Good news transportation wise, is that Big G can rely on something more reassuring, and comfortable, than modern air travel, for HIS upcoming transport needs -
By lifeboat. With perhaps a complementary tot of RNLI rum?
Actually I am still waiting for my conducted tour of the Shannon AWB promised by my son and the cox, but then I have had more important and on going health issues that I and my family will hopefully see addressed on the 6th Feb with my pacemaker operation
Indeed it was only a few days ago my son took me into A & E at 2.00am with chest pains, but after urgent tests and ECGs I was sent home by the doctor and consultant to take it easy and not drink coffee, but to return anytime I had issues
My son told me today he has a week's training in Poole in March and is hoping he will gain his helm certification shortly after, which will be his first command position after just 2 years
It is factual I will not fly again, but after all our world travels over the last 20 years, my wife and I have been left with so many memories and gratitude that we were able to see so much of our wonderful world while we could
I’m kind of angry and how badly Davey has managed / is managing this “scandal”.
Why the hell didn’t he just apologise? It is not necessary to personally culpable to apologise, and nor does - I think - open one up to prosecution or litigation.
Berk.
It was exactly my point yesterday
It was crazy to refuse 10 times to say sorry on an ITV news programme, when he could have calmed the issue down
Sky just interviewed the post mistress standing against him at the GE
I think it's lazy interviewing to ask the same question 10 times. Ask it twice, make the point that it's not been answered, and move on - 10 times is irritating "gotch" stuff.
Agree.
But what should Ed Davey have handled the situation?
Bill Clinton (for example) would have repeated same basic response, just kept changing it up via his gift of gab.
Like mentioning, did you know my aunt was a postmaster? And how he'd once defended her against a rogue postal inspector? And he'd been endorsed by Letter Carriers Union five times? And . . .
NOT saying that ED needs to match Bill Clinton standard of political gamespersonship.
Right now he's not achieving even Al Gore standard.
Yes, I think that if he doesn't want to apologise he needs to say so - "You keep asking the same question, but I think it goes way beyond individuals being pressed to apologise personally. The problem is that senior people have been too ready to assume that computer systems are always right, and that's something all we need not only to apologise for but make sure we don't do it again."
There are lots of sensible answers he could have given, Nick. He is by no means the main person to blame here and may indeed not have that much to be blamed for, not by comparison with others. I - for instance - would be asking some really tough questions of the Post Office's Chairs during this period.
But he didn't. He chose to give an interview but was woefully unprepared for it. Or he thought the way he handled it was the right way to do it.
So he looks either incompetent or lacking in judgment.
I am in no way a Lib Dem
1) Davey was given false information by officials, when he asked. 99.99% probability that this is true. 2) Where did the lying start in the chain below him? 3) When a minister gets a response from his department is he/she supposed not to trust it? Should every minister be at war with his department? 4) Given 1) someone owes Davey an appology.
It's a given that the PO did lie to Davey as he' claims. They lied to everyone else, to the extent of seeing completely innocent people falsely convicted of fraud, so why not the Minister in charge? Davey's mistake, in my view, is making this about him rather about the victims, even though he's the one being attacked.
My response in his shoes would go along the lines of: When the sub postmaster group asked to see me as the minister in charge about issues with Horizon, I did meet with them and then raised these issues with Post Office management who reassured me that these issues didn't exist. We now know they lied to me, and everyone else, to the extent that many innocent people were falsely convicted of crimes they didn't commit. I very much regret I didn't challenge them on their untruths as that might have helped the victims get justice earlier. What the Post Office did was was evil.
Reasonably factual, empathy with the victims, very clear where the real blame lies, but accepting there are things he could have done better.
Marchers out and about today chanting pro-Houthi slogans.
The Houthis being of course such poor innocent victims of unprovoked US and UK aggression. The poor dears, with their slavery, Taliban-style gender politics and oh I almost forgot, their lobbing of missiles and drones at international shipping.
Perhaps media outlets should start prefacing mediaevalist groups like this with “right wing” or “far right”. Because they are.
Labour leads by 14 points in first poll of 2024. • Labour 41% (+1) • Conservatives 27% (n/c) • Lib Dems 11% (n/c) • SNP 4% (+1) • Greens 6% (-1) • Reform 10% (+1)
I do think we are now on course for the largest Labour majority ever. And the Tories may never govern again.
On the latter point I heard the same nonsense between 1997 and 2010.
To be fair, it took the almost complete economic collapse of the West to get the Conservatives back close to power.
It was said after 1987 the Conservatives were the "natural Party of Government" and Labour "the natural party of Opposition". Some thought Blair would screw up after 1997 and the Conservatives would return in triumph after one term.
Who for instance, after the resounding Conservative victory in 2019, could have imagined we'd be where we are now - most expected a minimum two terms of Boris Johnson, he didn't make it to three years.
Trying to predict the future is fraught with peril - just look at my horse race betting account.
Two things massively derailed th government after Dec 2019. Covid and the war in Ukraine. Without those I think Johnson would still be in no 10, thinking about when to go to the nation.
LOL. Look at charts of NHS waiting lists, court waiting lists, asylum waiting lists, all increasing steadily from 2010 to 2019. That degradation in public services, an economy badly hit by Brexit, and Johnson’s inability to not lie would all be there without COVID and Ukraine,
Good news transportation wise, is that Big G can rely on something more reassuring, and comfortable, than modern air travel, for HIS upcoming transport needs -
By lifeboat. With perhaps a complementary tot of RNLI rum?
Actually I am still waiting for my conducted tour of the Shannon AWB promised by my son and the cox, but then I have had more important and on going health issues that I and my family will hopefully see addressed on the 6th Feb with my pacemaker operation
Indeed it was only a few days ago my son took me into A & E at 2.00am with chest pains, but after urgent tests and ECGs I was sent home by the doctor and consultant to take it easy and not drink coffee, but to return anytime I had issues
My son told me today he has a week's training in Poole in March and is hoping he will gain his helm certification shortly after, which will be his first command position after just 2 years
It is factual I will not fly again, but after all our world travels over the last 20 years, my wife and I have been left with so many memories and gratitude that we were able to see so much of our wonderful world while we could
I’m kind of angry and how badly Davey has managed / is managing this “scandal”.
Why the hell didn’t he just apologise? It is not necessary to personally culpable to apologise, and nor does - I think - open one up to prosecution or litigation.
Berk.
It was exactly my point yesterday
It was crazy to refuse 10 times to say sorry on an ITV news programme, when he could have calmed the issue down
Sky just interviewed the post mistress standing against him at the GE
I think it's lazy interviewing to ask the same question 10 times. Ask it twice, make the point that it's not been answered, and move on - 10 times is irritating "gotch" stuff.
Agree.
But what should Ed Davey have handled the situation?
Bill Clinton (for example) would have repeated same basic response, just kept changing it up via his gift of gab.
Like mentioning, did you know my aunt was a postmaster? And how he'd once defended her against a rogue postal inspector? And he'd been endorsed by Letter Carriers Union five times? And . . .
NOT saying that ED needs to match Bill Clinton standard of political gamespersonship.
Right now he's not achieving even Al Gore standard.
Yes, I think that if he doesn't want to apologise he needs to say so - "You keep asking the same question, but I think it goes way beyond individuals being pressed to apologise personally. The problem is that senior people have been too ready to assume that computer systems are always right, and that's something all we need not only to apologise for but make sure we don't do it again."
There are lots of sensible answers he could have given, Nick. He is by no means the main person to blame here and may indeed not have that much to be blamed for, not by comparison with others. I - for instance - would be asking some really tough questions of the Post Office's Chairs during this period.
But he didn't. He chose to give an interview but was woefully unprepared for it. Or he thought the way he handled it was the right way to do it.
So he looks either incompetent or lacking in judgment.
I am in no way a Lib Dem
1) Davey was given false information by officials, when he asked. 99.99% probability that this is true. 2) Where did the lying start in the chain below him? 3) When a minister gets a response from his department is he/she supposed not to trust it? Should every minister be at war with his department? 4) Given 1) someone owes Davey an appology.
I am a Lib Dem.
The problem for Davey, as I see it, is that he broadly feels the same as you.
Whilst you're not entirely wrong, it isn't a media strategy. People's sympathy is with folk who got jailed, not a bloke who had the wool pulled over his eyes and is now copping some flak over it.
His response has come across a bit like "I'm a victim too" which isn't appropriate and certainly isn't effective.
I don't think he's in the level of danger others have suggested. But his response has been disappointing on this one.
I saw the interview on Sky News with the woman who says she’s going to run against him. Her main issue seems to be that he didn’t help the sub postmaster at Tolworth. The interviewer said that the Lib Dems say that Davey couldn’t help because the guy wasn’t resident in the constituency. Tolworth is certainly in the seat, but it’s very possible he lived outside of the seat.
I don’t know if she will cause him problems or not. She did come across as someone who might be jumping on the bandwagon.
I do think we are now on course for the largest Labour majority ever. And the Tories may never govern again.
On the latter point I heard the same nonsense between 1997 and 2010.
To be fair, it took the almost complete economic collapse of the West to get the Conservatives back close to power.
It was said after 1987 the Conservatives were the "natural Party of Government" and Labour "the natural party of Opposition". Some thought Blair would screw up after 1997 and the Conservatives would return in triumph after one term.
Who for instance, after the resounding Conservative victory in 2019, could have imagined we'd be where we are now - most expected a minimum two terms of Boris Johnson, he didn't make it to three years.
Trying to predict the future is fraught with peril - just look at my horse race betting account.
Two things massively derailed th government after Dec 2019. Covid and the war in Ukraine. Without those I think Johnson would still be in no 10, thinking about when to go to the nation.
No, because he was set to ‘self-destruct’ from the very beginning. If it hadn’t been the disgraced covid partying, it would soon have been something else.
It would have happened in the end, yes I agree with you. But there is no doubt that covid destroyed any chance of a period of calm government. I suspect that no Western Government in power for covid will do that well when next seeking election.
I do think we are now on course for the largest Labour majority ever. And the Tories may never govern again.
Hubris, thy name is AverageNinja. It’s not that long ago that people wondered if labour would ever govern again. I doubt labour has the answers to transform the U.K., so when the shine starts to come off the polls will turn. It may not be just one term, but history suggests that defeated Tories go away and reinvent themselves to get back to power. That’s where the money is, after all…
Man, I read that post and time travelled back to 1996.
Remind me, when Blair dragged Labour just over the line, did the Conservatives regroup and smash the next election out of the park, or were they unelectable for over a decade?
The original post said never again. Yes, the Tories did take a while to regroup, not helped by a very skewed vote distribution (small labour % leads gav3 big majorities). But then they found Cameron, who found a different kind of conservatism (at least for a while).
Of course after defeat in 1945, the Tories were back in power in 6 years, after defeat in 1964 back in power in 6 years and after defeat in 1974 back in power in 1979. New Labour was the exception which kept the Tories out of power for over a decade largely as they ran the economy better than previous Labour governments
It's very difficult to predict the future and even more so if you try to pattern match against the past.
Neither of us know what will happen assuming a Labour win in November. A lot will depend on the scale of the victory and the scale of the defeat (which aren't the same).
As we may see, a more volatile or perhaps less tribal electorate will enable larger swings than was once the case.
The question probably is where will those who become dillusioned with Labour go - will they go direct to the Conservatives or will they flirt with Reform, the LDs, the Greens? As I've often said how parties respond to defeat is often more instructive than how they respond to victory.
WRT the question of which party governs the UK, a massive disillusion with Labour post GE 2024 would provide the conditions for an outside chance of reordering the system. The SDP is a reminder of how outside and unlikely that chance is. But. In 2025/6/7 the country could be both totally fed up with Labour, and still regard the Tories as unelectable used car salesmen. The SDP came about (and of course failed) in a context of a left takeover of Labour, and a Tory government hated by the centre/social democrat left, leaving space for Jenkins and co.
Jenkins and Williams being unavailable it is hard to spot among the pygmies of today the force which could do this, but the chance may come about for the first time since 1981. DYOR but don't bet the farm.
Good news transportation wise, is that Big G can rely on something more reassuring, and comfortable, than modern air travel, for HIS upcoming transport needs -
By lifeboat. With perhaps a complementary tot of RNLI rum?
Actually I am still waiting for my conducted tour of the Shannon AWB promised by my son and the cox, but then I have had more important and on going health issues that I and my family will hopefully see addressed on the 6th Feb with my pacemaker operation
Indeed it was only a few days ago my son took me into A & E at 2.00am with chest pains, but after urgent tests and ECGs I was sent home by the doctor and consultant to take it easy and not drink coffee, but to return anytime I had issues
My son told me today he has a week's training in Poole in March and is hoping he will gain his helm certification shortly after, which will be his first command position after just 2 years
It is factual I will not fly again, but after all our world travels over the last 20 years, my wife and I have been left with so many memories and gratitude that we were able to see so much of our wonderful world while we could
I’m kind of angry and how badly Davey has managed / is managing this “scandal”.
