic they are. I know people who in terms of income level and general "meh" attitude to politics should be Tory voters. They regard the party with a contempt usually reserved for those residing in high-security medical facilities, having spent the past decade making decisions that have made lives more difficult or just been insulting.
It's going to take a lot for the Tories to reverse that, in a way that's rather different I think to those conducive to a changing of perceptions or a quick return. Especially given they seem completely unwilling or unable to realise the depth of their predicament with those who aren't retired or getting there.
If you're under 50, you're roughly as likely to believe the moon landings are faked as plan to vote Tory. That's not a party with a bright future, unless it can address the reasons why and change. Clue: It's part economics, part their flagship political project being catastrophically unpopular in a way few policies ever are.
For now, add in rising unemployment, strikes, rising inflation and high interest rates and sluggish growth under a Starmer government and the middle aged swing voters ie those 35-65, would certainly consider voting Tory again even if under 35s voted Labour still.
Remember in 2019 the median age more voters voted Conservative than Labour was 39 not 59 and most Conservative voters were voting to get Brexit done as most of them had voted for it!
Of course the median age where people were more likely to live in their own home than rent was also around 39 too. Which is shockingly bad and nothing for you to be pleased with.
Set aside Brexit and one thing that Thatcher, Cameron, Osborne, Johnson and Gove all had in common is they all wanted to get more on the housing ladder, they understood that it is only because of people being able to move on in life that people become more Tory as they age, its not a simple automatic fact of ageing that happens.
Unfortunately Johnson's moderate housing reforms were defeated by the likes of May, cheered on by the likes of you, and then Sunak has torn up any measures to see more housing built to alleviate the crisis that is causing those in their 20s and 30s to have to rent.
As a result you and they deserve to be nowhere near office, and do not deserve to be elected.
Conservativism should be about ensuring as many people as possible can support themselves, paying for their own home, out of their own wages.
Unfortunately its been taken over by a cargo cult who believe that other people paying for their homes, out of their wages, is a better way to live.
Until the Conservatives return back to solid Conservative principles, they deserve to be in Opposition.
I have always wondered why the most anti development, the Greens are the ones the youngster seem to think deserve their vote. Got a lib dem councillor round our way who has opposed at every juncture the building of a couple of hundred houses by an RSL (registered social landlord = council housing) but in their efforts to become the local MP has 'affordable housing' as second on his list of priorities for the constituency.
This is a timeless feature of local politics - one of the ways to get elected is to jump on to some planning controversy. Every party is guilty of this but the greens/lib dems are consistently the worst offenders.
Extraordinarily short sighted comment. Most Greens and LDs aren't anti-development - what they are opposed to is developments purely designed to maximise profit for housebuilders and property developers. Simply chucking a huge block of flats or a vast estate of houses on a site without considering the impact on the surrounding communities and infrastructure seems entirely desireable.
Sure, but what this means is that the Government and its regulators should act to ensure that the housing market is tight, competitive, open to new entrants, and that profits are made by meeting consumer demand effectively. The should also act to ensure that new dwellings are beautiful, and accompanied by sufficient facilities. Markets need to be chopped, changed, and regulated to ensure that they're working properly - Adam Smith himself acknowledged this. Markets where a vast profit is being made but consumer demands aren't being met are dysfunctional. The energy market is another. That doesn't mean replacing the market with the Government as client - then you just get housing provided like the NHS.
Housing does not result in a need for facilities, people do.
People pay taxes for public facilities.
Public facilities should be paid for via those taxes, not via housing.
Private facilities should be paid for privately by people, not via housing.
Whether the Tories win an election again within a decade or not depends on how Labour handle the economy. Handle it reasonably well as New Labour did and like post 1997 the Tories can expect to be in Opposition for 10 years or more.
Handle it poorly as previous Labour governments did and the swingback to the Tories would be much more rapid. Remember after landslide defeat in 1945 the Tories were back in government in 1951, after losing power in 1964 they were back in power in 1970 ie within 10 years. Thatcher of course took the party back to government in 1979, just 5 years after Heath had lost the 1974 general elections to Wilson's Labour
Obviously anything's possible and one shouldn't rule out a Tory comeback, but it may be very optimistic about the hole the Tories are in with a large swathe of the public. Even a fairly dud Labour government could plausibly lay most of its economic difficulties at the door of the previous government's failures and a wasted decade.
You can see it in polling where the Tories figures among those of working age are pitiful (and that includes those in the past who'd be moving to vote solidly Tory). It may be in a doom loop whereby its route to recovery is blocked by the fact it's increasingly reliant on the wealthy old, so can't propose growth-friendly policies that irk them. But without doing so cater to a base with diminishing returns and further cement their reputation as the party of economic decline.
What we may witness is something like 1979, a generational sea change whereby for a lot of people of a certain generation, Labour gained a reputation for economic mismanagement and supporting a broken model it arguably hasn't shaken off with those of that age. With the one era of success coming when Blair and Brown made clear the party had moved away from that.
The next successful Tory leader may well have to prove that similarly, they're not wedded to the right of the party's failed approach, and their ostensibly liberal wing's weakness in appeasing them.
Remember by the end of 1980 even Michael Foot led Thatcher in the polls as unemployment rose, indeed Thatcher would probably have lost in 1983 had she not got unemployment as well as inflation down and cut strikes by then and won in the Falklands.
If economy is poor and frequent strikes and high inflation under a Starmer government even a rightwinger as Tory leader could wing much as the supposedly 'unelectable' Thatcher won as a rightwinger against the 1979 Labour government after only 5 years of the Tories in opposition
But that's kind of the point. Thatcher won in 83 and then 87 despite some serious difficulties and rough patches, in part because there had been an underlying shift in perceptions that Labour struggled to grasp and run with because a whole tranche of people had lost faith in its ideas.
Similarly, doubt Starmer's govt will have its issues, but even after a mediocre four or five years the Tories may face an uphill battle because they're simply toxic, like really toxic, to generations whose votes will only grow in importance.
And there's probably an underestimation of quite how toxic they are. I know people who in terms of income level and general "meh" attitude to politics should be Tory voters. They regard the party with a contempt usually reserved for those residing in high-security medical facilities, having spent the past decade making decisions that have made lives more difficult or just been insulting.
It's going to take a lot for the Tories to reverse that, in a way that's rather different I think to those conducive to a changing of perceptions or a quick return. Especially given they seem completely unwilling or unable to realise the depth of their predicament with those who aren't retired or getting there.
If you're under 50, you're roughly as likely to believe the moon landings are faked as plan to vote Tory. That's not a party with a bright future, unless it can address the reasons why and change. Clue: It's part economics, part their flagship political project being catastrophically unpopular in a way few policies ever are.
For now, add in rising unemployment, strikes, rising inflation and high interest rates and sluggish growth under a Starmer government and the middle aged swing voters ie those 35-65, would certainly consider voting Tory again even if under 35s voted Labour still.
Remember in 2019 the median age more voters voted Conservative than Labour was 39 not 59 and most Conservative voters were voting to get Brexit done as most of them had voted for it!
Of course the median age where people were more likely to live in their own home than rent was also around 39 too. Which is shockingly bad and nothing for you to be pleased with.
Set aside Brexit and one thing that Thatcher, Cameron, Osborne, Johnson and Gove all had in common is they all wanted to get more on the housing ladder, they understood that it is only because of people being able to move on in life that people become more Tory as they age, its not a simple automatic fact of ageing that happens.
Unfortunately Johnson's moderate housing reforms were defeated by the likes of May, cheered on by the likes of you, and then Sunak has torn up any measures to see more housing built to alleviate the crisis that is causing those in their 20s and 30s to have to rent.
As a result you and they deserve to be nowhere near office, and do not deserve to be elected.
Conservativism should be about ensuring as many people as possible can support themselves, paying for their own home, out of their own wages.
Unfortunately its been taken over by a cargo cult who believe that other people paying for their homes, out of their wages, is a better way to live.
Until the Conservatives return back to solid Conservative principles, they deserve to be in Opposition.
I have always wondered why the most anti development, the Greens are the ones the youngster seem to think deserve their vote. Got a lib dem councillor round our way who has opposed at every juncture the building of a couple of hundred houses by an RSL (registered social landlord = council housing) but in their efforts to become the local MP has 'affordable housing' as second on his list of priorities for the constituency.
This is a timeless feature of local politics - one of the ways to get elected is to jump on to some planning controversy. Every party is guilty of this but the greens/lib dems are consistently the worst offenders.
Extraordinarily short sighted comment. Most Greens and LDs aren't anti-development - what they are opposed to is developments purely designed to maximise profit for housebuilders and property developers. Simply chucking a huge block of flats or a vast estate of houses on a site without considering the impact on the surrounding communities and infrastructure seems entirely desireable.
Sure, but what this means is that the Government and its regulators should act to ensure that the housing market is tight, competitive, open to new entrants, and that profits are made by meeting consumer demand effectively. The should also act to ensure that new dwellings are beautiful, and accompanied by sufficient facilities. Markets need to be chopped, changed, and regulated to ensure that they're working properly - Adam Smith himself acknowledged this. Markets where a vast profit is being made but consumer demands aren't being met are dysfunctional. The energy market is another. That doesn't mean replacing the market with the Government as client - then you just get housing provided like the NHS.
Housing does not result in a need for facilities, people do.
People pay taxes for public facilities.
Public facilities should be paid for via those taxes, not via housing.
Private facilities should be paid for privately by people, not via housing.
I agree, but there does need to be space made for them within developments, so they need to be considered.
Whether the Tories win an election again within a decade or not depends on how Labour handle the economy. Handle it reasonably well as New Labour did and like post 1997 the Tories can expect to be in Opposition for 10 years or more.
Handle it poorly as previous Labour governments did and the swingback to the Tories would be much more rapid. Remember after landslide defeat in 1945 the Tories were back in government in 1951, after losing power in 1964 they were back in power in 1970 ie within 10 years. Thatcher of course took the party back to government in 1979, just 5 years after Heath had lost the 1974 general elections to Wilson's Labour
Obviously anything's possible and one shouldn't rule out a Tory comeback, but it may be very optimistic about the hole the Tories are in with a large swathe of the public. Even a fairly dud Labour government could plausibly lay most of its economic difficulties at the door of the previous government's failures and a wasted decade.
You can see it in polling where the Tories figures among those of working age are pitiful (and that includes those in the past who'd be moving to vote solidly Tory). It may be in a doom loop whereby its route to recovery is blocked by the fact it's increasingly reliant on the wealthy old, so can't propose growth-friendly policies that irk them. But without doing so cater to a base with diminishing returns and further cement their reputation as the party of economic decline.
What we may witness is something like 1979, a generational sea change whereby for a lot of people of a certain generation, Labour gained a reputation for economic mismanagement and supporting a broken model it arguably hasn't shaken off with those of that age. With the one era of success coming when Blair and Brown made clear the party had moved away from that.
The next successful Tory leader may well have to prove that similarly, they're not wedded to the right of the party's failed approach, and their ostensibly liberal wing's weakness in appeasing them.
Remember by the end of 1980 even Michael Foot led Thatcher in the polls as unemployment rose, indeed Thatcher would probably have lost in 1983 had she not got unemployment as well as inflation down and cut strikes by then and won in the Falklands.
If economy is poor and frequent strikes and high inflation under a Starmer government even a rightwinger as Tory leader could wing much as the supposedly 'unelectable' Thatcher won as a rightwinger against the 1979 Labour government after only 5 years of the Tories in opposition
But that's kind of the point. Thatcher won in 83 and then 87 despite some serious difficulties and rough patches, in part because there had been an underlying shift in perceptions that Labour struggled to grasp and run with because a whole tranche of people had lost faith in its ideas.
Similarly, doubt Starmer's govt will have its issues, but even after a mediocre four or five years the Tories may face an uphill battle because they're simply toxic, like really toxic, to generations whose votes will only grow in importance.
And there's probably an underestimation of quite how toxic they are. I know people who in terms of income level and general "meh" attitude to politics should be Tory voters. They regard the party with a contempt usually reserved for those residing in high-security medical facilities, having spent the past decade making decisions that have made lives more difficult or just been insulting.
It's going to take a lot for the Tories to reverse that, in a way that's rather different I think to those conducive to a changing of perceptions or a quick return. Especially given they seem completely unwilling or unable to realise the depth of their predicament with those who aren't retired or getting there.
If you're under 50, you're roughly as likely to believe the moon landings are faked as plan to vote Tory. That's not a party with a bright future, unless it can address the reasons why and change. Clue: It's part economics, part their flagship political project being catastrophically unpopular in a way few policies ever are.
For now, add in rising unemployment, strikes, rising inflation and high interest rates and sluggish growth under a Starmer government and the middle aged swing voters ie those 35-65, would certainly consider voting Tory again even if under 35s voted Labour still.
Remember in 2019 the median age more voters voted Conservative than Labour was 39 not 59 and most Conservative voters were voting to get Brexit done as most of them had voted for it!
Of course the median age where people were more likely to live in their own home than rent was also around 39 too. Which is shockingly bad and nothing for you to be pleased with.
Set aside Brexit and one thing that Thatcher, Cameron, Osborne, Johnson and Gove all had in common is they all wanted to get more on the housing ladder, they understood that it is only because of people being able to move on in life that people become more Tory as they age, its not a simple automatic fact of ageing that happens.
Unfortunately Johnson's moderate housing reforms were defeated by the likes of May, cheered on by the likes of you, and then Sunak has torn up any measures to see more housing built to alleviate the crisis that is causing those in their 20s and 30s to have to rent.
As a result you and they deserve to be nowhere near office, and do not deserve to be elected.
Conservativism should be about ensuring as many people as possible can support themselves, paying for their own home, out of their own wages.
Unfortunately its been taken over by a cargo cult who believe that other people paying for their homes, out of their wages, is a better way to live.
Until the Conservatives return back to solid Conservative principles, they deserve to be in Opposition.
I have always wondered why the most anti development, the Greens are the ones the youngster seem to think deserve their vote. Got a lib dem councillor round our way who has opposed at every juncture the building of a couple of hundred houses by an RSL (registered social landlord = council housing) but in their efforts to become the local MP has 'affordable housing' as second on his list of priorities for the constituency.
This is a timeless feature of local politics - one of the ways to get elected is to jump on to some planning controversy. Every party is guilty of this but the greens/lib dems are consistently the worst offenders.
Extraordinarily short sighted comment. Most Greens and LDs aren't anti-development - what they are opposed to is developments purely designed to maximise profit for housebuilders and property developers. Simply chucking a huge block of flats or a vast estate of houses on a site without considering the impact on the surrounding communities and infrastructure seems entirely desireable.
Any and all developments of houses ease the housing shortage and should be supported. That they make a profit for housebuilders and developers is neither here nor there, that's the purpose of them, they're providing a valuable service (increasing housing supply) so should be entitled to a profit just the same as every other business.
The impact of surrounding communities and infrastructure should never stand in the way of housing developments, nor be the responsibility of developers. It should be the responsibility of those in charge of communities and infrastructure to respond to increased development by investing in more infrastructure if that is what is required.
Standing in the way of required development of housing because of a shortage of infrastructure solves neither the infrastructure shortage, nor the housing shortage.
Fortunately, our planning and development process isn't as chaotic as you would like.
Section 106 either provides for the developers to pay for infrastructure projects to improve the wider community or, as a condition of approval, the developer might offer to provide a new school or a health centre or a community facility which is fine to a point.
If you have a village with 500 houses and a development proposal for 500 new houses, it's going to impact the village (I don't disagree the impacts are broadly positive) and the impacts have to be taken into account. That doesn't stop the 500 being built but recognises the impact they will have on the surrounding community.
Section 106 along with our planning system should be abolished.
If you have a population of 1200 people living in 500 homes and the population develops to 2400 people then its going to impact the village, whether those 2400 are living now in 1000 homes or the same 500.
Population growth is happening whether you like it or not, standing in the way of development to stick your head in the sand and pretend that alleviates consequences or impact is a dismal failure that's just resulted in a chronic housing shortage, failure to invest in infrastructure, collapsing infrastructure and dismal services.
The system isn't working.
Abolishing the requirement for developers to provide appropriate infrastructure with new housing via s106 ie new schools, GPs etc would just see an even bigger surge in Nimbyism.
The population is rising mainly because of immigration which the government has finally taken measures to control, the UK birth rate is below replacement level
Screw the NIMBYs, abolish the planning system and the NIMBYs can go f*** themselves for all I care. JFDI the developments.
New schools, GPs etc are required because of population, not houses. Standing in the way of houses because you want schools does not work, if thanks to population growth we need more public services then the entire population not just new builds should be paying for those public services.
Except excluding immigration as I said the population would be falling and demand for public services too, except for oldest in the ageing population.
If you build lots of new builds in a town or village or suburb however adding 500-1000+ to the local population that will need a new GP surgery, new primary school etc to absorb the incomers. Developers should partly fund that from the sale profits of the new houses they have built and sold.
Totally ignore NIMBYs and they will elect new NIMBY councillors and NIMBY councils and in time new NIMBY MPs and new NIMBY governments too
Whether the Tories win an election again within a decade or not depends on how Labour handle the economy. Handle it reasonably well as New Labour did and like post 1997 the Tories can expect to be in Opposition for 10 years or more.
Handle it poorly as previous Labour governments did and the swingback to the Tories would be much more rapid. Remember after landslide defeat in 1945 the Tories were back in government in 1951, after losing power in 1964 they were back in power in 1970 ie within 10 years. Thatcher of course took the party back to government in 1979, just 5 years after Heath had lost the 1974 general elections to Wilson's Labour
Obviously anything's possible and one shouldn't rule out a Tory comeback, but it may be very optimistic about the hole the Tories are in with a large swathe of the public. Even a fairly dud Labour government could plausibly lay most of its economic difficulties at the door of the previous government's failures and a wasted decade.
You can see it in polling where the Tories figures among those of working age are pitiful (and that includes those in the past who'd be moving to vote solidly Tory). It may be in a doom loop whereby its route to recovery is blocked by the fact it's increasingly reliant on the wealthy old, so can't propose growth-friendly policies that irk them. But without doing so cater to a base with diminishing returns and further cement their reputation as the party of economic decline.
What we may witness is something like 1979, a generational sea change whereby for a lot of people of a certain generation, Labour gained a reputation for economic mismanagement and supporting a broken model it arguably hasn't shaken off with those of that age. With the one era of success coming when Blair and Brown made clear the party had moved away from that.
The next successful Tory leader may well have to prove that similarly, they're not wedded to the right of the party's failed approach, and their ostensibly liberal wing's weakness in appeasing them.
Remember by the end of 1980 even Michael Foot led Thatcher in the polls as unemployment rose, indeed Thatcher would probably have lost in 1983 had she not got unemployment as well as inflation down and cut strikes by then and won in the Falklands.
If economy is poor and frequent strikes and high inflation under a Starmer government even a rightwinger as Tory leader could wing much as the supposedly 'unelectable' Thatcher won as a rightwinger against the 1979 Labour government after only 5 years of the Tories in opposition
But that's kind of the point. Thatcher won in 83 and then 87 despite some serious difficulties and rough patches, in part because there had been an underlying shift in perceptions that Labour struggled to grasp and run with because a whole tranche of people had lost faith in its ideas.
Similarly, doubt Starmer's govt will have its issues, but even after a mediocre four or five years the Tories may face an uphill battle because they're simply toxic, like really toxic, to generations whose votes will only grow in importance.
And there's probably an underestimation of quite how toxic they are. I know people who in terms of income level and general "meh" attitude to politics should be Tory voters. They regard the party with a contempt usually reserved for those residing in high-security medical facilities, having spent the past decade making decisions that have made lives more difficult or just been insulting.
It's going to take a lot for the Tories to reverse that, in a way that's rather different I think to those conducive to a changing of perceptions or a quick return. Especially given they seem completely unwilling or unable to realise the depth of their predicament with those who aren't retired or getting there.
If you're under 50, you're roughly as likely to believe the moon landings are faked as plan to vote Tory. That's not a party with a bright future, unless it can address the reasons why and change. Clue: It's part economics, part their flagship political project being catastrophically unpopular in a way few policies ever are.
For now, add in rising unemployment, strikes, rising inflation and high interest rates and sluggish growth under a Starmer government and the middle aged swing voters ie those 35-65, would certainly consider voting Tory again even if under 35s voted Labour still.
Remember in 2019 the median age more voters voted Conservative than Labour was 39 not 59 and most Conservative voters were voting to get Brexit done as most of them had voted for it!
Of course the median age where people were more likely to live in their own home than rent was also around 39 too. Which is shockingly bad and nothing for you to be pleased with.
Set aside Brexit and one thing that Thatcher, Cameron, Osborne, Johnson and Gove all had in common is they all wanted to get more on the housing ladder, they understood that it is only because of people being able to move on in life that people become more Tory as they age, its not a simple automatic fact of ageing that happens.
Unfortunately Johnson's moderate housing reforms were defeated by the likes of May, cheered on by the likes of you, and then Sunak has torn up any measures to see more housing built to alleviate the crisis that is causing those in their 20s and 30s to have to rent.
As a result you and they deserve to be nowhere near office, and do not deserve to be elected.
Conservativism should be about ensuring as many people as possible can support themselves, paying for their own home, out of their own wages.
Unfortunately its been taken over by a cargo cult who believe that other people paying for their homes, out of their wages, is a better way to live.
Until the Conservatives return back to solid Conservative principles, they deserve to be in Opposition.
I have always wondered why the most anti development, the Greens are the ones the youngster seem to think deserve their vote. Got a lib dem councillor round our way who has opposed at every juncture the building of a couple of hundred houses by an RSL (registered social landlord = council housing) but in their efforts to become the local MP has 'affordable housing' as second on his list of priorities for the constituency.
This is a timeless feature of local politics - one of the ways to get elected is to jump on to some planning controversy. Every party is guilty of this but the greens/lib dems are consistently the worst offenders.
Extraordinarily short sighted comment. Most Greens and LDs aren't anti-development - what they are opposed to is developments purely designed to maximise profit for housebuilders and property developers. Simply chucking a huge block of flats or a vast estate of houses on a site without considering the impact on the surrounding communities and infrastructure seems entirely desireable.
Sure, but what this means is that the Government and its regulators should act to ensure that the housing market is tight, competitive, open to new entrants, and that profits are made by meeting consumer demand effectively. The should also act to ensure that new dwellings are beautiful, and accompanied by sufficient facilities. Markets need to be chopped, changed, and regulated to ensure that they're working properly - Adam Smith himself acknowledged this. Markets where a vast profit is being made but consumer demands aren't being met are dysfunctional. The energy market is another. That doesn't mean replacing the market with the Government as client - then you just get housing provided like the NHS.
Housing does not result in a need for facilities, people do.
People pay taxes for public facilities.
Public facilities should be paid for via those taxes, not via housing.
Private facilities should be paid for privately by people, not via housing.
The idea that actors shouldn’t meet the costs of their externalities is extraordinarily behind the times. And ignorant.
Whether the Tories win an election again within a decade or not depends on how Labour handle the economy. Handle it reasonably well as New Labour did and like post 1997 the Tories can expect to be in Opposition for 10 years or more.
Handle it poorly as previous Labour governments did and the swingback to the Tories would be much more rapid. Remember after landslide defeat in 1945 the Tories were back in government in 1951, after losing power in 1964 they were back in power in 1970 ie within 10 years. Thatcher of course took the party back to government in 1979, just 5 years after Heath had lost the 1974 general elections to Wilson's Labour
Obviously anything's possible and one shouldn't rule out a Tory comeback, but it may be very optimistic about the hole the Tories are in with a large swathe of the public. Even a fairly dud Labour government could plausibly lay most of its economic difficulties at the door of the previous government's failures and a wasted decade.
You can see it in polling where the Tories figures among those of working age are pitiful (and that includes those in the past who'd be moving to vote solidly Tory). It may be in a doom loop whereby its route to recovery is blocked by the fact it's increasingly reliant on the wealthy old, so can't propose growth-friendly policies that irk them. But without doing so cater to a base with diminishing returns and further cement their reputation as the party of economic decline.
What we may witness is something like 1979, a generational sea change whereby for a lot of people of a certain generation, Labour gained a reputation for economic mismanagement and supporting a broken model it arguably hasn't shaken off with those of that age. With the one era of success coming when Blair and Brown made clear the party had moved away from that.
The next successful Tory leader may well have to prove that similarly, they're not wedded to the right of the party's failed approach, and their ostensibly liberal wing's weakness in appeasing them.
Remember by the end of 1980 even Michael Foot led Thatcher in the polls as unemployment rose, indeed Thatcher would probably have lost in 1983 had she not got unemployment as well as inflation down and cut strikes by then and won in the Falklands.
If economy is poor and frequent strikes and high inflation under a Starmer government even a rightwinger as Tory leader could wing much as the supposedly 'unelectable' Thatcher won as a rightwinger against the 1979 Labour government after only 5 years of the Tories in opposition
But that's kind of the point. Thatcher won in 83 and then 87 despite some serious difficulties and rough patches, in part because there had been an underlying shift in perceptions that Labour struggled to grasp and run with because a whole tranche of people had lost faith in its ideas.
Similarly, doubt Starmer's govt will have its issues, but even after a mediocre four or five years the Tories may face an uphill battle because they're simply toxic, like really toxic, to generations whose votes will only grow in importance.
And there's probably an underestimation of quite how toxic they are. I know people who in terms of income level and general "meh" attitude to politics should be Tory voters. They regard the party with a contempt usually reserved for those residing in high-security medical facilities, having spent the past decade making decisions that have made lives more difficult or just been insulting.
It's going to take a lot for the Tories to reverse that, in a way that's rather different I think to those conducive to a changing of perceptions or a quick return. Especially given they seem completely unwilling or unable to realise the depth of their predicament with those who aren't retired or getting there.
If you're under 50, you're roughly as likely to believe the moon landings are faked as plan to vote Tory. That's not a party with a bright future, unless it can address the reasons why and change. Clue: It's part economics, part their flagship political project being catastrophically unpopular in a way few policies ever are.
For now, add in rising unemployment, strikes, rising inflation and high interest rates and sluggish growth under a Starmer government and the middle aged swing voters ie those 35-65, would certainly consider voting Tory again even if under 35s voted Labour still.
Remember in 2019 the median age more voters voted Conservative than Labour was 39 not 59 and most Conservative voters were voting to get Brexit done as most of them had voted for it!
Of course the median age where people were more likely to live in their own home than rent was also around 39 too. Which is shockingly bad and nothing for you to be pleased with.
Set aside Brexit and one thing that Thatcher, Cameron, Osborne, Johnson and Gove all had in common is they all wanted to get more on the housing ladder, they understood that it is only because of people being able to move on in life that people become more Tory as they age, its not a simple automatic fact of ageing that happens.
Unfortunately Johnson's moderate housing reforms were defeated by the likes of May, cheered on by the likes of you, and then Sunak has torn up any measures to see more housing built to alleviate the crisis that is causing those in their 20s and 30s to have to rent.
As a result you and they deserve to be nowhere near office, and do not deserve to be elected.
Conservativism should be about ensuring as many people as possible can support themselves, paying for their own home, out of their own wages.
Unfortunately its been taken over by a cargo cult who believe that other people paying for their homes, out of their wages, is a better way to live.
Until the Conservatives return back to solid Conservative principles, they deserve to be in Opposition.
I have always wondered why the most anti development, the Greens are the ones the youngster seem to think deserve their vote. Got a lib dem councillor round our way who has opposed at every juncture the building of a couple of hundred houses by an RSL (registered social landlord = council housing) but in their efforts to become the local MP has 'affordable housing' as second on his list of priorities for the constituency.
This is a timeless feature of local politics - one of the ways to get elected is to jump on to some planning controversy. Every party is guilty of this but the greens/lib dems are consistently the worst offenders.
Extraordinarily short sighted comment. Most Greens and LDs aren't anti-development - what they are opposed to is developments purely designed to maximise profit for housebuilders and property developers. Simply chucking a huge block of flats or a vast estate of houses on a site without considering the impact on the surrounding communities and infrastructure seems entirely desireable.
Sure, but what this means is that the Government and its regulators should act to ensure that the housing market is tight, competitive, open to new entrants, and that profits are made by meeting consumer demand effectively. The should also act to ensure that new dwellings are beautiful, and accompanied by sufficient facilities. Markets need to be chopped, changed, and regulated to ensure that they're working properly - Adam Smith himself acknowledged this. Markets where a vast profit is being made but consumer demands aren't being met are dysfunctional. The energy market is another. That doesn't mean replacing the market with the Government as client - then you just get housing provided like the NHS.
Housing does not result in a need for facilities, people do.
People pay taxes for public facilities.
Public facilities should be paid for via those taxes, not via housing.
Private facilities should be paid for privately by people, not via housing.
I agree, but there does need to be space made for them within developments, so they need to be considered.
Why does there need to be space within developments? There needs to be space, but it can be adjacent to or near the developments not within them - and if it is for a public service it should be paid for via everyone not just the developments.
Public education falls upon the taxpayer, if a towns population doubles so a new school needs to be built then all taxpayers should chip in for the new school, not just those taxpayers who happen to be buying a new house while the others get to abdicate their responsibilities.
Whether the Tories win an election again within a decade or not depends on how Labour handle the economy. Handle it reasonably well as New Labour did and like post 1997 the Tories can expect to be in Opposition for 10 years or more.
Handle it poorly as previous Labour governments did and the swingback to the Tories would be much more rapid. Remember after landslide defeat in 1945 the Tories were back in government in 1951, after losing power in 1964 they were back in power in 1970 ie within 10 years. Thatcher of course took the party back to government in 1979, just 5 years after Heath had lost the 1974 general elections to Wilson's Labour
Obviously anything's possible and one shouldn't rule out a Tory comeback, but it may be very optimistic about the hole the Tories are in with a large swathe of the public. Even a fairly dud Labour government could plausibly lay most of its economic difficulties at the door of the previous government's failures and a wasted decade.
You can see it in polling where the Tories figures among those of working age are pitiful (and that includes those in the past who'd be moving to vote solidly Tory). It may be in a doom loop whereby its route to recovery is blocked by the fact it's increasingly reliant on the wealthy old, so can't propose growth-friendly policies that irk them. But without doing so cater to a base with diminishing returns and further cement their reputation as the party of economic decline.
What we may witness is something like 1979, a generational sea change whereby for a lot of people of a certain generation, Labour gained a reputation for economic mismanagement and supporting a broken model it arguably hasn't shaken off with those of that age. With the one era of success coming when Blair and Brown made clear the party had moved away from that.
The next successful Tory leader may well have to prove that similarly, they're not wedded to the right of the party's failed approach, and their ostensibly liberal wing's weakness in appeasing them.
Remember by the end of 1980 even Michael Foot led Thatcher in the polls as unemployment rose, indeed Thatcher would probably have lost in 1983 had she not got unemployment as well as inflation down and cut strikes by then and won in the Falklands.
If economy is poor and frequent strikes and high inflation under a Starmer government even a rightwinger as Tory leader could wing much as the supposedly 'unelectable' Thatcher won as a rightwinger against the 1979 Labour government after only 5 years of the Tories in opposition
But that's kind of the point. Thatcher won in 83 and then 87 despite some serious difficulties and rough patches, in part because there had been an underlying shift in perceptions that Labour struggled to grasp and run with because a whole tranche of people had lost faith in its ideas.
Similarly, doubt Starmer's govt will have its issues, but even after a mediocre four or five years the Tories may face an uphill battle because they're simply toxic, like really toxic, to generations whose votes will only grow in importance.
And there's probably an underestimation of quite how toxic they are. I know people who in terms of income level and general "meh" attitude to politics should be Tory voters. They regard the party with a contempt usually reserved for those residing in high-security medical facilities, having spent the past decade making decisions that have made lives more difficult or just been insulting.
It's going to take a lot for the Tories to reverse that, in a way that's rather different I think to those conducive to a changing of perceptions or a quick return. Especially given they seem completely unwilling or unable to realise the depth of their predicament with those who aren't retired or getting there.
If you're under 50, you're roughly as likely to believe the moon landings are faked as plan to vote Tory. That's not a party with a bright future, unless it can address the reasons why and change. Clue: It's part economics, part their flagship political project being catastrophically unpopular in a way few policies ever are.
For now, add in rising unemployment, strikes, rising inflation and high interest rates and sluggish growth under a Starmer government and the middle aged swing voters ie those 35-65, would certainly consider voting Tory again even if under 35s voted Labour still.
Remember in 2019 the median age more voters voted Conservative than Labour was 39 not 59 and most Conservative voters were voting to get Brexit done as most of them had voted for it!
Of course the median age where people were more likely to live in their own home than rent was also around 39 too. Which is shockingly bad and nothing for you to be pleased with.
Set aside Brexit and one thing that Thatcher, Cameron, Osborne, Johnson and Gove all had in common is they all wanted to get more on the housing ladder, they understood that it is only because of people being able to move on in life that people become more Tory as they age, its not a simple automatic fact of ageing that happens.
Unfortunately Johnson's moderate housing reforms were defeated by the likes of May, cheered on by the likes of you, and then Sunak has torn up any measures to see more housing built to alleviate the crisis that is causing those in their 20s and 30s to have to rent.
As a result you and they deserve to be nowhere near office, and do not deserve to be elected.
Conservativism should be about ensuring as many people as possible can support themselves, paying for their own home, out of their own wages.
Unfortunately its been taken over by a cargo cult who believe that other people paying for their homes, out of their wages, is a better way to live.
Until the Conservatives return back to solid Conservative principles, they deserve to be in Opposition.
I have always wondered why the most anti development, the Greens are the ones the youngster seem to think deserve their vote. Got a lib dem councillor round our way who has opposed at every juncture the building of a couple of hundred houses by an RSL (registered social landlord = council housing) but in their efforts to become the local MP has 'affordable housing' as second on his list of priorities for the constituency.
This is a timeless feature of local politics - one of the ways to get elected is to jump on to some planning controversy. Every party is guilty of this but the greens/lib dems are consistently the worst offenders.
Extraordinarily short sighted comment. Most Greens and LDs aren't anti-development - what they are opposed to is developments purely designed to maximise profit for housebuilders and property developers. Simply chucking a huge block of flats or a vast estate of houses on a site without considering the impact on the surrounding communities and infrastructure seems entirely desireable.
Sure, but what this means is that the Government and its regulators should act to ensure that the housing market is tight, competitive, open to new entrants, and that profits are made by meeting consumer demand effectively. The should also act to ensure that new dwellings are beautiful, and accompanied by sufficient facilities. Markets need to be chopped, changed, and regulated to ensure that they're working properly - Adam Smith himself acknowledged this. Markets where a vast profit is being made but consumer demands aren't being met are dysfunctional. The energy market is another. That doesn't mean replacing the market with the Government as client - then you just get housing provided like the NHS.
Housing does not result in a need for facilities, people do.
People pay taxes for public facilities.
Public facilities should be paid for via those taxes, not via housing.
Private facilities should be paid for privately by people, not via housing.
The idea that actors shouldn’t meet the costs of their externalities is extraordinarily behind the times. And ignorant.
They should need to meet the cost of their externalities.
Public services is not an externality, its a cost of servicing people not houses.
It’s always heartwarming to see that some folk who have never worked in the public sector are so skilled they can instantly diagnose all the issues (which, mysteriously, always manage to conform to their personal prejudices) and propose a solution which usually involves a change to “the culture”.
Sigh…
The public sector is roughly as good (and as bad) at doing things as the private sector (with some minor variances, generally based on being able to offer market pay). The big difference is that mistakes in the public sector have to be declared in full, whilst in the private sector they can usually be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of accountants and auditors.
Mistakes in the private sector have to be declared in full, and if brushed under the carpet then the business can fail as a result with the shareholders taking full responsibility of their neglect.
Mistakes in the public sector can be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of colleagues, "civil servants" politicians and more being in denial of any wrongdoing with the taxpayer taking full responsibility of their neglect.
One of the biggest mistakes of the Coalition was getting rid of the Audit Commission but there are mechanisms such as the Local Government Ombudsman. Who, for instance, would you hold accountable for the disasters at Thurrock and Woking - the elected Members, Senior Officers, both, neither? I do agree the taxpayer does in the end finish up footing the bill but when some private sector companies fail (as we've seen), the Government ends up holding the baby.
Allister Heath once argued for all organisations (both public and private) to write in effect a Will describing what should happen if the business were to become bankrupt or insolvent outlining what should happen to creditors, employees, shareholders etc.
The taxpayer should never foot the bill for private sector companies failing and Gordon Brown agreeing to do so was a tremendous mistake he made.
No private business should ever be regarded as too big to fail.
Far better to collapse the entire global banking system than to rescue a "too big to fail" bank? That's what happened when the Fed declined to rescue Lehman Bros, and Britain stopped Barclays from buying it because that would mean HM Treasury guaranteeing an American bank.
It’s always heartwarming to see that some folk who have never worked in the public sector are so skilled they can instantly diagnose all the issues (which, mysteriously, always manage to conform to their personal prejudices) and propose a solution which usually involves a change to “the culture”.
Sigh…
The public sector is roughly as good (and as bad) at doing things as the private sector (with some minor variances, generally based on being able to offer market pay). The big difference is that mistakes in the public sector have to be declared in full, whilst in the private sector they can usually be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of accountants and auditors.
Mistakes in the private sector have to be declared in full, and if brushed under the carpet then the business can fail as a result with the shareholders taking full responsibility of their neglect.
Mistakes in the public sector can be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of colleagues, "civil servants" politicians and more being in denial of any wrongdoing with the taxpayer taking full responsibility of their neglect.
Did the bank shareholders take full responsibility of their neglect during the GFC?
Have the rail franchise companies taken full responsibility of their neglect?
Will the water company shareholders be taking full responsibility of their neglect, in the coming years?
It’s always heartwarming to see that some folk who have never worked in the public sector are so skilled they can instantly diagnose all the issues (which, mysteriously, always manage to conform to their personal prejudices) and propose a solution which usually involves a change to “the culture”.
Sigh…
The public sector is roughly as good (and as bad) at doing things as the private sector (with some minor variances, generally based on being able to offer market pay). The big difference is that mistakes in the public sector have to be declared in full, whilst in the public sector they can usually be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of accountants and auditors.
"The big difference is that mistakes in the public sector have to be declared in full, whilst in the public sector they can usually be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of accountants and auditors."
Didn't you mean the second "public sector" in that sentence to read "private sector"?
I would cite the Post Office as a riposte to that sentiment but you know that already. Plus listed companies have to make market announcement - I pile cite a few examples there too.
But the Post Office during the key period (and since) was run by people brought in for their private sector expertise, who didn’t really understand what they were managing.
What we are looking at is a tragic confluence of private sector people focused on their key objective whilst not interested, or understanding, the environment they are in, supported by a load of career long public sector people trained to follow instructions and otherwise keep their heads down.
That is part of the explanation and an important factor. But I was responding to the claim that because it was in the public sector it had to declare its mistakes in full.
That has certainly not happened in the PO's case. If anything, partly to avoid embarrassing Ministers or at least Ministerial decisions and partly to permit the privatisation of Royal Mail, the unfolding problems were kept as quiet as possible for as long as possible, even to the extent of misleading courts and Parliament.
My read is that when Vennells arrives she was genuinely willing to try and sort the situation out. But she surely unappreciated the scale of the disaster, assuming they were dealing with a small number of anomalies that could be resolved without diverting her from her course. Which is what she will have been told, up the line. But at some point - pretty obviously shortly before Second Sight were sacked - she realised the scale of the catastrophe she was sitting on.
We can all see what the right thing to have done would have been. And I’m sure that 95% of us would swear that that’s what we would have done, in her position.
She will have found herself in a room full of senior people - long serving PO managers who understood things a lot better than her, maybe someone senior from Fuitisu still sowing misinformation, and - critically - some top lawyers who must have thought that they had a better than 50:50 chance of making the catastrophe go away with some disgraceful legal shenanigans, bankrupting the other party before the case got to a conclusion. As we can see, from both Wallis’s detailed account and the summary version dramatised by ITV, they very nearly succeeded. As it is, most of the money won by Bates and others went on legal costs.
Both the financial position of her business and her own personal reputation would have been trashed, had she come clean at that point - already being on record at the BIS SC and in the media as defending the PO position. So she had the choice between being honest and facing certain ordure, or gambling that she might make the whole thing go away.
We all know what the morally right thing to do was. But I’d bet that significantly less than 95% of us would have opted for the right path, put in her position.
I suspect there was also a great deal of Ministerial pressure not to do anything to impact the Post Office's route to profits.
But I have been in the position, both in the public sector and in the private sector, of having to tell very senior people (Ministers and Chief Executives) that what they would like to do is unlawful. That takes guts. And any CEO who ignores such advice is a bloody fool. It's not just about doing the morally right thing to do: it's about the difference between legality and illegality.
Susan Crichton, the GC, left suddenly in 2013 - not long after the external legal advice pointing out the unsafeness of the convictions and the first Second Sight report. I would really like to know the truth of what led to her departure and what advice she was giving. And what her successors and predecessors were doing and saying.
The role of the GC can be immensely powerful in such circumstances - if they use that power wisely and have the independence of character to use it. Not all do. Some are frankly useless. My guess is that her successor was more intent on facilitating a "let's sweep it under the carpet" job.
That is one reason why I think the role of the lawyers here has been so shameful. They should have been gatekeepers preventing morally dubious and unlawful behaviour. Instead they appear to have facilitated and carried it out.
It’s always heartwarming to see that some folk who have never worked in the public sector are so skilled they can instantly diagnose all the issues (which, mysteriously, always manage to conform to their personal prejudices) and propose a solution which usually involves a change to “the culture”.
Sigh…
The public sector is roughly as good (and as bad) at doing things as the private sector (with some minor variances, generally based on being able to offer market pay). The big difference is that mistakes in the public sector have to be declared in full, whilst in the private sector they can usually be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of accountants and auditors.
Mistakes in the private sector have to be declared in full, and if brushed under the carpet then the business can fail as a result with the shareholders taking full responsibility of their neglect.
Mistakes in the public sector can be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of colleagues, "civil servants" politicians and more being in denial of any wrongdoing with the taxpayer taking full responsibility of their neglect.
One of the biggest mistakes of the Coalition was getting rid of the Audit Commission but there are mechanisms such as the Local Government Ombudsman. Who, for instance, would you hold accountable for the disasters at Thurrock and Woking - the elected Members, Senior Officers, both, neither? I do agree the taxpayer does in the end finish up footing the bill but when some private sector companies fail (as we've seen), the Government ends up holding the baby.
Allister Heath once argued for all organisations (both public and private) to write in effect a Will describing what should happen if the business were to become bankrupt or insolvent outlining what should happen to creditors, employees, shareholders etc.
The taxpayer should never foot the bill for private sector companies failing and Gordon Brown agreeing to do so was a tremendous mistake he made.
No private business should ever be regarded as too big to fail.
Far better to collapse the entire global banking system than to rescue a "too big to fail" bank? That's what happened when the Fed declined to rescue Lehman Bros, and Britain stopped Barclays from buying it because that would mean HM Treasury guaranteeing an American bank.
Yes.
The Fed did the right thing in declining to rescue Lehman Bros.
Whether the Tories win an election again within a decade or not depends on how Labour handle the economy. Handle it reasonably well as New Labour did and like post 1997 the Tories can expect to be in Opposition for 10 years or more.
Handle it poorly as previous Labour governments did and the swingback to the Tories would be much more rapid. Remember after landslide defeat in 1945 the Tories were back in government in 1951, after losing power in 1964 they were back in power in 1970 ie within 10 years. Thatcher of course took the party back to government in 1979, just 5 years after Heath had lost the 1974 general elections to Wilson's Labour
Obviously anything's possible and one shouldn't rule out a Tory comeback, but it may be very optimistic about the hole the Tories are in with a large swathe of the public. Even a fairly dud Labour government could plausibly lay most of its economic difficulties at the door of the previous government's failures and a wasted decade.
You can see it in polling where the Tories figures among those of working age are pitiful (and that includes those in the past who'd be moving to vote solidly Tory). It may be in a doom loop whereby its route to recovery is blocked by the fact it's increasingly reliant on the wealthy old, so can't propose growth-friendly policies that irk them. But without doing so cater to a base with diminishing returns and further cement their reputation as the party of economic decline.
What we may witness is something like 1979, a generational sea change whereby for a lot of people of a certain generation, Labour gained a reputation for economic mismanagement and supporting a broken model it arguably hasn't shaken off with those of that age. With the one era of success coming when Blair and Brown made clear the party had moved away from that.
The next successful Tory leader may well have to prove that similarly, they're not wedded to the right of the party's failed approach, and their ostensibly liberal wing's weakness in appeasing them.
Remember by the end of 1980 even Michael Foot led Thatcher in the polls as unemployment rose, indeed Thatcher would probably have lost in 1983 had she not got unemployment as well as inflation down and cut strikes by then and won in the Falklands.
If economy is poor and frequent strikes and high inflation under a Starmer government even a rightwinger as Tory leader could wing much as the supposedly 'unelectable' Thatcher won as a rightwinger against the 1979 Labour government after only 5 years of the Tories in opposition
But that's kind of the point. Thatcher won in 83 and then 87 despite some serious difficulties and rough patches, in part because there had been an underlying shift in perceptions that Labour struggled to grasp and run with because a whole tranche of people had lost faith in its ideas.
Similarly, doubt Starmer's govt will have its issues, but even after a mediocre four or five years the Tories may face an uphill battle because they're simply toxic, like really toxic, to generations whose votes will only grow in importance.
And there's probably an underestimation of quite how toxic they are. I know people who in terms of income level and general "meh" attitude to politics should be Tory voters. They regard the party with a contempt usually reserved for those residing in high-security medical facilities, having spent the past decade making decisions that have made lives more difficult or just been insulting.
It's going to take a lot for the Tories to reverse that, in a way that's rather different I think to those conducive to a changing of perceptions or a quick return. Especially given they seem completely unwilling or unable to realise the depth of their predicament with those who aren't retired or getting there.
If you're under 50, you're roughly as likely to believe the moon landings are faked as plan to vote Tory. That's not a party with a bright future, unless it can address the reasons why and change. Clue: It's part economics, part their flagship political project being catastrophically unpopular in a way few policies ever are.
For now, add in rising unemployment, strikes, rising inflation and high interest rates and sluggish growth under a Starmer government and the middle aged swing voters ie those 35-65, would certainly consider voting Tory again even if under 35s voted Labour still.
Remember in 2019 the median age more voters voted Conservative than Labour was 39 not 59 and most Conservative voters were voting to get Brexit done as most of them had voted for it!
Of course the median age where people were more likely to live in their own home than rent was also around 39 too. Which is shockingly bad and nothing for you to be pleased with.
Set aside Brexit and one thing that Thatcher, Cameron, Osborne, Johnson and Gove all had in common is they all wanted to get more on the housing ladder, they understood that it is only because of people being able to move on in life that people become more Tory as they age, its not a simple automatic fact of ageing that happens.
Unfortunately Johnson's moderate housing reforms were defeated by the likes of May, cheered on by the likes of you, and then Sunak has torn up any measures to see more housing built to alleviate the crisis that is causing those in their 20s and 30s to have to rent.
As a result you and they deserve to be nowhere near office, and do not deserve to be elected.
Conservativism should be about ensuring as many people as possible can support themselves, paying for their own home, out of their own wages.
Unfortunately its been taken over by a cargo cult who believe that other people paying for their homes, out of their wages, is a better way to live.
Until the Conservatives return back to solid Conservative principles, they deserve to be in Opposition.
I have always wondered why the most anti development, the Greens are the ones the youngster seem to think deserve their vote. Got a lib dem councillor round our way who has opposed at every juncture the building of a couple of hundred houses by an RSL (registered social landlord = council housing) but in their efforts to become the local MP has 'affordable housing' as second on his list of priorities for the constituency.
This is a timeless feature of local politics - one of the ways to get elected is to jump on to some planning controversy. Every party is guilty of this but the greens/lib dems are consistently the worst offenders.
Extraordinarily short sighted comment. Most Greens and LDs aren't anti-development - what they are opposed to is developments purely designed to maximise profit for housebuilders and property developers. Simply chucking a huge block of flats or a vast estate of houses on a site without considering the impact on the surrounding communities and infrastructure seems entirely desireable.
Sure, but what this means is that the Government and its regulators should act to ensure that the housing market is tight, competitive, open to new entrants, and that profits are made by meeting consumer demand effectively. The should also act to ensure that new dwellings are beautiful, and accompanied by sufficient facilities. Markets need to be chopped, changed, and regulated to ensure that they're working properly - Adam Smith himself acknowledged this. Markets where a vast profit is being made but consumer demands aren't being met are dysfunctional. The energy market is another. That doesn't mean replacing the market with the Government as client - then you just get housing provided like the NHS.
Housing does not result in a need for facilities, people do.
People pay taxes for public facilities.
Public facilities should be paid for via those taxes, not via housing.
Private facilities should be paid for privately by people, not via housing.
I agree, but there does need to be space made for them within developments, so they need to be considered.
Why does there need to be space within developments? There needs to be space, but it can be adjacent to or near the developments not within them - and if it is for a public service it should be paid for via everyone not just the developments.
Public education falls upon the taxpayer, if a towns population doubles so a new school needs to be built then all taxpayers should chip in for the new school, not just those taxpayers who happen to be buying a new house while the others get to abdicate their responsibilities.
Because spaces need to be livable with in the long term - a housing development built around a village green with a cricket pavillion is infinitely preferable to row after row of rabbit hutches, and its acceptable to require developers to consider the communities who will live in the dwellings they're building.
It’s always heartwarming to see that some folk who have never worked in the public sector are so skilled they can instantly diagnose all the issues (which, mysteriously, always manage to conform to their personal prejudices) and propose a solution which usually involves a change to “the culture”.
Sigh…
The public sector is roughly as good (and as bad) at doing things as the private sector (with some minor variances, generally based on being able to offer market pay). The big difference is that mistakes in the public sector have to be declared in full, whilst in the private sector they can usually be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of accountants and auditors.
Mistakes in the private sector have to be declared in full, and if brushed under the carpet then the business can fail as a result with the shareholders taking full responsibility of their neglect.
Mistakes in the public sector can be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of colleagues, "civil servants" politicians and more being in denial of any wrongdoing with the taxpayer taking full responsibility of their neglect.
Did the bank shareholders take full responsibility of their neglect during the GFC?
Have the rail franchise companies taken full responsibility of their neglect?
Will the water company shareholders be taking full responsibility of their neglect, in the coming years?
I would love to have people with the forensic skill of say Ms Cyclefree as an MP. But you'd probably need to pay her c£250k for her to touch the job with a barge pole.
If you have skills and want to use them for the benefit of society there are lots of jobs going in the public sector. Obviously you have to take a pay cut but that is reflective of the fact you are changing direction to public service and most of the time there is a large pension. However I don't think becoming an MP has much appeal because of the grief that now comes with the work.
I think I'd hate working in the public sector and find it immensely frustrating.
Getting things done is frowned upon and would rapidly lead to me getting ostracised by colleagues.
I too think that you would.
My claim to fame, when I go to the grave, is to have achieved the biggest change to the way postmen and women are paid, since the 19th century. But it took six years of continual focus, cost the careers of two union general secretaries (one of whom went off to a second career and ended up as Home Secretary), and earned me neither fame, fortune or honour.
The skills and competencies needed to work in the public and private sector are more different than many people realise. The idiots are those who think that those that take them far in one sector can simply be dropped into a role in the other, and succeed.
It would be better if people in different roles understood the varying environments in which they work, and respect that different jobs have different challenges and require different skill sets.
En route to privatisation, the Royal Mail went out of its way to bring in a shedload of senior people from private industry (a prerequisite for which was having to pay hugely more by way of salary and bonus); I wish I was able to tell you some of the stories of how things sometimes turned out….
Vennells’ appearance before the statutory inquiry will be most instructive….perhaps.
You did well but, to me, your stories just highlight the problems of the culture.
Most people won't do the right thing, persistently, if it doesn't lead to fame, fortune or honour; they will play the politics instead.
I would love to have people with the forensic skill of say Ms Cyclefree as an MP. But you'd probably need to pay her c£250k for her to touch the job with a barge pole.
Ok the flip side, if you made the MP salary £250k you'd encourage people to do it just for the money if they come from a more modest background. Might get more cases like Sheffield Hallam after Clegg.
But you're right, there's plenty of well paid people who are not wealthy as such (e.g. no significant family wealth, big mortgage) that are never going to accept a significant pay cut to be an MP. I'm sure plenty would be good MPs, but then I'm sure there's plenty of other people with the potential who aren't in lucrative careers (or have family wealth such that they can afford to slum it, relatively speaking). It's just a matter of finding them that seems to be a struggle right now.
I’d actually rather have people willing to take on the role for reasons other than money.
Even if, at a stretch, paying a lot more encouraged new people to apply from outside the well established political routes into parliament, what makes anyone think they’d fare well when they run into the twisted world of Tory Association and Labour CLP selection committees?
Almost certainly, raise the pay and we would get the same monkeys, simply earning more.
Yup. Never been convinced of the argument for higher pay. To my mind there are two wider problems which results in a poor quality of MPs.
Firstly, the odd and very public nature of the job that holds you very personally accountable while having to tow the line and do stuff you really don't want to. It attracts the odd remarkable, altruistic person but often those who want to do it are the ultra-ambitious but mediocre. Paying more generally won't change that. It might even make matters worse as it'll be more attractive to those who are out for themselves, while no more so to the brilliant but unconvinced.
Then you have the real issue - MPs have to go through a selection process that favours those who cultivate party memberships. Certain parts of all parties are always going to favour a fool who has buttered up the right people, joined the right campaigns, and expressed the 'correct' opinions over a more talented candidate whose face is more of an awkward fit.
Whether the Tories win an election again within a decade or not depends on how Labour handle the economy. Handle it reasonably well as New Labour did and like post 1997 the Tories can expect to be in Opposition for 10 years or more.
Handle it poorly as previous Labour governments did and the swingback to the Tories would be much more rapid. Remember after landslide defeat in 1945 the Tories were back in government in 1951, after losing power in 1964 they were back in power in 1970 ie within 10 years. Thatcher of course took the party back to government in 1979, just 5 years after Heath had lost the 1974 general elections to Wilson's Labour
Obviously anything's possible and one shouldn't rule out a Tory comeback, but it may be very optimistic about the hole the Tories are in with a large swathe of the public. Even a fairly dud Labour government could plausibly lay most of its economic difficulties at the door of the previous government's failures and a wasted decade.
You can see it in polling where the Tories figures among those of working age are pitiful (and that includes those in the past who'd be moving to vote solidly Tory). It may be in a doom loop whereby its route to recovery is blocked by the fact it's increasingly reliant on the wealthy old, so can't propose growth-friendly policies that irk them. But without doing so cater to a base with diminishing returns and further cement their reputation as the party of economic decline.
What we may witness is something like 1979, a generational sea change whereby for a lot of people of a certain generation, Labour gained a reputation for economic mismanagement and supporting a broken model it arguably hasn't shaken off with those of that age. With the one era of success coming when Blair and Brown made clear the party had moved away from that.
The next successful Tory leader may well have to prove that similarly, they're not wedded to the right of the party's failed approach, and their ostensibly liberal wing's weakness in appeasing them.
Remember by the end of 1980 even Michael Foot led Thatcher in the polls as unemployment rose, indeed Thatcher would probably have lost in 1983 had she not got unemployment as well as inflation down and cut strikes by then and won in the Falklands.
If economy is poor and frequent strikes and high inflation under a Starmer government even a rightwinger as Tory leader could wing much as the supposedly 'unelectable' Thatcher won as a rightwinger against the 1979 Labour government after only 5 years of the Tories in opposition
But that's kind of the point. Thatcher won in 83 and then 87 despite some serious difficulties and rough patches, in part because there had been an underlying shift in perceptions that Labour struggled to grasp and run with because a whole tranche of people had lost faith in its ideas.
Similarly, doubt Starmer's govt will have its issues, but even after a mediocre four or five years the Tories may face an uphill battle because they're simply toxic, like really toxic, to generations whose votes will only grow in importance.
And there's probably an underestimation of quite how toxic they are. I know people who in terms of income level and general "meh" attitude to politics should be Tory voters. They regard the party with a contempt usually reserved for those residing in high-security medical facilities, having spent the past decade making decisions that have made lives more difficult or just been insulting.
It's going to take a lot for the Tories to reverse that, in a way that's rather different I think to those conducive to a changing of perceptions or a quick return. Especially given they seem completely unwilling or unable to realise the depth of their predicament with those who aren't retired or getting there.
If you're under 50, you're roughly as likely to believe the moon landings are faked as plan to vote Tory. That's not a party with a bright future, unless it can address the reasons why and change. Clue: It's part economics, part their flagship political project being catastrophically unpopular in a way few policies ever are.
For now, add in rising unemployment, strikes, rising inflation and high interest rates and sluggish growth under a Starmer government and the middle aged swing voters ie those 35-65, would certainly consider voting Tory again even if under 35s voted Labour still.
Remember in 2019 the median age more voters voted Conservative than Labour was 39 not 59 and most Conservative voters were voting to get Brexit done as most of them had voted for it!
Of course the median age where people were more likely to live in their own home than rent was also around 39 too. Which is shockingly bad and nothing for you to be pleased with.
Set aside Brexit and one thing that Thatcher, Cameron, Osborne, Johnson and Gove all had in common is they all wanted to get more on the housing ladder, they understood that it is only because of people being able to move on in life that people become more Tory as they age, its not a simple automatic fact of ageing that happens.
Unfortunately Johnson's moderate housing reforms were defeated by the likes of May, cheered on by the likes of you, and then Sunak has torn up any measures to see more housing built to alleviate the crisis that is causing those in their 20s and 30s to have to rent.
As a result you and they deserve to be nowhere near office, and do not deserve to be elected.
Conservativism should be about ensuring as many people as possible can support themselves, paying for their own home, out of their own wages.
Unfortunately its been taken over by a cargo cult who believe that other people paying for their homes, out of their wages, is a better way to live.
Until the Conservatives return back to solid Conservative principles, they deserve to be in Opposition.
I have always wondered why the most anti development, the Greens are the ones the youngster seem to think deserve their vote. Got a lib dem councillor round our way who has opposed at every juncture the building of a couple of hundred houses by an RSL (registered social landlord = council housing) but in their efforts to become the local MP has 'affordable housing' as second on his list of priorities for the constituency.
This is a timeless feature of local politics - one of the ways to get elected is to jump on to some planning controversy. Every party is guilty of this but the greens/lib dems are consistently the worst offenders.
Extraordinarily short sighted comment. Most Greens and LDs aren't anti-development - what they are opposed to is developments purely designed to maximise profit for housebuilders and property developers. Simply chucking a huge block of flats or a vast estate of houses on a site without considering the impact on the surrounding communities and infrastructure seems entirely desireable.
Sure, but what this means is that the Government and its regulators should act to ensure that the housing market is tight, competitive, open to new entrants, and that profits are made by meeting consumer demand effectively. The should also act to ensure that new dwellings are beautiful, and accompanied by sufficient facilities. Markets need to be chopped, changed, and regulated to ensure that they're working properly - Adam Smith himself acknowledged this. Markets where a vast profit is being made but consumer demands aren't being met are dysfunctional. The energy market is another. That doesn't mean replacing the market with the Government as client - then you just get housing provided like the NHS.
Housing does not result in a need for facilities, people do.
People pay taxes for public facilities.
Public facilities should be paid for via those taxes, not via housing.
Private facilities should be paid for privately by people, not via housing.
I agree, but there does need to be space made for them within developments, so they need to be considered.
Why does there need to be space within developments? There needs to be space, but it can be adjacent to or near the developments not within them - and if it is for a public service it should be paid for via everyone not just the developments.
Public education falls upon the taxpayer, if a towns population doubles so a new school needs to be built then all taxpayers should chip in for the new school, not just those taxpayers who happen to be buying a new house while the others get to abdicate their responsibilities.
Because spaces need to be livable with in the long term - a housing development built around a village green with a cricket pavillion is infinitely preferable to row after row of rabbit hutches, and its acceptable to require developers to consider the communities who will live in the dwellings they're building.
You think being near a village green and a cricket pavilion is preferable, so you can make that choice.
If people want a village green and a cricket pavilion let them pay to be near a village green and a cricket pavilion.
If people want rabbit hutches, let them make that choice too.
Why should the communities who live near the dwellings be taken into account at all? Its not their land.
It’s always heartwarming to see that some folk who have never worked in the public sector are so skilled they can instantly diagnose all the issues (which, mysteriously, always manage to conform to their personal prejudices) and propose a solution which usually involves a change to “the culture”.
Sigh…
The public sector is roughly as good (and as bad) at doing things as the private sector (with some minor variances, generally based on being able to offer market pay). The big difference is that mistakes in the public sector have to be declared in full, whilst in the private sector they can usually be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of accountants and auditors.
Mistakes in the private sector have to be declared in full, and if brushed under the carpet then the business can fail as a result with the shareholders taking full responsibility of their neglect.
Mistakes in the public sector can be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of colleagues, "civil servants" politicians and more being in denial of any wrongdoing with the taxpayer taking full responsibility of their neglect.
Did the bank shareholders take full responsibility of their neglect during the GFC?
Have the rail franchise companies taken full responsibility of their neglect?
Will the water company shareholders be taking full responsibility of their neglect, in the coming years?
Lehman Bros shareholders did, yes.
And RBS, HBOS, the rail franchises, the water companies?
It’s always heartwarming to see that some folk who have never worked in the public sector are so skilled they can instantly diagnose all the issues (which, mysteriously, always manage to conform to their personal prejudices) and propose a solution which usually involves a change to “the culture”.
Sigh…
The public sector is roughly as good (and as bad) at doing things as the private sector (with some minor variances, generally based on being able to offer market pay). The big difference is that mistakes in the public sector have to be declared in full, whilst in the private sector they can usually be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of accountants and auditors.
Mistakes in the private sector have to be declared in full, and if brushed under the carpet then the business can fail as a result with the shareholders taking full responsibility of their neglect.
Mistakes in the public sector can be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of colleagues, "civil servants" politicians and more being in denial of any wrongdoing with the taxpayer taking full responsibility of their neglect.
Did the bank shareholders take full responsibility of their neglect during the GFC?
Have the rail franchise companies taken full responsibility of their neglect?
Will the water company shareholders be taking full responsibility of their neglect, in the coming years?
Lehman Bros shareholders did, yes.
And RBS, HBOS, the rail franchises, the water companies?
RBS no because the Government chose to step in, which was wrong, and I criticised it.
I would be quite content to see the water companies shareholders wiped out if they've failed. Its not been resolved yet, but I would rather see a Lehman Bros situation than an RBS one. I oppose any bailout of the water firms.
It’s always heartwarming to see that some folk who have never worked in the public sector are so skilled they can instantly diagnose all the issues (which, mysteriously, always manage to conform to their personal prejudices) and propose a solution which usually involves a change to “the culture”.
Sigh…
The public sector is roughly as good (and as bad) at doing things as the private sector (with some minor variances, generally based on being able to offer market pay). The big difference is that mistakes in the public sector have to be declared in full, whilst in the public sector they can usually be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of accountants and auditors.
"The big difference is that mistakes in the public sector have to be declared in full, whilst in the public sector they can usually be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of accountants and auditors."
Didn't you mean the second "public sector" in that sentence to read "private sector"?
I would cite the Post Office as a riposte to that sentiment but you know that already. Plus listed companies have to make market announcement - I pile cite a few examples there too.
But the Post Office during the key period (and since) was run by people brought in for their private sector expertise, who didn’t really understand what they were managing.
What we are looking at is a tragic confluence of private sector people focused on their key objective whilst not interested, or understanding, the environment they are in, supported by a load of career long public sector people trained to follow instructions and otherwise keep their heads down.
That is part of the explanation and an important factor. But I was responding to the claim that because it was in the public sector it had to declare its mistakes in full.
That has certainly not happened in the PO's case. If anything, partly to avoid embarrassing Ministers or at least Ministerial decisions and partly to permit the privatisation of Royal Mail, the unfolding problems were kept as quiet as possible for as long as possible, even to the extent of misleading courts and Parliament.
My read is that when Vennells arrives she was genuinely willing to try and sort the situation out. But she surely unappreciated the scale of the disaster, assuming they were dealing with a small number of anomalies that could be resolved without diverting her from her course. Which is what she will have been told, up the line. But at some point - pretty obviously shortly before Second Sight were sacked - she realised the scale of the catastrophe she was sitting on.
We can all see what the right thing to have done would have been. And I’m sure that 95% of us would swear that that’s what we would have done, in her position.
She will have found herself in a room full of senior people - long serving PO managers who understood things a lot better than her, maybe someone senior from Fuitisu still sowing misinformation, and - critically - some top lawyers who must have thought that they had a better than 50:50 chance of making the catastrophe go away with some disgraceful legal shenanigans, bankrupting the other party before the case got to a conclusion. As we can see, from both Wallis’s detailed account and the summary version dramatised by ITV, they very nearly succeeded. As it is, most of the money won by Bates and others went on legal costs.
Both the financial position of her business and her own personal reputation would have been trashed, had she come clean at that point - already being on record at the BIS SC and in the media as defending the PO position. So she had the choice between being honest and facing certain ordure, or gambling that she might make the whole thing go away.
We all know what the morally right thing to do was. But I’d bet that significantly less than 95% of us would have opted for the right path, put in her position.
I suspect there was also a great deal of Ministerial pressure not to do anything to impact the Post Office's route to profits.
But I have been in the position, both in the public sector and in the private sector, of having to tell very senior people (Ministers and Chief Executives) that what they would like to do is unlawful. That takes guts. And any CEO who ignores such advice is a bloody fool. It's not just about doing the morally right thing to do: it's about the difference between legality and illegality.
Susan Crichton, the GC, left suddenly in 2013 - not long after the external legal advice pointing out the unsafeness of the convictions and the first Second Sight report. I would really like to know the truth of what led to her departure and what advice she was giving. And what her successors and predecessors were doing and saying.
The role of the GC can be immensely powerful in such circumstances - if they use that power wisely and have the independence of character to use it. Not all do. Some are frankly useless. My guess is that her successor was more intent on facilitating a "let's sweep it under the carpet" job.
That is one reason why I think the role of the lawyers here has been so shameful. They should have been gatekeepers preventing morally dubious and unlawful behaviour. Instead they appear to have facilitated and carried it out.
I can agree with you there. Yet while the inquiry, and subsequent events, is likely to pour a cauldron of excrement over a few senior Post Office folk, and a few of the more junior ones whose evidence has been myopic, and maybe even some of the hapless oppos from Fujitsu, I’d wager that the legal profession - including the courts that convicted people merely because they couldn’t prove their innocence - will get off relatively lightly.
I would love to have people with the forensic skill of say Ms Cyclefree as an MP. But you'd probably need to pay her c£250k for her to touch the job with a barge pole.
Ok the flip side, if you made the MP salary £250k you'd encourage people to do it just for the money if they come from a more modest background. Might get more cases like Sheffield Hallam after Clegg.
But you're right, there's plenty of well paid people who are not wealthy as such (e.g. no significant family wealth, big mortgage) that are never going to accept a significant pay cut to be an MP. I'm sure plenty would be good MPs, but then I'm sure there's plenty of other people with the potential who aren't in lucrative careers (or have family wealth such that they can afford to slum it, relatively speaking). It's just a matter of finding them that seems to be a struggle right now.
I’d actually rather have people willing to take on the role for reasons other than money.
Even if, at a stretch, paying a lot more encouraged new people to apply from outside the well established political routes into parliament, what makes anyone think they’d fare well when they run into the twisted world of Tory Association and Labour CLP selection committees?
Almost certainly, raise the pay and we would get the same monkeys, simply earning more.
Yup. Never been convinced of the argument for higher pay. To my mind there are two wider problems which results in a poor quality of MPs.
Firstly, the odd and very public nature of the job that holds you very personally accountable while having to tow the line and do stuff you really don't want to. It attracts the odd remarkable, altruistic person but often those who want to do it are the ultra-ambitious but mediocre. Paying more generally won't change that. It might even make matters worse as it'll be more attractive to those who are out for themselves, while no more so to the brilliant but unconvinced.
Then you have the real issue - MPs have to go through a selection process that favours those who cultivate party memberships. Certain parts of all parties are always going to favour a fool who has buttered up the right people, joined the right campaigns, and expressed the 'correct' opinions over a more talented candidate whose face is more of an awkward fit.
Or, of course, someone with the "gift of the gab" but possibly no other redeeming features.
I would love to have people with the forensic skill of say Ms Cyclefree as an MP. But you'd probably need to pay her c£250k for her to touch the job with a barge pole.
If you have skills and want to use them for the benefit of society there are lots of jobs going in the public sector. Obviously you have to take a pay cut but that is reflective of the fact you are changing direction to public service and most of the time there is a large pension. However I don't think becoming an MP has much appeal because of the grief that now comes with the work.
I think I'd hate working in the public sector and find it immensely frustrating.
Getting things done is frowned upon and would rapidly lead to me getting ostracised by colleagues.
I too think that you would.
My claim to fame, when I go to the grave, is to have achieved the biggest change to the way postmen and women are paid, since the 19th century. But it took six years of continual focus, cost the careers of two union general secretaries (one of whom went off to a second career and ended up as Home Secretary), and earned me neither fame, fortune or honour.
The skills and competencies needed to work in the public and private sector are more different than many people realise. The idiots are those who think that those that take them far in one sector can simply be dropped into a role in the other, and succeed.
It would be better if people in different roles understood the varying environments in which they work, and respect that different jobs have different challenges and require different skill sets.
En route to privatisation, the Royal Mail went out of its way to bring in a shedload of senior people from private industry (a prerequisite for which was having to pay hugely more by way of salary and bonus); I wish I was able to tell you some of the stories of how things sometimes turned out….
Vennells’ appearance before the statutory inquiry will be most instructive….perhaps.
You did well but, to me, your stories just highlight the problems of the culture.
Most people won't do the right thing, persistently, if it doesn't lead to fame, fortune or honour; they will play the politics instead.
It may be the last glimmers of Christmastide, but I suspect most people don't need that much persuasion to do the right thing themselves, quietly.
What's much harder is to stand up to thugs and bullies. Which means the bad people dominate the landscape.
And then the landscape changes in the image of the bad people...
It’s always heartwarming to see that some folk who have never worked in the public sector are so skilled they can instantly diagnose all the issues (which, mysteriously, always manage to conform to their personal prejudices) and propose a solution which usually involves a change to “the culture”.
Sigh…
The public sector is roughly as good (and as bad) at doing things as the private sector (with some minor variances, generally based on being able to offer market pay). The big difference is that mistakes in the public sector have to be declared in full, whilst in the private sector they can usually be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of accountants and auditors.
Mistakes in the private sector have to be declared in full, and if brushed under the carpet then the business can fail as a result with the shareholders taking full responsibility of their neglect.
Mistakes in the public sector can be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of colleagues, "civil servants" politicians and more being in denial of any wrongdoing with the taxpayer taking full responsibility of their neglect.
One of the biggest mistakes of the Coalition was getting rid of the Audit Commission but there are mechanisms such as the Local Government Ombudsman. Who, for instance, would you hold accountable for the disasters at Thurrock and Woking - the elected Members, Senior Officers, both, neither? I do agree the taxpayer does in the end finish up footing the bill but when some private sector companies fail (as we've seen), the Government ends up holding the baby.
Allister Heath once argued for all organisations (both public and private) to write in effect a Will describing what should happen if the business were to become bankrupt or insolvent outlining what should happen to creditors, employees, shareholders etc.
The taxpayer should never foot the bill for private sector companies failing and Gordon Brown agreeing to do so was a tremendous mistake he made.
No private business should ever be regarded as too big to fail.
Far better to collapse the entire global banking system than to rescue a "too big to fail" bank? That's what happened when the Fed declined to rescue Lehman Bros, and Britain stopped Barclays from buying it because that would mean HM Treasury guaranteeing an American bank.
Yes.
The Fed did the right thing in declining to rescue Lehman Bros.
I would love to have people with the forensic skill of say Ms Cyclefree as an MP. But you'd probably need to pay her c£250k for her to touch the job with a barge pole.
If you have skills and want to use them for the benefit of society there are lots of jobs going in the public sector. Obviously you have to take a pay cut but that is reflective of the fact you are changing direction to public service and most of the time there is a large pension. However I don't think becoming an MP has much appeal because of the grief that now comes with the work.
I think I'd hate working in the public sector and find it immensely frustrating.
Getting things done is frowned upon and would rapidly lead to me getting ostracised by colleagues.
I too think that you would.
My claim to fame, when I go to the grave, is to have achieved the biggest change to the way postmen and women are paid, since the 19th century. But it took six years of continual focus, cost the careers of two union general secretaries (one of whom went off to a second career and ended up as Home Secretary), and earned me neither fame, fortune or honour.
The skills and competencies needed to work in the public and private sector are more different than many people realise. The idiots are those who think that those that take them far in one sector can simply be dropped into a role in the other, and succeed.
It would be better if people in different roles understood the varying environments in which they work, and respect that different jobs have different challenges and require different skill sets.
En route to privatisation, the Royal Mail went out of its way to bring in a shedload of senior people from private industry (a prerequisite for which was having to pay hugely more by way of salary and bonus); I wish I was able to tell you some of the stories of how things sometimes turned out….
Vennells’ appearance before the statutory inquiry will be most instructive….perhaps.
You did well but, to me, your stories just highlight the problems of the culture.
Most people won't do the right thing, persistently, if it doesn't lead to fame, fortune or honour; they will play the politics instead.
Absolutely, but if you have the right twisted mindset, that’s the fun of it.
It’s been that way for centuries, indeed for millennia. The trouble with you simple private sector folk is that you are usually so badly read.
Floundering Rishi Sunak outspending Donald Trump on Facebook ads in desperate bid to cling on to power
Rishi Sunak outspending Donald Trump on Facebook ads in desperate bid to stay in power It comes amid warnings that the Tories doubling the spending limits ahead of elections risked damaging the transparency of political donations and public confidence in elections https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/rishi-sunak-outspending-donald-trump-31822218
Social media does not have to stop for Christmas. January 2025.
I find it utterly remarkable people are still repeating this bullshit lie that public services are an externality of construction of housing.
If that were the case, we'd have world class public services right now as our construction of housing has been trailing population growth so there is much less of an externality happening proportionately.
However in the real world public services don't service houses, and are not an externality. They service people, which is why people need to pay taxes.
If the population grows we need more houses and more public services, because we have more people in the public than we did in the past. Blocking the development of houses does not alleviate public services, because the public is still there whether the houses are or not. Public services are not an externality of housing and the two need to be completely divorced from each other - public services are there for people, whether those people are crammed into too few houses or not.
Whether the Tories win an election again within a decade or not depends on how Labour handle the economy. Handle it reasonably well as New Labour did and like post 1997 the Tories can expect to be in Opposition for 10 years or more.
Handle it poorly as previous Labour governments did and the swingback to the Tories would be much more rapid. Remember after landslide defeat in 1945 the Tories were back in government in 1951, after losing power in 1964 they were back in power in 1970 ie within 10 years. Thatcher of course took the party back to government in 1979, just 5 years after Heath had lost the 1974 general elections to Wilson's Labour
Obviously anything's possible and one shouldn't rule out a Tory comeback, but it may be very optimistic about the hole the Tories are in with a large swathe of the public. Even a fairly dud Labour government could plausibly lay most of its economic difficulties at the door of the previous government's failures and a wasted decade.
You can see it in polling where the Tories figures among those of working age are pitiful (and that includes those in the past who'd be moving to vote solidly Tory). It may be in a doom loop whereby its route to recovery is blocked by the fact it's increasingly reliant on the wealthy old, so can't propose growth-friendly policies that irk them. But without doing so cater to a base with diminishing returns and further cement their reputation as the party of economic decline.
What we may witness is something like 1979, a generational sea change whereby for a lot of people of a certain generation, Labour gained a reputation for economic mismanagement and supporting a broken model it arguably hasn't shaken off with those of that age. With the one era of success coming when Blair and Brown made clear the party had moved away from that.
The next successful Tory leader may well have to prove that similarly, they're not wedded to the right of the party's failed approach, and their ostensibly liberal wing's weakness in appeasing them.
Remember by the end of 1980 even Michael Foot led Thatcher in the polls as unemployment rose, indeed Thatcher would probably have lost in 1983 had she not got unemployment as well as inflation down and cut strikes by then and won in the Falklands.