Why the hell didn’t he just apologise? It is not necessary to personally culpable to apologise, and nor does - I think - open one up to prosecution or litigation.
Berk.
It was exactly my point yesterday
It was crazy to refuse 10 times to say sorry on an ITV news programme, when he could have calmed the issue down
Sky just interviewed the post mistress standing against him at the GE
I think it's lazy interviewing to ask the same question 10 times. Ask it twice, make the point that it's not been answered, and move on - 10 times is irritating "gotch" stuff.
Agree.
But what should Ed Davey have handled the situation?
Bill Clinton (for example) would have repeated same basic response, just kept changing it up via his gift of gab.
Like mentioning, did you know my aunt was a postmaster? And how he'd once defended her against a rogue postal inspector? And he'd been endorsed by Letter Carriers Union five times? And . . .
NOT saying that ED needs to match Bill Clinton standard of political gamespersonship.
Right now he's not achieving even Al Gore standard.
Yes, I think that if he doesn't want to apologise he needs to say so - "You keep asking the same question, but I think it goes way beyond individuals being pressed to apologise personally. The problem is that senior people have been too ready to assume that computer systems are always right, and that's something all we need not only to apologise for but make sure we don't do it again."
There are lots of sensible answers he could have given, Nick. He is by no means the main person to blame here and may indeed not have that much to be blamed for, not by comparison with others. I - for instance - would be asking some really tough questions of the Post Office's Chairs during this period.
But he didn't. He chose to give an interview but was woefully unprepared for it. Or he thought the way he handled it was the right way to do it.
So he looks either incompetent or lacking in judgment.
I am in no way a Lib Dem
1) Davey was given false information by officials, when he asked. 99.99% probability that this is true. 2) Where did the lying start in the chain below him? 3) When a minister gets a response from his department is he/she supposed not to trust it? Should every minister be at war with his department? 4) Given 1) someone owes Davey an appology.
I am a Lib Dem.
The problem for Davey, as I see it, is that he broadly feels the same as you.
Whilst you're not entirely wrong, it isn't a media strategy. People's sympathy is with folk who got jailed, not a bloke who had the wool pulled over his eyes and is now copping some flak over it.
His response has come across a bit like "I'm a victim too" which isn't appropriate and certainly isn't effective.
I don't think he's in the level of danger others have suggested. But his response has been disappointing on this one.
I saw the interview on Sky News with the woman who says she’s going to run against him. Her main issue seems to be that he didn’t help the sub postmaster at Tolworth. The interviewer said that the Lib Dems say that Davey couldn’t help because the guy wasn’t resident in the constituency. Tolworth is certainly in the seat, but it’s very possible he lived outside of the seat.
I don’t know if she will cause him problems or not. She did come across as someone who might be jumping on the bandwagon.
He's not going to have a problem in his own seat, to be honest.
I do think we are now on course for the largest Labour majority ever. And the Tories may never govern again.
On the latter point I heard the same nonsense between 1997 and 2010.
To be fair, it took the almost complete economic collapse of the West to get the Conservatives back close to power.
It was said after 1987 the Conservatives were the "natural Party of Government" and Labour "the natural party of Opposition". Some thought Blair would screw up after 1997 and the Conservatives would return in triumph after one term.
Who for instance, after the resounding Conservative victory in 2019, could have imagined we'd be where we are now - most expected a minimum two terms of Boris Johnson, he didn't make it to three years.
Trying to predict the future is fraught with peril - just look at my horse race betting account.
Two things massively derailed th government after Dec 2019. Covid and the war in Ukraine. Without those I think Johnson would still be in no 10, thinking about when to go to the nation.
LOL. Look at charts of NHS waiting lists, court waiting lists, asylum waiting lists, all increasing steadily from 2010 to 2019. That degradation in public services, an economy badly hit by Brexit, and Johnson’s inability to not lie would all be there without COVID and Ukraine,
We don5 really know how badly the economy has been hit by Brexit, as we don5 have the counterfactual of no covid and no war to run against. Modelling will be biased by the biases of the modellers. Pro EU modellers will definitely show a huge hit from Brexit. Pro Brexit the reverse.
And yes the NHS is an issue, and all the other factors that have resulted post 2008. Yes, that’s the real hysteresis point.
Researching something else I was astonished to discover you can buy reasonable looking flats in Bishop Auckland for £20 000. The common areas are somewhat manky but the flats themselves are decent. Given Bishop Auckland is overall run down, I don't think they are in especially bad districts either.
They are apparently being rented at £350 a month. Someone is making a lot of profit.
Maybe the chairman of NatWest had a point when he said everyone can afford to buy a house.
Marchers out and about today chanting pro-Houthi slogans.
The Houthis being of course such poor innocent victims of unprovoked US and UK aggression. The poor dears, with their slavery, Taliban-style gender politics and oh I almost forgot, their lobbing of missiles and drones at international shipping.
Perhaps media outlets should start prefacing mediaevalist groups like this with “right wing” or “far right”. Because they are.
Marchers out and about today chanting pro-Houthi slogans.
The Houthis being of course such poor innocent victims of unprovoked US and UK aggression. The poor dears, with their slavery, Taliban-style gender politics and oh I almost forgot, their lobbing of missiles and drones at international shipping.
Perhaps media outlets should start prefacing mediaevalist groups like this with “right wing” or “far right”. Because they are.
Marchers out and about today chanting pro-Houthi slogans.
The Houthis being of course such poor innocent victims of unprovoked US and UK aggression. The poor dears, with their slavery, Taliban-style gender politics and oh I almost forgot, their lobbing of missiles and drones at international shipping.
Perhaps media outlets should start prefacing mediaevalist groups like this with “right wing” or “far right”. Because they are.
I do think we are now on course for the largest Labour majority ever. And the Tories may never govern again.
On the latter point I heard the same nonsense between 1997 and 2010.
To be fair, it took the almost complete economic collapse of the West to get the Conservatives back close to power.
It was said after 1987 the Conservatives were the "natural Party of Government" and Labour "the natural party of Opposition". Some thought Blair would screw up after 1997 and the Conservatives would return in triumph after one term.
Who for instance, after the resounding Conservative victory in 2019, could have imagined we'd be where we are now - most expected a minimum two terms of Boris Johnson, he didn't make it to three years.
Trying to predict the future is fraught with peril - just look at my horse race betting account.
Two things massively derailed th government after Dec 2019. Covid and the war in Ukraine. Without those I think Johnson would still be in no 10, thinking about when to go to the nation.
No, because he was set to ‘self-destruct’ from the very beginning. If it hadn’t been the disgraced covid partying, it would soon have been something else.
It would have happened in the end, yes I agree with you. But there is no doubt that covid destroyed any chance of a period of calm government. I suspect that no Western Government in power for covid will do that well when next seeking election.
As mentioned, I am dubious about inventing a vague class of people and then blaming them for all problems. I think it’s better to look at culture and process!
One process, something Cyclefree has talked about, is whistleblowing. How do we support a culture that supports and allows whistleblowing?
We could also talk about the Third Way, the belief from Major to Blair to Brown to Cameron that there is a better way to bring together the best of the private and public sector. But I think this has often been illusory. PFIs turned out to be a very expensive mistake. Having a Post Office that is a standalone company, wholly owned by the government, seems to have led to the worst of the private and public sector being brought together.
I do think we are now on course for the largest Labour majority ever. And the Tories may never govern again.
On the latter point I heard the same nonsense between 1997 and 2010.
To be fair, it took the almost complete economic collapse of the West to get the Conservatives back close to power.
It was said after 1987 the Conservatives were the "natural Party of Government" and Labour "the natural party of Opposition". Some thought Blair would screw up after 1997 and the Conservatives would return in triumph after one term.
Who for instance, after the resounding Conservative victory in 2019, could have imagined we'd be where we are now - most expected a minimum two terms of Boris Johnson, he didn't make it to three years.
Trying to predict the future is fraught with peril - just look at my horse race betting account.
Two things massively derailed th government after Dec 2019. Covid and the war in Ukraine. Without those I think Johnson would still be in no 10, thinking about when to go to the nation.
No, because he was set to ‘self-destruct’ from the very beginning. If it hadn’t been the disgraced covid partying, it would soon have been something else.
It would have happened in the end, yes I agree with you. But there is no doubt that covid destroyed any chance of a period of calm government. I suspect that no Western Government in power for covid will do that well when next seeking election.
Emmanuel Macron says 'Hi!'
Elected by the fewest of France’s voters since the 60’s, and against a far right opponent to boot?
Marchers out and about today chanting pro-Houthi slogans.
The Houthis being of course such poor innocent victims of unprovoked US and UK aggression. The poor dears, with their slavery, Taliban-style gender politics and oh I almost forgot, their lobbing of missiles and drones at international shipping.
Perhaps media outlets should start prefacing mediaevalist groups like this with “right wing” or “far right”. Because they are.
I do think we are now on course for the largest Labour majority ever. And the Tories may never govern again.
On the latter point I heard the same nonsense between 1997 and 2010.
To be fair, it took the almost complete economic collapse of the West to get the Conservatives back close to power.
It was said after 1987 the Conservatives were the "natural Party of Government" and Labour "the natural party of Opposition". Some thought Blair would screw up after 1997 and the Conservatives would return in triumph after one term.
Who for instance, after the resounding Conservative victory in 2019, could have imagined we'd be where we are now - most expected a minimum two terms of Boris Johnson, he didn't make it to three years.
Trying to predict the future is fraught with peril - just look at my horse race betting account.
Two things massively derailed th government after Dec 2019. Covid and the war in Ukraine. Without those I think Johnson would still be in no 10, thinking about when to go to the nation.
No, because he was set to ‘self-destruct’ from the very beginning. If it hadn’t been the disgraced covid partying, it would soon have been something else.
It would have happened in the end, yes I agree with you. But there is no doubt that covid destroyed any chance of a period of calm government. I suspect that no Western Government in power for covid will do that well when next seeking election.
Emmanuel Macron says 'Hi!'
No, he says bye.
"When next seeking election"? He's constitutionally forbidden to run again, he's reached his term limit already while we were still dealing with Covid.
Good news transportation wise, is that Big G can rely on something more reassuring, and comfortable, than modern air travel, for HIS upcoming transport needs -
By lifeboat. With perhaps a complementary tot of RNLI rum?
Actually I am still waiting for my conducted tour of the Shannon AWB promised by my son and the cox, but then I have had more important and on going health issues that I and my family will hopefully see addressed on the 6th Feb with my pacemaker operation
Indeed it was only a few days ago my son took me into A & E at 2.00am with chest pains, but after urgent tests and ECGs I was sent home by the doctor and consultant to take it easy and not drink coffee, but to return anytime I had issues
My son told me today he has a week's training in Poole in March and is hoping he will gain his helm certification shortly after, which will be his first command position after just 2 years
It is factual I will not fly again, but after all our world travels over the last 20 years, my wife and I have been left with so many memories and gratitude that we were able to see so much of our wonderful world while we could
I’m kind of angry and how badly Davey has managed / is managing this “scandal”.
Why the hell didn’t he just apologise? It is not necessary to personally culpable to apologise, and nor does - I think - open one up to prosecution or litigation.
Berk.
It was exactly my point yesterday
It was crazy to refuse 10 times to say sorry on an ITV news programme, when he could have calmed the issue down
Sky just interviewed the post mistress standing against him at the GE
I think it's lazy interviewing to ask the same question 10 times. Ask it twice, make the point that it's not been answered, and move on - 10 times is irritating "gotch" stuff.
Agree.
But what should Ed Davey have handled the situation?
Bill Clinton (for example) would have repeated same basic response, just kept changing it up via his gift of gab.
Like mentioning, did you know my aunt was a postmaster? And how he'd once defended her against a rogue postal inspector? And he'd been endorsed by Letter Carriers Union five times? And . . .
NOT saying that ED needs to match Bill Clinton standard of political gamespersonship.
Right now he's not achieving even Al Gore standard.
Yes, I think that if he doesn't want to apologise he needs to say so - "You keep asking the same question, but I think it goes way beyond individuals being pressed to apologise personally. The problem is that senior people have been too ready to assume that computer systems are always right, and that's something all we need not only to apologise for but make sure we don't do it again."
There are lots of sensible answers he could have given, Nick. He is by no means the main person to blame here and may indeed not have that much to be blamed for, not by comparison with others. I - for instance - would be asking some really tough questions of the Post Office's Chairs during this period.
But he didn't. He chose to give an interview but was woefully unprepared for it. Or he thought the way he handled it was the right way to do it.
So he looks either incompetent or lacking in judgment.
I am in no way a Lib Dem
1) Davey was given false information by officials, when he asked. 99.99% probability that this is true. 2) Where did the lying start in the chain below him? 3) When a minister gets a response from his department is he/she supposed not to trust it? Should every minister be at war with his department? 4) Given 1) someone owes Davey an appology.
I am a Lib Dem.
The problem for Davey, as I see it, is that he broadly feels the same as you.
Whilst you're not entirely wrong, it isn't a media strategy. People's sympathy is with folk who got jailed, not a bloke who had the wool pulled over his eyes and is now copping some flak over it.
His response has come across a bit like "I'm a victim too" which isn't appropriate and certainly isn't effective.
I don't think he's in the level of danger others have suggested. But his response has been disappointing on this one.
I saw the interview on Sky News with the woman who says she’s going to run against him. Her main issue seems to be that he didn’t help the sub postmaster at Tolworth. The interviewer said that the Lib Dems say that Davey couldn’t help because the guy wasn’t resident in the constituency. Tolworth is certainly in the seat, but it’s very possible he lived outside of the seat.
I don’t know if she will cause him problems or not. She did come across as someone who might be jumping on the bandwagon.
Ain't "jumping on the bandwagon" or something like it, what Neal Hamilton said about Martin Bell in 1997?
True enough . . . but NOT near enough to help Hamilton.
I do think we are now on course for the largest Labour majority ever. And the Tories may never govern again.
On the latter point I heard the same nonsense between 1997 and 2010.
To be fair, it took the almost complete economic collapse of the West to get the Conservatives back close to power.
It was said after 1987 the Conservatives were the "natural Party of Government" and Labour "the natural party of Opposition". Some thought Blair would screw up after 1997 and the Conservatives would return in triumph after one term.
Who for instance, after the resounding Conservative victory in 2019, could have imagined we'd be where we are now - most expected a minimum two terms of Boris Johnson, he didn't make it to three years.
Trying to predict the future is fraught with peril - just look at my horse race betting account.
Two things massively derailed th government after Dec 2019. Covid and the war in Ukraine. Without those I think Johnson would still be in no 10, thinking about when to go to the nation.
No, because he was set to ‘self-destruct’ from the very beginning. If it hadn’t been the disgraced covid partying, it would soon have been something else.
It would have happened in the end, yes I agree with you. But there is no doubt that covid destroyed any chance of a period of calm government. I suspect that no Western Government in power for covid will do that well when next seeking election.
Emmanuel Macron says 'Hi!'
No, he says bye.
"When next seeking election"? He's constitutionally forbidden to run again, he's reached his term limit already while we were still dealing with Covid.
He was re-elected in 2022 Covid was largely a non-story by then; the impact had been fully felt. If covid was going to prevent Macron being re-elected it would have done so in 2022.
" He defines the New Elite as Oxbridge/Russell Group graduates in managerial jobs with liberal cosmopolitan values who are overrepresented in decision-making and represent about a quarter of the population"
Almost by definition, the managerial classes are going (more likely than not) going to be educated at top universities.
Is this a new phenomena? Maybe if it is, it's because more people are educated at university.
I do think we are now on course for the largest Labour majority ever. And the Tories may never govern again.
On the latter point I heard the same nonsense between 1997 and 2010.
To be fair, it took the almost complete economic collapse of the West to get the Conservatives back close to power.
It was said after 1987 the Conservatives were the "natural Party of Government" and Labour "the natural party of Opposition". Some thought Blair would screw up after 1997 and the Conservatives would return in triumph after one term.
Who for instance, after the resounding Conservative victory in 2019, could have imagined we'd be where we are now - most expected a minimum two terms of Boris Johnson, he didn't make it to three years.
Trying to predict the future is fraught with peril - just look at my horse race betting account.
Two things massively derailed th government after Dec 2019. Covid and the war in Ukraine. Without those I think Johnson would still be in no 10, thinking about when to go to the nation.
No, because he was set to ‘self-destruct’ from the very beginning. If it hadn’t been the disgraced covid partying, it would soon have been something else.
It would have happened in the end, yes I agree with you. But there is no doubt that covid destroyed any chance of a period of calm government. I suspect that no Western Government in power for covid will do that well when next seeking election.
Emmanuel Macron says 'Hi!'
Elected by the fewest of France’s voters since the 60’s, and against a far right opponent to boot?
I do think we are now on course for the largest Labour majority ever. And the Tories may never govern again.
On the latter point I heard the same nonsense between 1997 and 2010.
To be fair, it took the almost complete economic collapse of the West to get the Conservatives back close to power.
It was said after 1987 the Conservatives were the "natural Party of Government" and Labour "the natural party of Opposition". Some thought Blair would screw up after 1997 and the Conservatives would return in triumph after one term.
Who for instance, after the resounding Conservative victory in 2019, could have imagined we'd be where we are now - most expected a minimum two terms of Boris Johnson, he didn't make it to three years.
Trying to predict the future is fraught with peril - just look at my horse race betting account.
Two things massively derailed th government after Dec 2019. Covid and the war in Ukraine. Without those I think Johnson would still be in no 10, thinking about when to go to the nation.
LOL. Look at charts of NHS waiting lists, court waiting lists, asylum waiting lists, all increasing steadily from 2010 to 2019. That degradation in public services, an economy badly hit by Brexit, and Johnson’s inability to not lie would all be there without COVID and Ukraine,
The corrected OECD statistics show virtually no Brexit effect, but keep spinning.
I do think we are now on course for the largest Labour majority ever. And the Tories may never govern again.
On the latter point I heard the same nonsense between 1997 and 2010.
To be fair, it took the almost complete economic collapse of the West to get the Conservatives back close to power.
It was said after 1987 the Conservatives were the "natural Party of Government" and Labour "the natural party of Opposition". Some thought Blair would screw up after 1997 and the Conservatives would return in triumph after one term.
Who for instance, after the resounding Conservative victory in 2019, could have imagined we'd be where we are now - most expected a minimum two terms of Boris Johnson, he didn't make it to three years.
Trying to predict the future is fraught with peril - just look at my horse race betting account.
Two things massively derailed th government after Dec 2019. Covid and the war in Ukraine. Without those I think Johnson would still be in no 10, thinking about when to go to the nation.
LOL. Look at charts of NHS waiting lists, court waiting lists, asylum waiting lists, all increasing steadily from 2010 to 2019. That degradation in public services, an economy badly hit by Brexit, and Johnson’s inability to not lie would all be there without COVID and Ukraine,
The corrected OECD statistics show virtually no Brexit effect, but keep spinning.
Now, this is all over (a) very small period of time, and (b) is distorted by Covid, but there is a Brexit effect, in that we were consistently growing 1.1-1.3% faster than our EU peers, and now it's more like 0.3-0.5%.
So, we're still growing faster than the other EU countries but the gap is narrower than it was.
I do think we are now on course for the largest Labour majority ever. And the Tories may never govern again.
On the latter point I heard the same nonsense between 1997 and 2010.
To be fair, it took the almost complete economic collapse of the West to get the Conservatives back close to power.
It was said after 1987 the Conservatives were the "natural Party of Government" and Labour "the natural party of Opposition". Some thought Blair would screw up after 1997 and the Conservatives would return in triumph after one term.
Who for instance, after the resounding Conservative victory in 2019, could have imagined we'd be where we are now - most expected a minimum two terms of Boris Johnson, he didn't make it to three years.
Trying to predict the future is fraught with peril - just look at my horse race betting account.
Two things massively derailed th government after Dec 2019. Covid and the war in Ukraine. Without those I think Johnson would still be in no 10, thinking about when to go to the nation.
No, because he was set to ‘self-destruct’ from the very beginning. If it hadn’t been the disgraced covid partying, it would soon have been something else.
It would have happened in the end, yes I agree with you. But there is no doubt that covid destroyed any chance of a period of calm government. I suspect that no Western Government in power for covid will do that well when next seeking election.
Emmanuel Macron says 'Hi!'
No, he says bye.
"When next seeking election"? He's constitutionally forbidden to run again, he's reached his term limit already while we were still dealing with Covid.
He was re-elected in 2022 Covid was largely a non-story by then; the impact had been fully felt. If covid was going to prevent MArcor being re-elected it would have done so in 2022.
Early 2022 was while Covid was still an issue and more importantly before the bills started coming due to be paid. When governments were still operating on largely free money from quantitative easing rather than quantitative tightening.
The ECB's base rate when Macron was re-elected was -0.5%, rather than 4.0% today.
I can't think of a Western Government re-elected since the banks started raising base rates and Macron can't fit that bill since he's term-limited.
Labour leads by 14 points in first poll of 2024. • Labour 41% (+1) • Conservatives 27% (n/c) • Lib Dems 11% (n/c) • SNP 4% (+1) • Greens 6% (-1) • Reform 10% (+1)
Opinium takes account of potential swing back I believe
Yes this one is the real election result poll. So you can confidently Baxter it and see what comes out.
It’s interesting that a number of polls now show the Lib Dems essentially unchanged despite Davey’s personal ratings taking a hit. I wonder if this is relatively sophisticated voters distinguishing between the leader and the party, as did those who quite liked Rishi but hated the Tories early in his leadership.
That phenomenon doesn’t last though. Ed needs to get his popularity up or it’s going to be a drag on the LD vote.
Researching something else I was astonished to discover you can buy reasonable looking flats in Bishop Auckland for £20 000. The common areas are somewhat manky but the flats themselves are decent. Given Bishop Auckland is overall run down, I don't think they are in especially bad districts either.
They are apparently being rented at £350 a month. Someone is making a lot of profit.
Maybe the chairman of NatWest had a point when he said everyone can afford to buy a house.
If only he'd said 'everyone with a London salary can afford a house in Bishop Auckland' it would have been more easily defensible.
I do think we are now on course for the largest Labour majority ever. And the Tories may never govern again.
On the latter point I heard the same nonsense between 1997 and 2010.
To be fair, it took the almost complete economic collapse of the West to get the Conservatives back close to power.
It was said after 1987 the Conservatives were the "natural Party of Government" and Labour "the natural party of Opposition". Some thought Blair would screw up after 1997 and the Conservatives would return in triumph after one term.
Who for instance, after the resounding Conservative victory in 2019, could have imagined we'd be where we are now - most expected a minimum two terms of Boris Johnson, he didn't make it to three years.
Trying to predict the future is fraught with peril - just look at my horse race betting account.
Two things massively derailed th government after Dec 2019. Covid and the war in Ukraine. Without those I think Johnson would still be in no 10, thinking about when to go to the nation.
No, because he was set to ‘self-destruct’ from the very beginning. If it hadn’t been the disgraced covid partying, it would soon have been something else.
It would have happened in the end, yes I agree with you. But there is no doubt that covid destroyed any chance of a period of calm government. I suspect that no Western Government in power for covid will do that well when next seeking election.
Emmanuel Macron says 'Hi!'
Elected by the fewest of France’s voters since the 60’s, and against a far right opponent to boot?
Good news transportation wise, is that Big G can rely on something more reassuring, and comfortable, than modern air travel, for HIS upcoming transport needs -
By lifeboat. With perhaps a complementary tot of RNLI rum?
Actually I am still waiting for my conducted tour of the Shannon AWB promised by my son and the cox, but then I have had more important and on going health issues that I and my family will hopefully see addressed on the 6th Feb with my pacemaker operation
Indeed it was only a few days ago my son took me into A & E at 2.00am with chest pains, but after urgent tests and ECGs I was sent home by the doctor and consultant to take it easy and not drink coffee, but to return anytime I had issues
My son told me today he has a week's training in Poole in March and is hoping he will gain his helm certification shortly after, which will be his first command position after just 2 years
It is factual I will not fly again, but after all our world travels over the last 20 years, my wife and I have been left with so many memories and gratitude that we were able to see so much of our wonderful world while we could
I’m kind of angry and how badly Davey has managed / is managing this “scandal”.
Why the hell didn’t he just apologise? It is not necessary to personally culpable to apologise, and nor does - I think - open one up to prosecution or litigation.
Berk.
It was exactly my point yesterday
It was crazy to refuse 10 times to say sorry on an ITV news programme, when he could have calmed the issue down
Sky just interviewed the post mistress standing against him at the GE
I think it's lazy interviewing to ask the same question 10 times. Ask it twice, make the point that it's not been answered, and move on - 10 times is irritating "gotch" stuff.
Agree.
But what should Ed Davey have handled the situation?
Bill Clinton (for example) would have repeated same basic response, just kept changing it up via his gift of gab.
Like mentioning, did you know my aunt was a postmaster? And how he'd once defended her against a rogue postal inspector? And he'd been endorsed by Letter Carriers Union five times? And . . .
NOT saying that ED needs to match Bill Clinton standard of political gamespersonship.
Right now he's not achieving even Al Gore standard.
Yes, I think that if he doesn't want to apologise he needs to say so - "You keep asking the same question, but I think it goes way beyond individuals being pressed to apologise personally. The problem is that senior people have been too ready to assume that computer systems are always right, and that's something all we need not only to apologise for but make sure we don't do it again."
There are lots of sensible answers he could have given, Nick. He is by no means the main person to blame here and may indeed not have that much to be blamed for, not by comparison with others. I - for instance - would be asking some really tough questions of the Post Office's Chairs during this period.
But he didn't. He chose to give an interview but was woefully unprepared for it. Or he thought the way he handled it was the right way to do it.
So he looks either incompetent or lacking in judgment.