If economy is poor and frequent strikes and high inflation under a Starmer government even a rightwinger as Tory leader could wing much as the supposedly 'unelectable' Thatcher won as a rightwinger against the 1979 Labour government after only 5 years of the Tories in opposition
But that's kind of the point. Thatcher won in 83 and then 87 despite some serious difficulties and rough patches, in part because there had been an underlying shift in perceptions that Labour struggled to grasp and run with because a whole tranche of people had lost faith in its ideas.
Similarly, doubt Starmer's govt will have its issues, but even after a mediocre four or five years the Tories may face an uphill battle because they're simply toxic, like really toxic, to generations whose votes will only grow in importance.
And there's probably an underestimation of quite how toxic they are. I know people who in terms of income level and general "meh" attitude to politics should be Tory voters. They regard the party with a contempt usually reserved for those residing in high-security medical facilities, having spent the past decade making decisions that have made lives more difficult or just been insulting.
It's going to take a lot for the Tories to reverse that, in a way that's rather different I think to those conducive to a changing of perceptions or a quick return. Especially given they seem completely unwilling or unable to realise the depth of their predicament with those who aren't retired or getting there.
If you're under 50, you're roughly as likely to believe the moon landings are faked as plan to vote Tory. That's not a party with a bright future, unless it can address the reasons why and change. Clue: It's part economics, part their flagship political project being catastrophically unpopular in a way few policies ever are.
For now, add in rising unemployment, strikes, rising inflation and high interest rates and sluggish growth under a Starmer government and the middle aged swing voters ie those 35-65, would certainly consider voting Tory again even if under 35s voted Labour still.
Remember in 2019 the median age more voters voted Conservative than Labour was 39 not 59 and most Conservative voters were voting to get Brexit done as most of them had voted for it!
Of course the median age where people were more likely to live in their own home than rent was also around 39 too. Which is shockingly bad and nothing for you to be pleased with.
Set aside Brexit and one thing that Thatcher, Cameron, Osborne, Johnson and Gove all had in common is they all wanted to get more on the housing ladder, they understood that it is only because of people being able to move on in life that people become more Tory as they age, its not a simple automatic fact of ageing that happens.
Unfortunately Johnson's moderate housing reforms were defeated by the likes of May, cheered on by the likes of you, and then Sunak has torn up any measures to see more housing built to alleviate the crisis that is causing those in their 20s and 30s to have to rent.
As a result you and they deserve to be nowhere near office, and do not deserve to be elected.
Conservativism should be about ensuring as many people as possible can support themselves, paying for their own home, out of their own wages.
Unfortunately its been taken over by a cargo cult who believe that other people paying for their homes, out of their wages, is a better way to live.
Until the Conservatives return back to solid Conservative principles, they deserve to be in Opposition.
I have always wondered why the most anti development, the Greens are the ones the youngster seem to think deserve their vote. Got a lib dem councillor round our way who has opposed at every juncture the building of a couple of hundred houses by an RSL (registered social landlord = council housing) but in their efforts to become the local MP has 'affordable housing' as second on his list of priorities for the constituency.
This is a timeless feature of local politics - one of the ways to get elected is to jump on to some planning controversy. Every party is guilty of this but the greens/lib dems are consistently the worst offenders.
Extraordinarily short sighted comment. Most Greens and LDs aren't anti-development - what they are opposed to is developments purely designed to maximise profit for housebuilders and property developers. Simply chucking a huge block of flats or a vast estate of houses on a site without considering the impact on the surrounding communities and infrastructure seems entirely desireable.
Sure, but what this means is that the Government and its regulators should act to ensure that the housing market is tight, competitive, open to new entrants, and that profits are made by meeting consumer demand effectively. The should also act to ensure that new dwellings are beautiful, and accompanied by sufficient facilities. Markets need to be chopped, changed, and regulated to ensure that they're working properly - Adam Smith himself acknowledged this. Markets where a vast profit is being made but consumer demands aren't being met are dysfunctional. The energy market is another. That doesn't mean replacing the market with the Government as client - then you just get housing provided like the NHS.
Housing does not result in a need for facilities, people do.
People pay taxes for public facilities.
Public facilities should be paid for via those taxes, not via housing.
Private facilities should be paid for privately by people, not via housing.
I agree, but there does need to be space made for them within developments, so they need to be considered.
Why does there need to be space within developments? There needs to be space, but it can be adjacent to or near the developments not within them - and if it is for a public service it should be paid for via everyone not just the developments.
Public education falls upon the taxpayer, if a towns population doubles so a new school needs to be built then all taxpayers should chip in for the new school, not just those taxpayers who happen to be buying a new house while the others get to abdicate their responsibilities.
Because spaces need to be livable with in the long term - a housing development built around a village green with a cricket pavillion is infinitely preferable to row after row of rabbit hutches, and its acceptable to require developers to consider the communities who will live in the dwellings they're building.
You think being near a village green and a cricket pavilion is preferable, so you can make that choice.
If people want a village green and a cricket pavilion let them pay to be near a village green and a cricket pavilion.
If people want rabbit hutches, let them make that choice too.
Why should the communities who live near the dwellings be taken into account at all? Its not their land.
You seem to have an issue with any regulation of the market - a nuance-free view that I would suggest is based on a partial reading of Adam Smith's work.
Do you also think that companies should be allowed to form monopolies or fix prices with other companies at the expense of consumers?
If a Tory MP can earn more outside the Commons in the law or a company board or as a lobbyist maybe they will jump before pushed if in a marginal seat or if in a safe seat and they were a Minister or had Cabinet potential and the prospect of Opposition doesn't appeal, if not they probably won't.
The type of MP who probably won't is the likes of this poor redwall Conservative MP mentioned in Dorries' book first elected in 2019.
Its certainly true that MPs are grossly overpaid, and many of them will come back down to Earth with a bump post-defeat.
However I don't have a violin tiny enough for any sympathy for them, they've reaped the benefits of being overpaid for years and if they lose its because they collectively have not done a good job.
MPs should be paid much closer to the median salary, not something like the 98th percentile which it is currently.
MPs are grossly overpaid if you want only slightly above average intellect and career wise candidates as you clearly do.
If you want the top 1% intellect and career wise to consider a political career however MPs are significantly underpaid. They aren't going to take a pay cut and considerable media and social media intrusion just for the outside chance of a Cabinet post and more likely spending much of the time on the backbenches.
So we will get more of the MPs we deserve, increasingly party hacks and ex councillors or parliamentary researchers
Does it ever occur to people who advance this argument that people who make a god out of money are perhaps not the kind of people we should be filling the legislature with?
It doesn't have to be billionaires or multi millionaires, even criminal QCs or partners in commercial law firms, consultants, partners in GP practices, national newspaper columnists and news readers and headmasters of secondary schools earn more than MPs do
And of course so they should too.
Partners, headmasters etc are at the top of their career - the PM as head politician should be paid comparable to them.
Entry level backbenchers as junior politicians should be paid comparable to newly qualified teachers, junior doctors etc.
The fact Councillors are grossly overpaid doesn't mean that we should pay MPs more either, it means we should pay Councillors less too.
The average councillor earns less than minimum wage in allowances, it is only at Cabinet level in County or Borough councils you earn significantly more
Good evening
I remember the time when they were not paid but gave their services to the community entirely voluntarily and they were far better than most councillors elected today
The House chock-a-block full of Jacob Rees Moggs. At least Johnson couldn't have afforded to live on a tutelage wage.
We actually had a group of very capable lib dem councillors, one of whom was a friend, and they were as far away from the idiotic JRM then you could get
I'm not quite sure why people heap so much hate on JRM, he presents himself with courtesy and politeness pretty much most of the time. His 'gaffs' where more about his politically enemies deliberately interpreting his words in bad faith. He does seem from a different age, but so what.
He showed guts when somebody disrupted a meeting.
I can't remember any other MP, though, who has displayed such contempt for the Commons as JRM did when he lay down on the front bench and pretended to snooze while a Labour colleague was speaking. Bercow fawned to him and doubtless thought he was real "class". Had it been an MP from another party, or even Boris Johnson, he'd have bawled them out.
JRM has also played up to the whole Mr Snooty cartoon character thing, e.g. saying "floccinaucinihilipilification" as if it made him look clever when it was little more than taking the piss.
Demeanour suggests he thinks he can do what he likes, given pater edited the Times for 14 years. Am guessing he's utter rubbish at helping constituents who aren't rich.
It’s always heartwarming to see that some folk who have never worked in the public sector are so skilled they can instantly diagnose all the issues (which, mysteriously, always manage to conform to their personal prejudices) and propose a solution which usually involves a change to “the culture”.
Sigh…
The public sector is roughly as good (and as bad) at doing things as the private sector (with some minor variances, generally based on being able to offer market pay). The big difference is that mistakes in the public sector have to be declared in full, whilst in the private sector they can usually be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of accountants and auditors.
Mistakes in the private sector have to be declared in full, and if brushed under the carpet then the business can fail as a result with the shareholders taking full responsibility of their neglect.
Mistakes in the public sector can be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of colleagues, "civil servants" politicians and more being in denial of any wrongdoing with the taxpayer taking full responsibility of their neglect.
One of the biggest mistakes of the Coalition was getting rid of the Audit Commission but there are mechanisms such as the Local Government Ombudsman. Who, for instance, would you hold accountable for the disasters at Thurrock and Woking - the elected Members, Senior Officers, both, neither? I do agree the taxpayer does in the end finish up footing the bill but when some private sector companies fail (as we've seen), the Government ends up holding the baby.
Allister Heath once argued for all organisations (both public and private) to write in effect a Will describing what should happen if the business were to become bankrupt or insolvent outlining what should happen to creditors, employees, shareholders etc.
The taxpayer should never foot the bill for private sector companies failing and Gordon Brown agreeing to do so was a tremendous mistake he made.
No private business should ever be regarded as too big to fail.
Far better to collapse the entire global banking system than to rescue a "too big to fail" bank? That's what happened when the Fed declined to rescue Lehman Bros, and Britain stopped Barclays from buying it because that would mean HM Treasury guaranteeing an American bank.
Yes.
The Fed did the right thing in declining to rescue Lehman Bros.
Which precipitated the Global Financial Crisis.
No, crises happen. Shit happens.
People make mistakes and when those mistakes come to light, crises are a good way of clearing out the trash - which by that point Lehman Bros was.
Trying to prevent crises is as foolhardy as trying to stop winter.
Two further points on matters housing and planning:
1) The truth is developers and planners do work together now - the notion it's an entirely adversarial system perpetrated by some on here is just wrong. A developer will go and talk to the planning authority and seek to agree in advance what kind of development would be acceptable to the authority within the context of the existing Local Plan. If the densities and types of properties acceptable to the authority will ensure a good return for the developer that's fine. There's also considerations of levels of "affordable" housing, rental housing, parking and other traffic management issues.
A lot happens long before any application is submitted - all the preparation won't guarantee acceptance from nearby residents (though sensible developers court them in advance with public meetings explaining what is being proposed) and local councillors can be unpredictable but it's a far more concensual approach than is widely believed.
2) Anecdotally, I've heard from developers they are struggling to sell new flats and houses - some are holding off believing mortgage rates and inflation will be lower in the summer which is leaving unsold flats and houses. Sometimes the supply and demand equation isn't that simple.
Whether the Tories win an election again within a decade or not depends on how Labour handle the economy. Handle it reasonably well as New Labour did and like post 1997 the Tories can expect to be in Opposition for 10 years or more.
Handle it poorly as previous Labour governments did and the swingback to the Tories would be much more rapid. Remember after landslide defeat in 1945 the Tories were back in government in 1951, after losing power in 1964 they were back in power in 1970 ie within 10 years. Thatcher of course took the party back to government in 1979, just 5 years after Heath had lost the 1974 general elections to Wilson's Labour
Obviously anything's possible and one shouldn't rule out a Tory comeback, but it may be very optimistic about the hole the Tories are in with a large swathe of the public. Even a fairly dud Labour government could plausibly lay most of its economic difficulties at the door of the previous government's failures and a wasted decade.
You can see it in polling where the Tories figures among those of working age are pitiful (and that includes those in the past who'd be moving to vote solidly Tory). It may be in a doom loop whereby its route to recovery is blocked by the fact it's increasingly reliant on the wealthy old, so can't propose growth-friendly policies that irk them. But without doing so cater to a base with diminishing returns and further cement their reputation as the party of economic decline.
What we may witness is something like 1979, a generational sea change whereby for a lot of people of a certain generation, Labour gained a reputation for economic mismanagement and supporting a broken model it arguably hasn't shaken off with those of that age. With the one era of success coming when Blair and Brown made clear the party had moved away from that.
The next successful Tory leader may well have to prove that similarly, they're not wedded to the right of the party's failed approach, and their ostensibly liberal wing's weakness in appeasing them.
Remember by the end of 1980 even Michael Foot led Thatcher in the polls as unemployment rose, indeed Thatcher would probably have lost in 1983 had she not got unemployment as well as inflation down and cut strikes by then and won in the Falklands.
If economy is poor and frequent strikes and high inflation under a Starmer government even a rightwinger as Tory leader could wing much as the supposedly 'unelectable' Thatcher won as a rightwinger against the 1979 Labour government after only 5 years of the Tories in opposition
But that's kind of the point. Thatcher won in 83 and then 87 despite some serious difficulties and rough patches, in part because there had been an underlying shift in perceptions that Labour struggled to grasp and run with because a whole tranche of people had lost faith in its ideas.
Similarly, doubt Starmer's govt will have its issues, but even after a mediocre four or five years the Tories may face an uphill battle because they're simply toxic, like really toxic, to generations whose votes will only grow in importance.
And there's probably an underestimation of quite how toxic they are. I know people who in terms of income level and general "meh" attitude to politics should be Tory voters. They regard the party with a contempt usually reserved for those residing in high-security medical facilities, having spent the past decade making decisions that have made lives more difficult or just been insulting.
It's going to take a lot for the Tories to reverse that, in a way that's rather different I think to those conducive to a changing of perceptions or a quick return. Especially given they seem completely unwilling or unable to realise the depth of their predicament with those who aren't retired or getting there.
If you're under 50, you're roughly as likely to believe the moon landings are faked as plan to vote Tory. That's not a party with a bright future, unless it can address the reasons why and change. Clue: It's part economics, part their flagship political project being catastrophically unpopular in a way few policies ever are.
For now, add in rising unemployment, strikes, rising inflation and high interest rates and sluggish growth under a Starmer government and the middle aged swing voters ie those 35-65, would certainly consider voting Tory again even if under 35s voted Labour still.
Remember in 2019 the median age more voters voted Conservative than Labour was 39 not 59 and most Conservative voters were voting to get Brexit done as most of them had voted for it!
Of course the median age where people were more likely to live in their own home than rent was also around 39 too. Which is shockingly bad and nothing for you to be pleased with.
Set aside Brexit and one thing that Thatcher, Cameron, Osborne, Johnson and Gove all had in common is they all wanted to get more on the housing ladder, they understood that it is only because of people being able to move on in life that people become more Tory as they age, its not a simple automatic fact of ageing that happens.
Unfortunately Johnson's moderate housing reforms were defeated by the likes of May, cheered on by the likes of you, and then Sunak has torn up any measures to see more housing built to alleviate the crisis that is causing those in their 20s and 30s to have to rent.
As a result you and they deserve to be nowhere near office, and do not deserve to be elected.
Conservativism should be about ensuring as many people as possible can support themselves, paying for their own home, out of their own wages.
Unfortunately its been taken over by a cargo cult who believe that other people paying for their homes, out of their wages, is a better way to live.
Until the Conservatives return back to solid Conservative principles, they deserve to be in Opposition.
I have always wondered why the most anti development, the Greens are the ones the youngster seem to think deserve their vote. Got a lib dem councillor round our way who has opposed at every juncture the building of a couple of hundred houses by an RSL (registered social landlord = council housing) but in their efforts to become the local MP has 'affordable housing' as second on his list of priorities for the constituency.
This is a timeless feature of local politics - one of the ways to get elected is to jump on to some planning controversy. Every party is guilty of this but the greens/lib dems are consistently the worst offenders.
Extraordinarily short sighted comment. Most Greens and LDs aren't anti-development - what they are opposed to is developments purely designed to maximise profit for housebuilders and property developers. Simply chucking a huge block of flats or a vast estate of houses on a site without considering the impact on the surrounding communities and infrastructure seems entirely desireable.
Sure, but what this means is that the Government and its regulators should act to ensure that the housing market is tight, competitive, open to new entrants, and that profits are made by meeting consumer demand effectively. The should also act to ensure that new dwellings are beautiful, and accompanied by sufficient facilities. Markets need to be chopped, changed, and regulated to ensure that they're working properly - Adam Smith himself acknowledged this. Markets where a vast profit is being made but consumer demands aren't being met are dysfunctional. The energy market is another. That doesn't mean replacing the market with the Government as client - then you just get housing provided like the NHS.
Housing does not result in a need for facilities, people do.
People pay taxes for public facilities.
Public facilities should be paid for via those taxes, not via housing.
Private facilities should be paid for privately by people, not via housing.
I agree, but there does need to be space made for them within developments, so they need to be considered.
Why does there need to be space within developments? There needs to be space, but it can be adjacent to or near the developments not within them - and if it is for a public service it should be paid for via everyone not just the developments.
Public education falls upon the taxpayer, if a towns population doubles so a new school needs to be built then all taxpayers should chip in for the new school, not just those taxpayers who happen to be buying a new house while the others get to abdicate their responsibilities.
Because spaces need to be livable with in the long term - a housing development built around a village green with a cricket pavillion is infinitely preferable to row after row of rabbit hutches, and its acceptable to require developers to consider the communities who will live in the dwellings they're building.
You think being near a village green and a cricket pavilion is preferable, so you can make that choice.
If people want a village green and a cricket pavilion let them pay to be near a village green and a cricket pavilion.
If people want rabbit hutches, let them make that choice too.
Why should the communities who live near the dwellings be taken into account at all? Its not their land.
You seem to have an issue with any regulation of the market - a nuance-free view that I would suggest is based on a partial reading of Adam Smith's work.
Do you also think that companies should be allowed to form monopolies or fix prices with other companies at the expense of consumers?
No.
I am in favour of limited regulation, I'm a libertarian not an anarchist.
But I'm also in favour primarily of people taking responsibility for their own actions and their own choices.
I like cricket, but I know I'm in a minority for that. If I want to live near a cricket green since I'm a cricket fan, that's my choice. If someone else doesn't as they're not one, that's their choice too. Someone else my prefer to live near a rugby league ground, or a football ground, or a cinema, or a theatre. The world and the country is diverse in its interests and people should get to choose what suits them and live somewhere that suits them.
But population growth is happening and has happened whether construction keeps up or not. Public services exist to service the public, the key is in the name, and the whole public needs to take responsibility for that - not take the benefits of immigration then outsource the costs onto young people who need somewhere to live.
Rishi Sunak’s new pensions minister has systematically breached parliamentary expenses rules by using taxpayers’ money for political purposes, it can be revealed today.
The expenses regulator has referred Paul Maynard for investigation after he claimed back money from the public purse for Conservative Party business.
The breaches include producing overtly political materials promoting the party and his re-election. Since his election in 2010, Maynard has spent £106,000 on printing and related costs — more than any Tory MP on record.
It’s always heartwarming to see that some folk who have never worked in the public sector are so skilled they can instantly diagnose all the issues (which, mysteriously, always manage to conform to their personal prejudices) and propose a solution which usually involves a change to “the culture”.
Sigh…
The public sector is roughly as good (and as bad) at doing things as the private sector (with some minor variances, generally based on being able to offer market pay). The big difference is that mistakes in the public sector have to be declared in full, whilst in the private sector they can usually be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of accountants and auditors.
Mistakes in the private sector have to be declared in full, and if brushed under the carpet then the business can fail as a result with the shareholders taking full responsibility of their neglect.
Mistakes in the public sector can be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of colleagues, "civil servants" politicians and more being in denial of any wrongdoing with the taxpayer taking full responsibility of their neglect.
One of the biggest mistakes of the Coalition was getting rid of the Audit Commission but there are mechanisms such as the Local Government Ombudsman. Who, for instance, would you hold accountable for the disasters at Thurrock and Woking - the elected Members, Senior Officers, both, neither? I do agree the taxpayer does in the end finish up footing the bill but when some private sector companies fail (as we've seen), the Government ends up holding the baby.
Allister Heath once argued for all organisations (both public and private) to write in effect a Will describing what should happen if the business were to become bankrupt or insolvent outlining what should happen to creditors, employees, shareholders etc.
The taxpayer should never foot the bill for private sector companies failing and Gordon Brown agreeing to do so was a tremendous mistake he made.
No private business should ever be regarded as too big to fail.
Far better to collapse the entire global banking system than to rescue a "too big to fail" bank? That's what happened when the Fed declined to rescue Lehman Bros, and Britain stopped Barclays from buying it because that would mean HM Treasury guaranteeing an American bank.
Yes.
The Fed did the right thing in declining to rescue Lehman Bros.
Which precipitated the Global Financial Crisis.
No, crises happen. Shit happens.
People make mistakes and when those mistakes come to light, crises are a good way of clearing out the trash - which by that point Lehman Bros was.
Trying to prevent crises is as foolhardy as trying to stop winter.
We can't stop winter but we can take dress warmly, take shelter and heat our homes. The problem could not be isolated to one bank. The resultant Global Financial Crisis cost trillions of dollars.
It’s always heartwarming to see that some folk who have never worked in the public sector are so skilled they can instantly diagnose all the issues (which, mysteriously, always manage to conform to their personal prejudices) and propose a solution which usually involves a change to “the culture”.
Sigh…
The public sector is roughly as good (and as bad) at doing things as the private sector (with some minor variances, generally based on being able to offer market pay). The big difference is that mistakes in the public sector have to be declared in full, whilst in the private sector they can usually be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of accountants and auditors.
Mistakes in the private sector have to be declared in full, and if brushed under the carpet then the business can fail as a result with the shareholders taking full responsibility of their neglect.
Mistakes in the public sector can be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of colleagues, "civil servants" politicians and more being in denial of any wrongdoing with the taxpayer taking full responsibility of their neglect.
One of the biggest mistakes of the Coalition was getting rid of the Audit Commission but there are mechanisms such as the Local Government Ombudsman. Who, for instance, would you hold accountable for the disasters at Thurrock and Woking - the elected Members, Senior Officers, both, neither? I do agree the taxpayer does in the end finish up footing the bill but when some private sector companies fail (as we've seen), the Government ends up holding the baby.
Allister Heath once argued for all organisations (both public and private) to write in effect a Will describing what should happen if the business were to become bankrupt or insolvent outlining what should happen to creditors, employees, shareholders etc.
The taxpayer should never foot the bill for private sector companies failing and Gordon Brown agreeing to do so was a tremendous mistake he made.
No private business should ever be regarded as too big to fail.
Far better to collapse the entire global banking system than to rescue a "too big to fail" bank? That's what happened when the Fed declined to rescue Lehman Bros, and Britain stopped Barclays from buying it because that would mean HM Treasury guaranteeing an American bank.
Yes.
The Fed did the right thing in declining to rescue Lehman Bros.
Which precipitated the Global Financial Crisis.
No, crises happen. Shit happens.
People make mistakes and when those mistakes come to light, crises are a good way of clearing out the trash - which by that point Lehman Bros was.
Trying to prevent crises is as foolhardy as trying to stop winter.
We can't stop winter but we can take dress warmly, take shelter and heat our homes. The problem could not be isolated to one bank. The resultant Global Financial Crisis cost trillions of dollars.
Yes and that cost should have fallen on the shareholders of the banks that hadn't done their due dilligence.
The taxpayer should not have born the cost of private institutions failures. We had a system of protected accounts and protected account limits but all that was wiped out with the taxpayer giving a blank cheque, unnecessarily.
Iceland let its banks fail. The state stepped in to keep the operation of banking systems ongoing but did not bail out shareholders or unprotected accounts.
I would love to have people with the forensic skill of say Ms Cyclefree as an MP. But you'd probably need to pay her c£250k for her to touch the job with a barge pole.
If you have skills and want to use them for the benefit of society there are lots of jobs going in the public sector. Obviously you have to take a pay cut but that is reflective of the fact you are changing direction to public service and most of the time there is a large pension. However I don't think becoming an MP has much appeal because of the grief that now comes with the work.
I think I'd hate working in the public sector and find it immensely frustrating.
Getting things done is frowned upon and would rapidly lead to me getting ostracised by colleagues.
You're simply wrong. In the public sector, getting things done is not frowned upon: it is celebrated and valued, and tends to lead to rapid promotion. I speak from extensive experience.
Problem-solving in order to get things done in complex public sector organisations is intellectually challenging, and hugely rewarding as it leads to improved services for the public.
The other thing is that in public service sometimes the best achievements are the things you stopped happening, the disasters averted/avoided, which doesn't fit in to the popular narrative of it all being about delivery. In the simplest sense it is easy to JFDI - push something through that has massive political momentum behind it, bask in the limelight and take the credit for it - but actually everyone around you knows it is a dud, and they are all laughing at you behind your back.
In my experience people can come in from the private sector and figure this out - some adapt and others don't.
I would love to have people with the forensic skill of say Ms Cyclefree as an MP. But you'd probably need to pay her c£250k for her to touch the job with a barge pole.
If you have skills and want to use them for the benefit of society there are lots of jobs going in the public sector. Obviously you have to take a pay cut but that is reflective of the fact you are changing direction to public service and most of the time there is a large pension. However I don't think becoming an MP has much appeal because of the grief that now comes with the work.
I think I'd hate working in the public sector and find it immensely frustrating.
Getting things done is frowned upon and would rapidly lead to me getting ostracised by colleagues.
You're simply wrong. In the public sector, getting things done is not frowned upon: it is celebrated and valued, and tends to lead to rapid promotion. I speak from extensive experience.
Problem-solving in order to get things done in complex public sector organisations is intellectually challenging, and hugely rewarding as it leads to improved services for the public.
Which bit of the public sector do you work in? Because in mine zero f**ks are given even if you solved nuclear fusion on your own time over a weekend then gave it to them.
It’s always heartwarming to see that some folk who have never worked in the public sector are so skilled they can instantly diagnose all the issues (which, mysteriously, always manage to conform to their personal prejudices) and propose a solution which usually involves a change to “the culture”.
Sigh…
The public sector is roughly as good (and as bad) at doing things as the private sector (with some minor variances, generally based on being able to offer market pay). The big difference is that mistakes in the public sector have to be declared in full, whilst in the private sector they can usually be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of accountants and auditors.
Mistakes in the private sector have to be declared in full, and if brushed under the carpet then the business can fail as a result with the shareholders taking full responsibility of their neglect.
Mistakes in the public sector can be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of colleagues, "civil servants" politicians and more being in denial of any wrongdoing with the taxpayer taking full responsibility of their neglect.
One of the biggest mistakes of the Coalition was getting rid of the Audit Commission but there are mechanisms such as the Local Government Ombudsman. Who, for instance, would you hold accountable for the disasters at Thurrock and Woking - the elected Members, Senior Officers, both, neither? I do agree the taxpayer does in the end finish up footing the bill but when some private sector companies fail (as we've seen), the Government ends up holding the baby.
Allister Heath once argued for all organisations (both public and private) to write in effect a Will describing what should happen if the business were to become bankrupt or insolvent outlining what should happen to creditors, employees, shareholders etc.
The taxpayer should never foot the bill for private sector companies failing and Gordon Brown agreeing to do so was a tremendous mistake he made.
No private business should ever be regarded as too big to fail.
Far better to collapse the entire global banking system than to rescue a "too big to fail" bank? That's what happened when the Fed declined to rescue Lehman Bros, and Britain stopped Barclays from buying it because that would mean HM Treasury guaranteeing an American bank.
Yes.
The Fed did the right thing in declining to rescue Lehman Bros.
Which precipitated the Global Financial Crisis.
No, crises happen. Shit happens.
People make mistakes and when those mistakes come to light, crises are a good way of clearing out the trash - which by that point Lehman Bros was.
Trying to prevent crises is as foolhardy as trying to stop winter.
We can't stop winter but we can take dress warmly, take shelter and heat our homes. The problem could not be isolated to one bank. The resultant Global Financial Crisis cost trillions of dollars.
Yes and that cost should have fallen on the shareholders of the banks that hadn't done their due dilligence.
The taxpayer should not have born the cost of private institutions failures. We had a system of protected accounts and protected account limits but all that was wiped out with the taxpayer giving a blank cheque, unnecessarily.
Iceland let its banks fail. The state stepped in to keep the operation of banking systems ongoing but did not bail out shareholders or unprotected accounts.
Sadly, that option was not open to us or America. If the global banking system stopped, so would everything, including almost all commerce and your wages.
Whether the Tories win an election again within a decade or not depends on how Labour handle the economy. Handle it reasonably well as New Labour did and like post 1997 the Tories can expect to be in Opposition for 10 years or more.
Handle it poorly as previous Labour governments did and the swingback to the Tories would be much more rapid. Remember after landslide defeat in 1945 the Tories were back in government in 1951, after losing power in 1964 they were back in power in 1970 ie within 10 years. Thatcher of course took the party back to government in 1979, just 5 years after Heath had lost the 1974 general elections to Wilson's Labour
Obviously anything's possible and one shouldn't rule out a Tory comeback, but it may be very optimistic about the hole the Tories are in with a large swathe of the public. Even a fairly dud Labour government could plausibly lay most of its economic difficulties at the door of the previous government's failures and a wasted decade.
You can see it in polling where the Tories figures among those of working age are pitiful (and that includes those in the past who'd be moving to vote solidly Tory). It may be in a doom loop whereby its route to recovery is blocked by the fact it's increasingly reliant on the wealthy old, so can't propose growth-friendly policies that irk them. But without doing so cater to a base with diminishing returns and further cement their reputation as the party of economic decline.
What we may witness is something like 1979, a generational sea change whereby for a lot of people of a certain generation, Labour gained a reputation for economic mismanagement and supporting a broken model it arguably hasn't shaken off with those of that age. With the one era of success coming when Blair and Brown made clear the party had moved away from that.
The next successful Tory leader may well have to prove that similarly, they're not wedded to the right of the party's failed approach, and their ostensibly liberal wing's weakness in appeasing them.
Remember by the end of 1980 even Michael Foot led Thatcher in the polls as unemployment rose, indeed Thatcher would probably have lost in 1983 had she not got unemployment as well as inflation down and cut strikes by then and won in the Falklands.
If economy is poor and frequent strikes and high inflation under a Starmer government even a rightwinger as Tory leader could wing much as the supposedly 'unelectable' Thatcher won as a rightwinger against the 1979 Labour government after only 5 years of the Tories in opposition
But that's kind of the point. Thatcher won in 83 and then 87 despite some serious difficulties and rough patches, in part because there had been an underlying shift in perceptions that Labour struggled to grasp and run with because a whole tranche of people had lost faith in its ideas.
Similarly, doubt Starmer's govt will have its issues, but even after a mediocre four or five years the Tories may face an uphill battle because they're simply toxic, like really toxic, to generations whose votes will only grow in importance.
And there's probably an underestimation of quite how toxic they are. I know people who in terms of income level and general "meh" attitude to politics should be Tory voters. They regard the party with a contempt usually reserved for those residing in high-security medical facilities, having spent the past decade making decisions that have made lives more difficult or just been insulting.
It's going to take a lot for the Tories to reverse that, in a way that's rather different I think to those conducive to a changing of perceptions or a quick return. Especially given they seem completely unwilling or unable to realise the depth of their predicament with those who aren't retired or getting there.
If you're under 50, you're roughly as likely to believe the moon landings are faked as plan to vote Tory. That's not a party with a bright future, unless it can address the reasons why and change. Clue: It's part economics, part their flagship political project being catastrophically unpopular in a way few policies ever are.
For now, add in rising unemployment, strikes, rising inflation and high interest rates and sluggish growth under a Starmer government and the middle aged swing voters ie those 35-65, would certainly consider voting Tory again even if under 35s voted Labour still.
Remember in 2019 the median age more voters voted Conservative than Labour was 39 not 59 and most Conservative voters were voting to get Brexit done as most of them had voted for it!
Of course the median age where people were more likely to live in their own home than rent was also around 39 too. Which is shockingly bad and nothing for you to be pleased with.
Set aside Brexit and one thing that Thatcher, Cameron, Osborne, Johnson and Gove all had in common is they all wanted to get more on the housing ladder, they understood that it is only because of people being able to move on in life that people become more Tory as they age, its not a simple automatic fact of ageing that happens.
Unfortunately Johnson's moderate housing reforms were defeated by the likes of May, cheered on by the likes of you, and then Sunak has torn up any measures to see more housing built to alleviate the crisis that is causing those in their 20s and 30s to have to rent.
As a result you and they deserve to be nowhere near office, and do not deserve to be elected.
Conservativism should be about ensuring as many people as possible can support themselves, paying for their own home, out of their own wages.
Unfortunately its been taken over by a cargo cult who believe that other people paying for their homes, out of their wages, is a better way to live.
Until the Conservatives return back to solid Conservative principles, they deserve to be in Opposition.
I have always wondered why the most anti development, the Greens are the ones the youngster seem to think deserve their vote. Got a lib dem councillor round our way who has opposed at every juncture the building of a couple of hundred houses by an RSL (registered social landlord = council housing) but in their efforts to become the local MP has 'affordable housing' as second on his list of priorities for the constituency.
This is a timeless feature of local politics - one of the ways to get elected is to jump on to some planning controversy. Every party is guilty of this but the greens/lib dems are consistently the worst offenders.
Extraordinarily short sighted comment. Most Greens and LDs aren't anti-development - what they are opposed to is developments purely designed to maximise profit for housebuilders and property developers. Simply chucking a huge block of flats or a vast estate of houses on a site without considering the impact on the surrounding communities and infrastructure seems entirely desireable.
Sure, but what this means is that the Government and its regulators should act to ensure that the housing market is tight, competitive, open to new entrants, and that profits are made by meeting consumer demand effectively. The should also act to ensure that new dwellings are beautiful, and accompanied by sufficient facilities. Markets need to be chopped, changed, and regulated to ensure that they're working properly - Adam Smith himself acknowledged this. Markets where a vast profit is being made but consumer demands aren't being met are dysfunctional. The energy market is another. That doesn't mean replacing the market with the Government as client - then you just get housing provided like the NHS.
Housing does not result in a need for facilities, people do.
People pay taxes for public facilities.
Public facilities should be paid for via those taxes, not via housing.
Private facilities should be paid for privately by people, not via housing.
I agree, but there does need to be space made for them within developments, so they need to be considered.
Why does there need to be space within developments? There needs to be space, but it can be adjacent to or near the developments not within them - and if it is for a public service it should be paid for via everyone not just the developments.
Public education falls upon the taxpayer, if a towns population doubles so a new school needs to be built then all taxpayers should chip in for the new school, not just those taxpayers who happen to be buying a new house while the others get to abdicate their responsibilities.
Bugger off, to put it politely. I see no reason why I should pay to maintain the profits of some toybox house manufacturer doubling the size of my town. They can bloody well pay the capital costs, at the very least, of buulding about 5 new schools.
Interesting to note that after Susan Crichton, the GC, left in 2013, her replacement - Chris Aujard - was an interim GC only and left in 2015.
During this period, the Post Office's Chairman was Alice Perkins. She is also the wife of Jack Straw. Jack Straw's former SPAD, Mark Davies, was the Post Office's Director of Communications.
This period was when everything was being done to cover up what was being uncovered. It was when Second Sight, the experts brought in at the behest of MPs, were denied documents to do their job and then finally sacked. The decision to deny them documents was made by a Board meeting attended by Ms Perkins and the GC. She needs to be asked questions rather more than Ed Davey, frankly
The Director of Communications will have put pressure on editors not to run with the stories or reassured them that it was all nonsense etc.,.
There were lots of people who saw it as their job to cover this up. Paula Vennells is by no means the only person at fault here and there is something unbecoming and distasteful in the way that all these others are avoiding their share of responsibility
Whether the Tories win an election again within a decade or not depends on how Labour handle the economy. Handle it reasonably well as New Labour did and like post 1997 the Tories can expect to be in Opposition for 10 years or more.
Handle it poorly as previous Labour governments did and the swingback to the Tories would be much more rapid. Remember after landslide defeat in 1945 the Tories were back in government in 1951, after losing power in 1964 they were back in power in 1970 ie within 10 years. Thatcher of course took the party back to government in 1979, just 5 years after Heath had lost the 1974 general elections to Wilson's Labour
Obviously anything's possible and one shouldn't rule out a Tory comeback, but it may be very optimistic about the hole the Tories are in with a large swathe of the public. Even a fairly dud Labour government could plausibly lay most of its economic difficulties at the door of the previous government's failures and a wasted decade.
You can see it in polling where the Tories figures among those of working age are pitiful (and that includes those in the past who'd be moving to vote solidly Tory). It may be in a doom loop whereby its route to recovery is blocked by the fact it's increasingly reliant on the wealthy old, so can't propose growth-friendly policies that irk them. But without doing so cater to a base with diminishing returns and further cement their reputation as the party of economic decline.
What we may witness is something like 1979, a generational sea change whereby for a lot of people of a certain generation, Labour gained a reputation for economic mismanagement and supporting a broken model it arguably hasn't shaken off with those of that age. With the one era of success coming when Blair and Brown made clear the party had moved away from that.
The next successful Tory leader may well have to prove that similarly, they're not wedded to the right of the party's failed approach, and their ostensibly liberal wing's weakness in appeasing them.
Remember by the end of 1980 even Michael Foot led Thatcher in the polls as unemployment rose, indeed Thatcher would probably have lost in 1983 had she not got unemployment as well as inflation down and cut strikes by then and won in the Falklands.
If economy is poor and frequent strikes and high inflation under a Starmer government even a rightwinger as Tory leader could wing much as the supposedly 'unelectable' Thatcher won as a rightwinger against the 1979 Labour government after only 5 years of the Tories in opposition
But that's kind of the point. Thatcher won in 83 and then 87 despite some serious difficulties and rough patches, in part because there had been an underlying shift in perceptions that Labour struggled to grasp and run with because a whole tranche of people had lost faith in its ideas.
Similarly, doubt Starmer's govt will have its issues, but even after a mediocre four or five years the Tories may face an uphill battle because they're simply toxic, like really toxic, to generations whose votes will only grow in importance.