I am in no way a Lib Dem
1) Davey was given false information by officials, when he asked. 99.99% probability that this is true. 2) Where did the lying start in the chain below him? 3) When a minister gets a response from his department is he/she supposed not to trust it? Should every minister be at war with his department? 4) Given 1) someone owes Davey an appology.
It's a given that the PO did lie to Davey as he' claims. They lied to everyone else, to the extent of seeing completely innocent people falsely convicted of fraud, so why not the Minister in charge? Davey's mistake, in my view, is making this about him rather about the victims, even though he's the one being attacked.
My response in his shoes would go along the lines of: When the sub postmaster group asked to see me as the minister in charge about issues with Horizon, I did meet with them and then raised these issues with Post Office management who reassured me that these issues didn't exist. We now know they lied to me, and everyone else, to the extent that many innocent people were falsely convicted of crimes they didn't commit. I very much regret I didn't challenge them on their untruths as that might have helped the victims get justice earlier. What the Post Office did was was evil.
Reasonably factual, empathy with the victims, very clear where the real blame lies, but accepting there are things he could have done better.
Have you considered a job with the Liberal Democrats?
November 2024 seems bonkers to me. People get more miserable after the clocks go back and its suddenly dark much earlier, why would you have the election then rather than October?
As late as possible yes, but if going before Christmas then surely 24 October is last reasonable date. 31 October is just too riddled with Halloween jokes and November is after clocks change.
If not 24 October, then its surely January 25?
I'm in Spain 12th - 19th October. Would make campaigning difficult...
"A passenger plane has returned to its departure airport in Japan after a crack was found on the cockpit window of the Boeing 737-800 aircraft mid-air.
All Nippon Airways Flight 1182 was on a domestic journey heading to Toyama airport but then headed back to the Sapporo-New Chitose airport."
I do think we are now on course for the largest Labour majority ever. And the Tories may never govern again.
On the latter point I heard the same nonsense between 1997 and 2010.
To be fair, it took the almost complete economic collapse of the West to get the Conservatives back close to power.
It was said after 1987 the Conservatives were the "natural Party of Government" and Labour "the natural party of Opposition". Some thought Blair would screw up after 1997 and the Conservatives would return in triumph after one term.
Who for instance, after the resounding Conservative victory in 2019, could have imagined we'd be where we are now - most expected a minimum two terms of Boris Johnson, he didn't make it to three years.
Trying to predict the future is fraught with peril - just look at my horse race betting account.
Two things massively derailed th government after Dec 2019. Covid and the war in Ukraine. Without those I think Johnson would still be in no 10, thinking about when to go to the nation.
No, because he was set to ‘self-destruct’ from the very beginning. If it hadn’t been the disgraced covid partying, it would soon have been something else.
It would have happened in the end, yes I agree with you. But there is no doubt that covid destroyed any chance of a period of calm government. I suspect that no Western Government in power for covid will do that well when next seeking election.
Emmanuel Macron says 'Hi!'
No, he says bye.
"When next seeking election"? He's constitutionally forbidden to run again, he's reached his term limit already while we were still dealing with Covid.
He was re-elected in 2022 Covid was largely a non-story by then; the impact had been fully felt. If covid was going to prevent MArcor being re-elected it would have done so in 2022.
Early 2022 was while Covid was still an issue and more importantly before the bills started coming due to be paid. When governments were still operating on largely free money from quantitative easing rather than quantitative tightening.
The ECB's base rate when Macron was re-elected was -0.5%, rather than 4.0% today.
I can't think of a Western Government re-elected since the banks started raising base rates and Macron can't fit that bill since he's term-limited.
EDIT: I firmly hope Biden will be the exception.
Sanchez in Spain?
Messy, because PP won more seats but had fewer allies, but he's still in the Moncloa.
• 90% had heard of the Post Office scandal • 79% had heard of the junior doctors' strike • 77% had heard of the Epstein list • 71% had heard of the PM's election hint • 55% had heard of potential mortgage rate cuts • 53% had heard of Davey's postal role
I do think we are now on course for the largest Labour majority ever. And the Tories may never govern again.
On the latter point I heard the same nonsense between 1997 and 2010.
To be fair, it took the almost complete economic collapse of the West to get the Conservatives back close to power.
It was said after 1987 the Conservatives were the "natural Party of Government" and Labour "the natural party of Opposition". Some thought Blair would screw up after 1997 and the Conservatives would return in triumph after one term.
Who for instance, after the resounding Conservative victory in 2019, could have imagined we'd be where we are now - most expected a minimum two terms of Boris Johnson, he didn't make it to three years.
Trying to predict the future is fraught with peril - just look at my horse race betting account.
Two things massively derailed th government after Dec 2019. Covid and the war in Ukraine. Without those I think Johnson would still be in no 10, thinking about when to go to the nation.
No, because he was set to ‘self-destruct’ from the very beginning. If it hadn’t been the disgraced covid partying, it would soon have been something else.
It would have happened in the end, yes I agree with you. But there is no doubt that covid destroyed any chance of a period of calm government. I suspect that no Western Government in power for covid will do that well when next seeking election.
Emmanuel Macron says 'Hi!'
Elected by the fewest of France’s voters since the 60’s, and against a far right opponent to boot?
As mentioned, I am dubious about inventing a vague class of people and then blaming them for all problems. I think it’s better to look at culture and process!
One process, something Cyclefree has talked about, is whistleblowing. How do we support a culture that supports and allows whistleblowing?
We could also talk about the Third Way, the belief from Major to Blair to Brown to Cameron that there is a better way to bring together the best of the private and public sector. But I think this has often been illusory. PFIs turned out to be a very expensive mistake. Having a Post Office that is a standalone company, wholly owned by the government, seems to have led to the worst of the private and public sector being brought together.
Yes good points.
Another culture is the one of non-exec directors choosing other non-execs who are already non-execs on several other boards. The very term 'gravy train' seems to have been invented for this.
• 90% had heard of the Post Office scandal • 79% had heard of the junior doctors' strike • 77% had heard of the Epstein list • 71% had heard of the PM's election hint • 55% had heard of potential mortgage rate cuts • 53% had heard of Davey's postal role
Marchers out and about today chanting pro-Houthi slogans.
The Houthis being of course such poor innocent victims of unprovoked US and UK aggression. The poor dears, with their slavery, Taliban-style gender politics and oh I almost forgot, their lobbing of missiles and drones at international shipping.
Perhaps media outlets should start prefacing mediaevalist groups like this with “right wing” or “far right”. Because they are.
I do think we are now on course for the largest Labour majority ever. And the Tories may never govern again.
On the latter point I heard the same nonsense between 1997 and 2010.
To be fair, it took the almost complete economic collapse of the West to get the Conservatives back close to power.
It was said after 1987 the Conservatives were the "natural Party of Government" and Labour "the natural party of Opposition". Some thought Blair would screw up after 1997 and the Conservatives would return in triumph after one term.
Who for instance, after the resounding Conservative victory in 2019, could have imagined we'd be where we are now - most expected a minimum two terms of Boris Johnson, he didn't make it to three years.
Trying to predict the future is fraught with peril - just look at my horse race betting account.
Two things massively derailed th government after Dec 2019. Covid and the war in Ukraine. Without those I think Johnson would still be in no 10, thinking about when to go to the nation.
No, because he was set to ‘self-destruct’ from the very beginning. If it hadn’t been the disgraced covid partying, it would soon have been something else.
It would have happened in the end, yes I agree with you. But there is no doubt that covid destroyed any chance of a period of calm government. I suspect that no Western Government in power for covid will do that well when next seeking election.
Emmanuel Macron says 'Hi!'
No, he says bye.
"When next seeking election"? He's constitutionally forbidden to run again, he's reached his term limit already while we were still dealing with Covid.
He was re-elected in 2022 Covid was largely a non-story by then; the impact had been fully felt. If covid was going to prevent MArcor being re-elected it would have done so in 2022.
Early 2022 was while Covid was still an issue and more importantly before the bills started coming due to be paid. When governments were still operating on largely free money from quantitative easing rather than quantitative tightening.
The ECB's base rate when Macron was re-elected was -0.5%, rather than 4.0% today.
I can't think of a Western Government re-elected since the banks started raising base rates and Macron can't fit that bill since he's term-limited.
EDIT: I firmly hope Biden will be the exception.
Sanchez in Spain?
Messy, because PP won more seats but had fewer allies, but he's still in the Moncloa.
Good shout.
Far better suggestion than Macron, as you say its messy but he just about clung on.
I do think we are now on course for the largest Labour majority ever. And the Tories may never govern again.
On the latter point I heard the same nonsense between 1997 and 2010.
To be fair, it took the almost complete economic collapse of the West to get the Conservatives back close to power.
It was said after 1987 the Conservatives were the "natural Party of Government" and Labour "the natural party of Opposition". Some thought Blair would screw up after 1997 and the Conservatives would return in triumph after one term.
Who for instance, after the resounding Conservative victory in 2019, could have imagined we'd be where we are now - most expected a minimum two terms of Boris Johnson, he didn't make it to three years.
Trying to predict the future is fraught with peril - just look at my horse race betting account.
Two things massively derailed th government after Dec 2019. Covid and the war in Ukraine. Without those I think Johnson would still be in no 10, thinking about when to go to the nation.
LOL. Look at charts of NHS waiting lists, court waiting lists, asylum waiting lists, all increasing steadily from 2010 to 2019. That degradation in public services, an economy badly hit by Brexit, and Johnson’s inability to not lie would all be there without COVID and Ukraine,
The corrected OECD statistics show virtually no Brexit effect, but keep spinning.
Now, this is all over (a) very small period of time, and (b) is distorted by Covid, but there is a Brexit effect, in that we were consistently growing 1.1-1.3% faster than our EU peers, and now it's more like 0.3-0.5%.
So, we're still growing faster than the other EU countries but the gap is narrower than it was.
Choose to interpret that how you like.
Britain is surely importing more migrants than almost any EU country, as a proportion of population. So all these figures need to be adjusted per capita
It’s almost impossible NOT to grow your economy when you have 1.3m net migrants in just 2 years. Sadly the per capita figures will be much less heartening - Brexit or no Brexit
November 2024 seems bonkers to me. People get more miserable after the clocks go back and its suddenly dark much earlier, why would you have the election then rather than October?
As late as possible yes, but if going before Christmas then surely 24 October is last reasonable date. 31 October is just too riddled with Halloween jokes and November is after clocks change.
If not 24 October, then its surely January 25?
24th October is the day after the Commonwealth Heads of Government conference in Samoa.
Marchers out and about today chanting pro-Houthi slogans.
The Houthis being of course such poor innocent victims of unprovoked US and UK aggression. The poor dears, with their slavery, Taliban-style gender politics and oh I almost forgot, their lobbing of missiles and drones at international shipping.
Perhaps media outlets should start prefacing mediaevalist groups like this with “right wing” or “far right”. Because they are.
I do think we are now on course for the largest Labour majority ever. And the Tories may never govern again.
On the latter point I heard the same nonsense between 1997 and 2010.
To be fair, it took the almost complete economic collapse of the West to get the Conservatives back close to power.
It was said after 1987 the Conservatives were the "natural Party of Government" and Labour "the natural party of Opposition". Some thought Blair would screw up after 1997 and the Conservatives would return in triumph after one term.
Who for instance, after the resounding Conservative victory in 2019, could have imagined we'd be where we are now - most expected a minimum two terms of Boris Johnson, he didn't make it to three years.
Trying to predict the future is fraught with peril - just look at my horse race betting account.
Two things massively derailed th government after Dec 2019. Covid and the war in Ukraine. Without those I think Johnson would still be in no 10, thinking about when to go to the nation.
LOL. Look at charts of NHS waiting lists, court waiting lists, asylum waiting lists, all increasing steadily from 2010 to 2019. That degradation in public services, an economy badly hit by Brexit, and Johnson’s inability to not lie would all be there without COVID and Ukraine,
The corrected OECD statistics show virtually no Brexit effect, but keep spinning.
Now, this is all over (a) very small period of time, and (b) is distorted by Covid, but there is a Brexit effect, in that we were consistently growing 1.1-1.3% faster than our EU peers, and now it's more like 0.3-0.5%.
So, we're still growing faster than the other EU countries but the gap is narrower than it was.
Choose to interpret that how you like.
Britain is surely importing more migrants than almost any EU country, as a proportion of population. So all these figures need to be adjusted per capita
It’s almost impossible NOT to grow your economy when you have 1.3m net migrants in just 2 years. Sadly the per capita figures will be much less heartening - Brexit or no Brexit
I do think we are now on course for the largest Labour majority ever. And the Tories may never govern again.
On the latter point I heard the same nonsense between 1997 and 2010.
To be fair, it took the almost complete economic collapse of the West to get the Conservatives back close to power.
It was said after 1987 the Conservatives were the "natural Party of Government" and Labour "the natural party of Opposition". Some thought Blair would screw up after 1997 and the Conservatives would return in triumph after one term.
Who for instance, after the resounding Conservative victory in 2019, could have imagined we'd be where we are now - most expected a minimum two terms of Boris Johnson, he didn't make it to three years.
Trying to predict the future is fraught with peril - just look at my horse race betting account.
Two things massively derailed th government after Dec 2019. Covid and the war in Ukraine. Without those I think Johnson would still be in no 10, thinking about when to go to the nation.
LOL. Look at charts of NHS waiting lists, court waiting lists, asylum waiting lists, all increasing steadily from 2010 to 2019. That degradation in public services, an economy badly hit by Brexit, and Johnson’s inability to not lie would all be there without COVID and Ukraine,
The corrected OECD statistics show virtually no Brexit effect, but keep spinning.
Now, this is all over (a) very small period of time, and (b) is distorted by Covid, but there is a Brexit effect, in that we were consistently growing 1.1-1.3% faster than our EU peers, and now it's more like 0.3-0.5%.
So, we're still growing faster than the other EU countries but the gap is narrower than it was.
Choose to interpret that how you like.
Britain is surely importing more migrants than almost any EU country, as a proportion of population. So all these figures need to be adjusted per capita
It’s almost impossible NOT to grow your economy when you have 1.3m net migrants in just 2 years. Sadly the per capita figures will be much less heartening - Brexit or no Brexit
Britain grew faster than the Eurozone from 2010-2019, "despite Brexit" happening in the middle of the decade, per capita.
Since then, Covid and the war in Ukraine has rather messed with the economy its so hard to make reasonable comparisons yet, but I doubt we're doing worse than the Eurozone per capita then either.
"A passenger plane has returned to its departure airport in Japan after a crack was found on the cockpit window of the Boeing 737-800 aircraft mid-air.
All Nippon Airways Flight 1182 was on a domestic journey heading to Toyama airport but then headed back to the Sapporo-New Chitose airport."
Good news transportation wise, is that Big G can rely on something more reassuring, and comfortable, than modern air travel, for HIS upcoming transport needs -
By lifeboat. With perhaps a complementary tot of RNLI rum?
Actually I am still waiting for my conducted tour of the Shannon AWB promised by my son and the cox, but then I have had more important and on going health issues that I and my family will hopefully see addressed on the 6th Feb with my pacemaker operation
Indeed it was only a few days ago my son took me into A & E at 2.00am with chest pains, but after urgent tests and ECGs I was sent home by the doctor and consultant to take it easy and not drink coffee, but to return anytime I had issues
My son told me today he has a week's training in Poole in March and is hoping he will gain his helm certification shortly after, which will be his first command position after just 2 years
It is factual I will not fly again, but after all our world travels over the last 20 years, my wife and I have been left with so many memories and gratitude that we were able to see so much of our wonderful world while we could
I’m kind of angry and how badly Davey has managed / is managing this “scandal”.
Why the hell didn’t he just apologise? It is not necessary to personally culpable to apologise, and nor does - I think - open one up to prosecution or litigation.
Berk.
It was exactly my point yesterday
It was crazy to refuse 10 times to say sorry on an ITV news programme, when he could have calmed the issue down
Sky just interviewed the post mistress standing against him at the GE
I think it's lazy interviewing to ask the same question 10 times. Ask it twice, make the point that it's not been answered, and move on - 10 times is irritating "gotch" stuff.
Agree.
But what should Ed Davey have handled the situation?
Bill Clinton (for example) would have repeated same basic response, just kept changing it up via his gift of gab.
Like mentioning, did you know my aunt was a postmaster? And how he'd once defended her against a rogue postal inspector? And he'd been endorsed by Letter Carriers Union five times? And . . .
NOT saying that ED needs to match Bill Clinton standard of political gamespersonship.
Right now he's not achieving even Al Gore standard.
Yes, I think that if he doesn't want to apologise he needs to say so - "You keep asking the same question, but I think it goes way beyond individuals being pressed to apologise personally. The problem is that senior people have been too ready to assume that computer systems are always right, and that's something all we need not only to apologise for but make sure we don't do it again."
There are lots of sensible answers he could have given, Nick. He is by no means the main person to blame here and may indeed not have that much to be blamed for, not by comparison with others. I - for instance - would be asking some really tough questions of the Post Office's Chairs during this period.
But he didn't. He chose to give an interview but was woefully unprepared for it. Or he thought the way he handled it was the right way to do it.
So he looks either incompetent or lacking in judgment.
I am in no way a Lib Dem
1) Davey was given false information by officials, when he asked. 99.99% probability that this is true. 2) Where did the lying start in the chain below him? 3) When a minister gets a response from his department is he/she supposed not to trust it? Should every minister be at war with his department? 4) Given 1) someone owes Davey an appology.
It's a given that the PO did lie to Davey as he' claims. They lied to everyone else, to the extent of seeing completely innocent people falsely convicted of fraud, so why not the Minister in charge? Davey's mistake, in my view, is making this about him rather about the victims, even though he's the one being attacked.
My response in his shoes would go along the lines of: When the sub postmaster group asked to see me as the minister in charge about issues with Horizon, I did meet with them and then raised these issues with Post Office management who reassured me that these issues didn't exist. We now know they lied to me, and everyone else, to the extent that many innocent people were falsely convicted of crimes they didn't commit. I very much regret I didn't challenge them on their untruths as that might have helped the victims get justice earlier. What the Post Office did was was evil.
Reasonably factual, empathy with the victims, very clear where the real blame lies, but accepting there are things he could have done better.
Have you considered a job with the Liberal Democrats?
No but I did have a previous job where things went wrong outside of our control more often than I would have liked and I had to deal with pissed off customers. Hence my interest in how to manage these situations. I don't think there's a right answer, but there are definitely better ways to handle it, and not so good ways.
"A passenger plane has returned to its departure airport in Japan after a crack was found on the cockpit window of the Boeing 737-800 aircraft mid-air.
All Nippon Airways Flight 1182 was on a domestic journey heading to Toyama airport but then headed back to the Sapporo-New Chitose airport."
I do think we are now on course for the largest Labour majority ever. And the Tories may never govern again.
On the latter point I heard the same nonsense between 1997 and 2010.
To be fair, it took the almost complete economic collapse of the West to get the Conservatives back close to power.
It was said after 1987 the Conservatives were the "natural Party of Government" and Labour "the natural party of Opposition". Some thought Blair would screw up after 1997 and the Conservatives would return in triumph after one term.
Who for instance, after the resounding Conservative victory in 2019, could have imagined we'd be where we are now - most expected a minimum two terms of Boris Johnson, he didn't make it to three years.
Trying to predict the future is fraught with peril - just look at my horse race betting account.
Two things massively derailed th government after Dec 2019. Covid and the war in Ukraine. Without those I think Johnson would still be in no 10, thinking about when to go to the nation.
LOL. Look at charts of NHS waiting lists, court waiting lists, asylum waiting lists, all increasing steadily from 2010 to 2019. That degradation in public services, an economy badly hit by Brexit, and Johnson’s inability to not lie would all be there without COVID and Ukraine,
We don5 really know how badly the economy has been hit by Brexit, as we don5 have the counterfactual of no covid and no war to run against. Modelling will be biased by the biases of the modellers. Pro EU modellers will definitely show a huge hit from Brexit. Pro Brexit the reverse.
And yes the NHS is an issue, and all the other factors that have resulted post 2008. Yes, that’s the real hysteresis point.
Brexit is pretty well understood to have damaged the economy via decreased investment, poorer trade performance, increased inflation, and poorer currency performance.
The recent trade figures, suggest that it has hit Britain’s role as a EU entrepôt to the extent that it has even damaged Britain’s export performance to the US. The auto and pharma industries are hit more than most, services relatively unscathed.
This is not at all controversial, except on GB News, certain pubs in Middlesbrough, and on PB.
"A passenger plane has returned to its departure airport in Japan after a crack was found on the cockpit window of the Boeing 737-800 aircraft mid-air.
All Nippon Airways Flight 1182 was on a domestic journey heading to Toyama airport but then headed back to the Sapporo-New Chitose airport."
I do think we are now on course for the largest Labour majority ever. And the Tories may never govern again.
On the latter point I heard the same nonsense between 1997 and 2010.
To be fair, it took the almost complete economic collapse of the West to get the Conservatives back close to power.
It was said after 1987 the Conservatives were the "natural Party of Government" and Labour "the natural party of Opposition". Some thought Blair would screw up after 1997 and the Conservatives would return in triumph after one term.
Who for instance, after the resounding Conservative victory in 2019, could have imagined we'd be where we are now - most expected a minimum two terms of Boris Johnson, he didn't make it to three years.
Trying to predict the future is fraught with peril - just look at my horse race betting account.
Two things massively derailed th government after Dec 2019. Covid and the war in Ukraine. Without those I think Johnson would still be in no 10, thinking about when to go to the nation.
LOL. Look at charts of NHS waiting lists, court waiting lists, asylum waiting lists, all increasing steadily from 2010 to 2019. That degradation in public services, an economy badly hit by Brexit, and Johnson’s inability to not lie would all be there without COVID and Ukraine,
The corrected OECD statistics show virtually no Brexit effect, but keep spinning.
Now, this is all over (a) very small period of time, and (b) is distorted by Covid, but there is a Brexit effect, in that we were consistently growing 1.1-1.3% faster than our EU peers, and now it's more like 0.3-0.5%.
So, we're still growing faster than the other EU countries but the gap is narrower than it was.
Choose to interpret that how you like.
Britain is surely importing more migrants than almost any EU country, as a proportion of population. So all these figures need to be adjusted per capita
It’s almost impossible NOT to grow your economy when you have 1.3m net migrants in just 2 years. Sadly the per capita figures will be much less heartening - Brexit or no Brexit
I have a feeling this current government may be achieving the almost impossible this year.
I do think we are now on course for the largest Labour majority ever. And the Tories may never govern again.
On the latter point I heard the same nonsense between 1997 and 2010.
To be fair, it took the almost complete economic collapse of the West to get the Conservatives back close to power.
It was said after 1987 the Conservatives were the "natural Party of Government" and Labour "the natural party of Opposition". Some thought Blair would screw up after 1997 and the Conservatives would return in triumph after one term.
Who for instance, after the resounding Conservative victory in 2019, could have imagined we'd be where we are now - most expected a minimum two terms of Boris Johnson, he didn't make it to three years.
Trying to predict the future is fraught with peril - just look at my horse race betting account.
Two things massively derailed th government after Dec 2019. Covid and the war in Ukraine. Without those I think Johnson would still be in no 10, thinking about when to go to the nation.
LOL. Look at charts of NHS waiting lists, court waiting lists, asylum waiting lists, all increasing steadily from 2010 to 2019. That degradation in public services, an economy badly hit by Brexit, and Johnson’s inability to not lie would all be there without COVID and Ukraine,
The corrected OECD statistics show virtually no Brexit effect, but keep spinning.
Now, this is all over (a) very small period of time, and (b) is distorted by Covid, but there is a Brexit effect, in that we were consistently growing 1.1-1.3% faster than our EU peers, and now it's more like 0.3-0.5%.
So, we're still growing faster than the other EU countries but the gap is narrower than it was.
Choose to interpret that how you like.
Britain is surely importing more migrants than almost any EU country, as a proportion of population. So all these figures need to be adjusted per capita
It’s almost impossible NOT to grow your economy when you have 1.3m net migrants in just 2 years. Sadly the per capita figures will be much less heartening - Brexit or no Brexit
Britain grew faster than the Eurozone from 2010-2019, "despite Brexit" happening in the middle of the decade, per capita.
Since then, Covid and the war in Ukraine has rather messed with the economy its so hard to make reasonable comparisons yet, but I doubt we're doing worse than the Eurozone per capita then either.
And another one. Why on earth would anyone choose 2010 as a starting point for the UK’s Brexity economic performance?
November 2024 seems bonkers to me. People get more miserable after the clocks go back and its suddenly dark much earlier, why would you have the election then rather than October?
As late as possible yes, but if going before Christmas then surely 24 October is last reasonable date. 31 October is just too riddled with Halloween jokes and November is after clocks change.
If not 24 October, then its surely January 25?
24th October is the day after the Commonwealth Heads of Government conference in Samoa.
I do think we are now on course for the largest Labour majority ever. And the Tories may never govern again.
On the latter point I heard the same nonsense between 1997 and 2010.
To be fair, it took the almost complete economic collapse of the West to get the Conservatives back close to power.
It was said after 1987 the Conservatives were the "natural Party of Government" and Labour "the natural party of Opposition". Some thought Blair would screw up after 1997 and the Conservatives would return in triumph after one term.
Who for instance, after the resounding Conservative victory in 2019, could have imagined we'd be where we are now - most expected a minimum two terms of Boris Johnson, he didn't make it to three years.
Trying to predict the future is fraught with peril - just look at my horse race betting account.
Two things massively derailed th government after Dec 2019. Covid and the war in Ukraine. Without those I think Johnson would still be in no 10, thinking about when to go to the nation.
LOL. Look at charts of NHS waiting lists, court waiting lists, asylum waiting lists, all increasing steadily from 2010 to 2019. That degradation in public services, an economy badly hit by Brexit, and Johnson’s inability to not lie would all be there without COVID and Ukraine,
The corrected OECD statistics show virtually no Brexit effect, but keep spinning.