And there's probably an underestimation of quite how toxic they are. I know people who in terms of income level and general "meh" attitude to politics should be Tory voters. They regard the party with a contempt usually reserved for those residing in high-security medical facilities, having spent the past decade making decisions that have made lives more difficult or just been insulting.
It's going to take a lot for the Tories to reverse that, in a way that's rather different I think to those conducive to a changing of perceptions or a quick return. Especially given they seem completely unwilling or unable to realise the depth of their predicament with those who aren't retired or getting there.
If you're under 50, you're roughly as likely to believe the moon landings are faked as plan to vote Tory. That's not a party with a bright future, unless it can address the reasons why and change. Clue: It's part economics, part their flagship political project being catastrophically unpopular in a way few policies ever are.
For now, add in rising unemployment, strikes, rising inflation and high interest rates and sluggish growth under a Starmer government and the middle aged swing voters ie those 35-65, would certainly consider voting Tory again even if under 35s voted Labour still.
Remember in 2019 the median age more voters voted Conservative than Labour was 39 not 59 and most Conservative voters were voting to get Brexit done as most of them had voted for it!
Of course the median age where people were more likely to live in their own home than rent was also around 39 too. Which is shockingly bad and nothing for you to be pleased with.
Set aside Brexit and one thing that Thatcher, Cameron, Osborne, Johnson and Gove all had in common is they all wanted to get more on the housing ladder, they understood that it is only because of people being able to move on in life that people become more Tory as they age, its not a simple automatic fact of ageing that happens.
Unfortunately Johnson's moderate housing reforms were defeated by the likes of May, cheered on by the likes of you, and then Sunak has torn up any measures to see more housing built to alleviate the crisis that is causing those in their 20s and 30s to have to rent.
As a result you and they deserve to be nowhere near office, and do not deserve to be elected.
Conservativism should be about ensuring as many people as possible can support themselves, paying for their own home, out of their own wages.
Unfortunately its been taken over by a cargo cult who believe that other people paying for their homes, out of their wages, is a better way to live.
Until the Conservatives return back to solid Conservative principles, they deserve to be in Opposition.
I have always wondered why the most anti development, the Greens are the ones the youngster seem to think deserve their vote. Got a lib dem councillor round our way who has opposed at every juncture the building of a couple of hundred houses by an RSL (registered social landlord = council housing) but in their efforts to become the local MP has 'affordable housing' as second on his list of priorities for the constituency.
This is a timeless feature of local politics - one of the ways to get elected is to jump on to some planning controversy. Every party is guilty of this but the greens/lib dems are consistently the worst offenders.
Extraordinarily short sighted comment. Most Greens and LDs aren't anti-development - what they are opposed to is developments purely designed to maximise profit for housebuilders and property developers. Simply chucking a huge block of flats or a vast estate of houses on a site without considering the impact on the surrounding communities and infrastructure seems entirely desireable.
Sure, but what this means is that the Government and its regulators should act to ensure that the housing market is tight, competitive, open to new entrants, and that profits are made by meeting consumer demand effectively. The should also act to ensure that new dwellings are beautiful, and accompanied by sufficient facilities. Markets need to be chopped, changed, and regulated to ensure that they're working properly - Adam Smith himself acknowledged this. Markets where a vast profit is being made but consumer demands aren't being met are dysfunctional. The energy market is another. That doesn't mean replacing the market with the Government as client - then you just get housing provided like the NHS.
Housing does not result in a need for facilities, people do.
People pay taxes for public facilities.
Public facilities should be paid for via those taxes, not via housing.
Private facilities should be paid for privately by people, not via housing.
I agree, but there does need to be space made for them within developments, so they need to be considered.
Why does there need to be space within developments? There needs to be space, but it can be adjacent to or near the developments not within them - and if it is for a public service it should be paid for via everyone not just the developments.
Public education falls upon the taxpayer, if a towns population doubles so a new school needs to be built then all taxpayers should chip in for the new school, not just those taxpayers who happen to be buying a new house while the others get to abdicate their responsibilities.
Bugger off, to put it politely. I see no reason why I should pay to maintain the profits of some toybox house manufacturer doubling the size of my town. They can bloody well pay the capital costs, at the very least, of buulding about 5 new schools.
Education has bugger all to do with profits or housing numbers and is entirely to do with children, you ninny.
If there's twice as many children in your town than before, then there's more school places needed. Regardless of whether the number of houses is reduced, unchanged, doubled or trebled.
Education is not an externality, its a public service there to educate children.
There are more children in this country than there were in the past. You may have a house of your own, but those children need educating whether they live in overcrowded slums or their parents can actually have a house of their own too.
Speaking of perfidious Albionian appropriation of the culture heritage of others, just discovered that you Brits have sunk to copying US TV via cheap knockoff of that beloved American institution - "Jeopardy".
How the worm has turned! Indeed, the World Turned Upside Down.
Though do think that Stephen Fry makes a damn good quiz-master.
BUT does NOT absolve yez from inventing "The Apprentice" as part of sinister trans-Atlantic plot to make Donald Trump POTUS!!!
The program "The Apprentice" was invented in the US[1], @SeaShantyIrish2 Although we did invent television, no matter what Americans are taught in school.
IIRC When Aaron Sorkin did "The Farnsworth Invention" on Broadway, they had to apologise/insist to the Brits in the audience before the show started. However, they are simply wrong and it was invented by John Logie Baird.
Whether the Tories win an election again within a decade or not depends on how Labour handle the economy. Handle it reasonably well as New Labour did and like post 1997 the Tories can expect to be in Opposition for 10 years or more.
Handle it poorly as previous Labour governments did and the swingback to the Tories would be much more rapid. Remember after landslide defeat in 1945 the Tories were back in government in 1951, after losing power in 1964 they were back in power in 1970 ie within 10 years. Thatcher of course took the party back to government in 1979, just 5 years after Heath had lost the 1974 general elections to Wilson's Labour
Obviously anything's possible and one shouldn't rule out a Tory comeback, but it may be very optimistic about the hole the Tories are in with a large swathe of the public. Even a fairly dud Labour government could plausibly lay most of its economic difficulties at the door of the previous government's failures and a wasted decade.
You can see it in polling where the Tories figures among those of working age are pitiful (and that includes those in the past who'd be moving to vote solidly Tory). It may be in a doom loop whereby its route to recovery is blocked by the fact it's increasingly reliant on the wealthy old, so can't propose growth-friendly policies that irk them. But without doing so cater to a base with diminishing returns and further cement their reputation as the party of economic decline.
What we may witness is something like 1979, a generational sea change whereby for a lot of people of a certain generation, Labour gained a reputation for economic mismanagement and supporting a broken model it arguably hasn't shaken off with those of that age. With the one era of success coming when Blair and Brown made clear the party had moved away from that.
The next successful Tory leader may well have to prove that similarly, they're not wedded to the right of the party's failed approach, and their ostensibly liberal wing's weakness in appeasing them.
Remember by the end of 1980 even Michael Foot led Thatcher in the polls as unemployment rose, indeed Thatcher would probably have lost in 1983 had she not got unemployment as well as inflation down and cut strikes by then and won in the Falklands.
If economy is poor and frequent strikes and high inflation under a Starmer government even a rightwinger as Tory leader could wing much as the supposedly 'unelectable' Thatcher won as a rightwinger against the 1979 Labour government after only 5 years of the Tories in opposition
But that's kind of the point. Thatcher won in 83 and then 87 despite some serious difficulties and rough patches, in part because there had been an underlying shift in perceptions that Labour struggled to grasp and run with because a whole tranche of people had lost faith in its ideas.
Similarly, doubt Starmer's govt will have its issues, but even after a mediocre four or five years the Tories may face an uphill battle because they're simply toxic, like really toxic, to generations whose votes will only grow in importance.
And there's probably an underestimation of quite how toxic they are. I know people who in terms of income level and general "meh" attitude to politics should be Tory voters. They regard the party with a contempt usually reserved for those residing in high-security medical facilities, having spent the past decade making decisions that have made lives more difficult or just been insulting.
It's going to take a lot for the Tories to reverse that, in a way that's rather different I think to those conducive to a changing of perceptions or a quick return. Especially given they seem completely unwilling or unable to realise the depth of their predicament with those who aren't retired or getting there.
If you're under 50, you're roughly as likely to believe the moon landings are faked as plan to vote Tory. That's not a party with a bright future, unless it can address the reasons why and change. Clue: It's part economics, part their flagship political project being catastrophically unpopular in a way few policies ever are.
For now, add in rising unemployment, strikes, rising inflation and high interest rates and sluggish growth under a Starmer government and the middle aged swing voters ie those 35-65, would certainly consider voting Tory again even if under 35s voted Labour still.
Remember in 2019 the median age more voters voted Conservative than Labour was 39 not 59 and most Conservative voters were voting to get Brexit done as most of them had voted for it!
Of course the median age where people were more likely to live in their own home than rent was also around 39 too. Which is shockingly bad and nothing for you to be pleased with.
Set aside Brexit and one thing that Thatcher, Cameron, Osborne, Johnson and Gove all had in common is they all wanted to get more on the housing ladder, they understood that it is only because of people being able to move on in life that people become more Tory as they age, its not a simple automatic fact of ageing that happens.
Unfortunately Johnson's moderate housing reforms were defeated by the likes of May, cheered on by the likes of you, and then Sunak has torn up any measures to see more housing built to alleviate the crisis that is causing those in their 20s and 30s to have to rent.
As a result you and they deserve to be nowhere near office, and do not deserve to be elected.
Conservativism should be about ensuring as many people as possible can support themselves, paying for their own home, out of their own wages.
Unfortunately its been taken over by a cargo cult who believe that other people paying for their homes, out of their wages, is a better way to live.
Until the Conservatives return back to solid Conservative principles, they deserve to be in Opposition.
I have always wondered why the most anti development, the Greens are the ones the youngster seem to think deserve their vote. Got a lib dem councillor round our way who has opposed at every juncture the building of a couple of hundred houses by an RSL (registered social landlord = council housing) but in their efforts to become the local MP has 'affordable housing' as second on his list of priorities for the constituency.
This is a timeless feature of local politics - one of the ways to get elected is to jump on to some planning controversy. Every party is guilty of this but the greens/lib dems are consistently the worst offenders.
Extraordinarily short sighted comment. Most Greens and LDs aren't anti-development - what they are opposed to is developments purely designed to maximise profit for housebuilders and property developers. Simply chucking a huge block of flats or a vast estate of houses on a site without considering the impact on the surrounding communities and infrastructure seems entirely desireable.
Sure, but what this means is that the Government and its regulators should act to ensure that the housing market is tight, competitive, open to new entrants, and that profits are made by meeting consumer demand effectively. The should also act to ensure that new dwellings are beautiful, and accompanied by sufficient facilities. Markets need to be chopped, changed, and regulated to ensure that they're working properly - Adam Smith himself acknowledged this. Markets where a vast profit is being made but consumer demands aren't being met are dysfunctional. The energy market is another. That doesn't mean replacing the market with the Government as client - then you just get housing provided like the NHS.
Housing does not result in a need for facilities, people do.
People pay taxes for public facilities.
Public facilities should be paid for via those taxes, not via housing.
Private facilities should be paid for privately by people, not via housing.
I agree, but there does need to be space made for them within developments, so they need to be considered.
Why does there need to be space within developments? There needs to be space, but it can be adjacent to or near the developments not within them - and if it is for a public service it should be paid for via everyone not just the developments.
Public education falls upon the taxpayer, if a towns population doubles so a new school needs to be built then all taxpayers should chip in for the new school, not just those taxpayers who happen to be buying a new house while the others get to abdicate their responsibilities.
Bugger off, to put it politely. I see no reason why I should pay to maintain the profits of some toybox house manufacturer doubling the size of my town. They can bloody well pay the capital costs, at the very least, of buulding about 5 new schools.
Education has bugger all to do with profits or housing numbers and is entirely to do with children, you ninny.
If there's twice as many children in your town than before, then there's more school places needed. Regardless of whether the number of houses is reduced, unchanged, doubled or trebled.
Education is not an externality, its a public service there to educate children.
There are more children in this country than there were in the past. You may have a house of your own, but those children need educating whether they live in overcrowded slums or their parents can actually have a house of their own too.
But the children are being moved from place to place. Have you not thought that through?
And it has EVERYTHING to do with profits when the spaces in existing schools are a major determinant of planning permission. No schools, no planning permission, no PROFITS. So the developers need to cough ip for schools and drains and so on and so forth rather than dumping the costs on the existing inhabitants.
It’s always heartwarming to see that some folk who have never worked in the public sector are so skilled they can instantly diagnose all the issues (which, mysteriously, always manage to conform to their personal prejudices) and propose a solution which usually involves a change to “the culture”.
Sigh…
The public sector is roughly as good (and as bad) at doing things as the private sector (with some minor variances, generally based on being able to offer market pay). The big difference is that mistakes in the public sector have to be declared in full, whilst in the private sector they can usually be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of accountants and auditors.
Mistakes in the private sector have to be declared in full, and if brushed under the carpet then the business can fail as a result with the shareholders taking full responsibility of their neglect.
Mistakes in the public sector can be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of colleagues, "civil servants" politicians and more being in denial of any wrongdoing with the taxpayer taking full responsibility of their neglect.
One of the biggest mistakes of the Coalition was getting rid of the Audit Commission but there are mechanisms such as the Local Government Ombudsman. Who, for instance, would you hold accountable for the disasters at Thurrock and Woking - the elected Members, Senior Officers, both, neither? I do agree the taxpayer does in the end finish up footing the bill but when some private sector companies fail (as we've seen), the Government ends up holding the baby.
Allister Heath once argued for all organisations (both public and private) to write in effect a Will describing what should happen if the business were to become bankrupt or insolvent outlining what should happen to creditors, employees, shareholders etc.
The taxpayer should never foot the bill for private sector companies failing and Gordon Brown agreeing to do so was a tremendous mistake he made.
No private business should ever be regarded as too big to fail.
Far better to collapse the entire global banking system than to rescue a "too big to fail" bank? That's what happened when the Fed declined to rescue Lehman Bros, and Britain stopped Barclays from buying it because that would mean HM Treasury guaranteeing an American bank.
Yes.
The Fed did the right thing in declining to rescue Lehman Bros.
Which precipitated the Global Financial Crisis.
No, crises happen. Shit happens.
People make mistakes and when those mistakes come to light, crises are a good way of clearing out the trash - which by that point Lehman Bros was.
Trying to prevent crises is as foolhardy as trying to stop winter.
We can't stop winter but we can take dress warmly, take shelter and heat our homes. The problem could not be isolated to one bank. The resultant Global Financial Crisis cost trillions of dollars.
Yes and that cost should have fallen on the shareholders of the banks that hadn't done their due dilligence.
The taxpayer should not have born the cost of private institutions failures. We had a system of protected accounts and protected account limits but all that was wiped out with the taxpayer giving a blank cheque, unnecessarily.
Iceland let its banks fail. The state stepped in to keep the operation of banking systems ongoing but did not bail out shareholders or unprotected accounts.
Sadly, that option was not open to us or America. If the global banking system stopped, so would everything, including almost all commerce and your wages.
You can keep the global banking system going without keeping the shareholders going.
Nationalise the critical bits of the banking system, wiping out unprotected accounts, unprotected shareholders, unprotected creditors etc
Whether the Tories win an election again within a decade or not depends on how Labour handle the economy. Handle it reasonably well as New Labour did and like post 1997 the Tories can expect to be in Opposition for 10 years or more.
Handle it poorly as previous Labour governments did and the swingback to the Tories would be much more rapid. Remember after landslide defeat in 1945 the Tories were back in government in 1951, after losing power in 1964 they were back in power in 1970 ie within 10 years. Thatcher of course took the party back to government in 1979, just 5 years after Heath had lost the 1974 general elections to Wilson's Labour
Obviously anything's possible and one shouldn't rule out a Tory comeback, but it may be very optimistic about the hole the Tories are in with a large swathe of the public. Even a fairly dud Labour government could plausibly lay most of its economic difficulties at the door of the previous government's failures and a wasted decade.
You can see it in polling where the Tories figures among those of working age are pitiful (and that includes those in the past who'd be moving to vote solidly Tory). It may be in a doom loop whereby its route to recovery is blocked by the fact it's increasingly reliant on the wealthy old, so can't propose growth-friendly policies that irk them. But without doing so cater to a base with diminishing returns and further cement their reputation as the party of economic decline.
What we may witness is something like 1979, a generational sea change whereby for a lot of people of a certain generation, Labour gained a reputation for economic mismanagement and supporting a broken model it arguably hasn't shaken off with those of that age. With the one era of success coming when Blair and Brown made clear the party had moved away from that.
The next successful Tory leader may well have to prove that similarly, they're not wedded to the right of the party's failed approach, and their ostensibly liberal wing's weakness in appeasing them.
Remember by the end of 1980 even Michael Foot led Thatcher in the polls as unemployment rose, indeed Thatcher would probably have lost in 1983 had she not got unemployment as well as inflation down and cut strikes by then and won in the Falklands.
If economy is poor and frequent strikes and high inflation under a Starmer government even a rightwinger as Tory leader could wing much as the supposedly 'unelectable' Thatcher won as a rightwinger against the 1979 Labour government after only 5 years of the Tories in opposition
But that's kind of the point. Thatcher won in 83 and then 87 despite some serious difficulties and rough patches, in part because there had been an underlying shift in perceptions that Labour struggled to grasp and run with because a whole tranche of people had lost faith in its ideas.
Similarly, doubt Starmer's govt will have its issues, but even after a mediocre four or five years the Tories may face an uphill battle because they're simply toxic, like really toxic, to generations whose votes will only grow in importance.
And there's probably an underestimation of quite how toxic they are. I know people who in terms of income level and general "meh" attitude to politics should be Tory voters. They regard the party with a contempt usually reserved for those residing in high-security medical facilities, having spent the past decade making decisions that have made lives more difficult or just been insulting.
It's going to take a lot for the Tories to reverse that, in a way that's rather different I think to those conducive to a changing of perceptions or a quick return. Especially given they seem completely unwilling or unable to realise the depth of their predicament with those who aren't retired or getting there.
If you're under 50, you're roughly as likely to believe the moon landings are faked as plan to vote Tory. That's not a party with a bright future, unless it can address the reasons why and change. Clue: It's part economics, part their flagship political project being catastrophically unpopular in a way few policies ever are.
For now, add in rising unemployment, strikes, rising inflation and high interest rates and sluggish growth under a Starmer government and the middle aged swing voters ie those 35-65, would certainly consider voting Tory again even if under 35s voted Labour still.
Remember in 2019 the median age more voters voted Conservative than Labour was 39 not 59 and most Conservative voters were voting to get Brexit done as most of them had voted for it!
Of course the median age where people were more likely to live in their own home than rent was also around 39 too. Which is shockingly bad and nothing for you to be pleased with.
Set aside Brexit and one thing that Thatcher, Cameron, Osborne, Johnson and Gove all had in common is they all wanted to get more on the housing ladder, they understood that it is only because of people being able to move on in life that people become more Tory as they age, its not a simple automatic fact of ageing that happens.
Unfortunately Johnson's moderate housing reforms were defeated by the likes of May, cheered on by the likes of you, and then Sunak has torn up any measures to see more housing built to alleviate the crisis that is causing those in their 20s and 30s to have to rent.
As a result you and they deserve to be nowhere near office, and do not deserve to be elected.
Conservativism should be about ensuring as many people as possible can support themselves, paying for their own home, out of their own wages.
Unfortunately its been taken over by a cargo cult who believe that other people paying for their homes, out of their wages, is a better way to live.
Until the Conservatives return back to solid Conservative principles, they deserve to be in Opposition.
I have always wondered why the most anti development, the Greens are the ones the youngster seem to think deserve their vote. Got a lib dem councillor round our way who has opposed at every juncture the building of a couple of hundred houses by an RSL (registered social landlord = council housing) but in their efforts to become the local MP has 'affordable housing' as second on his list of priorities for the constituency.
This is a timeless feature of local politics - one of the ways to get elected is to jump on to some planning controversy. Every party is guilty of this but the greens/lib dems are consistently the worst offenders.
Extraordinarily short sighted comment. Most Greens and LDs aren't anti-development - what they are opposed to is developments purely designed to maximise profit for housebuilders and property developers. Simply chucking a huge block of flats or a vast estate of houses on a site without considering the impact on the surrounding communities and infrastructure seems entirely desireable.
Sure, but what this means is that the Government and its regulators should act to ensure that the housing market is tight, competitive, open to new entrants, and that profits are made by meeting consumer demand effectively. The should also act to ensure that new dwellings are beautiful, and accompanied by sufficient facilities. Markets need to be chopped, changed, and regulated to ensure that they're working properly - Adam Smith himself acknowledged this. Markets where a vast profit is being made but consumer demands aren't being met are dysfunctional. The energy market is another. That doesn't mean replacing the market with the Government as client - then you just get housing provided like the NHS.
Housing does not result in a need for facilities, people do.
People pay taxes for public facilities.
Public facilities should be paid for via those taxes, not via housing.
Private facilities should be paid for privately by people, not via housing.
I agree, but there does need to be space made for them within developments, so they need to be considered.
Why does there need to be space within developments? There needs to be space, but it can be adjacent to or near the developments not within them - and if it is for a public service it should be paid for via everyone not just the developments.
Public education falls upon the taxpayer, if a towns population doubles so a new school needs to be built then all taxpayers should chip in for the new school, not just those taxpayers who happen to be buying a new house while the others get to abdicate their responsibilities.
Bugger off, to put it politely. I see no reason why I should pay to maintain the profits of some toybox house manufacturer doubling the size of my town. They can bloody well pay the capital costs, at the very least, of buulding about 5 new schools.
Education has bugger all to do with profits or housing numbers and is entirely to do with children, you ninny.
If there's twice as many children in your town than before, then there's more school places needed. Regardless of whether the number of houses is reduced, unchanged, doubled or trebled.
Education is not an externality, its a public service there to educate children.
There are more children in this country than there were in the past. You may have a house of your own, but those children need educating whether they live in overcrowded slums or their parents can actually have a house of their own too.
But the children are being moved from place to place. Have you not thought that through?
No they're not. There's population growth.
Which mythical place in this country has an overabundance of services as the people have been moved away from it.
At the moment I keep hearing about new houses being built to be sold as investments - institutional investors acquire them to rent out at the top end of the rental market. This has gone on for a long time for flats but now is now happening with houses - this seems to be a big growth area.
Whether the Tories win an election again within a decade or not depends on how Labour handle the economy. Handle it reasonably well as New Labour did and like post 1997 the Tories can expect to be in Opposition for 10 years or more.
Handle it poorly as previous Labour governments did and the swingback to the Tories would be much more rapid. Remember after landslide defeat in 1945 the Tories were back in government in 1951, after losing power in 1964 they were back in power in 1970 ie within 10 years. Thatcher of course took the party back to government in 1979, just 5 years after Heath had lost the 1974 general elections to Wilson's Labour
Obviously anything's possible and one shouldn't rule out a Tory comeback, but it may be very optimistic about the hole the Tories are in with a large swathe of the public. Even a fairly dud Labour government could plausibly lay most of its economic difficulties at the door of the previous government's failures and a wasted decade.
You can see it in polling where the Tories figures among those of working age are pitiful (and that includes those in the past who'd be moving to vote solidly Tory). It may be in a doom loop whereby its route to recovery is blocked by the fact it's increasingly reliant on the wealthy old, so can't propose growth-friendly policies that irk them. But without doing so cater to a base with diminishing returns and further cement their reputation as the party of economic decline.
What we may witness is something like 1979, a generational sea change whereby for a lot of people of a certain generation, Labour gained a reputation for economic mismanagement and supporting a broken model it arguably hasn't shaken off with those of that age. With the one era of success coming when Blair and Brown made clear the party had moved away from that.
The next successful Tory leader may well have to prove that similarly, they're not wedded to the right of the party's failed approach, and their ostensibly liberal wing's weakness in appeasing them.
Remember by the end of 1980 even Michael Foot led Thatcher in the polls as unemployment rose, indeed Thatcher would probably have lost in 1983 had she not got unemployment as well as inflation down and cut strikes by then and won in the Falklands.
If economy is poor and frequent strikes and high inflation under a Starmer government even a rightwinger as Tory leader could wing much as the supposedly 'unelectable' Thatcher won as a rightwinger against the 1979 Labour government after only 5 years of the Tories in opposition
But that's kind of the point. Thatcher won in 83 and then 87 despite some serious difficulties and rough patches, in part because there had been an underlying shift in perceptions that Labour struggled to grasp and run with because a whole tranche of people had lost faith in its ideas.
Similarly, doubt Starmer's govt will have its issues, but even after a mediocre four or five years the Tories may face an uphill battle because they're simply toxic, like really toxic, to generations whose votes will only grow in importance.
And there's probably an underestimation of quite how toxic they are. I know people who in terms of income level and general "meh" attitude to politics should be Tory voters. They regard the party with a contempt usually reserved for those residing in high-security medical facilities, having spent the past decade making decisions that have made lives more difficult or just been insulting.
It's going to take a lot for the Tories to reverse that, in a way that's rather different I think to those conducive to a changing of perceptions or a quick return. Especially given they seem completely unwilling or unable to realise the depth of their predicament with those who aren't retired or getting there.
If you're under 50, you're roughly as likely to believe the moon landings are faked as plan to vote Tory. That's not a party with a bright future, unless it can address the reasons why and change. Clue: It's part economics, part their flagship political project being catastrophically unpopular in a way few policies ever are.
For now, add in rising unemployment, strikes, rising inflation and high interest rates and sluggish growth under a Starmer government and the middle aged swing voters ie those 35-65, would certainly consider voting Tory again even if under 35s voted Labour still.
Remember in 2019 the median age more voters voted Conservative than Labour was 39 not 59 and most Conservative voters were voting to get Brexit done as most of them had voted for it!
Of course the median age where people were more likely to live in their own home than rent was also around 39 too. Which is shockingly bad and nothing for you to be pleased with.
Set aside Brexit and one thing that Thatcher, Cameron, Osborne, Johnson and Gove all had in common is they all wanted to get more on the housing ladder, they understood that it is only because of people being able to move on in life that people become more Tory as they age, its not a simple automatic fact of ageing that happens.
Unfortunately Johnson's moderate housing reforms were defeated by the likes of May, cheered on by the likes of you, and then Sunak has torn up any measures to see more housing built to alleviate the crisis that is causing those in their 20s and 30s to have to rent.
As a result you and they deserve to be nowhere near office, and do not deserve to be elected.
Conservativism should be about ensuring as many people as possible can support themselves, paying for their own home, out of their own wages.
Unfortunately its been taken over by a cargo cult who believe that other people paying for their homes, out of their wages, is a better way to live.
Until the Conservatives return back to solid Conservative principles, they deserve to be in Opposition.
I have always wondered why the most anti development, the Greens are the ones the youngster seem to think deserve their vote. Got a lib dem councillor round our way who has opposed at every juncture the building of a couple of hundred houses by an RSL (registered social landlord = council housing) but in their efforts to become the local MP has 'affordable housing' as second on his list of priorities for the constituency.
This is a timeless feature of local politics - one of the ways to get elected is to jump on to some planning controversy. Every party is guilty of this but the greens/lib dems are consistently the worst offenders.
Extraordinarily short sighted comment. Most Greens and LDs aren't anti-development - what they are opposed to is developments purely designed to maximise profit for housebuilders and property developers. Simply chucking a huge block of flats or a vast estate of houses on a site without considering the impact on the surrounding communities and infrastructure seems entirely desireable.
Sure, but what this means is that the Government and its regulators should act to ensure that the housing market is tight, competitive, open to new entrants, and that profits are made by meeting consumer demand effectively. The should also act to ensure that new dwellings are beautiful, and accompanied by sufficient facilities. Markets need to be chopped, changed, and regulated to ensure that they're working properly - Adam Smith himself acknowledged this. Markets where a vast profit is being made but consumer demands aren't being met are dysfunctional. The energy market is another. That doesn't mean replacing the market with the Government as client - then you just get housing provided like the NHS.
Housing does not result in a need for facilities, people do.
People pay taxes for public facilities.
Public facilities should be paid for via those taxes, not via housing.
Private facilities should be paid for privately by people, not via housing.
I agree, but there does need to be space made for them within developments, so they need to be considered.
Why does there need to be space within developments? There needs to be space, but it can be adjacent to or near the developments not within them - and if it is for a public service it should be paid for via everyone not just the developments.
Public education falls upon the taxpayer, if a towns population doubles so a new school needs to be built then all taxpayers should chip in for the new school, not just those taxpayers who happen to be buying a new house while the others get to abdicate their responsibilities.
Bugger off, to put it politely. I see no reason why I should pay to maintain the profits of some toybox house manufacturer doubling the size of my town. They can bloody well pay the capital costs, at the very least, of buulding about 5 new schools.
Education has bugger all to do with profits or housing numbers and is entirely to do with children, you ninny.
If there's twice as many children in your town than before, then there's more school places needed. Regardless of whether the number of houses is reduced, unchanged, doubled or trebled.
Education is not an externality, its a public service there to educate children.
There are more children in this country than there were in the past. You may have a house of your own, but those children need educating whether they live in overcrowded slums or their parents can actually have a house of their own too.
But the children are being moved from place to place. Have you not thought that through?
No they're not. There's population growth.
Which mythical place in this country has an overabundance of services as the people have been moved away from it.
People being mkoved into places with not enough services.
And I know of towns and schools demolished as industries moved away. It happens, all right.
I would love to have people with the forensic skill of say Ms Cyclefree as an MP. But you'd probably need to pay her c£250k for her to touch the job with a barge pole.
If you have skills and want to use them for the benefit of society there are lots of jobs going in the public sector. Obviously you have to take a pay cut but that is reflective of the fact you are changing direction to public service and most of the time there is a large pension. However I don't think becoming an MP has much appeal because of the grief that now comes with the work.
I think I'd hate working in the public sector and find it immensely frustrating.
Getting things done is frowned upon and would rapidly lead to me getting ostracised by colleagues.
You're simply wrong. In the public sector, getting things done is not frowned upon: it is celebrated and valued, and tends to lead to rapid promotion. I speak from extensive experience.
Problem-solving in order to get things done in complex public sector organisations is intellectually challenging, and hugely rewarding as it leads to improved services for the public.
Exactly.
Now, it is true that the public sector’s middle ranks are filled with some people who don’t harbour much ambition, and know that keeping their heads down and doing exactly what the guy before did, without risking changing anything at all, is usually the safest approach.
But there’s also a satisfaction in plugging away and overcoming all the obstacles and, eventually, delivering real achievements. And there are talented, capable people throughout the public sector doing just that. Again, I recommend Heywood’s biography, written by his wife. If you can overlook the widow’s reluctance to fault anything her husband ever did, it is nevertheless a very good illustration of how to get things done in a complex, multi-stakeholder and landmine-strewn environment.
If you pitch into a public sector job and blindly assume that the staff will do whatever you tell them, that the unions will agree, that the politicians won’t mind, and the public won’t notice, you are destined to fail.
It’s always heartwarming to see that some folk who have never worked in the public sector are so skilled they can instantly diagnose all the issues (which, mysteriously, always manage to conform to their personal prejudices) and propose a solution which usually involves a change to “the culture”.
Sigh…
The public sector is roughly as good (and as bad) at doing things as the private sector (with some minor variances, generally based on being able to offer market pay). The big difference is that mistakes in the public sector have to be declared in full, whilst in the public sector they can usually be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of accountants and auditors.
"The big difference is that mistakes in the public sector have to be declared in full, whilst in the public sector they can usually be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of accountants and auditors."
Didn't you mean the second "public sector" in that sentence to read "private sector"?
I would cite the Post Office as a riposte to that sentiment but you know that already. Plus listed companies have to make market announcement - I pile cite a few examples there too.
But the Post Office during the key period (and since) was run by people brought in for their private sector expertise, who didn’t really understand what they were managing.
What we are looking at is a tragic confluence of private sector people focused on their key objective whilst not interested, or understanding, the environment they are in, supported by a load of career long public sector people trained to follow instructions and otherwise keep their heads down.
That is part of the explanation and an important factor. But I was responding to the claim that because it was in the public sector it had to declare its mistakes in full.
That has certainly not happened in the PO's case. If anything, partly to avoid embarrassing Ministers or at least Ministerial decisions and partly to permit the privatisation of Royal Mail, the unfolding problems were kept as quiet as possible for as long as possible, even to the extent of misleading courts and Parliament.
My read is that when Vennells arrives she was genuinely willing to try and sort the situation out. But she surely unappreciated the scale of the disaster, assuming they were dealing with a small number of anomalies that could be resolved without diverting her from her course. Which is what she will have been told, up the line. But at some point - pretty obviously shortly before Second Sight were sacked - she realised the scale of the catastrophe she was sitting on.
We can all see what the right thing to have done would have been. And I’m sure that 95% of us would swear that that’s what we would have done, in her position.
She will have found herself in a room full of senior people - long serving PO managers who understood things a lot better than her, maybe someone senior from Fuitisu still sowing misinformation, and - critically - some top lawyers who must have thought that they had a better than 50:50 chance of making the catastrophe go away with some disgraceful legal shenanigans, bankrupting the other party before the case got to a conclusion. As we can see, from both Wallis’s detailed account and the summary version dramatised by ITV, they very nearly succeeded. As it is, most of the money won by Bates and others went on legal costs.
Both the financial position of her business and her own personal reputation would have been trashed, had she come clean at that point - already being on record at the BIS SC and in the media as defending the PO position. So she had the choice between being honest and facing certain ordure, or gambling that she might make the whole thing go away.
We all know what the morally right thing to do was. But I’d bet that significantly less than 95% of us would have opted for the right path, put in her position.
I suspect there was also a great deal of Ministerial pressure not to do anything to impact the Post Office's route to profits.
But I have been in the position, both in the public sector and in the private sector, of having to tell very senior people (Ministers and Chief Executives) that what they would like to do is unlawful. That takes guts. And any CEO who ignores such advice is a bloody fool. It's not just about doing the morally right thing to do: it's about the difference between legality and illegality.
Susan Crichton, the GC, left suddenly in 2013 - not long after the external legal advice pointing out the unsafeness of the convictions and the first Second Sight report. I would really like to know the truth of what led to her departure and what advice she was giving. And what her successors and predecessors were doing and saying.
The role of the GC can be immensely powerful in such circumstances - if they use that power wisely and have the independence of character to use it. Not all do. Some are frankly useless. My guess is that her successor was more intent on facilitating a "let's sweep it under the carpet" job.
That is one reason why I think the role of the lawyers here has been so shameful. They should have been gatekeepers preventing morally dubious and unlawful behaviour. Instead they appear to have facilitated and carried it out.
I can agree with you there. Yet while the inquiry, and subsequent events, is likely to pour a cauldron of excrement over a few senior Post Office folk, and a few of the more junior ones whose evidence has been myopic, and maybe even some of the hapless oppos from Fujitsu, I’d wager that the legal profession - including the courts that convicted people merely because they couldn’t prove their innocence - will get off relatively lightly.
I really really hope not. The lawyers involved have behaved disgracefully and they, above all, should be made to pay a price for their misconduct, including criminal prosecutions if necessary.
I will certainly give them a lashing on here as and when the evidence comes out.
Incidentally your attack on the courts is silly: where someone pleads guilty, the court cannot ignore that. Where there is a trial, the verdict is that of the jury. The courts were hamstrung by the stupid decision to change the law on computer evidence.
The Ministry of Justice on the other hand - why weren't they noticing all these prosecutions? Why weren't they looking at how the Post Office was using its prosecution powers? There is plenty more to come out and I look forward to learning all about it, even if it makes me thoroughly ashamed of some members of my profession.
Whether the Tories win an election again within a decade or not depends on how Labour handle the economy. Handle it reasonably well as New Labour did and like post 1997 the Tories can expect to be in Opposition for 10 years or more.
Handle it poorly as previous Labour governments did and the swingback to the Tories would be much more rapid. Remember after landslide defeat in 1945 the Tories were back in government in 1951, after losing power in 1964 they were back in power in 1970 ie within 10 years. Thatcher of course took the party back to government in 1979, just 5 years after Heath had lost the 1974 general elections to Wilson's Labour
Obviously anything's possible and one shouldn't rule out a Tory comeback, but it may be very optimistic about the hole the Tories are in with a large swathe of the public. Even a fairly dud Labour government could plausibly lay most of its economic difficulties at the door of the previous government's failures and a wasted decade.
You can see it in polling where the Tories figures among those of working age are pitiful (and that includes those in the past who'd be moving to vote solidly Tory). It may be in a doom loop whereby its route to recovery is blocked by the fact it's increasingly reliant on the wealthy old, so can't propose growth-friendly policies that irk them. But without doing so cater to a base with diminishing returns and further cement their reputation as the party of economic decline.
What we may witness is something like 1979, a generational sea change whereby for a lot of people of a certain generation, Labour gained a reputation for economic mismanagement and supporting a broken model it arguably hasn't shaken off with those of that age. With the one era of success coming when Blair and Brown made clear the party had moved away from that.
The next successful Tory leader may well have to prove that similarly, they're not wedded to the right of the party's failed approach, and their ostensibly liberal wing's weakness in appeasing them.
Remember by the end of 1980 even Michael Foot led Thatcher in the polls as unemployment rose, indeed Thatcher would probably have lost in 1983 had she not got unemployment as well as inflation down and cut strikes by then and won in the Falklands.
If economy is poor and frequent strikes and high inflation under a Starmer government even a rightwinger as Tory leader could wing much as the supposedly 'unelectable' Thatcher won as a rightwinger against the 1979 Labour government after only 5 years of the Tories in opposition
But that's kind of the point. Thatcher won in 83 and then 87 despite some serious difficulties and rough patches, in part because there had been an underlying shift in perceptions that Labour struggled to grasp and run with because a whole tranche of people had lost faith in its ideas.
Similarly, doubt Starmer's govt will have its issues, but even after a mediocre four or five years the Tories may face an uphill battle because they're simply toxic, like really toxic, to generations whose votes will only grow in importance.
And there's probably an underestimation of quite how toxic they are. I know people who in terms of income level and general "meh" attitude to politics should be Tory voters. They regard the party with a contempt usually reserved for those residing in high-security medical facilities, having spent the past decade making decisions that have made lives more difficult or just been insulting.
It's going to take a lot for the Tories to reverse that, in a way that's rather different I think to those conducive to a changing of perceptions or a quick return. Especially given they seem completely unwilling or unable to realise the depth of their predicament with those who aren't retired or getting there.
If you're under 50, you're roughly as likely to believe the moon landings are faked as plan to vote Tory. That's not a party with a bright future, unless it can address the reasons why and change. Clue: It's part economics, part their flagship political project being catastrophically unpopular in a way few policies ever are.
For now, add in rising unemployment, strikes, rising inflation and high interest rates and sluggish growth under a Starmer government and the middle aged swing voters ie those 35-65, would certainly consider voting Tory again even if under 35s voted Labour still.
Remember in 2019 the median age more voters voted Conservative than Labour was 39 not 59 and most Conservative voters were voting to get Brexit done as most of them had voted for it!
Of course the median age where people were more likely to live in their own home than rent was also around 39 too. Which is shockingly bad and nothing for you to be pleased with.
Set aside Brexit and one thing that Thatcher, Cameron, Osborne, Johnson and Gove all had in common is they all wanted to get more on the housing ladder, they understood that it is only because of people being able to move on in life that people become more Tory as they age, its not a simple automatic fact of ageing that happens.
Unfortunately Johnson's moderate housing reforms were defeated by the likes of May, cheered on by the likes of you, and then Sunak has torn up any measures to see more housing built to alleviate the crisis that is causing those in their 20s and 30s to have to rent.
As a result you and they deserve to be nowhere near office, and do not deserve to be elected.
Conservativism should be about ensuring as many people as possible can support themselves, paying for their own home, out of their own wages.
Unfortunately its been taken over by a cargo cult who believe that other people paying for their homes, out of their wages, is a better way to live.
Until the Conservatives return back to solid Conservative principles, they deserve to be in Opposition.
I have always wondered why the most anti development, the Greens are the ones the youngster seem to think deserve their vote. Got a lib dem councillor round our way who has opposed at every juncture the building of a couple of hundred houses by an RSL (registered social landlord = council housing) but in their efforts to become the local MP has 'affordable housing' as second on his list of priorities for the constituency.
This is a timeless feature of local politics - one of the ways to get elected is to jump on to some planning controversy. Every party is guilty of this but the greens/lib dems are consistently the worst offenders.
Extraordinarily short sighted comment. Most Greens and LDs aren't anti-development - what they are opposed to is developments purely designed to maximise profit for housebuilders and property developers. Simply chucking a huge block of flats or a vast estate of houses on a site without considering the impact on the surrounding communities and infrastructure seems entirely desireable.
Sure, but what this means is that the Government and its regulators should act to ensure that the housing market is tight, competitive, open to new entrants, and that profits are made by meeting consumer demand effectively. The should also act to ensure that new dwellings are beautiful, and accompanied by sufficient facilities. Markets need to be chopped, changed, and regulated to ensure that they're working properly - Adam Smith himself acknowledged this. Markets where a vast profit is being made but consumer demands aren't being met are dysfunctional. The energy market is another. That doesn't mean replacing the market with the Government as client - then you just get housing provided like the NHS.
Housing does not result in a need for facilities, people do.
People pay taxes for public facilities.
Public facilities should be paid for via those taxes, not via housing.
Private facilities should be paid for privately by people, not via housing.
I agree, but there does need to be space made for them within developments, so they need to be considered.
Why does there need to be space within developments? There needs to be space, but it can be adjacent to or near the developments not within them - and if it is for a public service it should be paid for via everyone not just the developments.
Public education falls upon the taxpayer, if a towns population doubles so a new school needs to be built then all taxpayers should chip in for the new school, not just those taxpayers who happen to be buying a new house while the others get to abdicate their responsibilities.
Bugger off, to put it politely. I see no reason why I should pay to maintain the profits of some toybox house manufacturer doubling the size of my town. They can bloody well pay the capital costs, at the very least, of buulding about 5 new schools.
Education has bugger all to do with profits or housing numbers and is entirely to do with children, you ninny.
If there's twice as many children in your town than before, then there's more school places needed. Regardless of whether the number of houses is reduced, unchanged, doubled or trebled.
Education is not an externality, its a public service there to educate children.
There are more children in this country than there were in the past. You may have a house of your own, but those children need educating whether they live in overcrowded slums or their parents can actually have a house of their own too.
But the children are being moved from place to place. Have you not thought that through?
No they're not. There's population growth.
Which mythical place in this country has an overabundance of services as the people have been moved away from it.
People being mkoved into places with not enough services.
Where from?
No, people live in places with not enough services already, they're not being moved in from anywhere.
People are living in overcrowded homes because there's a shortage of housing. If you increase the housing supply, so that people in overcrowded homes can get one down the road of their own rather than living in overcrowding, then the population hasn't changed.
Apart from abroad, the idea that people are being moved in is a myth. Almost the entire country is seeing population growth, that's growth that's not an externality and the whole country needs to pay for those public services.
It’s always heartwarming to see that some folk who have never worked in the public sector are so skilled they can instantly diagnose all the issues (which, mysteriously, always manage to conform to their personal prejudices) and propose a solution which usually involves a change to “the culture”.
Sigh…
The public sector is roughly as good (and as bad) at doing things as the private sector (with some minor variances, generally based on being able to offer market pay). The big difference is that mistakes in the public sector have to be declared in full, whilst in the public sector they can usually be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of accountants and auditors.
"The big difference is that mistakes in the public sector have to be declared in full, whilst in the public sector they can usually be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of accountants and auditors."
Didn't you mean the second "public sector" in that sentence to read "private sector"?
I would cite the Post Office as a riposte to that sentiment but you know that already. Plus listed companies have to make market announcement - I pile cite a few examples there too.
To the first one - yes.
To the second - no, with respect that’s very naive. For a start that only really applies to listed companies anyway, and even then the level of transparency is a million miles different.
A large part of the issue with the post office scandal, of course, was trying to run it in a private sector fashion when the service is crying out to be run as a public service.
There is something in the criticism that a public service was being run by the wrong people in the wrong way. But it overlooks the fact that in important ways it was behaving like a public sector organization - its prosecution powers, for instance, gave it powers that few bodies had, its claim on unlimited funds when it came to litigation and the lack of any effective supervision or oversight.
I don't think the private sector is some sort of nirvana. It seems to me the difference is that the character and competence of those in charge is very important and has been far too undervalued. Part of what I mean by character is the willingness to ask questions and the humility to know that you do not know everything and need to learn. Far too many people at the top lack this.
One other point is the practice of having part-time Chairmen or directors with lots of different directorships. See, for instance, Tim Cook - Chairman of the Post Office during the Vennells era who thought he could do the job in 1 & 1/2 days a week. These jobs are serious ones which really require more effort and commitment. Too often they are treated as sinecures for people who collect a load of them. Then we wonder why things go wrong.
If Keir Starmer actually wants to announce an manifesto policy, he could do worse than announce the removal of the Post Office’s prosecution powers.
Interesting to note that after Susan Crichton, the GC, left in 2013, her replacement - Chris Aujard - was an interim GC only and left in 2015.
During this period, the Post Office's Chairman was Alice Perkins. She is also the wife of Jack Straw. Jack Straw's former SPAD, Mark Davies, was the Post Office's Director of Communications.
This period was when everything was being done to cover up what was being uncovered. It was when Second Sight, the experts brought in at the behest of MPs, were denied documents to do their job and then finally sacked. The decision to deny them documents was made by a Board meeting attended by Ms Perkins and the GC. She needs to be asked questions rather more than Ed Davey, frankly
The Director of Communications will have put pressure on editors not to run with the stories or reassured them that it was all nonsense etc.,.
There were lots of people who saw it as their job to cover this up. Paula Vennells is by no means the only person at fault here and there is something unbecoming and distasteful in the way that all these others are avoiding their share of responsibility
I am sure that you understand the realpolitik, whilst reacting against it as strongly as I do.
The sad reality is that if Vennells gets to take most of the flak, and a few junior people in Fujitsu get done for good measure, they’ll hope to get, and will probably achieve, closure.
It isn’t fair, and there will be lots of the culpable - from judges through lawyers through senior Post Office executives and Fujitsu managers - who ought to be punished as well.
But, sadly perhaps, the world we have to live in is real, and will want to move on.
Whether the Tories win an election again within a decade or not depends on how Labour handle the economy. Handle it reasonably well as New Labour did and like post 1997 the Tories can expect to be in Opposition for 10 years or more.
Handle it poorly as previous Labour governments did and the swingback to the Tories would be much more rapid. Remember after landslide defeat in 1945 the Tories were back in government in 1951, after losing power in 1964 they were back in power in 1970 ie within 10 years. Thatcher of course took the party back to government in 1979, just 5 years after Heath had lost the 1974 general elections to Wilson's Labour
Obviously anything's possible and one shouldn't rule out a Tory comeback, but it may be very optimistic about the hole the Tories are in with a large swathe of the public. Even a fairly dud Labour government could plausibly lay most of its economic difficulties at the door of the previous government's failures and a wasted decade.
You can see it in polling where the Tories figures among those of working age are pitiful (and that includes those in the past who'd be moving to vote solidly Tory). It may be in a doom loop whereby its route to recovery is blocked by the fact it's increasingly reliant on the wealthy old, so can't propose growth-friendly policies that irk them. But without doing so cater to a base with diminishing returns and further cement their reputation as the party of economic decline.
What we may witness is something like 1979, a generational sea change whereby for a lot of people of a certain generation, Labour gained a reputation for economic mismanagement and supporting a broken model it arguably hasn't shaken off with those of that age. With the one era of success coming when Blair and Brown made clear the party had moved away from that.
The next successful Tory leader may well have to prove that similarly, they're not wedded to the right of the party's failed approach, and their ostensibly liberal wing's weakness in appeasing them.
Remember by the end of 1980 even Michael Foot led Thatcher in the polls as unemployment rose, indeed Thatcher would probably have lost in 1983 had she not got unemployment as well as inflation down and cut strikes by then and won in the Falklands.
If economy is poor and frequent strikes and high inflation under a Starmer government even a rightwinger as Tory leader could wing much as the supposedly 'unelectable' Thatcher won as a rightwinger against the 1979 Labour government after only 5 years of the Tories in opposition
But that's kind of the point. Thatcher won in 83 and then 87 despite some serious difficulties and rough patches, in part because there had been an underlying shift in perceptions that Labour struggled to grasp and run with because a whole tranche of people had lost faith in its ideas.
Similarly, doubt Starmer's govt will have its issues, but even after a mediocre four or five years the Tories may face an uphill battle because they're simply toxic, like really toxic, to generations whose votes will only grow in importance.
And there's probably an underestimation of quite how toxic they are. I know people who in terms of income level and general "meh" attitude to politics should be Tory voters. They regard the party with a contempt usually reserved for those residing in high-security medical facilities, having spent the past decade making decisions that have made lives more difficult or just been insulting.
It's going to take a lot for the Tories to reverse that, in a way that's rather different I think to those conducive to a changing of perceptions or a quick return. Especially given they seem completely unwilling or unable to realise the depth of their predicament with those who aren't retired or getting there.
If you're under 50, you're roughly as likely to believe the moon landings are faked as plan to vote Tory. That's not a party with a bright future, unless it can address the reasons why and change. Clue: It's part economics, part their flagship political project being catastrophically unpopular in a way few policies ever are.
For now, add in rising unemployment, strikes, rising inflation and high interest rates and sluggish growth under a Starmer government and the middle aged swing voters ie those 35-65, would certainly consider voting Tory again even if under 35s voted Labour still.
Remember in 2019 the median age more voters voted Conservative than Labour was 39 not 59 and most Conservative voters were voting to get Brexit done as most of them had voted for it!
Of course the median age where people were more likely to live in their own home than rent was also around 39 too. Which is shockingly bad and nothing for you to be pleased with.
Set aside Brexit and one thing that Thatcher, Cameron, Osborne, Johnson and Gove all had in common is they all wanted to get more on the housing ladder, they understood that it is only because of people being able to move on in life that people become more Tory as they age, its not a simple automatic fact of ageing that happens.
Unfortunately Johnson's moderate housing reforms were defeated by the likes of May, cheered on by the likes of you, and then Sunak has torn up any measures to see more housing built to alleviate the crisis that is causing those in their 20s and 30s to have to rent.
As a result you and they deserve to be nowhere near office, and do not deserve to be elected.
Conservativism should be about ensuring as many people as possible can support themselves, paying for their own home, out of their own wages.
Unfortunately its been taken over by a cargo cult who believe that other people paying for their homes, out of their wages, is a better way to live.
Until the Conservatives return back to solid Conservative principles, they deserve to be in Opposition.
I have always wondered why the most anti development, the Greens are the ones the youngster seem to think deserve their vote. Got a lib dem councillor round our way who has opposed at every juncture the building of a couple of hundred houses by an RSL (registered social landlord = council housing) but in their efforts to become the local MP has 'affordable housing' as second on his list of priorities for the constituency.
This is a timeless feature of local politics - one of the ways to get elected is to jump on to some planning controversy. Every party is guilty of this but the greens/lib dems are consistently the worst offenders.
Extraordinarily short sighted comment. Most Greens and LDs aren't anti-development - what they are opposed to is developments purely designed to maximise profit for housebuilders and property developers. Simply chucking a huge block of flats or a vast estate of houses on a site without considering the impact on the surrounding communities and infrastructure seems entirely desireable.
Sure, but what this means is that the Government and its regulators should act to ensure that the housing market is tight, competitive, open to new entrants, and that profits are made by meeting consumer demand effectively. The should also act to ensure that new dwellings are beautiful, and accompanied by sufficient facilities. Markets need to be chopped, changed, and regulated to ensure that they're working properly - Adam Smith himself acknowledged this. Markets where a vast profit is being made but consumer demands aren't being met are dysfunctional. The energy market is another. That doesn't mean replacing the market with the Government as client - then you just get housing provided like the NHS.
Housing does not result in a need for facilities, people do.
People pay taxes for public facilities.
Public facilities should be paid for via those taxes, not via housing.
Private facilities should be paid for privately by people, not via housing.
I agree, but there does need to be space made for them within developments, so they need to be considered.
Why does there need to be space within developments? There needs to be space, but it can be adjacent to or near the developments not within them - and if it is for a public service it should be paid for via everyone not just the developments.
Public education falls upon the taxpayer, if a towns population doubles so a new school needs to be built then all taxpayers should chip in for the new school, not just those taxpayers who happen to be buying a new house while the others get to abdicate their responsibilities.
Bugger off, to put it politely. I see no reason why I should pay to maintain the profits of some toybox house manufacturer doubling the size of my town. They can bloody well pay the capital costs, at the very least, of buulding about 5 new schools.
Education has bugger all to do with profits or housing numbers and is entirely to do with children, you ninny.
If there's twice as many children in your town than before, then there's more school places needed. Regardless of whether the number of houses is reduced, unchanged, doubled or trebled.
Education is not an externality, its a public service there to educate children.
There are more children in this country than there were in the past. You may have a house of your own, but those children need educating whether they live in overcrowded slums or their parents can actually have a house of their own too.
But the children are being moved from place to place. Have you not thought that through?
And it has EVERYTHING to do with profits when the spaces in existing schools are a major determinant of planning permission. No schools, no planning permission, no PROFITS. So the developers need to cough ip for schools and drains and so on and so forth rather than dumping the costs on the existing inhabitants.
What the past few years have revealed is that there is absolutely no political interest in scrapping the planning system. The direction of travel is entirely the other way - more regulation, more requirements, more legislation - all political parties are signed up to this agenda.
Every time we have this discussion @Carnyx you come up with this bullshit lie that public services are an externality, and that people are being moved in but when questioned "where from" you always go deathly silent.
Where is this magical, mystical land in this country with an overabundance of school places and other public services that people are supposedly moving from?
You ask why you should pay for education? Because its a public service. That's why. If you have grandchildren, and those grandchildren need to go to school, then why does the fact that you have a house of your own, while children live in overcrowded accommodation make you absolved for paying for education while only those who buy a house should pay for it?
If people are moving away from a town or city with bountiful public services and an overabundance of good quality services and school places, then I'd love to know where this mythical make-believe town or city is.
It’s always heartwarming to see that some folk who have never worked in the public sector are so skilled they can instantly diagnose all the issues (which, mysteriously, always manage to conform to their personal prejudices) and propose a solution which usually involves a change to “the culture”.
Sigh…
The public sector is roughly as good (and as bad) at doing things as the private sector (with some minor variances, generally based on being able to offer market pay). The big difference is that mistakes in the public sector have to be declared in full, whilst in the private sector they can usually be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of accountants and auditors.
Mistakes in the private sector have to be declared in full, and if brushed under the carpet then the business can fail as a result with the shareholders taking full responsibility of their neglect.
Mistakes in the public sector can be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of colleagues, "civil servants" politicians and more being in denial of any wrongdoing with the taxpayer taking full responsibility of their neglect.
One of the biggest mistakes of the Coalition was getting rid of the Audit Commission but there are mechanisms such as the Local Government Ombudsman. Who, for instance, would you hold accountable for the disasters at Thurrock and Woking - the elected Members, Senior Officers, both, neither? I do agree the taxpayer does in the end finish up footing the bill but when some private sector companies fail (as we've seen), the Government ends up holding the baby.
Allister Heath once argued for all organisations (both public and private) to write in effect a Will describing what should happen if the business were to become bankrupt or insolvent outlining what should happen to creditors, employees, shareholders etc.
The taxpayer should never foot the bill for private sector companies failing and Gordon Brown agreeing to do so was a tremendous mistake he made.
No private business should ever be regarded as too big to fail.
Far better to collapse the entire global banking system than to rescue a "too big to fail" bank? That's what happened when the Fed declined to rescue Lehman Bros, and Britain stopped Barclays from buying it because that would mean HM Treasury guaranteeing an American bank.
Yes.
The Fed did the right thing in declining to rescue Lehman Bros.
Which precipitated the Global Financial Crisis.
Unsustainable banking practices precipitated the Global Financial Crisis.
Whether the Tories win an election again within a decade or not depends on how Labour handle the economy. Handle it reasonably well as New Labour did and like post 1997 the Tories can expect to be in Opposition for 10 years or more.
Handle it poorly as previous Labour governments did and the swingback to the Tories would be much more rapid. Remember after landslide defeat in 1945 the Tories were back in government in 1951, after losing power in 1964 they were back in power in 1970 ie within 10 years. Thatcher of course took the party back to government in 1979, just 5 years after Heath had lost the 1974 general elections to Wilson's Labour
Obviously anything's possible and one shouldn't rule out a Tory comeback, but it may be very optimistic about the hole the Tories are in with a large swathe of the public. Even a fairly dud Labour government could plausibly lay most of its economic difficulties at the door of the previous government's failures and a wasted decade.
You can see it in polling where the Tories figures among those of working age are pitiful (and that includes those in the past who'd be moving to vote solidly Tory). It may be in a doom loop whereby its route to recovery is blocked by the fact it's increasingly reliant on the wealthy old, so can't propose growth-friendly policies that irk them. But without doing so cater to a base with diminishing returns and further cement their reputation as the party of economic decline.
What we may witness is something like 1979, a generational sea change whereby for a lot of people of a certain generation, Labour gained a reputation for economic mismanagement and supporting a broken model it arguably hasn't shaken off with those of that age. With the one era of success coming when Blair and Brown made clear the party had moved away from that.
The next successful Tory leader may well have to prove that similarly, they're not wedded to the right of the party's failed approach, and their ostensibly liberal wing's weakness in appeasing them.
Remember by the end of 1980 even Michael Foot led Thatcher in the polls as unemployment rose, indeed Thatcher would probably have lost in 1983 had she not got unemployment as well as inflation down and cut strikes by then and won in the Falklands.
If economy is poor and frequent strikes and high inflation under a Starmer government even a rightwinger as Tory leader could wing much as the supposedly 'unelectable' Thatcher won as a rightwinger against the 1979 Labour government after only 5 years of the Tories in opposition
But that's kind of the point. Thatcher won in 83 and then 87 despite some serious difficulties and rough patches, in part because there had been an underlying shift in perceptions that Labour struggled to grasp and run with because a whole tranche of people had lost faith in its ideas.
Similarly, doubt Starmer's govt will have its issues, but even after a mediocre four or five years the Tories may face an uphill battle because they're simply toxic, like really toxic, to generations whose votes will only grow in importance.
And there's probably an underestimation of quite how toxic they are. I know people who in terms of income level and general "meh" attitude to politics should be Tory voters. They regard the party with a contempt usually reserved for those residing in high-security medical facilities, having spent the past decade making decisions that have made lives more difficult or just been insulting.
It's going to take a lot for the Tories to reverse that, in a way that's rather different I think to those conducive to a changing of perceptions or a quick return. Especially given they seem completely unwilling or unable to realise the depth of their predicament with those who aren't retired or getting there.
If you're under 50, you're roughly as likely to believe the moon landings are faked as plan to vote Tory. That's not a party with a bright future, unless it can address the reasons why and change. Clue: It's part economics, part their flagship political project being catastrophically unpopular in a way few policies ever are.
For now, add in rising unemployment, strikes, rising inflation and high interest rates and sluggish growth under a Starmer government and the middle aged swing voters ie those 35-65, would certainly consider voting Tory again even if under 35s voted Labour still.
Remember in 2019 the median age more voters voted Conservative than Labour was 39 not 59 and most Conservative voters were voting to get Brexit done as most of them had voted for it!
Of course the median age where people were more likely to live in their own home than rent was also around 39 too. Which is shockingly bad and nothing for you to be pleased with.
Set aside Brexit and one thing that Thatcher, Cameron, Osborne, Johnson and Gove all had in common is they all wanted to get more on the housing ladder, they understood that it is only because of people being able to move on in life that people become more Tory as they age, its not a simple automatic fact of ageing that happens.
Unfortunately Johnson's moderate housing reforms were defeated by the likes of May, cheered on by the likes of you, and then Sunak has torn up any measures to see more housing built to alleviate the crisis that is causing those in their 20s and 30s to have to rent.
As a result you and they deserve to be nowhere near office, and do not deserve to be elected.
Conservativism should be about ensuring as many people as possible can support themselves, paying for their own home, out of their own wages.
Unfortunately its been taken over by a cargo cult who believe that other people paying for their homes, out of their wages, is a better way to live.
Until the Conservatives return back to solid Conservative principles, they deserve to be in Opposition.
I have always wondered why the most anti development, the Greens are the ones the youngster seem to think deserve their vote. Got a lib dem councillor round our way who has opposed at every juncture the building of a couple of hundred houses by an RSL (registered social landlord = council housing) but in their efforts to become the local MP has 'affordable housing' as second on his list of priorities for the constituency.
This is a timeless feature of local politics - one of the ways to get elected is to jump on to some planning controversy. Every party is guilty of this but the greens/lib dems are consistently the worst offenders.
Extraordinarily short sighted comment. Most Greens and LDs aren't anti-development - what they are opposed to is developments purely designed to maximise profit for housebuilders and property developers. Simply chucking a huge block of flats or a vast estate of houses on a site without considering the impact on the surrounding communities and infrastructure seems entirely desireable.
Sure, but what this means is that the Government and its regulators should act to ensure that the housing market is tight, competitive, open to new entrants, and that profits are made by meeting consumer demand effectively. The should also act to ensure that new dwellings are beautiful, and accompanied by sufficient facilities. Markets need to be chopped, changed, and regulated to ensure that they're working properly - Adam Smith himself acknowledged this. Markets where a vast profit is being made but consumer demands aren't being met are dysfunctional. The energy market is another. That doesn't mean replacing the market with the Government as client - then you just get housing provided like the NHS.
Housing does not result in a need for facilities, people do.
People pay taxes for public facilities.
Public facilities should be paid for via those taxes, not via housing.
Private facilities should be paid for privately by people, not via housing.
I agree, but there does need to be space made for them within developments, so they need to be considered.
Why does there need to be space within developments? There needs to be space, but it can be adjacent to or near the developments not within them - and if it is for a public service it should be paid for via everyone not just the developments.
Public education falls upon the taxpayer, if a towns population doubles so a new school needs to be built then all taxpayers should chip in for the new school, not just those taxpayers who happen to be buying a new house while the others get to abdicate their responsibilities.
Bugger off, to put it politely. I see no reason why I should pay to maintain the profits of some toybox house manufacturer doubling the size of my town. They can bloody well pay the capital costs, at the very least, of buulding about 5 new schools.
Education has bugger all to do with profits or housing numbers and is entirely to do with children, you ninny.
If there's twice as many children in your town than before, then there's more school places needed. Regardless of whether the number of houses is reduced, unchanged, doubled or trebled.
Education is not an externality, its a public service there to educate children.
There are more children in this country than there were in the past. You may have a house of your own, but those children need educating whether they live in overcrowded slums or their parents can actually have a house of their own too.
But the children are being moved from place to place. Have you not thought that through?
And it has EVERYTHING to do with profits when the spaces in existing schools are a major determinant of planning permission. No schools, no planning permission, no PROFITS. So the developers need to cough ip for schools and drains and so on and so forth rather than dumping the costs on the existing inhabitants.
What the past few years have revealed is that there is absolutely no political interest in scrapping the planning system. The direction of travel is entirely the other way - more regulation, more requirements, more legislation - all political parties are signed up to this agenda.
Which is why we have a chronic housing shortage and a failure to invest in sufficient public service for our population.
If you want to reverse that terminal decline, then that needs resolving.
Whether the Tories win an election again within a decade or not depends on how Labour handle the economy. Handle it reasonably well as New Labour did and like post 1997 the Tories can expect to be in Opposition for 10 years or more.
Handle it poorly as previous Labour governments did and the swingback to the Tories would be much more rapid. Remember after landslide defeat in 1945 the Tories were back in government in 1951, after losing power in 1964 they were back in power in 1970 ie within 10 years. Thatcher of course took the party back to government in 1979, just 5 years after Heath had lost the 1974 general elections to Wilson's Labour
Obviously anything's possible and one shouldn't rule out a Tory comeback, but it may be very optimistic about the hole the Tories are in with a large swathe of the public. Even a fairly dud Labour government could plausibly lay most of its economic difficulties at the door of the previous government's failures and a wasted decade.
You can see it in polling where the Tories figures among those of working age are pitiful (and that includes those in the past who'd be moving to vote solidly Tory). It may be in a doom loop whereby its route to recovery is blocked by the fact it's increasingly reliant on the wealthy old, so can't propose growth-friendly policies that irk them. But without doing so cater to a base with diminishing returns and further cement their reputation as the party of economic decline.
What we may witness is something like 1979, a generational sea change whereby for a lot of people of a certain generation, Labour gained a reputation for economic mismanagement and supporting a broken model it arguably hasn't shaken off with those of that age. With the one era of success coming when Blair and Brown made clear the party had moved away from that.
The next successful Tory leader may well have to prove that similarly, they're not wedded to the right of the party's failed approach, and their ostensibly liberal wing's weakness in appeasing them.
Remember by the end of 1980 even Michael Foot led Thatcher in the polls as unemployment rose, indeed Thatcher would probably have lost in 1983 had she not got unemployment as well as inflation down and cut strikes by then and won in the Falklands.
If economy is poor and frequent strikes and high inflation under a Starmer government even a rightwinger as Tory leader could wing much as the supposedly 'unelectable' Thatcher won as a rightwinger against the 1979 Labour government after only 5 years of the Tories in opposition
But that's kind of the point. Thatcher won in 83 and then 87 despite some serious difficulties and rough patches, in part because there had been an underlying shift in perceptions that Labour struggled to grasp and run with because a whole tranche of people had lost faith in its ideas.
Similarly, doubt Starmer's govt will have its issues, but even after a mediocre four or five years the Tories may face an uphill battle because they're simply toxic, like really toxic, to generations whose votes will only grow in importance.
And there's probably an underestimation of quite how toxic they are. I know people who in terms of income level and general "meh" attitude to politics should be Tory voters. They regard the party with a contempt usually reserved for those residing in high-security medical facilities, having spent the past decade making decisions that have made lives more difficult or just been insulting.
It's going to take a lot for the Tories to reverse that, in a way that's rather different I think to those conducive to a changing of perceptions or a quick return. Especially given they seem completely unwilling or unable to realise the depth of their predicament with those who aren't retired or getting there.
If you're under 50, you're roughly as likely to believe the moon landings are faked as plan to vote Tory. That's not a party with a bright future, unless it can address the reasons why and change. Clue: It's part economics, part their flagship political project being catastrophically unpopular in a way few policies ever are.
For now, add in rising unemployment, strikes, rising inflation and high interest rates and sluggish growth under a Starmer government and the middle aged swing voters ie those 35-65, would certainly consider voting Tory again even if under 35s voted Labour still.
Remember in 2019 the median age more voters voted Conservative than Labour was 39 not 59 and most Conservative voters were voting to get Brexit done as most of them had voted for it!
Of course the median age where people were more likely to live in their own home than rent was also around 39 too. Which is shockingly bad and nothing for you to be pleased with.
Set aside Brexit and one thing that Thatcher, Cameron, Osborne, Johnson and Gove all had in common is they all wanted to get more on the housing ladder, they understood that it is only because of people being able to move on in life that people become more Tory as they age, its not a simple automatic fact of ageing that happens.
Unfortunately Johnson's moderate housing reforms were defeated by the likes of May, cheered on by the likes of you, and then Sunak has torn up any measures to see more housing built to alleviate the crisis that is causing those in their 20s and 30s to have to rent.
As a result you and they deserve to be nowhere near office, and do not deserve to be elected.
Conservativism should be about ensuring as many people as possible can support themselves, paying for their own home, out of their own wages.
Unfortunately its been taken over by a cargo cult who believe that other people paying for their homes, out of their wages, is a better way to live.
Until the Conservatives return back to solid Conservative principles, they deserve to be in Opposition.
I have always wondered why the most anti development, the Greens are the ones the youngster seem to think deserve their vote. Got a lib dem councillor round our way who has opposed at every juncture the building of a couple of hundred houses by an RSL (registered social landlord = council housing) but in their efforts to become the local MP has 'affordable housing' as second on his list of priorities for the constituency.
This is a timeless feature of local politics - one of the ways to get elected is to jump on to some planning controversy. Every party is guilty of this but the greens/lib dems are consistently the worst offenders.
Extraordinarily short sighted comment. Most Greens and LDs aren't anti-development - what they are opposed to is developments purely designed to maximise profit for housebuilders and property developers. Simply chucking a huge block of flats or a vast estate of houses on a site without considering the impact on the surrounding communities and infrastructure seems entirely desireable.
Sure, but what this means is that the Government and its regulators should act to ensure that the housing market is tight, competitive, open to new entrants, and that profits are made by meeting consumer demand effectively. The should also act to ensure that new dwellings are beautiful, and accompanied by sufficient facilities. Markets need to be chopped, changed, and regulated to ensure that they're working properly - Adam Smith himself acknowledged this. Markets where a vast profit is being made but consumer demands aren't being met are dysfunctional. The energy market is another. That doesn't mean replacing the market with the Government as client - then you just get housing provided like the NHS.
Housing does not result in a need for facilities, people do.
People pay taxes for public facilities.
Public facilities should be paid for via those taxes, not via housing.
Private facilities should be paid for privately by people, not via housing.
I agree, but there does need to be space made for them within developments, so they need to be considered.
Why does there need to be space within developments? There needs to be space, but it can be adjacent to or near the developments not within them - and if it is for a public service it should be paid for via everyone not just the developments.
Public education falls upon the taxpayer, if a towns population doubles so a new school needs to be built then all taxpayers should chip in for the new school, not just those taxpayers who happen to be buying a new house while the others get to abdicate their responsibilities.
Bugger off, to put it politely. I see no reason why I should pay to maintain the profits of some toybox house manufacturer doubling the size of my town. They can bloody well pay the capital costs, at the very least, of buulding about 5 new schools.
In my own misspent youth, attended couple of schools in my small hometown, that were built for the community by a TRUE leader of business - Henry J. Kaiser.
This occurred when he built a massive alumin(i)um works just outside town. Which required construction of many new houses and apartments for his workers. Mostly with kids who needed schooling, naturally.
HJK was NOT the kind to take the tack, that it was NOT his concern. For number of reasons, including the good of his own corporation and stockholders.
It’s always heartwarming to see that some folk who have never worked in the public sector are so skilled they can instantly diagnose all the issues (which, mysteriously, always manage to conform to their personal prejudices) and propose a solution which usually involves a change to “the culture”.
Sigh…
The public sector is roughly as good (and as bad) at doing things as the private sector (with some minor variances, generally based on being able to offer market pay). The big difference is that mistakes in the public sector have to be declared in full, whilst in the private sector they can usually be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of accountants and auditors.
Mistakes in the private sector have to be declared in full, and if brushed under the carpet then the business can fail as a result with the shareholders taking full responsibility of their neglect.
Mistakes in the public sector can be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of colleagues, "civil servants" politicians and more being in denial of any wrongdoing with the taxpayer taking full responsibility of their neglect.
One of the biggest mistakes of the Coalition was getting rid of the Audit Commission but there are mechanisms such as the Local Government Ombudsman. Who, for instance, would you hold accountable for the disasters at Thurrock and Woking - the elected Members, Senior Officers, both, neither? I do agree the taxpayer does in the end finish up footing the bill but when some private sector companies fail (as we've seen), the Government ends up holding the baby.
Allister Heath once argued for all organisations (both public and private) to write in effect a Will describing what should happen if the business were to become bankrupt or insolvent outlining what should happen to creditors, employees, shareholders etc.
The taxpayer should never foot the bill for private sector companies failing and Gordon Brown agreeing to do so was a tremendous mistake he made.
No private business should ever be regarded as too big to fail.
Far better to collapse the entire global banking system than to rescue a "too big to fail" bank? That's what happened when the Fed declined to rescue Lehman Bros, and Britain stopped Barclays from buying it because that would mean HM Treasury guaranteeing an American bank.
Yes.
The Fed did the right thing in declining to rescue Lehman Bros.
Which precipitated the Global Financial Crisis.
No, crises happen. Shit happens.
People make mistakes and when those mistakes come to light, crises are a good way of clearing out the trash - which by that point Lehman Bros was.
Trying to prevent crises is as foolhardy as trying to stop winter.
We can't stop winter but we can take dress warmly, take shelter and heat our homes. The problem could not be isolated to one bank. The resultant Global Financial Crisis cost trillions of dollars.
Yes and that cost should have fallen on the shareholders of the banks that hadn't done their due dilligence.
The taxpayer should not have born the cost of private institutions failures. We had a system of protected accounts and protected account limits but all that was wiped out with the taxpayer giving a blank cheque, unnecessarily.
Iceland let its banks fail. The state stepped in to keep the operation of banking systems ongoing but did not bail out shareholders or unprotected accounts.
Sadly, that option was not open to us or America. If the global banking system stopped, so would everything, including almost all commerce and your wages.
You can keep the global banking system going without keeping the shareholders going.
Nationalise the critical bits of the banking system, wiping out unprotected accounts, unprotected shareholders, unprotected creditors etc
How? The trouble is the global banking system is a complicated web, not just a series of isolated banks that could be allowed to fail independently of one another. You cannot pick out "the critical bits of the banking system". We can't let Bank A fail and save Bank B, if Bank B is only solvent because of the money it is due from Bank A. And the millions of interrelated obligations between banks meant no-one knew till too late if that would be the case. To mix metaphors, when the Fed let Lehman Bros collapse, they knocked over the house of cards.
Whether the Tories win an election again within a decade or not depends on how Labour handle the economy. Handle it reasonably well as New Labour did and like post 1997 the Tories can expect to be in Opposition for 10 years or more.
Handle it poorly as previous Labour governments did and the swingback to the Tories would be much more rapid. Remember after landslide defeat in 1945 the Tories were back in government in 1951, after losing power in 1964 they were back in power in 1970 ie within 10 years. Thatcher of course took the party back to government in 1979, just 5 years after Heath had lost the 1974 general elections to Wilson's Labour
Obviously anything's possible and one shouldn't rule out a Tory comeback, but it may be very optimistic about the hole the Tories are in with a large swathe of the public. Even a fairly dud Labour government could plausibly lay most of its economic difficulties at the door of the previous government's failures and a wasted decade.
You can see it in polling where the Tories figures among those of working age are pitiful (and that includes those in the past who'd be moving to vote solidly Tory). It may be in a doom loop whereby its route to recovery is blocked by the fact it's increasingly reliant on the wealthy old, so can't propose growth-friendly policies that irk them. But without doing so cater to a base with diminishing returns and further cement their reputation as the party of economic decline.
What we may witness is something like 1979, a generational sea change whereby for a lot of people of a certain generation, Labour gained a reputation for economic mismanagement and supporting a broken model it arguably hasn't shaken off with those of that age. With the one era of success coming when Blair and Brown made clear the party had moved away from that.
The next successful Tory leader may well have to prove that similarly, they're not wedded to the right of the party's failed approach, and their ostensibly liberal wing's weakness in appeasing them.
Remember by the end of 1980 even Michael Foot led Thatcher in the polls as unemployment rose, indeed Thatcher would probably have lost in 1983 had she not got unemployment as well as inflation down and cut strikes by then and won in the Falklands.
If economy is poor and frequent strikes and high inflation under a Starmer government even a rightwinger as Tory leader could wing much as the supposedly 'unelectable' Thatcher won as a rightwinger against the 1979 Labour government after only 5 years of the Tories in opposition
But that's kind of the point. Thatcher won in 83 and then 87 despite some serious difficulties and rough patches, in part because there had been an underlying shift in perceptions that Labour struggled to grasp and run with because a whole tranche of people had lost faith in its ideas.
Similarly, doubt Starmer's govt will have its issues, but even after a mediocre four or five years the Tories may face an uphill battle because they're simply toxic, like really toxic, to generations whose votes will only grow in importance.
And there's probably an underestimation of quite how toxic they are. I know people who in terms of income level and general "meh" attitude to politics should be Tory voters. They regard the party with a contempt usually reserved for those residing in high-security medical facilities, having spent the past decade making decisions that have made lives more difficult or just been insulting.
It's going to take a lot for the Tories to reverse that, in a way that's rather different I think to those conducive to a changing of perceptions or a quick return. Especially given they seem completely unwilling or unable to realise the depth of their predicament with those who aren't retired or getting there.