Now, this is all over (a) very small period of time, and (b) is distorted by Covid, but there is a Brexit effect, in that we were consistently growing 1.1-1.3% faster than our EU peers, and now it's more like 0.3-0.5%.
So, we're still growing faster than the other EU countries but the gap is narrower than it was.
Choose to interpret that how you like.
Britain is surely importing more migrants than almost any EU country, as a proportion of population. So all these figures need to be adjusted per capita
It’s almost impossible NOT to grow your economy when you have 1.3m net migrants in just 2 years. Sadly the per capita figures will be much less heartening - Brexit or no Brexit
I hate to say it, but that's a fair point.
If you adjust for per capita performance, the Uk has done appallingly. Bottom or near bottom.
In the interests of transparency, an interesting study recently suggested that performance was better if you use available labour force as denominator.
I do think we are now on course for the largest Labour majority ever. And the Tories may never govern again.
On the latter point I heard the same nonsense between 1997 and 2010.
To be fair, it took the almost complete economic collapse of the West to get the Conservatives back close to power.
It was said after 1987 the Conservatives were the "natural Party of Government" and Labour "the natural party of Opposition". Some thought Blair would screw up after 1997 and the Conservatives would return in triumph after one term.
Who for instance, after the resounding Conservative victory in 2019, could have imagined we'd be where we are now - most expected a minimum two terms of Boris Johnson, he didn't make it to three years.
Trying to predict the future is fraught with peril - just look at my horse race betting account.
Two things massively derailed th government after Dec 2019. Covid and the war in Ukraine. Without those I think Johnson would still be in no 10, thinking about when to go to the nation.
LOL. Look at charts of NHS waiting lists, court waiting lists, asylum waiting lists, all increasing steadily from 2010 to 2019. That degradation in public services, an economy badly hit by Brexit, and Johnson’s inability to not lie would all be there without COVID and Ukraine,
We don5 really know how badly the economy has been hit by Brexit, as we don5 have the counterfactual of no covid and no war to run against. Modelling will be biased by the biases of the modellers. Pro EU modellers will definitely show a huge hit from Brexit. Pro Brexit the reverse.
And yes the NHS is an issue, and all the other factors that have resulted post 2008. Yes, that’s the real hysteresis point.
Brexit is pretty well understood to have damaged the economy via decreased investment, poorer trade performance, increased inflation, and poorer currency performance.
The recent trade figures, suggest that it has hit Britain’s role as a EU entrepôt to the extent that it has even damaged Britain’s export performance to the US. The auto and pharma industries are hit more than most, services relatively unscathed.
This is not at all controversial, except on GB News, certain pubs in Middlesbrough, and on PB.
To my mind the two countries we should compare to over the long term, for different reasons, are:
1. France, as a country with the same population size, same GDP, and a very different economic and industrial policy
2. The Netherlands, as the other global maritime nation with a similar history as entrepôt, cradle of capitalism and largely urban and coastal economy.
November 2024 seems bonkers to me. People get more miserable after the clocks go back and its suddenly dark much earlier, why would you have the election then rather than October?
As late as possible yes, but if going before Christmas then surely 24 October is last reasonable date. 31 October is just too riddled with Halloween jokes and November is after clocks change.
If not 24 October, then its surely January 25?
24th October is the day after the Commonwealth Heads of Government conference in Samoa.
I think I said Nov 21st.
But I can't remember
I've always said May 2nd is the only sensible date.
I do think we are now on course for the largest Labour majority ever. And the Tories may never govern again.
On the latter point I heard the same nonsense between 1997 and 2010.
To be fair, it took the almost complete economic collapse of the West to get the Conservatives back close to power.
It was said after 1987 the Conservatives were the "natural Party of Government" and Labour "the natural party of Opposition". Some thought Blair would screw up after 1997 and the Conservatives would return in triumph after one term.
Who for instance, after the resounding Conservative victory in 2019, could have imagined we'd be where we are now - most expected a minimum two terms of Boris Johnson, he didn't make it to three years.
Trying to predict the future is fraught with peril - just look at my horse race betting account.
Two things massively derailed th government after Dec 2019. Covid and the war in Ukraine. Without those I think Johnson would still be in no 10, thinking about when to go to the nation.
No, because he was set to ‘self-destruct’ from the very beginning. If it hadn’t been the disgraced covid partying, it would soon have been something else.
It would have happened in the end, yes I agree with you. But there is no doubt that covid destroyed any chance of a period of calm government. I suspect that no Western Government in power for covid will do that well when next seeking election.
Emmanuel Macron says 'Hi!'
No, he says bye.
"When next seeking election"? He's constitutionally forbidden to run again, he's reached his term limit already while we were still dealing with Covid.
He was re-elected in 2022 Covid was largely a non-story by then; the impact had been fully felt. If covid was going to prevent MArcor being re-elected it would have done so in 2022.
Early 2022 was while Covid was still an issue and more importantly before the bills started coming due to be paid. When governments were still operating on largely free money from quantitative easing rather than quantitative tightening.
The ECB's base rate when Macron was re-elected was -0.5%, rather than 4.0% today.
I can't think of a Western Government re-elected since the banks started raising base rates and Macron can't fit that bill since he's term-limited.
EDIT: I firmly hope Biden will be the exception.
Well, ok but you've not so much moved the goalposts as swapped them for some others.
I do think we are now on course for the largest Labour majority ever. And the Tories may never govern again.
On the latter point I heard the same nonsense between 1997 and 2010.
To be fair, it took the almost complete economic collapse of the West to get the Conservatives back close to power.
It was said after 1987 the Conservatives were the "natural Party of Government" and Labour "the natural party of Opposition". Some thought Blair would screw up after 1997 and the Conservatives would return in triumph after one term.
Who for instance, after the resounding Conservative victory in 2019, could have imagined we'd be where we are now - most expected a minimum two terms of Boris Johnson, he didn't make it to three years.
Trying to predict the future is fraught with peril - just look at my horse race betting account.
Two things massively derailed th government after Dec 2019. Covid and the war in Ukraine. Without those I think Johnson would still be in no 10, thinking about when to go to the nation.
LOL. Look at charts of NHS waiting lists, court waiting lists, asylum waiting lists, all increasing steadily from 2010 to 2019. That degradation in public services, an economy badly hit by Brexit, and Johnson’s inability to not lie would all be there without COVID and Ukraine,
The corrected OECD statistics show virtually no Brexit effect, but keep spinning.
Now, this is all over (a) very small period of time, and (b) is distorted by Covid, but there is a Brexit effect, in that we were consistently growing 1.1-1.3% faster than our EU peers, and now it's more like 0.3-0.5%.
So, we're still growing faster than the other EU countries but the gap is narrower than it was.
Choose to interpret that how you like.
Britain is surely importing more migrants than almost any EU country, as a proportion of population. So all these figures need to be adjusted per capita
It’s almost impossible NOT to grow your economy when you have 1.3m net migrants in just 2 years. Sadly the per capita figures will be much less heartening - Brexit or no Brexit
Britain grew faster than the Eurozone from 2010-2019, "despite Brexit" happening in the middle of the decade, per capita.
Since then, Covid and the war in Ukraine has rather messed with the economy its so hard to make reasonable comparisons yet, but I doubt we're doing worse than the Eurozone per capita then either.
And another one. Why on earth would anyone choose 2010 as a starting point for the UK’s Brexity economic performance?
Because it was when we last had a change of government, so is routinely used as a baseline for economic performance, and it shows a balance of performance where the referendum is in the middle of the period showing the effects before, during and after the campaign and showing them in the context of a decade.
And because it takes a decade to measure more than just semi-random annual swings anyway, and that was the last decade we had with data not artificially screwed up due to Covid etc
If Brexit had genuinely affected our investment etc from 2016 onwards, then it would have shown up in the data showing 2016 onwards. It does not.
I do think we are now on course for the largest Labour majority ever. And the Tories may never govern again.
On the latter point I heard the same nonsense between 1997 and 2010.
To be fair, it took the almost complete economic collapse of the West to get the Conservatives back close to power.
It was said after 1987 the Conservatives were the "natural Party of Government" and Labour "the natural party of Opposition". Some thought Blair would screw up after 1997 and the Conservatives would return in triumph after one term.
Who for instance, after the resounding Conservative victory in 2019, could have imagined we'd be where we are now - most expected a minimum two terms of Boris Johnson, he didn't make it to three years.
Trying to predict the future is fraught with peril - just look at my horse race betting account.
Two things massively derailed th government after Dec 2019. Covid and the war in Ukraine. Without those I think Johnson would still be in no 10, thinking about when to go to the nation.
No, because he was set to ‘self-destruct’ from the very beginning. If it hadn’t been the disgraced covid partying, it would soon have been something else.
It would have happened in the end, yes I agree with you. But there is no doubt that covid destroyed any chance of a period of calm government. I suspect that no Western Government in power for covid will do that well when next seeking election.
Emmanuel Macron says 'Hi!'
No, he says bye.
"When next seeking election"? He's constitutionally forbidden to run again, he's reached his term limit already while we were still dealing with Covid.
He was re-elected in 2022 Covid was largely a non-story by then; the impact had been fully felt. If covid was going to prevent MArcor being re-elected it would have done so in 2022.
Early 2022 was while Covid was still an issue and more importantly before the bills started coming due to be paid. When governments were still operating on largely free money from quantitative easing rather than quantitative tightening.
The ECB's base rate when Macron was re-elected was -0.5%, rather than 4.0% today.
I can't think of a Western Government re-elected since the banks started raising base rates and Macron can't fit that bill since he's term-limited.
EDIT: I firmly hope Biden will be the exception.
Well, ok but you've not so much moved the goalposts as swapped them for some others.
No I've not, the original goalposts were "next election" - well Macron won't have a next election as he's term limited. You invented your own goalposts whereby Macron had scored, but that's not a like-for-like that you invented that is comparable to anyone next seeking election.
Everyone next seeking election needs to do so with base rates back up etc and the era of free money that we had during Covid (and before) over. Macron does not fit that bill.
November 2024 seems bonkers to me. People get more miserable after the clocks go back and its suddenly dark much earlier, why would you have the election then rather than October?
As late as possible yes, but if going before Christmas then surely 24 October is last reasonable date. 31 October is just too riddled with Halloween jokes and November is after clocks change.
If not 24 October, then its surely January 25?
24th October is the day after the Commonwealth Heads of Government conference in Samoa.
I do think we are now on course for the largest Labour majority ever. And the Tories may never govern again.
On the latter point I heard the same nonsense between 1997 and 2010.
To be fair, it took the almost complete economic collapse of the West to get the Conservatives back close to power.
It was said after 1987 the Conservatives were the "natural Party of Government" and Labour "the natural party of Opposition". Some thought Blair would screw up after 1997 and the Conservatives would return in triumph after one term.
Who for instance, after the resounding Conservative victory in 2019, could have imagined we'd be where we are now - most expected a minimum two terms of Boris Johnson, he didn't make it to three years.
Trying to predict the future is fraught with peril - just look at my horse race betting account.
Two things massively derailed th government after Dec 2019. Covid and the war in Ukraine. Without those I think Johnson would still be in no 10, thinking about when to go to the nation.
LOL. Look at charts of NHS waiting lists, court waiting lists, asylum waiting lists, all increasing steadily from 2010 to 2019. That degradation in public services, an economy badly hit by Brexit, and Johnson’s inability to not lie would all be there without COVID and Ukraine,
The corrected OECD statistics show virtually no Brexit effect, but keep spinning.
Now, this is all over (a) very small period of time, and (b) is distorted by Covid, but there is a Brexit effect, in that we were consistently growing 1.1-1.3% faster than our EU peers, and now it's more like 0.3-0.5%.
So, we're still growing faster than the other EU countries but the gap is narrower than it was.
Choose to interpret that how you like.
Britain is surely importing more migrants than almost any EU country, as a proportion of population. So all these figures need to be adjusted per capita
It’s almost impossible NOT to grow your economy when you have 1.3m net migrants in just 2 years. Sadly the per capita figures will be much less heartening - Brexit or no Brexit
Britain grew faster than the Eurozone from 2010-2019, "despite Brexit" happening in the middle of the decade, per capita.
Since then, Covid and the war in Ukraine has rather messed with the economy its so hard to make reasonable comparisons yet, but I doubt we're doing worse than the Eurozone per capita then either.
And another one. Why on earth would anyone choose 2010 as a starting point for the UK’s Brexity economic performance?
Because it was when we last had a change of government, so is routinely used as a baseline for economic performance, and it shows a balance of performance where the referendum is in the middle of the period showing the effects before, during and after the campaign and showing them in the context of a decade.
And because it takes a decade to measure more than just semi-random annual swings anyway, and that was the last decade we had with data not artificially screwed up due to Covid etc
If Brexit had genuinely affected our investment etc from 2016 onwards, then it would have shown up in the data showing 2016 onwards. It does not.
"A passenger plane has returned to its departure airport in Japan after a crack was found on the cockpit window of the Boeing 737-800 aircraft mid-air.