If you're under 50, you're roughly as likely to believe the moon landings are faked as plan to vote Tory. That's not a party with a bright future, unless it can address the reasons why and change. Clue: It's part economics, part their flagship political project being catastrophically unpopular in a way few policies ever are.
For now, add in rising unemployment, strikes, rising inflation and high interest rates and sluggish growth under a Starmer government and the middle aged swing voters ie those 35-65, would certainly consider voting Tory again even if under 35s voted Labour still.
Remember in 2019 the median age more voters voted Conservative than Labour was 39 not 59 and most Conservative voters were voting to get Brexit done as most of them had voted for it!
Of course the median age where people were more likely to live in their own home than rent was also around 39 too. Which is shockingly bad and nothing for you to be pleased with.
Set aside Brexit and one thing that Thatcher, Cameron, Osborne, Johnson and Gove all had in common is they all wanted to get more on the housing ladder, they understood that it is only because of people being able to move on in life that people become more Tory as they age, its not a simple automatic fact of ageing that happens.
Unfortunately Johnson's moderate housing reforms were defeated by the likes of May, cheered on by the likes of you, and then Sunak has torn up any measures to see more housing built to alleviate the crisis that is causing those in their 20s and 30s to have to rent.
As a result you and they deserve to be nowhere near office, and do not deserve to be elected.
Conservativism should be about ensuring as many people as possible can support themselves, paying for their own home, out of their own wages.
Unfortunately its been taken over by a cargo cult who believe that other people paying for their homes, out of their wages, is a better way to live.
Until the Conservatives return back to solid Conservative principles, they deserve to be in Opposition.
I have always wondered why the most anti development, the Greens are the ones the youngster seem to think deserve their vote. Got a lib dem councillor round our way who has opposed at every juncture the building of a couple of hundred houses by an RSL (registered social landlord = council housing) but in their efforts to become the local MP has 'affordable housing' as second on his list of priorities for the constituency.
This is a timeless feature of local politics - one of the ways to get elected is to jump on to some planning controversy. Every party is guilty of this but the greens/lib dems are consistently the worst offenders.
Extraordinarily short sighted comment. Most Greens and LDs aren't anti-development - what they are opposed to is developments purely designed to maximise profit for housebuilders and property developers. Simply chucking a huge block of flats or a vast estate of houses on a site without considering the impact on the surrounding communities and infrastructure seems entirely desireable.
Sure, but what this means is that the Government and its regulators should act to ensure that the housing market is tight, competitive, open to new entrants, and that profits are made by meeting consumer demand effectively. The should also act to ensure that new dwellings are beautiful, and accompanied by sufficient facilities. Markets need to be chopped, changed, and regulated to ensure that they're working properly - Adam Smith himself acknowledged this. Markets where a vast profit is being made but consumer demands aren't being met are dysfunctional. The energy market is another. That doesn't mean replacing the market with the Government as client - then you just get housing provided like the NHS.
Housing does not result in a need for facilities, people do.
People pay taxes for public facilities.
Public facilities should be paid for via those taxes, not via housing.
Private facilities should be paid for privately by people, not via housing.
I agree, but there does need to be space made for them within developments, so they need to be considered.
Why does there need to be space within developments? There needs to be space, but it can be adjacent to or near the developments not within them - and if it is for a public service it should be paid for via everyone not just the developments.
Public education falls upon the taxpayer, if a towns population doubles so a new school needs to be built then all taxpayers should chip in for the new school, not just those taxpayers who happen to be buying a new house while the others get to abdicate their responsibilities.
Bugger off, to put it politely. I see no reason why I should pay to maintain the profits of some toybox house manufacturer doubling the size of my town. They can bloody well pay the capital costs, at the very least, of buulding about 5 new schools.
A couple of days ago someone asked if my water fast interfered with sleeping. I replied No, it’s fine
I can now report that’s totally untrue. My sleep pattern is all over the place. I’ve just woken up at 4am after 3 hours kip. I might sleep again in another 3-4 hours. It would make this quite impractical to combine with a normal job/family commitments
I also nearly succumbed to food last night with rages of starving hunger as I discovered a new packet of roasted peanuts in a cupboard. OMFG
Nonetheless here I am, 80 hours in. I can see ribs in my stomach that I haven’t seen in years. Like old friends from Sixth Form
I think I will end the fast later today. This evening. Enough
It’s always heartwarming to see that some folk who have never worked in the public sector are so skilled they can instantly diagnose all the issues (which, mysteriously, always manage to conform to their personal prejudices) and propose a solution which usually involves a change to “the culture”.
Sigh…
The public sector is roughly as good (and as bad) at doing things as the private sector (with some minor variances, generally based on being able to offer market pay). The big difference is that mistakes in the public sector have to be declared in full, whilst in the public sector they can usually be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of accountants and auditors.
"The big difference is that mistakes in the public sector have to be declared in full, whilst in the public sector they can usually be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of accountants and auditors."
Didn't you mean the second "public sector" in that sentence to read "private sector"?
I would cite the Post Office as a riposte to that sentiment but you know that already. Plus listed companies have to make market announcement - I pile cite a few examples there too.
But the Post Office during the key period (and since) was run by people brought in for their private sector expertise, who didn’t really understand what they were managing.
What we are looking at is a tragic confluence of private sector people focused on their key objective whilst not interested, or understanding, the environment they are in, supported by a load of career long public sector people trained to follow instructions and otherwise keep their heads down.
That is part of the explanation and an important factor. But I was responding to the claim that because it was in the public sector it had to declare its mistakes in full.
That has certainly not happened in the PO's case. If anything, partly to avoid embarrassing Ministers or at least Ministerial decisions and partly to permit the privatisation of Royal Mail, the unfolding problems were kept as quiet as possible for as long as possible, even to the extent of misleading courts and Parliament.
My read is that when Vennells arrives she was genuinely willing to try and sort the situation out. But she surely unappreciated the scale of the disaster, assuming they were dealing with a small number of anomalies that could be resolved without diverting her from her course. Which is what she will have been told, up the line. But at some point - pretty obviously shortly before Second Sight were sacked - she realised the scale of the catastrophe she was sitting on.
We can all see what the right thing to have done would have been. And I’m sure that 95% of us would swear that that’s what we would have done, in her position.
She will have found herself in a room full of senior people - long serving PO managers who understood things a lot better than her, maybe someone senior from Fuitisu still sowing misinformation, and - critically - some top lawyers who must have thought that they had a better than 50:50 chance of making the catastrophe go away with some disgraceful legal shenanigans, bankrupting the other party before the case got to a conclusion. As we can see, from both Wallis’s detailed account and the summary version dramatised by ITV, they very nearly succeeded. As it is, most of the money won by Bates and others went on legal costs.
Both the financial position of her business and her own personal reputation would have been trashed, had she come clean at that point - already being on record at the BIS SC and in the media as defending the PO position. So she had the choice between being honest and facing certain ordure, or gambling that she might make the whole thing go away.
We all know what the morally right thing to do was. But I’d bet that significantly less than 95% of us would have opted for the right path, put in her position.
I suspect there was also a great deal of Ministerial pressure not to do anything to impact the Post Office's route to profits.
But I have been in the position, both in the public sector and in the private sector, of having to tell very senior people (Ministers and Chief Executives) that what they would like to do is unlawful. That takes guts. And any CEO who ignores such advice is a bloody fool. It's not just about doing the morally right thing to do: it's about the difference between legality and illegality.
Susan Crichton, the GC, left suddenly in 2013 - not long after the external legal advice pointing out the unsafeness of the convictions and the first Second Sight report. I would really like to know the truth of what led to her departure and what advice she was giving. And what her successors and predecessors were doing and saying.
The role of the GC can be immensely powerful in such circumstances - if they use that power wisely and have the independence of character to use it. Not all do. Some are frankly useless. My guess is that her successor was more intent on facilitating a "let's sweep it under the carpet" job.
That is one reason why I think the role of the lawyers here has been so shameful. They should have been gatekeepers preventing morally dubious and unlawful behaviour. Instead they appear to have facilitated and carried it out.
I can agree with you there. Yet while the inquiry, and subsequent events, is likely to pour a cauldron of excrement over a few senior Post Office folk, and a few of the more junior ones whose evidence has been myopic, and maybe even some of the hapless oppos from Fujitsu, I’d wager that the legal profession - including the courts that convicted people merely because they couldn’t prove their innocence - will get off relatively lightly.
I really really hope not. The lawyers involved have behaved disgracefully and they, above all, should be made to pay a price for their misconduct, including criminal prosecutions if necessary.
I will certainly give them a lashing on here as and when the evidence comes out.
Incidentally your attack on the courts is silly: where someone pleads guilty, the court cannot ignore that. Where there is a trial, the verdict is that of the jury. The courts were hamstrung by the stupid decision to change the law on computer evidence.
The Ministry of Justice on the other hand - why weren't they noticing all these prosecutions? Why weren't they looking at how the Post Office was using its prosecution powers? There is plenty more to come out and I look forward to learning all about it, even if it makes me thoroughly ashamed of some members of my profession.
Why was MoJ asleep at the wheel?
Perhaps for the same reason cited by Ed Davey in his infamous brush-off form-letter in "response" to John Bates - that since the PO was/is no longer a government department, but instead something neither fish nor fowl (as opposed to foul)?
It’s always heartwarming to see that some folk who have never worked in the public sector are so skilled they can instantly diagnose all the issues (which, mysteriously, always manage to conform to their personal prejudices) and propose a solution which usually involves a change to “the culture”.
Sigh…
The public sector is roughly as good (and as bad) at doing things as the private sector (with some minor variances, generally based on being able to offer market pay). The big difference is that mistakes in the public sector have to be declared in full, whilst in the private sector they can usually be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of accountants and auditors.
Mistakes in the private sector have to be declared in full, and if brushed under the carpet then the business can fail as a result with the shareholders taking full responsibility of their neglect.
Mistakes in the public sector can be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of colleagues, "civil servants" politicians and more being in denial of any wrongdoing with the taxpayer taking full responsibility of their neglect.
One of the biggest mistakes of the Coalition was getting rid of the Audit Commission but there are mechanisms such as the Local Government Ombudsman. Who, for instance, would you hold accountable for the disasters at Thurrock and Woking - the elected Members, Senior Officers, both, neither? I do agree the taxpayer does in the end finish up footing the bill but when some private sector companies fail (as we've seen), the Government ends up holding the baby.
Allister Heath once argued for all organisations (both public and private) to write in effect a Will describing what should happen if the business were to become bankrupt or insolvent outlining what should happen to creditors, employees, shareholders etc.
The taxpayer should never foot the bill for private sector companies failing and Gordon Brown agreeing to do so was a tremendous mistake he made.
No private business should ever be regarded as too big to fail.
Far better to collapse the entire global banking system than to rescue a "too big to fail" bank? That's what happened when the Fed declined to rescue Lehman Bros, and Britain stopped Barclays from buying it because that would mean HM Treasury guaranteeing an American bank.
Yes.
The Fed did the right thing in declining to rescue Lehman Bros.
Which precipitated the Global Financial Crisis.
No, crises happen. Shit happens.
People make mistakes and when those mistakes come to light, crises are a good way of clearing out the trash - which by that point Lehman Bros was.
Trying to prevent crises is as foolhardy as trying to stop winter.
We can't stop winter but we can take dress warmly, take shelter and heat our homes. The problem could not be isolated to one bank. The resultant Global Financial Crisis cost trillions of dollars.
Yes and that cost should have fallen on the shareholders of the banks that hadn't done their due dilligence.
The taxpayer should not have born the cost of private institutions failures. We had a system of protected accounts and protected account limits but all that was wiped out with the taxpayer giving a blank cheque, unnecessarily.
Iceland let its banks fail. The state stepped in to keep the operation of banking systems ongoing but did not bail out shareholders or unprotected accounts.
Sadly, that option was not open to us or America. If the global banking system stopped, so would everything, including almost all commerce and your wages.
You can keep the global banking system going without keeping the shareholders going.
Nationalise the critical bits of the banking system, wiping out unprotected accounts, unprotected shareholders, unprotected creditors etc
How? The trouble is the global banking system is a complicated web, not just a series of isolated banks that could be allowed to fail independently of one another. You cannot pick out "the critical bits of the banking system". We can't let Bank A fail and save Bank B, if Bank B is only solvent because of the money it is due from Bank A. And the millions of interrelated obligations between banks meant no-one knew till too late if that would be the case. To mix metaphors, when the Fed let Lehman Bros collapse, they knocked over the house of cards.
Don't save any bank, let them all fail if they all fail, but send them into insolvency receivers who keep their operations running and keep critical elements of the system running while creditors and shareholders get pennies/cents in the pound/dollar as appropriate once its all worked out.
It’s always heartwarming to see that some folk who have never worked in the public sector are so skilled they can instantly diagnose all the issues (which, mysteriously, always manage to conform to their personal prejudices) and propose a solution which usually involves a change to “the culture”.
Sigh…
The public sector is roughly as good (and as bad) at doing things as the private sector (with some minor variances, generally based on being able to offer market pay). The big difference is that mistakes in the public sector have to be declared in full, whilst in the public sector they can usually be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of accountants and auditors.
"The big difference is that mistakes in the public sector have to be declared in full, whilst in the public sector they can usually be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of accountants and auditors."
Didn't you mean the second "public sector" in that sentence to read "private sector"?
I would cite the Post Office as a riposte to that sentiment but you know that already. Plus listed companies have to make market announcement - I pile cite a few examples there too.
But the Post Office during the key period (and since) was run by people brought in for their private sector expertise, who didn’t really understand what they were managing.
What we are looking at is a tragic confluence of private sector people focused on their key objective whilst not interested, or understanding, the environment they are in, supported by a load of career long public sector people trained to follow instructions and otherwise keep their heads down.
That is part of the explanation and an important factor. But I was responding to the claim that because it was in the public sector it had to declare its mistakes in full.
That has certainly not happened in the PO's case. If anything, partly to avoid embarrassing Ministers or at least Ministerial decisions and partly to permit the privatisation of Royal Mail, the unfolding problems were kept as quiet as possible for as long as possible, even to the extent of misleading courts and Parliament.
My read is that when Vennells arrives she was genuinely willing to try and sort the situation out. But she surely unappreciated the scale of the disaster, assuming they were dealing with a small number of anomalies that could be resolved without diverting her from her course. Which is what she will have been told, up the line. But at some point - pretty obviously shortly before Second Sight were sacked - she realised the scale of the catastrophe she was sitting on.
We can all see what the right thing to have done would have been. And I’m sure that 95% of us would swear that that’s what we would have done, in her position.
She will have found herself in a room full of senior people - long serving PO managers who understood things a lot better than her, maybe someone senior from Fuitisu still sowing misinformation, and - critically - some top lawyers who must have thought that they had a better than 50:50 chance of making the catastrophe go away with some disgraceful legal shenanigans, bankrupting the other party before the case got to a conclusion. As we can see, from both Wallis’s detailed account and the summary version dramatised by ITV, they very nearly succeeded. As it is, most of the money won by Bates and others went on legal costs.
Both the financial position of her business and her own personal reputation would have been trashed, had she come clean at that point - already being on record at the BIS SC and in the media as defending the PO position. So she had the choice between being honest and facing certain ordure, or gambling that she might make the whole thing go away.
We all know what the morally right thing to do was. But I’d bet that significantly less than 95% of us would have opted for the right path, put in her position.
I suspect there was also a great deal of Ministerial pressure not to do anything to impact the Post Office's route to profits.
But I have been in the position, both in the public sector and in the private sector, of having to tell very senior people (Ministers and Chief Executives) that what they would like to do is unlawful. That takes guts. And any CEO who ignores such advice is a bloody fool. It's not just about doing the morally right thing to do: it's about the difference between legality and illegality.
Susan Crichton, the GC, left suddenly in 2013 - not long after the external legal advice pointing out the unsafeness of the convictions and the first Second Sight report. I would really like to know the truth of what led to her departure and what advice she was giving. And what her successors and predecessors were doing and saying.
The role of the GC can be immensely powerful in such circumstances - if they use that power wisely and have the independence of character to use it. Not all do. Some are frankly useless. My guess is that her successor was more intent on facilitating a "let's sweep it under the carpet" job.
That is one reason why I think the role of the lawyers here has been so shameful. They should have been gatekeepers preventing morally dubious and unlawful behaviour. Instead they appear to have facilitated and carried it out.
I can agree with you there. Yet while the inquiry, and subsequent events, is likely to pour a cauldron of excrement over a few senior Post Office folk, and a few of the more junior ones whose evidence has been myopic, and maybe even some of the hapless oppos from Fujitsu, I’d wager that the legal profession - including the courts that convicted people merely because they couldn’t prove their innocence - will get off relatively lightly.
You may well be right, Ian. There is however a lot more to come yet, so who knows who will get off lightly and who will not. The Law Society has a dreadful reputation for failing to deal strenously with its errant members, but maybe it will surprise us this time around.
Meanwhile I ask how many of us could have defended a dodgy computer system knowing full well that by doing so we were sending innocent people to jail and destroying lives? I don't think it is many as 5%. You have to be right hard-nosed bastard to do that kind of thing.
Whether the Tories win an election again within a decade or not depends on how Labour handle the economy. Handle it reasonably well as New Labour did and like post 1997 the Tories can expect to be in Opposition for 10 years or more.
Handle it poorly as previous Labour governments did and the swingback to the Tories would be much more rapid. Remember after landslide defeat in 1945 the Tories were back in government in 1951, after losing power in 1964 they were back in power in 1970 ie within 10 years. Thatcher of course took the party back to government in 1979, just 5 years after Heath had lost the 1974 general elections to Wilson's Labour
Obviously anything's possible and one shouldn't rule out a Tory comeback, but it may be very optimistic about the hole the Tories are in with a large swathe of the public. Even a fairly dud Labour government could plausibly lay most of its economic difficulties at the door of the previous government's failures and a wasted decade.
You can see it in polling where the Tories figures among those of working age are pitiful (and that includes those in the past who'd be moving to vote solidly Tory). It may be in a doom loop whereby its route to recovery is blocked by the fact it's increasingly reliant on the wealthy old, so can't propose growth-friendly policies that irk them. But without doing so cater to a base with diminishing returns and further cement their reputation as the party of economic decline.
What we may witness is something like 1979, a generational sea change whereby for a lot of people of a certain generation, Labour gained a reputation for economic mismanagement and supporting a broken model it arguably hasn't shaken off with those of that age. With the one era of success coming when Blair and Brown made clear the party had moved away from that.
The next successful Tory leader may well have to prove that similarly, they're not wedded to the right of the party's failed approach, and their ostensibly liberal wing's weakness in appeasing them.
Remember by the end of 1980 even Michael Foot led Thatcher in the polls as unemployment rose, indeed Thatcher would probably have lost in 1983 had she not got unemployment as well as inflation down and cut strikes by then and won in the Falklands.
If economy is poor and frequent strikes and high inflation under a Starmer government even a rightwinger as Tory leader could wing much as the supposedly 'unelectable' Thatcher won as a rightwinger against the 1979 Labour government after only 5 years of the Tories in opposition
But that's kind of the point. Thatcher won in 83 and then 87 despite some serious difficulties and rough patches, in part because there had been an underlying shift in perceptions that Labour struggled to grasp and run with because a whole tranche of people had lost faith in its ideas.
Similarly, doubt Starmer's govt will have its issues, but even after a mediocre four or five years the Tories may face an uphill battle because they're simply toxic, like really toxic, to generations whose votes will only grow in importance.
And there's probably an underestimation of quite how toxic they are. I know people who in terms of income level and general "meh" attitude to politics should be Tory voters. They regard the party with a contempt usually reserved for those residing in high-security medical facilities, having spent the past decade making decisions that have made lives more difficult or just been insulting.
It's going to take a lot for the Tories to reverse that, in a way that's rather different I think to those conducive to a changing of perceptions or a quick return. Especially given they seem completely unwilling or unable to realise the depth of their predicament with those who aren't retired or getting there.
If you're under 50, you're roughly as likely to believe the moon landings are faked as plan to vote Tory. That's not a party with a bright future, unless it can address the reasons why and change. Clue: It's part economics, part their flagship political project being catastrophically unpopular in a way few policies ever are.
For now, add in rising unemployment, strikes, rising inflation and high interest rates and sluggish growth under a Starmer government and the middle aged swing voters ie those 35-65, would certainly consider voting Tory again even if under 35s voted Labour still.
Remember in 2019 the median age more voters voted Conservative than Labour was 39 not 59 and most Conservative voters were voting to get Brexit done as most of them had voted for it!
Of course the median age where people were more likely to live in their own home than rent was also around 39 too. Which is shockingly bad and nothing for you to be pleased with.
Set aside Brexit and one thing that Thatcher, Cameron, Osborne, Johnson and Gove all had in common is they all wanted to get more on the housing ladder, they understood that it is only because of people being able to move on in life that people become more Tory as they age, its not a simple automatic fact of ageing that happens.
Unfortunately Johnson's moderate housing reforms were defeated by the likes of May, cheered on by the likes of you, and then Sunak has torn up any measures to see more housing built to alleviate the crisis that is causing those in their 20s and 30s to have to rent.
As a result you and they deserve to be nowhere near office, and do not deserve to be elected.
Conservativism should be about ensuring as many people as possible can support themselves, paying for their own home, out of their own wages.
Unfortunately its been taken over by a cargo cult who believe that other people paying for their homes, out of their wages, is a better way to live.
Until the Conservatives return back to solid Conservative principles, they deserve to be in Opposition.
I have always wondered why the most anti development, the Greens are the ones the youngster seem to think deserve their vote. Got a lib dem councillor round our way who has opposed at every juncture the building of a couple of hundred houses by an RSL (registered social landlord = council housing) but in their efforts to become the local MP has 'affordable housing' as second on his list of priorities for the constituency.
This is a timeless feature of local politics - one of the ways to get elected is to jump on to some planning controversy. Every party is guilty of this but the greens/lib dems are consistently the worst offenders.
Extraordinarily short sighted comment. Most Greens and LDs aren't anti-development - what they are opposed to is developments purely designed to maximise profit for housebuilders and property developers. Simply chucking a huge block of flats or a vast estate of houses on a site without considering the impact on the surrounding communities and infrastructure seems entirely desireable.
Sure, but what this means is that the Government and its regulators should act to ensure that the housing market is tight, competitive, open to new entrants, and that profits are made by meeting consumer demand effectively. The should also act to ensure that new dwellings are beautiful, and accompanied by sufficient facilities. Markets need to be chopped, changed, and regulated to ensure that they're working properly - Adam Smith himself acknowledged this. Markets where a vast profit is being made but consumer demands aren't being met are dysfunctional. The energy market is another. That doesn't mean replacing the market with the Government as client - then you just get housing provided like the NHS.
Housing does not result in a need for facilities, people do.
People pay taxes for public facilities.
Public facilities should be paid for via those taxes, not via housing.
Private facilities should be paid for privately by people, not via housing.
I agree, but there does need to be space made for them within developments, so they need to be considered.
Why does there need to be space within developments? There needs to be space, but it can be adjacent to or near the developments not within them - and if it is for a public service it should be paid for via everyone not just the developments.
Public education falls upon the taxpayer, if a towns population doubles so a new school needs to be built then all taxpayers should chip in for the new school, not just those taxpayers who happen to be buying a new house while the others get to abdicate their responsibilities.
Bugger off, to put it politely. I see no reason why I should pay to maintain the profits of some toybox house manufacturer doubling the size of my town. They can bloody well pay the capital costs, at the very least, of buulding about 5 new schools.
Education has bugger all to do with profits or housing numbers and is entirely to do with children, you ninny.
If there's twice as many children in your town than before, then there's more school places needed. Regardless of whether the number of houses is reduced, unchanged, doubled or trebled.
Education is not an externality, its a public service there to educate children.
There are more children in this country than there were in the past. You may have a house of your own, but those children need educating whether they live in overcrowded slums or their parents can actually have a house of their own too.
But the children are being moved from place to place. Have you not thought that through?
And it has EVERYTHING to do with profits when the spaces in existing schools are a major determinant of planning permission. No schools, no planning permission, no PROFITS. So the developers need to cough ip for schools and drains and so on and so forth rather than dumping the costs on the existing inhabitants.
What the past few years have revealed is that there is absolutely no political interest in scrapping the planning system. The direction of travel is entirely the other way - more regulation, more requirements, more legislation - all political parties are signed up to this agenda.
Which is why we have a chronic housing shortage and a failure to invest in sufficient public service for our population.
If you want to reverse that terminal decline, then that needs resolving.
Yeah well there you go. A near existential problem that no one wants to resolve.
Whether the Tories win an election again within a decade or not depends on how Labour handle the economy. Handle it reasonably well as New Labour did and like post 1997 the Tories can expect to be in Opposition for 10 years or more.
Handle it poorly as previous Labour governments did and the swingback to the Tories would be much more rapid. Remember after landslide defeat in 1945 the Tories were back in government in 1951, after losing power in 1964 they were back in power in 1970 ie within 10 years. Thatcher of course took the party back to government in 1979, just 5 years after Heath had lost the 1974 general elections to Wilson's Labour
Obviously anything's possible and one shouldn't rule out a Tory comeback, but it may be very optimistic about the hole the Tories are in with a large swathe of the public. Even a fairly dud Labour government could plausibly lay most of its economic difficulties at the door of the previous government's failures and a wasted decade.
You can see it in polling where the Tories figures among those of working age are pitiful (and that includes those in the past who'd be moving to vote solidly Tory). It may be in a doom loop whereby its route to recovery is blocked by the fact it's increasingly reliant on the wealthy old, so can't propose growth-friendly policies that irk them. But without doing so cater to a base with diminishing returns and further cement their reputation as the party of economic decline.
What we may witness is something like 1979, a generational sea change whereby for a lot of people of a certain generation, Labour gained a reputation for economic mismanagement and supporting a broken model it arguably hasn't shaken off with those of that age. With the one era of success coming when Blair and Brown made clear the party had moved away from that.
The next successful Tory leader may well have to prove that similarly, they're not wedded to the right of the party's failed approach, and their ostensibly liberal wing's weakness in appeasing them.
Remember by the end of 1980 even Michael Foot led Thatcher in the polls as unemployment rose, indeed Thatcher would probably have lost in 1983 had she not got unemployment as well as inflation down and cut strikes by then and won in the Falklands.
If economy is poor and frequent strikes and high inflation under a Starmer government even a rightwinger as Tory leader could wing much as the supposedly 'unelectable' Thatcher won as a rightwinger against the 1979 Labour government after only 5 years of the Tories in opposition
But that's kind of the point. Thatcher won in 83 and then 87 despite some serious difficulties and rough patches, in part because there had been an underlying shift in perceptions that Labour struggled to grasp and run with because a whole tranche of people had lost faith in its ideas.
Similarly, doubt Starmer's govt will have its issues, but even after a mediocre four or five years the Tories may face an uphill battle because they're simply toxic, like really toxic, to generations whose votes will only grow in importance.
And there's probably an underestimation of quite how toxic they are. I know people who in terms of income level and general "meh" attitude to politics should be Tory voters. They regard the party with a contempt usually reserved for those residing in high-security medical facilities, having spent the past decade making decisions that have made lives more difficult or just been insulting.
It's going to take a lot for the Tories to reverse that, in a way that's rather different I think to those conducive to a changing of perceptions or a quick return. Especially given they seem completely unwilling or unable to realise the depth of their predicament with those who aren't retired or getting there.
If you're under 50, you're roughly as likely to believe the moon landings are faked as plan to vote Tory. That's not a party with a bright future, unless it can address the reasons why and change. Clue: It's part economics, part their flagship political project being catastrophically unpopular in a way few policies ever are.
For now, add in rising unemployment, strikes, rising inflation and high interest rates and sluggish growth under a Starmer government and the middle aged swing voters ie those 35-65, would certainly consider voting Tory again even if under 35s voted Labour still.
Remember in 2019 the median age more voters voted Conservative than Labour was 39 not 59 and most Conservative voters were voting to get Brexit done as most of them had voted for it!
Of course the median age where people were more likely to live in their own home than rent was also around 39 too. Which is shockingly bad and nothing for you to be pleased with.
Set aside Brexit and one thing that Thatcher, Cameron, Osborne, Johnson and Gove all had in common is they all wanted to get more on the housing ladder, they understood that it is only because of people being able to move on in life that people become more Tory as they age, its not a simple automatic fact of ageing that happens.
Unfortunately Johnson's moderate housing reforms were defeated by the likes of May, cheered on by the likes of you, and then Sunak has torn up any measures to see more housing built to alleviate the crisis that is causing those in their 20s and 30s to have to rent.
As a result you and they deserve to be nowhere near office, and do not deserve to be elected.
Conservativism should be about ensuring as many people as possible can support themselves, paying for their own home, out of their own wages.
Unfortunately its been taken over by a cargo cult who believe that other people paying for their homes, out of their wages, is a better way to live.
Until the Conservatives return back to solid Conservative principles, they deserve to be in Opposition.
I have always wondered why the most anti development, the Greens are the ones the youngster seem to think deserve their vote. Got a lib dem councillor round our way who has opposed at every juncture the building of a couple of hundred houses by an RSL (registered social landlord = council housing) but in their efforts to become the local MP has 'affordable housing' as second on his list of priorities for the constituency.
This is a timeless feature of local politics - one of the ways to get elected is to jump on to some planning controversy. Every party is guilty of this but the greens/lib dems are consistently the worst offenders.
Extraordinarily short sighted comment. Most Greens and LDs aren't anti-development - what they are opposed to is developments purely designed to maximise profit for housebuilders and property developers. Simply chucking a huge block of flats or a vast estate of houses on a site without considering the impact on the surrounding communities and infrastructure seems entirely desireable.
Sure, but what this means is that the Government and its regulators should act to ensure that the housing market is tight, competitive, open to new entrants, and that profits are made by meeting consumer demand effectively. The should also act to ensure that new dwellings are beautiful, and accompanied by sufficient facilities. Markets need to be chopped, changed, and regulated to ensure that they're working properly - Adam Smith himself acknowledged this. Markets where a vast profit is being made but consumer demands aren't being met are dysfunctional. The energy market is another. That doesn't mean replacing the market with the Government as client - then you just get housing provided like the NHS.
Housing does not result in a need for facilities, people do.
People pay taxes for public facilities.
Public facilities should be paid for via those taxes, not via housing.
Private facilities should be paid for privately by people, not via housing.
I agree, but there does need to be space made for them within developments, so they need to be considered.
Why does there need to be space within developments? There needs to be space, but it can be adjacent to or near the developments not within them - and if it is for a public service it should be paid for via everyone not just the developments.
Public education falls upon the taxpayer, if a towns population doubles so a new school needs to be built then all taxpayers should chip in for the new school, not just those taxpayers who happen to be buying a new house while the others get to abdicate their responsibilities.
Bugger off, to put it politely. I see no reason why I should pay to maintain the profits of some toybox house manufacturer doubling the size of my town. They can bloody well pay the capital costs, at the very least, of buulding about 5 new schools.
Education has bugger all to do with profits or housing numbers and is entirely to do with children, you ninny.
If there's twice as many children in your town than before, then there's more school places needed. Regardless of whether the number of houses is reduced, unchanged, doubled or trebled.
Education is not an externality, its a public service there to educate children.
There are more children in this country than there were in the past. You may have a house of your own, but those children need educating whether they live in overcrowded slums or their parents can actually have a house of their own too.
But the children are being moved from place to place. Have you not thought that through?
And it has EVERYTHING to do with profits when the spaces in existing schools are a major determinant of planning permission. No schools, no planning permission, no PROFITS. So the developers need to cough ip for schools and drains and so on and so forth rather than dumping the costs on the existing inhabitants.
What the past few years have revealed is that there is absolutely no political interest in scrapping the planning system. The direction of travel is entirely the other way - more regulation, more requirements, more legislation - all political parties are signed up to this agenda.
Which is why we have a chronic housing shortage and a failure to invest in sufficient public service for our population.
If you want to reverse that terminal decline, then that needs resolving.
Yeah well there you go. A near existential problem that no one wants to resolve.
I want to resolve it, and I have a solution. A solution which is tried and tested and worked in multiple countries that have done it.
Even if my solution is unpopular, I'll still advocate it. When I started banging on about housing on here years ago it was a niche view to even recognise the housing shortage, or that house prices were too high. I was called insane and all sorts of names for suggesting it.
Now many people recognise the problem, even if they won't accept the solution, yet.
Hopefully Starmer as a new broom, with a majority, may actually tackle our problems. If he does, I'll vote for him, even if he is Labour. If he does, he'll be the greatest PM since Thatcher and leave a great legacy that will make the country better off for it.
It’s always heartwarming to see that some folk who have never worked in the public sector are so skilled they can instantly diagnose all the issues (which, mysteriously, always manage to conform to their personal prejudices) and propose a solution which usually involves a change to “the culture”.
Sigh…
The public sector is roughly as good (and as bad) at doing things as the private sector (with some minor variances, generally based on being able to offer market pay). The big difference is that mistakes in the public sector have to be declared in full, whilst in the private sector they can usually be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of accountants and auditors.
Mistakes in the private sector have to be declared in full, and if brushed under the carpet then the business can fail as a result with the shareholders taking full responsibility of their neglect.
Mistakes in the public sector can be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of colleagues, "civil servants" politicians and more being in denial of any wrongdoing with the taxpayer taking full responsibility of their neglect.
One of the biggest mistakes of the Coalition was getting rid of the Audit Commission but there are mechanisms such as the Local Government Ombudsman. Who, for instance, would you hold accountable for the disasters at Thurrock and Woking - the elected Members, Senior Officers, both, neither? I do agree the taxpayer does in the end finish up footing the bill but when some private sector companies fail (as we've seen), the Government ends up holding the baby.
Allister Heath once argued for all organisations (both public and private) to write in effect a Will describing what should happen if the business were to become bankrupt or insolvent outlining what should happen to creditors, employees, shareholders etc.
The taxpayer should never foot the bill for private sector companies failing and Gordon Brown agreeing to do so was a tremendous mistake he made.
No private business should ever be regarded as too big to fail.
Far better to collapse the entire global banking system than to rescue a "too big to fail" bank? That's what happened when the Fed declined to rescue Lehman Bros, and Britain stopped Barclays from buying it because that would mean HM Treasury guaranteeing an American bank.
Yes.
The Fed did the right thing in declining to rescue Lehman Bros.
Which precipitated the Global Financial Crisis.
No, crises happen. Shit happens.
People make mistakes and when those mistakes come to light, crises are a good way of clearing out the trash - which by that point Lehman Bros was.
Trying to prevent crises is as foolhardy as trying to stop winter.
We can't stop winter but we can take dress warmly, take shelter and heat our homes. The problem could not be isolated to one bank. The resultant Global Financial Crisis cost trillions of dollars.
Yes and that cost should have fallen on the shareholders of the banks that hadn't done their due dilligence.
The taxpayer should not have born the cost of private institutions failures. We had a system of protected accounts and protected account limits but all that was wiped out with the taxpayer giving a blank cheque, unnecessarily.
Iceland let its banks fail. The state stepped in to keep the operation of banking systems ongoing but did not bail out shareholders or unprotected accounts.
Sadly, that option was not open to us or America. If the global banking system stopped, so would everything, including almost all commerce and your wages.
You can keep the global banking system going without keeping the shareholders going.
Nationalise the critical bits of the banking system, wiping out unprotected accounts, unprotected shareholders, unprotected creditors etc
How? The trouble is the global banking system is a complicated web, not just a series of isolated banks that could be allowed to fail independently of one another. You cannot pick out "the critical bits of the banking system". We can't let Bank A fail and save Bank B, if Bank B is only solvent because of the money it is due from Bank A. And the millions of interrelated obligations between banks meant no-one knew till too late if that would be the case. To mix metaphors, when the Fed let Lehman Bros collapse, they knocked over the house of cards.
Don't save any bank, let them all fail if they all fail, but send them into insolvency receivers who keep their operations running and keep critical elements of the system running while creditors and shareholders get pennies/cents in the pound/dollar as appropriate once its all worked out.
How? How do you draw your wages out of the cashpoint machine if your bank has not got the money it is owed? And how will it get the money it is owed if the next bank along has collapsed? How will your wages have been paid into your account if you use Lloyds and your employer is with NatWest? How will your employer pay you if it cannot be paid for whichever goods or services it sells?
It’s always heartwarming to see that some folk who have never worked in the public sector are so skilled they can instantly diagnose all the issues (which, mysteriously, always manage to conform to their personal prejudices) and propose a solution which usually involves a change to “the culture”.
Sigh…
The public sector is roughly as good (and as bad) at doing things as the private sector (with some minor variances, generally based on being able to offer market pay). The big difference is that mistakes in the public sector have to be declared in full, whilst in the private sector they can usually be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of accountants and auditors.
Mistakes in the private sector have to be declared in full, and if brushed under the carpet then the business can fail as a result with the shareholders taking full responsibility of their neglect.
Mistakes in the public sector can be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of colleagues, "civil servants" politicians and more being in denial of any wrongdoing with the taxpayer taking full responsibility of their neglect.
One of the biggest mistakes of the Coalition was getting rid of the Audit Commission but there are mechanisms such as the Local Government Ombudsman. Who, for instance, would you hold accountable for the disasters at Thurrock and Woking - the elected Members, Senior Officers, both, neither? I do agree the taxpayer does in the end finish up footing the bill but when some private sector companies fail (as we've seen), the Government ends up holding the baby.
Allister Heath once argued for all organisations (both public and private) to write in effect a Will describing what should happen if the business were to become bankrupt or insolvent outlining what should happen to creditors, employees, shareholders etc.
The taxpayer should never foot the bill for private sector companies failing and Gordon Brown agreeing to do so was a tremendous mistake he made.
No private business should ever be regarded as too big to fail.
Far better to collapse the entire global banking system than to rescue a "too big to fail" bank? That's what happened when the Fed declined to rescue Lehman Bros, and Britain stopped Barclays from buying it because that would mean HM Treasury guaranteeing an American bank.
Yes.
The Fed did the right thing in declining to rescue Lehman Bros.
Which precipitated the Global Financial Crisis.
No, crises happen. Shit happens.
People make mistakes and when those mistakes come to light, crises are a good way of clearing out the trash - which by that point Lehman Bros was.
Trying to prevent crises is as foolhardy as trying to stop winter.