All Nippon Airways Flight 1182 was on a domestic journey heading to Toyama airport but then headed back to the Sapporo-New Chitose airport."
"A passenger plane has returned to its departure airport in Japan after a crack was found on the cockpit window of the Boeing 737-800 aircraft mid-air.
All Nippon Airways Flight 1182 was on a domestic journey heading to Toyama airport but then headed back to the Sapporo-New Chitose airport."
"A passenger plane has returned to its departure airport in Japan after a crack was found on the cockpit window of the Boeing 737-800 aircraft mid-air.
All Nippon Airways Flight 1182 was on a domestic journey heading to Toyama airport but then headed back to the Sapporo-New Chitose airport."
I do think we are now on course for the largest Labour majority ever. And the Tories may never govern again.
On the latter point I heard the same nonsense between 1997 and 2010.
To be fair, it took the almost complete economic collapse of the West to get the Conservatives back close to power.
It was said after 1987 the Conservatives were the "natural Party of Government" and Labour "the natural party of Opposition". Some thought Blair would screw up after 1997 and the Conservatives would return in triumph after one term.
Who for instance, after the resounding Conservative victory in 2019, could have imagined we'd be where we are now - most expected a minimum two terms of Boris Johnson, he didn't make it to three years.
Trying to predict the future is fraught with peril - just look at my horse race betting account.
Two things massively derailed th government after Dec 2019. Covid and the war in Ukraine. Without those I think Johnson would still be in no 10, thinking about when to go to the nation.
LOL. Look at charts of NHS waiting lists, court waiting lists, asylum waiting lists, all increasing steadily from 2010 to 2019. That degradation in public services, an economy badly hit by Brexit, and Johnson’s inability to not lie would all be there without COVID and Ukraine,
The corrected OECD statistics show virtually no Brexit effect, but keep spinning.
Now, this is all over (a) very small period of time, and (b) is distorted by Covid, but there is a Brexit effect, in that we were consistently growing 1.1-1.3% faster than our EU peers, and now it's more like 0.3-0.5%.
So, we're still growing faster than the other EU countries but the gap is narrower than it was.
Choose to interpret that how you like.
Britain is surely importing more migrants than almost any EU country, as a proportion of population. So all these figures need to be adjusted per capita
It’s almost impossible NOT to grow your economy when you have 1.3m net migrants in just 2 years. Sadly the per capita figures will be much less heartening - Brexit or no Brexit
I hate to say it, but that's a fair point.
If you adjust for per capita performance, the Uk has done appallingly. Bottom or near bottom.
Particularly as the Ukraine war impacted the EZ more than us, as more closely linked economies.
I do think we are now on course for the largest Labour majority ever. And the Tories may never govern again.
On the latter point I heard the same nonsense between 1997 and 2010.
To be fair, it took the almost complete economic collapse of the West to get the Conservatives back close to power.
It was said after 1987 the Conservatives were the "natural Party of Government" and Labour "the natural party of Opposition". Some thought Blair would screw up after 1997 and the Conservatives would return in triumph after one term.
Who for instance, after the resounding Conservative victory in 2019, could have imagined we'd be where we are now - most expected a minimum two terms of Boris Johnson, he didn't make it to three years.
Trying to predict the future is fraught with peril - just look at my horse race betting account.
Two things massively derailed th government after Dec 2019. Covid and the war in Ukraine. Without those I think Johnson would still be in no 10, thinking about when to go to the nation.
LOL. Look at charts of NHS waiting lists, court waiting lists, asylum waiting lists, all increasing steadily from 2010 to 2019. That degradation in public services, an economy badly hit by Brexit, and Johnson’s inability to not lie would all be there without COVID and Ukraine,
The corrected OECD statistics show virtually no Brexit effect, but keep spinning.
Now, this is all over (a) very small period of time, and (b) is distorted by Covid, but there is a Brexit effect, in that we were consistently growing 1.1-1.3% faster than our EU peers, and now it's more like 0.3-0.5%.
So, we're still growing faster than the other EU countries but the gap is narrower than it was.
Choose to interpret that how you like.
Britain is surely importing more migrants than almost any EU country, as a proportion of population. So all these figures need to be adjusted per capita
It’s almost impossible NOT to grow your economy when you have 1.3m net migrants in just 2 years. Sadly the per capita figures will be much less heartening - Brexit or no Brexit
I hate to say it, but that's a fair point.
If you adjust for per capita performance, the Uk has done appallingly. Bottom or near bottom.
In the interests of transparency, an interesting study recently suggested that performance was better if you use available labour force as denominator.
GDP per capita in constant $ from 2010 to 2022 (if you're not happy with 2019 as end date), from World Bank. Euro Area up 12.97% United Kingdom up 13.27%
Funny how we're at the bottom, when we're ahead of the Euro Area. Funny definition of bottom.
"Despite Brexit", taking a reasonable view of the past performance of the economy since the last change of Government, the UK has outperformed the Euro Area. So I'm curious how hubristic you are and how much more than the Euro Area we should have ourperformed them had Brexit not happened in your eyes?
Looks good for you on the Island. I might be in with a shout in Warminster (and classically south of the M4), but we won’t be sure for a couple more days I think.
I do think we are now on course for the largest Labour majority ever. And the Tories may never govern again.
On the latter point I heard the same nonsense between 1997 and 2010.
To be fair, it took the almost complete economic collapse of the West to get the Conservatives back close to power.
It was said after 1987 the Conservatives were the "natural Party of Government" and Labour "the natural party of Opposition". Some thought Blair would screw up after 1997 and the Conservatives would return in triumph after one term.
Who for instance, after the resounding Conservative victory in 2019, could have imagined we'd be where we are now - most expected a minimum two terms of Boris Johnson, he didn't make it to three years.
Trying to predict the future is fraught with peril - just look at my horse race betting account.
Two things massively derailed th government after Dec 2019. Covid and the war in Ukraine. Without those I think Johnson would still be in no 10, thinking about when to go to the nation.
LOL. Look at charts of NHS waiting lists, court waiting lists, asylum waiting lists, all increasing steadily from 2010 to 2019. That degradation in public services, an economy badly hit by Brexit, and Johnson’s inability to not lie would all be there without COVID and Ukraine,
The corrected OECD statistics show virtually no Brexit effect, but keep spinning.
Now, this is all over (a) very small period of time, and (b) is distorted by Covid, but there is a Brexit effect, in that we were consistently growing 1.1-1.3% faster than our EU peers, and now it's more like 0.3-0.5%.
So, we're still growing faster than the other EU countries but the gap is narrower than it was.
Choose to interpret that how you like.
Britain is surely importing more migrants than almost any EU country, as a proportion of population. So all these figures need to be adjusted per capita
It’s almost impossible NOT to grow your economy when you have 1.3m net migrants in just 2 years. Sadly the per capita figures will be much less heartening - Brexit or no Brexit
I hate to say it, but that's a fair point.
If you adjust for per capita performance, the Uk has done appallingly. Bottom or near bottom.
In the interests of transparency, an interesting study recently suggested that performance was better if you use available labour force as denominator.
GDP per capita in constant $ from 2010 to 2022 (if you're not happy with 2019 as end date), from World Bank. Euro Area up 12.97% United Kingdom up 13.27%
funny how we're at the bottom, when we're ahead of the Euro Area. Funny definition of bottom.
"Despite Brexit", taking a reasonable view of the past performance of the economy since the last change of Government, the UK has outperformed the Euro Area. So I'm curious how hubristic you are and how much more than the Euro Area we should have ourperformed them had Brexit not happened in your eyes?
Once again, you are using 2010 as your starting point. You must take us all for fools.
All countries have elites, Britain’s issue is that they are primarily drawn from the same class, universities, and geography.
This is exactly the same in France. In fact, it's worse.
That makes it okay then?
The contention was that Britain had a unique issue.
It doesn't.
Britain is better than France as far as I know, but so what. France is notoriously hierarchical and elitist.
So it’s not saying much.
Britain is actually going backward on these measures. I posted before that Wales - for example - sends hardly anyone to Oxbridge anymore, to which someone said, so what?
London rental prices today are crowding out anyone apart from those born upper middle class from the professions.
Not really, if you are a graduate from a lower middle class or working class background and get a job in a London law firm or accountancy firm or tech company or bank you can certainly afford a London rental. In outer London certainly
Rental in Wormwood Scrubs isn't going to cut it, mate. Especially not for 40 years.
If you are a trainee in a corporate law firm you can soon afford rental in Finchley let alone the likes of Enfield, Bromley etc.
Wormwood Scrubs the government pays you rental and board
You are obviously unaware that Wormwood Scrubs is in the first instance a district of London. Indeed, one wonders what society you mix in if you jump to a different conclusion.
" He defines the New Elite as Oxbridge/Russell Group graduates in managerial jobs with liberal cosmopolitan values who are overrepresented in decision-making and represent about a quarter of the population"
Almost by definition, the managerial classes are going (more likely than not) going to be educated at top universities.
Is this a new phenomena? Maybe if it is, it's because more people are educated at university.
Yep, Goodwin's theory is, well, duh. I'm shocked, shocked to find out that upper middle class people go to good universities and get good jobs.
Turchin is the most interesting of the named theorists in the thread header (sorry, Malmesbury!) because, as the thread header astutely points out, an elite class has always existed. It just changes over time.
Malmesbury's NU10K is interesting in that it attempts to define who those elites are, in the present day. I'd go a little further and say that the UK is cursed by managerialism, by people who think their job is to manage, rather than improve. To keep things ticking over. Essentially the NU10K are all "quiet quitters".
But the reason why Turchin is so interesting is because his theory of overproduction of elites chimes so well with what we're seeing in (and sorry I'm going to say it), woke. When you believe you should have elite status, but your job lacks that kind of status, you resort to alternative signalling. In the past, someone might have worn Cartier or Rolex to signify their 'elite' status. But these days, it's about beliefs. A Washington Post journalist can't afford a Rolex, in fact they're likely living in a four person house share given salaries these days. So instead they adopt the virtues and mores of the 'elite' which Goodwin describes, which is overwhelmingly metropolitan and socially liberal.
And so it becomes a competition among wannabe-elites for who can signal the most 'liberal' opinions. This not only explains the "capture" of the media and universities -formerly high status professions- by "woke", it also explains the shift towards ever more radical opinions, as surplus wannabe-elites constantly try to out-do each other in status signalling.
Those who aren't part of the game - the red wall in the UK or the rust belt in the US, are just baffled by it all. To them it just looks like people who've gone mad, who've lost their sense of common sense. And so the divide between the wokerati and the rest grows year on year. With the inevitable polarisation of politics that comes with it, that we have seen in recent years.
I do think we are now on course for the largest Labour majority ever. And the Tories may never govern again.
On the latter point I heard the same nonsense between 1997 and 2010.
To be fair, it took the almost complete economic collapse of the West to get the Conservatives back close to power.
It was said after 1987 the Conservatives were the "natural Party of Government" and Labour "the natural party of Opposition". Some thought Blair would screw up after 1997 and the Conservatives would return in triumph after one term.
Who for instance, after the resounding Conservative victory in 2019, could have imagined we'd be where we are now - most expected a minimum two terms of Boris Johnson, he didn't make it to three years.
Trying to predict the future is fraught with peril - just look at my horse race betting account.
Two things massively derailed th government after Dec 2019. Covid and the war in Ukraine. Without those I think Johnson would still be in no 10, thinking about when to go to the nation.
No, because he was set to ‘self-destruct’ from the very beginning. If it hadn’t been the disgraced covid partying, it would soon have been something else.
It would have happened in the end, yes I agree with you. But there is no doubt that covid destroyed any chance of a period of calm government. I suspect that no Western Government in power for covid will do that well when next seeking election.
Emmanuel Macron says 'Hi!'
No, he says bye.
"When next seeking election"? He's constitutionally forbidden to run again, he's reached his term limit already while we were still dealing with Covid.
He was re-elected in 2022 Covid was largely a non-story by then; the impact had been fully felt. If covid was going to prevent MArcor being re-elected it would have done so in 2022.
Early 2022 was while Covid was still an issue and more importantly before the bills started coming due to be paid. When governments were still operating on largely free money from quantitative easing rather than quantitative tightening.
The ECB's base rate when Macron was re-elected was -0.5%, rather than 4.0% today.
I can't think of a Western Government re-elected since the banks started raising base rates and Macron can't fit that bill since he's term-limited.
EDIT: I firmly hope Biden will be the exception.
Well, ok but you've not so much moved the goalposts as swapped them for some others.
No I've not, the original goalposts were "next election" - well Macron won't have a next election as he's term limited. You invented your own goalposts whereby Macron had scored, but that's not a like-for-like that you invented that is comparable to anyone next seeking election.
Everyone next seeking election needs to do so with base rates back up etc and the era of free money that we had during Covid (and before) over. Macron does not fit that bill.
"I suspect that no Western Government in power for covid will do that well when next seeking election."
Macron was in power for covid and did well enough when next seeking election.