We can't stop winter but we can take dress warmly, take shelter and heat our homes. The problem could not be isolated to one bank. The resultant Global Financial Crisis cost trillions of dollars.
Yes and that cost should have fallen on the shareholders of the banks that hadn't done their due dilligence.
The taxpayer should not have born the cost of private institutions failures. We had a system of protected accounts and protected account limits but all that was wiped out with the taxpayer giving a blank cheque, unnecessarily.
Iceland let its banks fail. The state stepped in to keep the operation of banking systems ongoing but did not bail out shareholders or unprotected accounts.
Sadly, that option was not open to us or America. If the global banking system stopped, so would everything, including almost all commerce and your wages.
You can keep the global banking system going without keeping the shareholders going.
Nationalise the critical bits of the banking system, wiping out unprotected accounts, unprotected shareholders, unprotected creditors etc
How? The trouble is the global banking system is a complicated web, not just a series of isolated banks that could be allowed to fail independently of one another. You cannot pick out "the critical bits of the banking system". We can't let Bank A fail and save Bank B, if Bank B is only solvent because of the money it is due from Bank A. And the millions of interrelated obligations between banks meant no-one knew till too late if that would be the case. To mix metaphors, when the Fed let Lehman Bros collapse, they knocked over the house of cards.
Don't save any bank, let them all fail if they all fail, but send them into insolvency receivers who keep their operations running and keep critical elements of the system running while creditors and shareholders get pennies/cents in the pound/dollar as appropriate once its all worked out.
How? How do you draw your wages out of the cashpoint machine if your bank has not got the money it is owed? And how will it get the money it is owed if the next bank along has collapsed? How will your wages have been paid into your account if you use Lloyds and your employer is with NatWest? How will your employer pay you if it cannot be paid for whichever goods or services it sells?
Only recourse would be fate worse than debt - cash.
A couple of days ago someone asked if my water fast interfered with sleeping. I replied No, it’s fine
I can now report that’s totally untrue. My sleep pattern is all over the place. I’ve just woken up at 4am after 3 hours kip. I might sleep again in another 3-4 hours. It would make this quite impractical to combine with a normal job/family commitments
I also nearly succumbed to food last night with rages of starving hunger as I discovered a new packet of roasted peanuts in a cupboard. OMFG
Nonetheless here I am, 80 hours in. I can see ribs in my stomach that I haven’t seen in years. Like old friends from Sixth Form
I think I will end the fast later today. This evening. Enough
It’s always heartwarming to see that some folk who have never worked in the public sector are so skilled they can instantly diagnose all the issues (which, mysteriously, always manage to conform to their personal prejudices) and propose a solution which usually involves a change to “the culture”.
Sigh…
The public sector is roughly as good (and as bad) at doing things as the private sector (with some minor variances, generally based on being able to offer market pay). The big difference is that mistakes in the public sector have to be declared in full, whilst in the private sector they can usually be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of accountants and auditors.
Mistakes in the private sector have to be declared in full, and if brushed under the carpet then the business can fail as a result with the shareholders taking full responsibility of their neglect.
Mistakes in the public sector can be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of colleagues, "civil servants" politicians and more being in denial of any wrongdoing with the taxpayer taking full responsibility of their neglect.
One of the biggest mistakes of the Coalition was getting rid of the Audit Commission but there are mechanisms such as the Local Government Ombudsman. Who, for instance, would you hold accountable for the disasters at Thurrock and Woking - the elected Members, Senior Officers, both, neither? I do agree the taxpayer does in the end finish up footing the bill but when some private sector companies fail (as we've seen), the Government ends up holding the baby.
Allister Heath once argued for all organisations (both public and private) to write in effect a Will describing what should happen if the business were to become bankrupt or insolvent outlining what should happen to creditors, employees, shareholders etc.
The taxpayer should never foot the bill for private sector companies failing and Gordon Brown agreeing to do so was a tremendous mistake he made.
No private business should ever be regarded as too big to fail.
Far better to collapse the entire global banking system than to rescue a "too big to fail" bank? That's what happened when the Fed declined to rescue Lehman Bros, and Britain stopped Barclays from buying it because that would mean HM Treasury guaranteeing an American bank.
Yes.
The Fed did the right thing in declining to rescue Lehman Bros.
Which precipitated the Global Financial Crisis.
No, crises happen. Shit happens.
People make mistakes and when those mistakes come to light, crises are a good way of clearing out the trash - which by that point Lehman Bros was.
Trying to prevent crises is as foolhardy as trying to stop winter.
We can't stop winter but we can take dress warmly, take shelter and heat our homes. The problem could not be isolated to one bank. The resultant Global Financial Crisis cost trillions of dollars.
Yes and that cost should have fallen on the shareholders of the banks that hadn't done their due dilligence.
The taxpayer should not have born the cost of private institutions failures. We had a system of protected accounts and protected account limits but all that was wiped out with the taxpayer giving a blank cheque, unnecessarily.
Iceland let its banks fail. The state stepped in to keep the operation of banking systems ongoing but did not bail out shareholders or unprotected accounts.
Sadly, that option was not open to us or America. If the global banking system stopped, so would everything, including almost all commerce and your wages.
You can keep the global banking system going without keeping the shareholders going.
Nationalise the critical bits of the banking system, wiping out unprotected accounts, unprotected shareholders, unprotected creditors etc
How? The trouble is the global banking system is a complicated web, not just a series of isolated banks that could be allowed to fail independently of one another. You cannot pick out "the critical bits of the banking system". We can't let Bank A fail and save Bank B, if Bank B is only solvent because of the money it is due from Bank A. And the millions of interrelated obligations between banks meant no-one knew till too late if that would be the case. To mix metaphors, when the Fed let Lehman Bros collapse, they knocked over the house of cards.
Don't save any bank, let them all fail if they all fail, but send them into insolvency receivers who keep their operations running and keep critical elements of the system running while creditors and shareholders get pennies/cents in the pound/dollar as appropriate once its all worked out.
How? How do you draw your wages out of the cashpoint machine if your bank has not got the money it is owed? And how will it get the money it is owed if the next bank along has collapsed? How will your wages have been paid into your account if you use Lloyds and your employer is with NatWest? How will your employer pay you if it cannot be paid for whichever goods or services it sells?
Same as any other business that goes bankrupt.
The bank goes into receivership and insolvency receivers keep the lights on. Bankruptcy does not and never has meant immediate shutdown.
It’s always heartwarming to see that some folk who have never worked in the public sector are so skilled they can instantly diagnose all the issues (which, mysteriously, always manage to conform to their personal prejudices) and propose a solution which usually involves a change to “the culture”.
Sigh…
The public sector is roughly as good (and as bad) at doing things as the private sector (with some minor variances, generally based on being able to offer market pay). The big difference is that mistakes in the public sector have to be declared in full, whilst in the public sector they can usually be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of accountants and auditors.
"The big difference is that mistakes in the public sector have to be declared in full, whilst in the public sector they can usually be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of accountants and auditors."
Didn't you mean the second "public sector" in that sentence to read "private sector"?
I would cite the Post Office as a riposte to that sentiment but you know that already. Plus listed companies have to make market announcement - I pile cite a few examples there too.
To the first one - yes.
To the second - no, with respect that’s very naive. For a start that only really applies to listed companies anyway, and even then the level of transparency is a million miles different.
A large part of the issue with the post office scandal, of course, was trying to run it in a private sector fashion when the service is crying out to be run as a public service.
There is something in the criticism that a public service was being run by the wrong people in the wrong way. But it overlooks the fact that in important ways it was behaving like a public sector organization - its prosecution powers, for instance, gave it powers that few bodies had, its claim on unlimited funds when it came to litigation and the lack of any effective supervision or oversight.
I don't think the private sector is some sort of nirvana. It seems to me the difference is that the character and competence of those in charge is very important and has been far too undervalued. Part of what I mean by character is the willingness to ask questions and the humility to know that you do not know everything and need to learn. Far too many people at the top lack this.
One other point is the practice of having part-time Chairmen or directors with lots of different directorships. See, for instance, Tim Cook - Chairman of the Post Office during the Vennells era who thought he could do the job in 1 & 1/2 days a week. These jobs are serious ones which really require more effort and commitment. Too often they are treated as sinecures for people who collect a load of them. Then we wonder why things go wrong.
If Keir Starmer actually wants to announce an manifesto policy, he could do worse than announce the removal of the Post Office’s prosecution powers.
Plus -
1. An Act which can be passed in a day overturning all Post Office convictions 2000 - 2016. 2. The immediate review of the law on computer evidence to ensure that we get a provision which works without placing the burden of proof on defendants. 3. An independent compensation scheme which is not run by the Post Office and which will arrange for payments to be made within 3 months. 4. A public apology by the government to the subpostmasters.
Whether the Tories win an election again within a decade or not depends on how Labour handle the economy. Handle it reasonably well as New Labour did and like post 1997 the Tories can expect to be in Opposition for 10 years or more.
Handle it poorly as previous Labour governments did and the swingback to the Tories would be much more rapid. Remember after landslide defeat in 1945 the Tories were back in government in 1951, after losing power in 1964 they were back in power in 1970 ie within 10 years. Thatcher of course took the party back to government in 1979, just 5 years after Heath had lost the 1974 general elections to Wilson's Labour
Obviously anything's possible and one shouldn't rule out a Tory comeback, but it may be very optimistic about the hole the Tories are in with a large swathe of the public. Even a fairly dud Labour government could plausibly lay most of its economic difficulties at the door of the previous government's failures and a wasted decade.
You can see it in polling where the Tories figures among those of working age are pitiful (and that includes those in the past who'd be moving to vote solidly Tory). It may be in a doom loop whereby its route to recovery is blocked by the fact it's increasingly reliant on the wealthy old, so can't propose growth-friendly policies that irk them. But without doing so cater to a base with diminishing returns and further cement their reputation as the party of economic decline.
What we may witness is something like 1979, a generational sea change whereby for a lot of people of a certain generation, Labour gained a reputation for economic mismanagement and supporting a broken model it arguably hasn't shaken off with those of that age. With the one era of success coming when Blair and Brown made clear the party had moved away from that.
The next successful Tory leader may well have to prove that similarly, they're not wedded to the right of the party's failed approach, and their ostensibly liberal wing's weakness in appeasing them.
Remember by the end of 1980 even Michael Foot led Thatcher in the polls as unemployment rose, indeed Thatcher would probably have lost in 1983 had she not got unemployment as well as inflation down and cut strikes by then and won in the Falklands.
If economy is poor and frequent strikes and high inflation under a Starmer government even a rightwinger as Tory leader could wing much as the supposedly 'unelectable' Thatcher won as a rightwinger against the 1979 Labour government after only 5 years of the Tories in opposition
But that's kind of the point. Thatcher won in 83 and then 87 despite some serious difficulties and rough patches, in part because there had been an underlying shift in perceptions that Labour struggled to grasp and run with because a whole tranche of people had lost faith in its ideas.
Similarly, doubt Starmer's govt will have its issues, but even after a mediocre four or five years the Tories may face an uphill battle because they're simply toxic, like really toxic, to generations whose votes will only grow in importance.
And there's probably an underestimation of quite how toxic they are. I know people who in terms of income level and general "meh" attitude to politics should be Tory voters. They regard the party with a contempt usually reserved for those residing in high-security medical facilities, having spent the past decade making decisions that have made lives more difficult or just been insulting.
It's going to take a lot for the Tories to reverse that, in a way that's rather different I think to those conducive to a changing of perceptions or a quick return. Especially given they seem completely unwilling or unable to realise the depth of their predicament with those who aren't retired or getting there.
If you're under 50, you're roughly as likely to believe the moon landings are faked as plan to vote Tory. That's not a party with a bright future, unless it can address the reasons why and change. Clue: It's part economics, part their flagship political project being catastrophically unpopular in a way few policies ever are.
For now, add in rising unemployment, strikes, rising inflation and high interest rates and sluggish growth under a Starmer government and the middle aged swing voters ie those 35-65, would certainly consider voting Tory again even if under 35s voted Labour still.
Remember in 2019 the median age more voters voted Conservative than Labour was 39 not 59 and most Conservative voters were voting to get Brexit done as most of them had voted for it!
Of course the median age where people were more likely to live in their own home than rent was also around 39 too. Which is shockingly bad and nothing for you to be pleased with.
Set aside Brexit and one thing that Thatcher, Cameron, Osborne, Johnson and Gove all had in common is they all wanted to get more on the housing ladder, they understood that it is only because of people being able to move on in life that people become more Tory as they age, its not a simple automatic fact of ageing that happens.
Unfortunately Johnson's moderate housing reforms were defeated by the likes of May, cheered on by the likes of you, and then Sunak has torn up any measures to see more housing built to alleviate the crisis that is causing those in their 20s and 30s to have to rent.
As a result you and they deserve to be nowhere near office, and do not deserve to be elected.
Conservativism should be about ensuring as many people as possible can support themselves, paying for their own home, out of their own wages.
Unfortunately its been taken over by a cargo cult who believe that other people paying for their homes, out of their wages, is a better way to live.
Until the Conservatives return back to solid Conservative principles, they deserve to be in Opposition.
I have always wondered why the most anti development, the Greens are the ones the youngster seem to think deserve their vote. Got a lib dem councillor round our way who has opposed at every juncture the building of a couple of hundred houses by an RSL (registered social landlord = council housing) but in their efforts to become the local MP has 'affordable housing' as second on his list of priorities for the constituency.
This is a timeless feature of local politics - one of the ways to get elected is to jump on to some planning controversy. Every party is guilty of this but the greens/lib dems are consistently the worst offenders.
Extraordinarily short sighted comment. Most Greens and LDs aren't anti-development - what they are opposed to is developments purely designed to maximise profit for housebuilders and property developers. Simply chucking a huge block of flats or a vast estate of houses on a site without considering the impact on the surrounding communities and infrastructure seems entirely desireable.
Sure, but what this means is that the Government and its regulators should act to ensure that the housing market is tight, competitive, open to new entrants, and that profits are made by meeting consumer demand effectively. The should also act to ensure that new dwellings are beautiful, and accompanied by sufficient facilities. Markets need to be chopped, changed, and regulated to ensure that they're working properly - Adam Smith himself acknowledged this. Markets where a vast profit is being made but consumer demands aren't being met are dysfunctional. The energy market is another. That doesn't mean replacing the market with the Government as client - then you just get housing provided like the NHS.
Housing does not result in a need for facilities, people do.
People pay taxes for public facilities.
Public facilities should be paid for via those taxes, not via housing.
Private facilities should be paid for privately by people, not via housing.
I agree, but there does need to be space made for them within developments, so they need to be considered.
Why does there need to be space within developments? There needs to be space, but it can be adjacent to or near the developments not within them - and if it is for a public service it should be paid for via everyone not just the developments.
Public education falls upon the taxpayer, if a towns population doubles so a new school needs to be built then all taxpayers should chip in for the new school, not just those taxpayers who happen to be buying a new house while the others get to abdicate their responsibilities.
Bugger off, to put it politely. I see no reason why I should pay to maintain the profits of some toybox house manufacturer doubling the size of my town. They can bloody well pay the capital costs, at the very least, of buulding about 5 new schools.
Education has bugger all to do with profits or housing numbers and is entirely to do with children, you ninny.
If there's twice as many children in your town than before, then there's more school places needed. Regardless of whether the number of houses is reduced, unchanged, doubled or trebled.
Education is not an externality, its a public service there to educate children.
There are more children in this country than there were in the past. You may have a house of your own, but those children need educating whether they live in overcrowded slums or their parents can actually have a house of their own too.
But the children are being moved from place to place. Have you not thought that through?
And it has EVERYTHING to do with profits when the spaces in existing schools are a major determinant of planning permission. No schools, no planning permission, no PROFITS. So the developers need to cough ip for schools and drains and so on and so forth rather than dumping the costs on the existing inhabitants.
What the past few years have revealed is that there is absolutely no political interest in scrapping the planning system. The direction of travel is entirely the other way - more regulation, more requirements, more legislation - all political parties are signed up to this agenda.
Which is why we have a chronic housing shortage and a failure to invest in sufficient public service for our population.
If you want to reverse that terminal decline, then that needs resolving.
Yeah well there you go. A near existential problem that no one wants to resolve.
I want to resolve it, and I have a solution. A solution which is tried and tested and worked in multiple countries that have done it.
Even if my solution is unpopular, I'll still advocate it. When I started banging on about housing on here years ago it was a niche view to even recognise the housing shortage, or that house prices were too high. I was called insane and all sorts of names for suggesting it.
Now many people recognise the problem, even if they won't accept the solution, yet.
Hopefully Starmer as a new broom, with a majority, may actually tackle our problems. If he does, I'll vote for him, even if he is Labour. If he does, he'll be the greatest PM since Thatcher and leave a great legacy that will make the country better off for it.
I won't be holding my breath though.
As far as I understand, your solution is to have a system of zoning with design codes, you are going to zone lots of land across the country for residential in the hope that developers come forward and build on it, remove planning obligations, and the state plans out and pays for all the supporting infrastructure, primarily new roads.
A couple of days ago someone asked if my water fast interfered with sleeping. I replied No, it’s fine
I can now report that’s totally untrue. My sleep pattern is all over the place. I’ve just woken up at 4am after 3 hours kip. I might sleep again in another 3-4 hours. It would make this quite impractical to combine with a normal job/family commitments
I also nearly succumbed to food last night with rages of starving hunger as I discovered a new packet of roasted peanuts in a cupboard. OMFG
Nonetheless here I am, 80 hours in. I can see ribs in my stomach that I haven’t seen in years. Like old friends from Sixth Form
I think I will end the fast later today. This evening. Enough
Sweet Chilli coated peanuts are irresistible. 🤤
How to break a long fast is a hotly debated issue!
Apparently the ideal is bone broth or lightly steamed vegetables like sprouts or broccoli. Yummy, not
What you want to avoid is “refeeding” where you gorge yourself on carbs, sugars, fatty food and lapse into a coma
So a gentle reintro is required. Think I might try miso soup and a little bit of sashimi
Whether the Tories win an election again within a decade or not depends on how Labour handle the economy. Handle it reasonably well as New Labour did and like post 1997 the Tories can expect to be in Opposition for 10 years or more.
Handle it poorly as previous Labour governments did and the swingback to the Tories would be much more rapid. Remember after landslide defeat in 1945 the Tories were back in government in 1951, after losing power in 1964 they were back in power in 1970 ie within 10 years. Thatcher of course took the party back to government in 1979, just 5 years after Heath had lost the 1974 general elections to Wilson's Labour
Obviously anything's possible and one shouldn't rule out a Tory comeback, but it may be very optimistic about the hole the Tories are in with a large swathe of the public. Even a fairly dud Labour government could plausibly lay most of its economic difficulties at the door of the previous government's failures and a wasted decade.
You can see it in polling where the Tories figures among those of working age are pitiful (and that includes those in the past who'd be moving to vote solidly Tory). It may be in a doom loop whereby its route to recovery is blocked by the fact it's increasingly reliant on the wealthy old, so can't propose growth-friendly policies that irk them. But without doing so cater to a base with diminishing returns and further cement their reputation as the party of economic decline.
What we may witness is something like 1979, a generational sea change whereby for a lot of people of a certain generation, Labour gained a reputation for economic mismanagement and supporting a broken model it arguably hasn't shaken off with those of that age. With the one era of success coming when Blair and Brown made clear the party had moved away from that.
The next successful Tory leader may well have to prove that similarly, they're not wedded to the right of the party's failed approach, and their ostensibly liberal wing's weakness in appeasing them.
Remember by the end of 1980 even Michael Foot led Thatcher in the polls as unemployment rose, indeed Thatcher would probably have lost in 1983 had she not got unemployment as well as inflation down and cut strikes by then and won in the Falklands.
If economy is poor and frequent strikes and high inflation under a Starmer government even a rightwinger as Tory leader could wing much as the supposedly 'unelectable' Thatcher won as a rightwinger against the 1979 Labour government after only 5 years of the Tories in opposition
But that's kind of the point. Thatcher won in 83 and then 87 despite some serious difficulties and rough patches, in part because there had been an underlying shift in perceptions that Labour struggled to grasp and run with because a whole tranche of people had lost faith in its ideas.
Similarly, doubt Starmer's govt will have its issues, but even after a mediocre four or five years the Tories may face an uphill battle because they're simply toxic, like really toxic, to generations whose votes will only grow in importance.
And there's probably an underestimation of quite how toxic they are. I know people who in terms of income level and general "meh" attitude to politics should be Tory voters. They regard the party with a contempt usually reserved for those residing in high-security medical facilities, having spent the past decade making decisions that have made lives more difficult or just been insulting.
It's going to take a lot for the Tories to reverse that, in a way that's rather different I think to those conducive to a changing of perceptions or a quick return. Especially given they seem completely unwilling or unable to realise the depth of their predicament with those who aren't retired or getting there.
If you're under 50, you're roughly as likely to believe the moon landings are faked as plan to vote Tory. That's not a party with a bright future, unless it can address the reasons why and change. Clue: It's part economics, part their flagship political project being catastrophically unpopular in a way few policies ever are.
For now, add in rising unemployment, strikes, rising inflation and high interest rates and sluggish growth under a Starmer government and the middle aged swing voters ie those 35-65, would certainly consider voting Tory again even if under 35s voted Labour still.
Remember in 2019 the median age more voters voted Conservative than Labour was 39 not 59 and most Conservative voters were voting to get Brexit done as most of them had voted for it!
Of course the median age where people were more likely to live in their own home than rent was also around 39 too. Which is shockingly bad and nothing for you to be pleased with.
Set aside Brexit and one thing that Thatcher, Cameron, Osborne, Johnson and Gove all had in common is they all wanted to get more on the housing ladder, they understood that it is only because of people being able to move on in life that people become more Tory as they age, its not a simple automatic fact of ageing that happens.
Unfortunately Johnson's moderate housing reforms were defeated by the likes of May, cheered on by the likes of you, and then Sunak has torn up any measures to see more housing built to alleviate the crisis that is causing those in their 20s and 30s to have to rent.
As a result you and they deserve to be nowhere near office, and do not deserve to be elected.
Conservativism should be about ensuring as many people as possible can support themselves, paying for their own home, out of their own wages.
Unfortunately its been taken over by a cargo cult who believe that other people paying for their homes, out of their wages, is a better way to live.
Until the Conservatives return back to solid Conservative principles, they deserve to be in Opposition.
I have always wondered why the most anti development, the Greens are the ones the youngster seem to think deserve their vote. Got a lib dem councillor round our way who has opposed at every juncture the building of a couple of hundred houses by an RSL (registered social landlord = council housing) but in their efforts to become the local MP has 'affordable housing' as second on his list of priorities for the constituency.
This is a timeless feature of local politics - one of the ways to get elected is to jump on to some planning controversy. Every party is guilty of this but the greens/lib dems are consistently the worst offenders.
Extraordinarily short sighted comment. Most Greens and LDs aren't anti-development - what they are opposed to is developments purely designed to maximise profit for housebuilders and property developers. Simply chucking a huge block of flats or a vast estate of houses on a site without considering the impact on the surrounding communities and infrastructure seems entirely desireable.
Sure, but what this means is that the Government and its regulators should act to ensure that the housing market is tight, competitive, open to new entrants, and that profits are made by meeting consumer demand effectively. The should also act to ensure that new dwellings are beautiful, and accompanied by sufficient facilities. Markets need to be chopped, changed, and regulated to ensure that they're working properly - Adam Smith himself acknowledged this. Markets where a vast profit is being made but consumer demands aren't being met are dysfunctional. The energy market is another. That doesn't mean replacing the market with the Government as client - then you just get housing provided like the NHS.
Housing does not result in a need for facilities, people do.
People pay taxes for public facilities.
Public facilities should be paid for via those taxes, not via housing.
Private facilities should be paid for privately by people, not via housing.
I agree, but there does need to be space made for them within developments, so they need to be considered.
Why does there need to be space within developments? There needs to be space, but it can be adjacent to or near the developments not within them - and if it is for a public service it should be paid for via everyone not just the developments.
Public education falls upon the taxpayer, if a towns population doubles so a new school needs to be built then all taxpayers should chip in for the new school, not just those taxpayers who happen to be buying a new house while the others get to abdicate their responsibilities.
Bugger off, to put it politely. I see no reason why I should pay to maintain the profits of some toybox house manufacturer doubling the size of my town. They can bloody well pay the capital costs, at the very least, of buulding about 5 new schools.
Education has bugger all to do with profits or housing numbers and is entirely to do with children, you ninny.
If there's twice as many children in your town than before, then there's more school places needed. Regardless of whether the number of houses is reduced, unchanged, doubled or trebled.
Education is not an externality, its a public service there to educate children.
There are more children in this country than there were in the past. You may have a house of your own, but those children need educating whether they live in overcrowded slums or their parents can actually have a house of their own too.
But the children are being moved from place to place. Have you not thought that through?
And it has EVERYTHING to do with profits when the spaces in existing schools are a major determinant of planning permission. No schools, no planning permission, no PROFITS. So the developers need to cough ip for schools and drains and so on and so forth rather than dumping the costs on the existing inhabitants.
What the past few years have revealed is that there is absolutely no political interest in scrapping the planning system. The direction of travel is entirely the other way - more regulation, more requirements, more legislation - all political parties are signed up to this agenda.
Which is why we have a chronic housing shortage and a failure to invest in sufficient public service for our population.
If you want to reverse that terminal decline, then that needs resolving.
Yeah well there you go. A near existential problem that no one wants to resolve.
I want to resolve it, and I have a solution. A solution which is tried and tested and worked in multiple countries that have done it.
Even if my solution is unpopular, I'll still advocate it. When I started banging on about housing on here years ago it was a niche view to even recognise the housing shortage, or that house prices were too high. I was called insane and all sorts of names for suggesting it.
Now many people recognise the problem, even if they won't accept the solution, yet.
Hopefully Starmer as a new broom, with a majority, may actually tackle our problems. If he does, I'll vote for him, even if he is Labour. If he does, he'll be the greatest PM since Thatcher and leave a great legacy that will make the country better off for it.
I won't be holding my breath though.
As far as I understand, your solution is to have a system of zoning with design codes, you are going to zone lots of land across the country for residential in the hope that developers come forward and build on it, remove planning obligations, and the state plans out and pays for all the supporting infrastructure, primarily new roads.
Basically, but not primarily new roads. Roads should be included as well as other infrastructure - I object to the idea that roads should be excluded from infrastructure.
Since 2000 our population has grown by 15% but our housing levels have not and our road network only by 1%, which is effectively a 14% decline.
We need to reverse that shortage, but yes the entire public should pay for public infrastructure and houses should cost whatever houses cost - not houses plus public services plus inflated land costs.
Also I'd abolish stamp duty, Council Tax and all other land taxes and replace them with an annual land value tax.
It’s always heartwarming to see that some folk who have never worked in the public sector are so skilled they can instantly diagnose all the issues (which, mysteriously, always manage to conform to their personal prejudices) and propose a solution which usually involves a change to “the culture”.
Sigh…
The public sector is roughly as good (and as bad) at doing things as the private sector (with some minor variances, generally based on being able to offer market pay). The big difference is that mistakes in the public sector have to be declared in full, whilst in the public sector they can usually be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of accountants and auditors.
"The big difference is that mistakes in the public sector have to be declared in full, whilst in the public sector they can usually be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of accountants and auditors."
Didn't you mean the second "public sector" in that sentence to read "private sector"?
I would cite the Post Office as a riposte to that sentiment but you know that already. Plus listed companies have to make market announcement - I pile cite a few examples there too.
But the Post Office during the key period (and since) was run by people brought in for their private sector expertise, who didn’t really understand what they were managing.
What we are looking at is a tragic confluence of private sector people focused on their key objective whilst not interested, or understanding, the environment they are in, supported by a load of career long public sector people trained to follow instructions and otherwise keep their heads down.
That is part of the explanation and an important factor. But I was responding to the claim that because it was in the public sector it had to declare its mistakes in full.
That has certainly not happened in the PO's case. If anything, partly to avoid embarrassing Ministers or at least Ministerial decisions and partly to permit the privatisation of Royal Mail, the unfolding problems were kept as quiet as possible for as long as possible, even to the extent of misleading courts and Parliament.
My read is that when Vennells arrives she was genuinely willing to try and sort the situation out. But she surely unappreciated the scale of the disaster, assuming they were dealing with a small number of anomalies that could be resolved without diverting her from her course. Which is what she will have been told, up the line. But at some point - pretty obviously shortly before Second Sight were sacked - she realised the scale of the catastrophe she was sitting on.
We can all see what the right thing to have done would have been. And I’m sure that 95% of us would swear that that’s what we would have done, in her position.
She will have found herself in a room full of senior people - long serving PO managers who understood things a lot better than her, maybe someone senior from Fuitisu still sowing misinformation, and - critically - some top lawyers who must have thought that they had a better than 50:50 chance of making the catastrophe go away with some disgraceful legal shenanigans, bankrupting the other party before the case got to a conclusion. As we can see, from both Wallis’s detailed account and the summary version dramatised by ITV, they very nearly succeeded. As it is, most of the money won by Bates and others went on legal costs.
Both the financial position of her business and her own personal reputation would have been trashed, had she come clean at that point - already being on record at the BIS SC and in the media as defending the PO position. So she had the choice between being honest and facing certain ordure, or gambling that she might make the whole thing go away.
We all know what the morally right thing to do was. But I’d bet that significantly less than 95% of us would have opted for the right path, put in her position.
I suspect there was also a great deal of Ministerial pressure not to do anything to impact the Post Office's route to profits.
But I have been in the position, both in the public sector and in the private sector, of having to tell very senior people (Ministers and Chief Executives) that what they would like to do is unlawful. That takes guts. And any CEO who ignores such advice is a bloody fool. It's not just about doing the morally right thing to do: it's about the difference between legality and illegality.
Susan Crichton, the GC, left suddenly in 2013 - not long after the external legal advice pointing out the unsafeness of the convictions and the first Second Sight report. I would really like to know the truth of what led to her departure and what advice she was giving. And what her successors and predecessors were doing and saying.
The role of the GC can be immensely powerful in such circumstances - if they use that power wisely and have the independence of character to use it. Not all do. Some are frankly useless. My guess is that her successor was more intent on facilitating a "let's sweep it under the carpet" job.
That is one reason why I think the role of the lawyers here has been so shameful. They should have been gatekeepers preventing morally dubious and unlawful behaviour. Instead they appear to have facilitated and carried it out.
I can agree with you there. Yet while the inquiry, and subsequent events, is likely to pour a cauldron of excrement over a few senior Post Office folk, and a few of the more junior ones whose evidence has been myopic, and maybe even some of the hapless oppos from Fujitsu, I’d wager that the legal profession - including the courts that convicted people merely because they couldn’t prove their innocence - will get off relatively lightly.
I really really hope not. The lawyers involved have behaved disgracefully and they, above all, should be made to pay a price for their misconduct, including criminal prosecutions if necessary.
I will certainly give them a lashing on here as and when the evidence comes out.
Incidentally your attack on the courts is silly: where someone pleads guilty, the court cannot ignore that. Where there is a trial, the verdict is that of the jury. The courts were hamstrung by the stupid decision to change the law on computer evidence.
The Ministry of Justice on the other hand - why weren't they noticing all these prosecutions? Why weren't they looking at how the Post Office was using its prosecution powers? There is plenty more to come out and I look forward to learning all about it, even if it makes me thoroughly ashamed of some members of my profession.
Why was MoJ asleep at the wheel?
Perhaps for the same reason cited by Ed Davey in his infamous brush-off form-letter in "response" to John Bates - that since the PO was/is no longer a government department, but instead something neither fish nor fowl (as opposed to foul)?
The Ministry of Justice is responsible for the justice system. As the Court of Appeal ruled, the prosecutions were an affront to the conscience of the court. It was not simply that the convictions were unsound; they should never have been brought. The Ministry of Justice should be concerned if any body abuses the legal system to that extent. It brings the whole idea of justice and the legal system into disrepute.
Thanks. Struggled to get it on Prime, but will try again.
I found Oppenheimer a touch disappointing. But that might be coz it was SO hyped. It’s definitely a fine, well-made movie. But not, to my mind, a masterpiece
Maestro is similar. Bradley Cooper’s biopic about Leonard Bernstein. Some noble performances but somehow lacking - where is/was all the brilliant, exhilarating music from West Side Story?
I suspect they had copyright issues and couldn’t use it. And the absence hurts
It’s always heartwarming to see that some folk who have never worked in the public sector are so skilled they can instantly diagnose all the issues (which, mysteriously, always manage to conform to their personal prejudices) and propose a solution which usually involves a change to “the culture”.
Sigh…
The public sector is roughly as good (and as bad) at doing things as the private sector (with some minor variances, generally based on being able to offer market pay). The big difference is that mistakes in the public sector have to be declared in full, whilst in the public sector they can usually be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of accountants and auditors.
"The big difference is that mistakes in the public sector have to be declared in full, whilst in the public sector they can usually be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of accountants and auditors."
Didn't you mean the second "public sector" in that sentence to read "private sector"?
I would cite the Post Office as a riposte to that sentiment but you know that already. Plus listed companies have to make market announcement - I pile cite a few examples there too.
To the first one - yes.
To the second - no, with respect that’s very naive. For a start that only really applies to listed companies anyway, and even then the level of transparency is a million miles different.
A large part of the issue with the post office scandal, of course, was trying to run it in a private sector fashion when the service is crying out to be run as a public service.
There is something in the criticism that a public service was being run by the wrong people in the wrong way. But it overlooks the fact that in important ways it was behaving like a public sector organization - its prosecution powers, for instance, gave it powers that few bodies had, its claim on unlimited funds when it came to litigation and the lack of any effective supervision or oversight.
I don't think the private sector is some sort of nirvana. It seems to me the difference is that the character and competence of those in charge is very important and has been far too undervalued. Part of what I mean by character is the willingness to ask questions and the humility to know that you do not know everything and need to learn. Far too many people at the top lack this.
One other point is the practice of having part-time Chairmen or directors with lots of different directorships. See, for instance, Tim Cook - Chairman of the Post Office during the Vennells era who thought he could do the job in 1 & 1/2 days a week. These jobs are serious ones which really require more effort and commitment. Too often they are treated as sinecures for people who collect a load of them. Then we wonder why things go wrong.
If Keir Starmer actually wants to announce an manifesto policy, he could do worse than announce the removal of the Post Office’s prosecution powers.
Plus -
1. An Act which can be passed in a day overturning all Post Office convictions 2000 - 2016. 2. The immediate review of the law on computer evidence to ensure that we get a provision which works without placing the burden of proof on defendants. 3. An independent compensation scheme which is not run by the Post Office and which will arrange for payments to be made within 3 months. 4. A public apology by the government to the subpostmasters.
Concur! With additional stipulation?
5. Apology as per 4. to be delivered via Candygram . . . but NOT by Hermes>Evri.
Interesting to note that after Susan Crichton, the GC, left in 2013, her replacement - Chris Aujard - was an interim GC only and left in 2015.
During this period, the Post Office's Chairman was Alice Perkins. She is also the wife of Jack Straw. Jack Straw's former SPAD, Mark Davies, was the Post Office's Director of Communications.
This period was when everything was being done to cover up what was being uncovered. It was when Second Sight, the experts brought in at the behest of MPs, were denied documents to do their job and then finally sacked. The decision to deny them documents was made by a Board meeting attended by Ms Perkins and the GC. She needs to be asked questions rather more than Ed Davey, frankly
The Director of Communications will have put pressure on editors not to run with the stories or reassured them that it was all nonsense etc.,.
There were lots of people who saw it as their job to cover this up. Paula Vennells is by no means the only person at fault here and there is something unbecoming and distasteful in the way that all these others are avoiding their share of responsibility
I am sure that you understand the realpolitik, whilst reacting against it as strongly as I do.
The sad reality is that if Vennells gets to take most of the flak, and a few junior people in Fujitsu get done for good measure, they’ll hope to get, and will probably achieve, closure.
It isn’t fair, and there will be lots of the culpable - from judges through lawyers through senior Post Office executives and Fujitsu managers - who ought to be punished as well.
But, sadly perhaps, the world we have to live in is real, and will want to move on.
I do. I do. I will be pleasantly surprised if anyone gets punished. But I will say this: if this is the result it will simply add to the widespread loss of trust people are developing in the institutions that hold our society together and make it work.
This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.
Mistakes happen - that is inevitable. But it is how we deal with those mistakes that shows what sort of society (and individuals) we are.
We are dealing with these mistakes in the worst possible way and all this will do is continue to degrade trust and do nothing to repair broken institutions. A society where that happens over and over again is going to be increasingly unpleasant and dysfunctional.
Thanks. Struggled to get it on Prime, but will try again.
I found Oppenheimer a touch disappointing. But that might be coz it was SO hyped. It’s definitely a fine, well-made movie. But not, to my mind, a masterpiece
Maestro is similar. Bradley Cooper’s biopic about Leonard Bernstein. Some noble performances but somehow lacking - where is/was all the brilliant, exhilarating music from West Side Story?
I suspect they had copyright issues and couldn’t use it. And the absence hurts
I agree. Oppenheimer is a really boring film. It’s not about a bomb at all but all the politics after they made it. Still not as clueless and pointless as Barbie.
I haven’t seen Rebel Moon yet, is it worth bothering? I guess I’ll have to based on how good the trailer looks.
Interesting to note that after Susan Crichton, the GC, left in 2013, her replacement - Chris Aujard - was an interim GC only and left in 2015.
During this period, the Post Office's Chairman was Alice Perkins. She is also the wife of Jack Straw. Jack Straw's former SPAD, Mark Davies, was the Post Office's Director of Communications.
This period was when everything was being done to cover up what was being uncovered. It was when Second Sight, the experts brought in at the behest of MPs, were denied documents to do their job and then finally sacked. The decision to deny them documents was made by a Board meeting attended by Ms Perkins and the GC. She needs to be asked questions rather more than Ed Davey, frankly
The Director of Communications will have put pressure on editors not to run with the stories or reassured them that it was all nonsense etc.,.
There were lots of people who saw it as their job to cover this up. Paula Vennells is by no means the only person at fault here and there is something unbecoming and distasteful in the way that all these others are avoiding their share of responsibility
I am sure that you understand the realpolitik, whilst reacting against it as strongly as I do.
The sad reality is that if Vennells gets to take most of the flak, and a few junior people in Fujitsu get done for good measure, they’ll hope to get, and will probably achieve, closure.
It isn’t fair, and there will be lots of the culpable - from judges through lawyers through senior Post Office executives and Fujitsu managers - who ought to be punished as well.
But, sadly perhaps, the world we have to live in is real, and will want to move on.
I do. I do. I will be pleasantly surprised if anyone gets punished. But I will say this: if this is the result it will simply add to the widespread loss of trust people are developing in the institutions that hold our society together and make it work.
This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.
Mistakes happen - that is inevitable. But it is how we deal with those mistakes that shows what sort of society (and individuals) we are.
We are dealing with these mistakes in the worst possible way and all this will do is continue to degrade trust and do nothing to repair broken institutions. A society where that happens over and over again is going to be increasingly unpleasant and dysfunctional.
No offence, but PB-ers often complain about our hysterical, doom-laden media, and then I read paragraphs like this, by you:
“This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.”
You make us sound like Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, or a more tepid, Chocolate-Hobnob-eating version of North Korea. Perhaps a tad hyperbolic?
Interesting to note that after Susan Crichton, the GC, left in 2013, her replacement - Chris Aujard - was an interim GC only and left in 2015.
During this period, the Post Office's Chairman was Alice Perkins. She is also the wife of Jack Straw. Jack Straw's former SPAD, Mark Davies, was the Post Office's Director of Communications.
This period was when everything was being done to cover up what was being uncovered. It was when Second Sight, the experts brought in at the behest of MPs, were denied documents to do their job and then finally sacked. The decision to deny them documents was made by a Board meeting attended by Ms Perkins and the GC. She needs to be asked questions rather more than Ed Davey, frankly
The Director of Communications will have put pressure on editors not to run with the stories or reassured them that it was all nonsense etc.,.
There were lots of people who saw it as their job to cover this up. Paula Vennells is by no means the only person at fault here and there is something unbecoming and distasteful in the way that all these others are avoiding their share of responsibility
I am sure that you understand the realpolitik, whilst reacting against it as strongly as I do.
The sad reality is that if Vennells gets to take most of the flak, and a few junior people in Fujitsu get done for good measure, they’ll hope to get, and will probably achieve, closure.
It isn’t fair, and there will be lots of the culpable - from judges through lawyers through senior Post Office executives and Fujitsu managers - who ought to be punished as well.
But, sadly perhaps, the world we have to live in is real, and will want to move on.
I do. I do. I will be pleasantly surprised if anyone gets punished. But I will say this: if this is the result it will simply add to the widespread loss of trust people are developing in the institutions that hold our society together and make it work.
This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.
Mistakes happen - that is inevitable. But it is how we deal with those mistakes that shows what sort of society (and individuals) we are.
We are dealing with these mistakes in the worst possible way and all this will do is continue to degrade trust and do nothing to repair broken institutions. A society where that happens over and over again is going to be increasingly unpleasant and dysfunctional.
"Mistakes happen - that is inevitable. But it is how we deal with those mistakes that shows what sort of society (and individuals) we are."
Absolutely.
The PO made a mistake in buying and implenting Horizon, but it doubled down on the error when it began to prosecute SPMs in the full knowledge it was a defective system. That is a failure of individuals.
If we fail to follow through on the findings of the Horizon Inquiry that will be a failure of our society, and we will deserve what we get - an increasingly unpleasant and dysfunctional world to live in.
Interesting to note that after Susan Crichton, the GC, left in 2013, her replacement - Chris Aujard - was an interim GC only and left in 2015.
During this period, the Post Office's Chairman was Alice Perkins. She is also the wife of Jack Straw. Jack Straw's former SPAD, Mark Davies, was the Post Office's Director of Communications.
This period was when everything was being done to cover up what was being uncovered. It was when Second Sight, the experts brought in at the behest of MPs, were denied documents to do their job and then finally sacked. The decision to deny them documents was made by a Board meeting attended by Ms Perkins and the GC. She needs to be asked questions rather more than Ed Davey, frankly
The Director of Communications will have put pressure on editors not to run with the stories or reassured them that it was all nonsense etc.,.
There were lots of people who saw it as their job to cover this up. Paula Vennells is by no means the only person at fault here and there is something unbecoming and distasteful in the way that all these others are avoiding their share of responsibility
I am sure that you understand the realpolitik, whilst reacting against it as strongly as I do.
The sad reality is that if Vennells gets to take most of the flak, and a few junior people in Fujitsu get done for good measure, they’ll hope to get, and will probably achieve, closure.
It isn’t fair, and there will be lots of the culpable - from judges through lawyers through senior Post Office executives and Fujitsu managers - who ought to be punished as well.
But, sadly perhaps, the world we have to live in is real, and will want to move on.
I do. I do. I will be pleasantly surprised if anyone gets punished. But I will say this: if this is the result it will simply add to the widespread loss of trust people are developing in the institutions that hold our society together and make it work.
This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.
Mistakes happen - that is inevitable. But it is how we deal with those mistakes that shows what sort of society (and individuals) we are.
We are dealing with these mistakes in the worst possible way and all this will do is continue to degrade trust and do nothing to repair broken institutions. A society where that happens over and over again is going to be increasingly unpleasant and dysfunctional.
No offence, but PB-ers often complain about our hysterical, doom-laden media, and then I read paragraphs like this, by you:
“This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.”
You make us sound like Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, or a more tepid, Chocolate-Hobnob-eating version of North Korea. Perhaps a tad hyperbolic?
Perhaps she was trying to sex the subject up a bit for those who find it boring.
What is The Flintknappers Gazette's take on the Scandal?
It’s always heartwarming to see that some folk who have never worked in the public sector are so skilled they can instantly diagnose all the issues (which, mysteriously, always manage to conform to their personal prejudices) and propose a solution which usually involves a change to “the culture”.
Sigh…
The public sector is roughly as good (and as bad) at doing things as the private sector (with some minor variances, generally based on being able to offer market pay). The big difference is that mistakes in the public sector have to be declared in full, whilst in the private sector they can usually be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of accountants and auditors.
Ah yes, the way that people in Public Service put their hands up and said “we were wrong” about HMS Captain, Hillsborough, Aberfan, Rotherham, the Post Office and a thousand other scandals has been a lesson to us all.
Ben Siegel @bensiegel · 1h Trump in Iowa: “If it weren’t for John McCain, we’d have something better than Obamacare. John McCain, for some reason, couldn’t get his arm up that day.”
Seattle Times ($) - The Boeing 737 MAX 9 has been temporarily grounded by the Federal Aviation Administration following an in-flight blowout at 16,000 feet that forced an Alaska Airlines flight to make an emergency landing in Portland on Friday evening. . . .
The rectangular hole that appeared in the fuselage was located where Boeing fits a plug to seal a door opening that is not used as a door by most airlines, and by no U.S. carriers.
An emergency exit door is installed in that location only for jets going to low-cost carriers like Ryanair, which cram in additional seats that require an extra emergency exit. Otherwise, the hole is sealed with a plug, and from the inside it is covered by a sidewall. To a passenger, it looks like a normal window, not a door opening. . . .
There is no immediate explanation as to why the plug blew out. Photos and videos from passengers inside the jet show clean metal brackets where the plug would be latched, with no visible breaks, deformations or tears in the metal.
[SSI - you can hear the relief here in Seattle re: this next bit of info:]
The entire 737 fuselage, including the door plug, is assembled in Wichita, Kan., by Boeing’s major supplier, Spirit AeroSystems. . . .
[SSI - that is NOT in WA State.]
Alaska Airlines canceled more than 100 flights around the country on Saturday after announcing it would be voluntarily grounding its fleet of MAX 9s.
The canceled flights represent 15% of Alaska’s scheduled flights, according to flight tracking website FlightAware. More than 100 additional Alaska flights were delayed as of midday Saturday.
Before the FAA-mandated grounding, United Airlines also temporarily pulled some MAX 9s from service to conduct emergency inspections, according to a Bloomberg report. The airline has 78 MAX 9s in operation. . . .
The FAA on Saturday ordered the temporary grounding of most MAX 9 aircraft operated by U.S. airlines or in U.S. territory. Other aviation authorities around the globe are likely to follow the FAA’s lead. . . .
The MAX 9 is the largest plane in Boeing’s MAX series currently flying. The company has delivered a total of 218 MAX 9s worldwide.
The plug at issue in the incident is fitted on the previous generation 737-900ER and the same design is on the 737 MAX 8-200, the high-density version of the jet for low-cost carriers, as well as the MAX 9 and MAX 10, which has not yet been certified to carry passengers.
It is not present on the MAX 7 or MAX 8.
Online FAA records show the MAX 9 involved in Friday’s incident was almost new. Boeing delivered the jet to Alaska [Airlines] on Oct. 31.
FlightAware data shows Flight 1282 was the aircraft’s third flight of the day. It had flown from San Diego to New York overnight and then on to Portland earlier in the day.
It’s always heartwarming to see that some folk who have never worked in the public sector are so skilled they can instantly diagnose all the issues (which, mysteriously, always manage to conform to their personal prejudices) and propose a solution which usually involves a change to “the culture”.
Sigh…
The public sector is roughly as good (and as bad) at doing things as the private sector (with some minor variances, generally based on being able to offer market pay). The big difference is that mistakes in the public sector have to be declared in full, whilst in the public sector they can usually be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of accountants and auditors.
"The big difference is that mistakes in the public sector have to be declared in full, whilst in the public sector they can usually be brushed under the carpet with the connivance of accountants and auditors."
Didn't you mean the second "public sector" in that sentence to read "private sector"?
I would cite the Post Office as a riposte to that sentiment but you know that already. Plus listed companies have to make market announcement - I pile cite a few examples there too.
But the Post Office during the key period (and since) was run by people brought in for their private sector expertise, who didn’t really understand what they were managing.
What we are looking at is a tragic confluence of private sector people focused on their key objective whilst not interested, or understanding, the environment they are in, supported by a load of career long public sector people trained to follow instructions and otherwise keep their heads down.
That is part of the explanation and an important factor. But I was responding to the claim that because it was in the public sector it had to declare its mistakes in full.
That has certainly not happened in the PO's case. If anything, partly to avoid embarrassing Ministers or at least Ministerial decisions and partly to permit the privatisation of Royal Mail, the unfolding problems were kept as quiet as possible for as long as possible, even to the extent of misleading courts and Parliament.
My read is that when Vennells arrives she was genuinely willing to try and sort the situation out. But she surely unappreciated the scale of the disaster, assuming they were dealing with a small number of anomalies that could be resolved without diverting her from her course. Which is what she will have been told, up the line. But at some point - pretty obviously shortly before Second Sight were sacked - she realised the scale of the catastrophe she was sitting on.
We can all see what the right thing to have done would have been. And I’m sure that 95% of us would swear that that’s what we would have done, in her position.
She will have found herself in a room full of senior people - long serving PO managers who understood things a lot better than her, maybe someone senior from Fuitisu still sowing misinformation, and - critically - some top lawyers who must have thought that they had a better than 50:50 chance of making the catastrophe go away with some disgraceful legal shenanigans, bankrupting the other party before the case got to a conclusion. As we can see, from both Wallis’s detailed account and the summary version dramatised by ITV, they very nearly succeeded. As it is, most of the money won by Bates and others went on legal costs.
Both the financial position of her business and her own personal reputation would have been trashed, had she come clean at that point - already being on record at the BIS SC and in the media as defending the PO position. So she had the choice between being honest and facing certain ordure, or gambling that she might make the whole thing go away.
We all know what the morally right thing to do was. But I’d bet that significantly less than 95% of us would have opted for the right path, put in her position.
I suspect there was also a great deal of Ministerial pressure not to do anything to impact the Post Office's route to profits.
But I have been in the position, both in the public sector and in the private sector, of having to tell very senior people (Ministers and Chief Executives) that what they would like to do is unlawful. That takes guts. And any CEO who ignores such advice is a bloody fool. It's not just about doing the morally right thing to do: it's about the difference between legality and illegality.
Susan Crichton, the GC, left suddenly in 2013 - not long after the external legal advice pointing out the unsafeness of the convictions and the first Second Sight report. I would really like to know the truth of what led to her departure and what advice she was giving. And what her successors and predecessors were doing and saying.
The role of the GC can be immensely powerful in such circumstances - if they use that power wisely and have the independence of character to use it. Not all do. Some are frankly useless. My guess is that her successor was more intent on facilitating a "let's sweep it under the carpet" job.
That is one reason why I think the role of the lawyers here has been so shameful. They should have been gatekeepers preventing morally dubious and unlawful behaviour. Instead they appear to have facilitated and carried it out.
I can agree with you there. Yet while the inquiry, and subsequent events, is likely to pour a cauldron of excrement over a few senior Post Office folk, and a few of the more junior ones whose evidence has been myopic, and maybe even some of the hapless oppos from Fujitsu, I’d wager that the legal profession - including the courts that convicted people merely because they couldn’t prove their innocence - will get off relatively lightly.
You may well be right, Ian. There is however a lot more to come yet, so who knows who will get off lightly and who will not. The Law Society has a dreadful reputation for failing to deal strenously with its errant members, but maybe it will surprise us this time around.
Meanwhile I ask how many of us could have defended a dodgy computer system knowing full well that by doing so we were sending innocent people to jail and destroying lives? I don't think it is many as 5%. You have to be right hard-nosed bastard to do that kind of thing.
But everyone’s knowledge was incomplete, from top to bottom, for varying reasons.
Interesting to note that after Susan Crichton, the GC, left in 2013, her replacement - Chris Aujard - was an interim GC only and left in 2015.
During this period, the Post Office's Chairman was Alice Perkins. She is also the wife of Jack Straw. Jack Straw's former SPAD, Mark Davies, was the Post Office's Director of Communications.
This period was when everything was being done to cover up what was being uncovered. It was when Second Sight, the experts brought in at the behest of MPs, were denied documents to do their job and then finally sacked. The decision to deny them documents was made by a Board meeting attended by Ms Perkins and the GC. She needs to be asked questions rather more than Ed Davey, frankly
The Director of Communications will have put pressure on editors not to run with the stories or reassured them that it was all nonsense etc.,.
There were lots of people who saw it as their job to cover this up. Paula Vennells is by no means the only person at fault here and there is something unbecoming and distasteful in the way that all these others are avoiding their share of responsibility
I am sure that you understand the realpolitik, whilst reacting against it as strongly as I do.
The sad reality is that if Vennells gets to take most of the flak, and a few junior people in Fujitsu get done for good measure, they’ll hope to get, and will probably achieve, closure.
It isn’t fair, and there will be lots of the culpable - from judges through lawyers through senior Post Office executives and Fujitsu managers - who ought to be punished as well.
But, sadly perhaps, the world we have to live in is real, and will want to move on.
I do. I do. I will be pleasantly surprised if anyone gets punished. But I will say this: if this is the result it will simply add to the widespread loss of trust people are developing in the institutions that hold our society together and make it work.
This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.
Mistakes happen - that is inevitable. But it is how we deal with those mistakes that shows what sort of society (and individuals) we are.
We are dealing with these mistakes in the worst possible way and all this will do is continue to degrade trust and do nothing to repair broken institutions. A society where that happens over and over again is going to be increasingly unpleasant and dysfunctional.
No offence, but PB-ers often complain about our hysterical, doom-laden media, and then I read paragraphs like this, by you:
“This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.”
You make us sound like Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, or a more tepid, Chocolate-Hobnob-eating version of North Korea. Perhaps a tad hyperbolic?
Depends how much imagination you have. I reckon CS Lewis had it right;
The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid “dens of crime” that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the offices of a thoroughly nasty business concern.
It's cottage industry stuff compared with the mega scale of the great tyrants. But the dynamic that says "I will destroy you because it is convenient for me to do so" is the same. And there is way too much of it.
Comments
New schools, GPs etc are required because of population, not houses. Standing in the way of houses because you want schools does not work, if thanks to population growth we need more public services then the entire population not just new builds should be paying for those public services.
AP (via Seattle Times) - Michigan Republicans set to vote on chair Karamo’s removal as she promises not to accept result
LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Michigan Republicans plan to discuss the removal of state GOP Chairwoman Kristina Karamo during a meeting Saturday after many of the party’s leaders have called for her resignation following a year of leadership plagued by debt and infighting.
Karamo has made it clear she will not recognize the vote if removed Saturday, claiming the meeting is not official and has been illegally organized. The unfolding situation could set the stage for a court fight to determine control of the highest position within the Michigan GOP.
The internal dispute takes place as Michigan Republicans look to rebound from 2022 midterms in which they suffered historic losses. The party is aiming this year to flip an open U.S. Senate seat while also helping the Republican presidential nominee win the battleground state.
Michigan is among several swing states where parties overtaken by far-right leadership have struggled to overcome infighting and money issues. Similar situations have unfolded in Georgia and Arizona, which pose a significant issue in the 2024 presidential election where those states are poised to play pivotal roles.
Karamo, a former community college instructor, rose through Michigan’s Republican ranks by spreading election conspiracies after the 2020 presidential election. She eventually was backed by former President Donald Trump in her run for secretary of state in 2022, losing by 14 percentage points in a result that she still refuses to concede. . . .
Eight of the state party’s 13 congressional district chairs called on Karamo to resign last week, citing financial instability stemming from insufficient fundraising and asking Karamo to “put an end to the chaos in our party” by stepping down.
Karamo has refused to resign and promised not to leave if ousted at the meeting, calling the gathering “illegal” in a recent podcast posted on the Michigan GOP website. It’s unclear whether enough party members will attend for the Saturday afternoon gathering to be official.
Karamo did not respond to multiple requests for comment by The Associated Press.
SSI - The Revolution always eats its own, as their hero, Young(ish) Bolshevik Mad Vlad, could have told em . . .
We can all see what the right thing to have done would have been. And I’m sure that 95% of us would swear that that’s what we would have done, in her position.
She will have found herself in a room full of senior people - long serving PO managers who understood things a lot better than her, maybe someone senior from Fuitisu still sowing misinformation, and - critically - some top lawyers who must have thought that they had a better than 50:50 chance of making the catastrophe go away with some disgraceful legal shenanigans, bankrupting the other party before the case got to a conclusion. As we can see, from both Wallis’s detailed account and the summary version dramatised by ITV, they very nearly succeeded. As it is, most of the money won by Bates and others went on legal costs.
Both the financial position of her business and her own personal reputation would have been trashed, had she come clean at that point - already being on record at the BIS SC and in the media as defending the PO position. So she had the choice between being honest and facing certain ordure, or gambling that she might make the whole thing go away.
We all know what the morally right thing to do was. But I’d bet that significantly less than 95% of us would have opted for the right path, put in her position.
Off topic, it’s like collaboration. Most Brits imagine none of us would. Yet in every occupied country, including the Channel Islands, many did.
STORY
Floundering Rishi Sunak outspending Donald Trump on Facebook ads in desperate bid to cling on to power
People pay taxes for public facilities.
Public facilities should be paid for via those taxes, not via housing.
Private facilities should be paid for privately by people, not via housing.
And many of those who did were afterwards held to account for their wrongdoing.
Just because many do the wrong thing does not excuse or justify it.
If you build lots of new builds in a town or village or suburb however adding 500-1000+ to the local population that will need a new GP surgery, new primary school etc to absorb the incomers. Developers should partly fund that from the sale profits of the new houses they have built and sold.
Totally ignore NIMBYs and they will elect new NIMBY councillors and NIMBY councils and in time new NIMBY MPs and new NIMBY governments too
Public education falls upon the taxpayer, if a towns population doubles so a new school needs to be built then all taxpayers should chip in for the new school, not just those taxpayers who happen to be buying a new house while the others get to abdicate their responsibilities.
You’re letting yourself down, tonight.
Public services is not an externality, its a cost of servicing people not houses.
Have the rail franchise companies taken full responsibility of their neglect?
Will the water company shareholders be taking full responsibility of their neglect, in the coming years?
But I have been in the position, both in the public sector and in the private sector, of having to tell very senior people (Ministers and Chief Executives) that what they would like to do is unlawful. That takes guts. And any CEO who ignores such advice is a bloody fool. It's not just about doing the morally right thing to do: it's about the difference between legality and illegality.
Susan Crichton, the GC, left suddenly in 2013 - not long after the external legal advice pointing out the unsafeness of the convictions and the first Second Sight report. I would really like to know the truth of what led to her departure and what advice she was giving. And what her successors and predecessors were doing and saying.
The role of the GC can be immensely powerful in such circumstances - if they use that power wisely and have the independence of character to use it. Not all do. Some are frankly useless. My guess is that her successor was more intent on facilitating a "let's sweep it under the carpet" job.
That is one reason why I think the role of the lawyers here has been so shameful. They should have been gatekeepers preventing morally dubious and unlawful behaviour. Instead they appear to have facilitated and carried it out.
The Fed did the right thing in declining to rescue Lehman Bros.
Most people won't do the right thing, persistently, if it doesn't lead to fame, fortune or honour; they will play the politics instead.
Firstly, the odd and very public nature of the job that holds you very personally accountable while having to tow the line and do stuff you really don't want to. It attracts the odd remarkable, altruistic person but often those who want to do it are the ultra-ambitious but mediocre. Paying more generally won't change that. It might even make matters worse as it'll be more attractive to those who are out for themselves, while no more so to the brilliant but unconvinced.
Then you have the real issue - MPs have to go through a selection process that favours those who cultivate party memberships. Certain parts of all parties are always going to favour a fool who has buttered up the right people, joined the right campaigns, and expressed the 'correct' opinions over a more talented candidate whose face is more of an awkward fit.
If people want a village green and a cricket pavilion let them pay to be near a village green and a cricket pavilion.
If people want rabbit hutches, let them make that choice too.
Why should the communities who live near the dwellings be taken into account at all? Its not their land.
I would be quite content to see the water companies shareholders wiped out if they've failed. Its not been resolved yet, but I would rather see a Lehman Bros situation than an RBS one. I oppose any bailout of the water firms.
What's much harder is to stand up to thugs and bullies. Which means the bad people dominate the landscape.
And then the landscape changes in the image of the bad people...
It’s been that way for centuries, indeed for millennia. The trouble with you simple private sector folk is that you are usually so badly read.
It comes amid warnings that the Tories doubling the spending limits ahead of elections risked damaging the transparency of political donations and public confidence in elections
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/rishi-sunak-outspending-donald-trump-31822218
Social media does not have to stop for Christmas. January 2025.
If that were the case, we'd have world class public services right now as our construction of housing has been trailing population growth so there is much less of an externality happening proportionately.
However in the real world public services don't service houses, and are not an externality. They service people, which is why people need to pay taxes.
If the population grows we need more houses and more public services, because we have more people in the public than we did in the past. Blocking the development of houses does not alleviate public services, because the public is still there whether the houses are or not. Public services are not an externality of housing and the two need to be completely divorced from each other - public services are there for people, whether those people are crammed into too few houses or not.
Do you also think that companies should be allowed to form monopolies or fix prices with other companies at the expense of consumers?
I can't remember any other MP, though, who has displayed such contempt for the Commons as JRM did when he lay down on the front bench and pretended to snooze while a Labour colleague was speaking. Bercow fawned to him and doubtless thought he was real "class". Had it been an MP from another party, or even Boris Johnson, he'd have bawled them out.
JRM has also played up to the whole Mr Snooty cartoon character thing, e.g. saying "floccinaucinihilipilification" as if it made him look clever when it was little more than taking the piss.
Demeanour suggests he thinks he can do what he likes, given pater edited the Times for 14 years. Am guessing he's utter rubbish at helping constituents who aren't rich.
People make mistakes and when those mistakes come to light, crises are a good way of clearing out the trash - which by that point Lehman Bros was.
Trying to prevent crises is as foolhardy as trying to stop winter.
1) The truth is developers and planners do work together now - the notion it's an entirely adversarial system perpetrated by some on here is just wrong. A developer will go and talk to the planning authority and seek to agree in advance what kind of development would be acceptable to the authority within the context of the existing Local Plan. If the densities and types of properties acceptable to the authority will ensure a good return for the developer that's fine. There's also considerations of levels of "affordable" housing, rental housing, parking and other traffic management issues.
A lot happens long before any application is submitted - all the preparation won't guarantee acceptance from nearby residents (though sensible developers court them in advance with public meetings explaining what is being proposed) and local councillors can be unpredictable but it's a far more concensual approach than is widely believed.
2) Anecdotally, I've heard from developers they are struggling to sell new flats and houses - some are holding off believing mortgage rates and inflation will be lower in the summer which is leaving unsold flats and houses. Sometimes the supply and demand equation isn't that simple.
I am in favour of limited regulation, I'm a libertarian not an anarchist.
But I'm also in favour primarily of people taking responsibility for their own actions and their own choices.
I like cricket, but I know I'm in a minority for that. If I want to live near a cricket green since I'm a cricket fan, that's my choice. If someone else doesn't as they're not one, that's their choice too. Someone else my prefer to live near a rugby league ground, or a football ground, or a cinema, or a theatre. The world and the country is diverse in its interests and people should get to choose what suits them and live somewhere that suits them.
But population growth is happening and has happened whether construction keeps up or not. Public services exist to service the public, the key is in the name, and the whole public needs to take responsibility for that - not take the benefits of immigration then outsource the costs onto young people who need somewhere to live.
The expenses regulator has referred Paul Maynard for investigation after he claimed back money from the public purse for Conservative Party business.
The breaches include producing overtly political materials promoting the party and his re-election. Since his election in 2010, Maynard has spent £106,000 on printing and related costs — more than any Tory MP on record.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/minister-investigated-for-spending-taxpayer-cash-on-tory-campaigns-nglb3hn9j
The taxpayer should not have born the cost of private institutions failures. We had a system of protected accounts and protected account limits but all that was wiped out with the taxpayer giving a blank cheque, unnecessarily.
Iceland let its banks fail. The state stepped in to keep the operation of banking systems ongoing but did not bail out shareholders or unprotected accounts.
In my experience people can come in from the private sector and figure this out - some adapt and others don't.
The excitement is off the charts at the Olympics of competitive ‘spreadsheeting’
https://www.wsj.com/tech/microsoft-world-excel-championships-las-vegas-448c5f0b (£££)
During this period, the Post Office's Chairman was Alice Perkins. She is also the wife of Jack Straw. Jack Straw's former SPAD, Mark Davies, was the Post Office's Director of Communications.
This period was when everything was being done to cover up what was being uncovered. It was when Second Sight, the experts brought in at the behest of MPs, were denied documents to do their job and then finally sacked. The decision to deny them documents was made by a Board meeting attended by Ms Perkins and the GC. She needs to be asked questions rather more than Ed Davey, frankly
The Director of Communications will have put pressure on editors not to run with the stories or reassured them that it was all nonsense etc.,.
There were lots of people who saw it as their job to cover this up. Paula Vennells is by no means the only person at fault here and there is something unbecoming and distasteful in the way that all these others are avoiding their share of responsibility
If there's twice as many children in your town than before, then there's more school places needed. Regardless of whether the number of houses is reduced, unchanged, doubled or trebled.
Education is not an externality, its a public service there to educate children.
There are more children in this country than there were in the past. You may have a house of your own, but those children need educating whether they live in overcrowded slums or their parents can actually have a house of their own too.
IIRC When Aaron Sorkin did "The Farnsworth Invention" on Broadway, they had to apologise/insist to the Brits in the audience before the show started. However, they are simply wrong and it was invented by John Logie Baird.
And it has EVERYTHING to do with profits when the spaces in existing schools are a major determinant of planning permission. No schools, no planning permission, no PROFITS. So the developers need to cough ip for schools and drains and so on and so forth rather than dumping the costs on the existing inhabitants.
Nationalise the critical bits of the banking system, wiping out unprotected accounts, unprotected shareholders, unprotected creditors etc
Which mythical place in this country has an overabundance of services as the people have been moved away from it.
Excel Roller Coaster.
And I know of towns and schools demolished as industries moved away. It happens, all right.
Now, it is true that the public sector’s middle ranks are filled with some people who don’t harbour much ambition, and know that keeping their heads down and doing exactly what the guy before did, without risking changing anything at all, is usually the safest approach.
But there’s also a satisfaction in plugging away and overcoming all the obstacles and, eventually, delivering real achievements. And there are talented, capable people throughout the public sector doing just that. Again, I recommend Heywood’s biography, written by his wife. If you can overlook the widow’s reluctance to fault anything her husband ever did, it is nevertheless a very good illustration of how to get things done in a complex, multi-stakeholder and landmine-strewn environment.
If you pitch into a public sector job and blindly assume that the staff will do whatever you tell them, that the unions will agree, that the politicians won’t mind, and the public won’t notice, you are destined to fail.
I will certainly give them a lashing on here as and when the evidence comes out.
Incidentally your attack on the courts is silly: where someone pleads guilty, the court cannot ignore that. Where there is a trial, the verdict is that of the jury. The courts were hamstrung by the stupid decision to change the law on computer evidence.
The Ministry of Justice on the other hand - why weren't they noticing all these prosecutions? Why weren't they looking at how the Post Office was using its prosecution powers? There is plenty more to come out and I look forward to learning all about it, even if it makes me thoroughly ashamed of some members of my profession.
No, people live in places with not enough services already, they're not being moved in from anywhere.
People are living in overcrowded homes because there's a shortage of housing. If you increase the housing supply, so that people in overcrowded homes can get one down the road of their own rather than living in overcrowding, then the population hasn't changed.
Apart from abroad, the idea that people are being moved in is a myth. Almost the entire country is seeing population growth, that's growth that's not an externality and the whole country needs to pay for those public services.
The sad reality is that if Vennells gets to take most of the flak, and a few junior people in Fujitsu get done for good measure, they’ll hope to get, and will probably achieve, closure.
It isn’t fair, and there will be lots of the culpable - from judges through lawyers through senior Post Office executives and Fujitsu managers - who ought to be punished as well.
But, sadly perhaps, the world we have to live in is real, and will want to move on.
Where is this magical, mystical land in this country with an overabundance of school places and other public services that people are supposedly moving from?
You ask why you should pay for education? Because its a public service. That's why. If you have grandchildren, and those grandchildren need to go to school, then why does the fact that you have a house of your own, while children live in overcrowded accommodation make you absolved for paying for education while only those who buy a house should pay for it?
If people are moving away from a town or city with bountiful public services and an overabundance of good quality services and school places, then I'd love to know where this mythical make-believe town or city is.
If you want to reverse that terminal decline, then that needs resolving.
This occurred when he built a massive alumin(i)um works just outside town. Which required construction of many new houses and apartments for his workers. Mostly with kids who needed schooling, naturally.
HJK was NOT the kind to take the tack, that it was NOT his concern. For number of reasons, including the good of his own corporation and stockholders.
I can now report that’s totally untrue. My sleep pattern is all over the place. I’ve just woken up at 4am after 3 hours kip. I might sleep again in another 3-4 hours. It would make this quite impractical to combine with a normal job/family commitments
I also nearly succumbed to food last night with rages of starving hunger as I discovered a new packet of roasted peanuts in a cupboard. OMFG
Nonetheless here I am, 80 hours in. I can see ribs in my stomach that I haven’t seen in years. Like old friends from Sixth Form
I think I will end the fast later today. This evening. Enough
Perhaps for the same reason cited by Ed Davey in his infamous brush-off form-letter in "response" to John Bates - that since the PO was/is no longer a government department, but instead something neither fish nor fowl (as opposed to foul)?
Meanwhile I ask how many of us could have defended a dodgy computer system knowing full well that by doing so we were sending innocent people to jail and destroying lives? I don't think it is many as 5%. You have to be right hard-nosed bastard to do that kind of thing.
Even if my solution is unpopular, I'll still advocate it. When I started banging on about housing on here years ago it was a niche view to even recognise the housing shortage, or that house prices were too high. I was called insane and all sorts of names for suggesting it.
Now many people recognise the problem, even if they won't accept the solution, yet.
Hopefully Starmer as a new broom, with a majority, may actually tackle our problems. If he does, I'll vote for him, even if he is Labour. If he does, he'll be the greatest PM since Thatcher and leave a great legacy that will make the country better off for it.
I won't be holding my breath though.
It’s way harder than I expected. I’ve done 48 hours fasts before - without much problem - but this takes it to a new level. You get faintly delirious
Also if it ends I’ll stop going on about it, which will please many on PB
Until the Mint goes bust then - barter.
The bank goes into receivership and insolvency receivers keep the lights on. Bankruptcy does not and never has meant immediate shutdown.
Hell even Lehman Brothers themselves are still operating, or were as of 2022, under the provisions of the bankruptcy court: https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2022-lehman-brothers-collapse-plan-repay-after-bankruptcy/
PS this of course happened in Iceland with its too big to fail be saved banks.
Paul Maynard was confronted by a local Conservative activist over misuse of funds. Now the expenses watchdog has stepped in
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/minister-investigated-for-spending-taxpayer-cash-on-tory-campaigns-nglb3hn9j (£££)
1. An Act which can be passed in a day overturning all Post Office convictions 2000 - 2016.
2. The immediate review of the law on computer evidence to ensure that we get a provision which works without placing the burden of proof on defendants.
3. An independent compensation scheme which is not run by the Post Office and which will arrange for payments to be made within 3 months.
4. A public apology by the government to the subpostmasters.
Apparently the ideal is bone broth or lightly steamed vegetables like sprouts or broccoli. Yummy, not
What you want to avoid is “refeeding” where you gorge yourself on carbs, sugars, fatty food and lapse into a coma
So a gentle reintro is required. Think I might try miso soup and a little bit of sashimi
Since 2000 our population has grown by 15% but our housing levels have not and our road network only by 1%, which is effectively a 14% decline.
We need to reverse that shortage, but yes the entire public should pay for public infrastructure and houses should cost whatever houses cost - not houses plus public services plus inflated land costs.
Also I'd abolish stamp duty, Council Tax and all other land taxes and replace them with an annual land value tax.
Maestro is similar. Bradley Cooper’s biopic about Leonard Bernstein. Some noble performances but somehow lacking - where is/was all the brilliant, exhilarating music from West Side Story?
I suspect they had copyright issues and couldn’t use it. And the absence hurts
5. Apology as per 4. to be delivered via Candygram . . . but NOT by Hermes>Evri.
Yeah. 2024 is going to be better … “The largest male specimen of the world’s most venomous spider has been found in Australia” (from
@AP)
This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.
Mistakes happen - that is inevitable. But it is how we deal with those mistakes that shows what sort of society (and individuals) we are.
We are dealing with these mistakes in the worst possible way and all this will do is continue to degrade trust and do nothing to repair broken institutions. A society where that happens over and over again is going to be increasingly unpleasant and dysfunctional.
I haven’t seen Rebel Moon yet, is it worth bothering? I guess I’ll have to based on how good the trailer looks.
“This is not a one-off: everywhere you turn, our institutions are rotten, failing, untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt and downright malicious.”
You make us sound like Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, or a more tepid, Chocolate-Hobnob-eating version of North Korea. Perhaps a tad hyperbolic?
(and individuals) we are."
Absolutely.
The PO made a mistake in buying and implenting Horizon, but it doubled down on the error when it began to prosecute SPMs in the full knowledge it was a defective system. That is a failure of individuals.
If we fail to follow through on the findings of the Horizon Inquiry that will be a failure of our society, and we will deserve what we get - an increasingly unpleasant and dysfunctional world to live in.
Heather Hallett’s first findings are to be published before the summer and will show how austerity and Brexit hit pandemic planning
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/06/key-covid-inquiry-report-creates-election-date-headache-for-pm
January 2025.
What is The Flintknappers Gazette's take on the Scandal?
Ben Siegel
@bensiegel
·
1h
Trump in Iowa: “If it weren’t for John McCain, we’d have something better than Obamacare. John McCain, for some reason, couldn’t get his arm up that day.”
The rectangular hole that appeared in the fuselage was located where Boeing fits a plug to seal a door opening that is not used as a door by most airlines, and by no U.S. carriers.
An emergency exit door is installed in that location only for jets going to low-cost carriers like Ryanair, which cram in additional seats that require an extra emergency exit. Otherwise, the hole is sealed with a plug, and from the inside it is covered by a sidewall. To a passenger, it looks like a normal window, not a door opening. . . .
There is no immediate explanation as to why the plug blew out. Photos and videos from passengers inside the jet show clean metal brackets where the plug would be latched, with no visible breaks, deformations or tears in the metal.
[SSI - you can hear the relief here in Seattle re: this next bit of info:]
The entire 737 fuselage, including the door plug, is assembled in Wichita, Kan., by Boeing’s major supplier, Spirit AeroSystems. . . .
[SSI - that is NOT in WA State.]
Alaska Airlines canceled more than 100 flights around the country on Saturday after announcing it would be voluntarily grounding its fleet of MAX 9s.
The canceled flights represent 15% of Alaska’s scheduled flights, according to flight tracking website FlightAware. More than 100 additional Alaska flights were delayed as of midday Saturday.
Before the FAA-mandated grounding, United Airlines also temporarily pulled some MAX 9s from service to conduct emergency inspections, according to a Bloomberg report. The airline has 78 MAX 9s in operation. . . .
The FAA on Saturday ordered the temporary grounding of most MAX 9 aircraft operated by U.S. airlines or in U.S. territory. Other aviation authorities around the globe are likely to follow the FAA’s lead. . . .
The MAX 9 is the largest plane in Boeing’s MAX series currently flying. The company has delivered a total of 218 MAX 9s worldwide.
The plug at issue in the incident is fitted on the previous generation 737-900ER and the same design is on the 737 MAX 8-200, the high-density version of the jet for low-cost carriers, as well as the MAX 9 and MAX 10, which has not yet been certified to carry passengers.
It is not present on the MAX 7 or MAX 8.
Online FAA records show the MAX 9 involved in Friday’s incident was almost new. Boeing delivered the jet to Alaska [Airlines] on Oct. 31.
FlightAware data shows Flight 1282 was the aircraft’s third flight of the day. It had flown from San Diego to New York overnight and then on to Portland earlier in the day.
Bill Kristol
@BillKristol
·
1h
Trump on the Civil War. Worth watching because it’s revealing.
https://twitter.com/BillKristol/status/1743728216789880913
The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid “dens of crime” that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the offices of a thoroughly nasty business concern.
It's cottage industry stuff compared with the mega scale of the great tyrants. But the dynamic that says "I will destroy you because it is convenient for me to do so" is the same. And there is way too much of it.