All countries have elites, Britain’s issue is that they are primarily drawn from the same class, universities, and geography.
This is exactly the same in France. In fact, it's worse.
That makes it okay then?
The contention was that Britain had a unique issue.
It doesn't.
Britain is better than France as far as I know, but so what. France is notoriously hierarchical and elitist.
So it’s not saying much.
Britain is actually going backward on these measures. I posted before that Wales - for example - sends hardly anyone to Oxbridge anymore, to which someone said, so what?
London rental prices today are crowding out anyone apart from those born upper middle class from the professions.
Not really, if you are a graduate from a lower middle class or working class background and get a job in a London law firm or accountancy firm or tech company or bank you can certainly afford a London rental. In outer London certainly
Rental in Wormwood Scrubs isn't going to cut it, mate. Especially not for 40 years.
If you are a trainee in a corporate law firm you can soon afford rental in Finchley let alone the likes of Enfield, Bromley etc.
Wormwood Scrubs the government pays you rental and board
You are obviously unaware that Wormwood Scrubs is in the first instance a district of London. Indeed, one wonders what society you mix in if you jump to a different conclusion.
I do think we are now on course for the largest Labour majority ever. And the Tories may never govern again.
On the latter point I heard the same nonsense between 1997 and 2010.
To be fair, it took the almost complete economic collapse of the West to get the Conservatives back close to power.
It was said after 1987 the Conservatives were the "natural Party of Government" and Labour "the natural party of Opposition". Some thought Blair would screw up after 1997 and the Conservatives would return in triumph after one term.
Who for instance, after the resounding Conservative victory in 2019, could have imagined we'd be where we are now - most expected a minimum two terms of Boris Johnson, he didn't make it to three years.
Trying to predict the future is fraught with peril - just look at my horse race betting account.
Two things massively derailed th government after Dec 2019. Covid and the war in Ukraine. Without those I think Johnson would still be in no 10, thinking about when to go to the nation.
LOL. Look at charts of NHS waiting lists, court waiting lists, asylum waiting lists, all increasing steadily from 2010 to 2019. That degradation in public services, an economy badly hit by Brexit, and Johnson’s inability to not lie would all be there without COVID and Ukraine,
The corrected OECD statistics show virtually no Brexit effect, but keep spinning.
Now, this is all over (a) very small period of time, and (b) is distorted by Covid, but there is a Brexit effect, in that we were consistently growing 1.1-1.3% faster than our EU peers, and now it's more like 0.3-0.5%.
So, we're still growing faster than the other EU countries but the gap is narrower than it was.
Choose to interpret that how you like.
Britain is surely importing more migrants than almost any EU country, as a proportion of population. So all these figures need to be adjusted per capita
It’s almost impossible NOT to grow your economy when you have 1.3m net migrants in just 2 years. Sadly the per capita figures will be much less heartening - Brexit or no Brexit
I hate to say it, but that's a fair point.
If you adjust for per capita performance, the Uk has done appallingly. Bottom or near bottom.
In the interests of transparency, an interesting study recently suggested that performance was better if you use available labour force as denominator.
GDP per capita in constant $ from 2010 to 2022 (if you're not happy with 2019 as end date), from World Bank. Euro Area up 12.97% United Kingdom up 13.27%
funny how we're at the bottom, when we're ahead of the Euro Area. Funny definition of bottom.
"Despite Brexit", taking a reasonable view of the past performance of the economy since the last change of Government, the UK has outperformed the Euro Area. So I'm curious how hubristic you are and how much more than the Euro Area we should have ourperformed them had Brexit not happened in your eyes?
Once again, you are using 2010 as your starting point. You must take us all for fools.
Its a perfectly reasonable starting point. It is
A : Not during the last recession before Covid. B : The date of the last change of Government C : A date that allows us to view a decade of data. D : Brexit campaign, Brexit referendum and Brexit itself all happened within the period measured.
How is that unreasonable? If Brexit was so catastrophic, it would show up within that decade's data. That it does not, means it either was not bad, or that it was a piddly rounding error drowned out by other factors.
I do think we are now on course for the largest Labour majority ever. And the Tories may never govern again.
On the latter point I heard the same nonsense between 1997 and 2010.
To be fair, it took the almost complete economic collapse of the West to get the Conservatives back close to power.
It was said after 1987 the Conservatives were the "natural Party of Government" and Labour "the natural party of Opposition". Some thought Blair would screw up after 1997 and the Conservatives would return in triumph after one term.
Who for instance, after the resounding Conservative victory in 2019, could have imagined we'd be where we are now - most expected a minimum two terms of Boris Johnson, he didn't make it to three years.
Trying to predict the future is fraught with peril - just look at my horse race betting account.
Two things massively derailed th government after Dec 2019. Covid and the war in Ukraine. Without those I think Johnson would still be in no 10, thinking about when to go to the nation.
No, because he was set to ‘self-destruct’ from the very beginning. If it hadn’t been the disgraced covid partying, it would soon have been something else.
It would have happened in the end, yes I agree with you. But there is no doubt that covid destroyed any chance of a period of calm government. I suspect that no Western Government in power for covid will do that well when next seeking election.
Emmanuel Macron says 'Hi!'
No, he says bye.
"When next seeking election"? He's constitutionally forbidden to run again, he's reached his term limit already while we were still dealing with Covid.
He was re-elected in 2022 Covid was largely a non-story by then; the impact had been fully felt. If covid was going to prevent MArcor being re-elected it would have done so in 2022.
Early 2022 was while Covid was still an issue and more importantly before the bills started coming due to be paid. When governments were still operating on largely free money from quantitative easing rather than quantitative tightening.
The ECB's base rate when Macron was re-elected was -0.5%, rather than 4.0% today.
I can't think of a Western Government re-elected since the banks started raising base rates and Macron can't fit that bill since he's term-limited.
EDIT: I firmly hope Biden will be the exception.
Well, ok but you've not so much moved the goalposts as swapped them for some others.
No I've not, the original goalposts were "next election" - well Macron won't have a next election as he's term limited. You invented your own goalposts whereby Macron had scored, but that's not a like-for-like that you invented that is comparable to anyone next seeking election.
Everyone next seeking election needs to do so with base rates back up etc and the era of free money that we had during Covid (and before) over. Macron does not fit that bill.
"I suspect that no Western Government in power for covid will do that well when next seeking election."
Macron was in power for covid and did well enough when next seeking election.
Next from now, and next from Covid are two completely different things.
"I suspect ... when next" means next from now, the past is neither a suspicion nor next.
Looks good for you on the Island. I might be in with a shout in Warminster (and classically south of the M4), but we won’t be sure for a couple more days I think.
Well I'm south of you, near Shaftesbury, and I'm not expecting any.
Politico - How the Pros Think the Iowa Caucuses Will Shake Out We convened top Iowa journalists to discuss who’s really got the edge in the first 2024 contest.
I do think we are now on course for the largest Labour majority ever. And the Tories may never govern again.
On the latter point I heard the same nonsense between 1997 and 2010.
To be fair, it took the almost complete economic collapse of the West to get the Conservatives back close to power.
It was said after 1987 the Conservatives were the "natural Party of Government" and Labour "the natural party of Opposition". Some thought Blair would screw up after 1997 and the Conservatives would return in triumph after one term.
Who for instance, after the resounding Conservative victory in 2019, could have imagined we'd be where we are now - most expected a minimum two terms of Boris Johnson, he didn't make it to three years.
Trying to predict the future is fraught with peril - just look at my horse race betting account.
Two things massively derailed th government after Dec 2019. Covid and the war in Ukraine. Without those I think Johnson would still be in no 10, thinking about when to go to the nation.
No, because he was set to ‘self-destruct’ from the very beginning. If it hadn’t been the disgraced covid partying, it would soon have been something else.
It would have happened in the end, yes I agree with you. But there is no doubt that covid destroyed any chance of a period of calm government. I suspect that no Western Government in power for covid will do that well when next seeking election.
Emmanuel Macron says 'Hi!'
No, he says bye.
"When next seeking election"? He's constitutionally forbidden to run again, he's reached his term limit already while we were still dealing with Covid.
He was re-elected in 2022 Covid was largely a non-story by then; the impact had been fully felt. If covid was going to prevent MArcor being re-elected it would have done so in 2022.
Early 2022 was while Covid was still an issue and more importantly before the bills started coming due to be paid. When governments were still operating on largely free money from quantitative easing rather than quantitative tightening.
The ECB's base rate when Macron was re-elected was -0.5%, rather than 4.0% today.
I can't think of a Western Government re-elected since the banks started raising base rates and Macron can't fit that bill since he's term-limited.
EDIT: I firmly hope Biden will be the exception.
Well, ok but you've not so much moved the goalposts as swapped them for some others.
No I've not, the original goalposts were "next election" - well Macron won't have a next election as he's term limited. You invented your own goalposts whereby Macron had scored, but that's not a like-for-like that you invented that is comparable to anyone next seeking election.
Everyone next seeking election needs to do so with base rates back up etc and the era of free money that we had during Covid (and before) over. Macron does not fit that bill.
"I suspect that no Western Government in power for covid will do that well when next seeking election."
Macron was in power for covid and did well enough when next seeking election.
Next from now, and next from Covid are two completely different things.
"I suspect ... when next" means next from now, the past is neither a suspicion nor next.
Ok, I took it to mean 'when next after covid'.
Now though you really seem to be saying when next after base rate rises.
Whatever, I hope your theory is right regarding Sunak and wrong regarding Biden.
All countries have elites, Britain’s issue is that they are primarily drawn from the same class, universities, and geography.
This is exactly the same in France. In fact, it's worse.
That makes it okay then?
The contention was that Britain had a unique issue.
It doesn't.
Britain is better than France as far as I know, but so what. France is notoriously hierarchical and elitist.
So it’s not saying much.
Britain is actually going backward on these measures. I posted before that Wales - for example - sends hardly anyone to Oxbridge anymore, to which someone said, so what?
London rental prices today are crowding out anyone apart from those born upper middle class from the professions.
Not really, if you are a graduate from a lower middle class or working class background and get a job in a London law firm or accountancy firm or tech company or bank you can certainly afford a London rental. In outer London certainly
Rental in Wormwood Scrubs isn't going to cut it, mate. Especially not for 40 years.
If you are a trainee in a corporate law firm you can soon afford rental in Finchley let alone the likes of Enfield, Bromley etc.
Wormwood Scrubs the government pays you rental and board
You are obviously unaware that Wormwood Scrubs is in the first instance a district of London. Indeed, one wonders what society you mix in if you jump to a different conclusion.
Looks good for you on the Island. I might be in with a shout in Warminster (and classically south of the M4), but we won’t be sure for a couple more days I think.
Well I'm south of you, near Shaftesbury, and I'm not expecting any.
Agnes C. Poirier @AgnesCPoirier · 6h Yesterday, the youngest carpenter of #NotreDame, the 19-year-old Leonard, tied the traditional bouquet on top of the completed nave roof.
All countries have elites, Britain’s issue is that they are primarily drawn from the same class, universities, and geography.
This is exactly the same in France. In fact, it's worse.
That makes it okay then?
The contention was that Britain had a unique issue.
It doesn't.
Britain is better than France as far as I know, but so what. France is notoriously hierarchical and elitist.
So it’s not saying much.
Britain is actually going backward on these measures. I posted before that Wales - for example - sends hardly anyone to Oxbridge anymore, to which someone said, so what?
London rental prices today are crowding out anyone apart from those born upper middle class from the professions.
Not really, if you are a graduate from a lower middle class or working class background and get a job in a London law firm or accountancy firm or tech company or bank you can certainly afford a London rental. In outer London certainly
Rental in Wormwood Scrubs isn't going to cut it, mate. Especially not for 40 years.
If you are a trainee in a corporate law firm you can soon afford rental in Finchley let alone the likes of Enfield, Bromley etc.
Wormwood Scrubs the government pays you rental and board
You are obviously unaware that Wormwood Scrubs is in the first instance a district of London. Indeed, one wonders what society you mix in if you jump to a different conclusion.
The type with a pent (house) in ville?
Please stop banging on about Wormwood Scrubs or you'll wake @Leon up.
Only the better class of Speccie hacks get sent to the 'Ville.
Here’s business investment before and after 2016, for what it’s worth.
That data matches mine, its just warped by a surge in UK investment in 2016. Could something have happened in 2016 to cause such a surge in investment?
From 2010 to 2022 the UK has grown from ~72 to ~92, growth of approximately 27.7% From 2010 to 2022 the Euro Area has grown from ~86 to ~106, growth of approximately 24.7%
So it seems from a reading of that data, that the UK has outshone the Euro Area with particularly fantastic results for the UK in Q2 2016 being a dramatic spike in investment.
What could have happened in the past decade and a bit, to result in such a dramatic spike in investment in Q2 2016 and more investment growth overall from 2010 to present?
All countries have elites, Britain’s issue is that they are primarily drawn from the same class, universities, and geography.
This is exactly the same in France. In fact, it's worse.
That makes it okay then?
The contention was that Britain had a unique issue.
It doesn't.
Britain is better than France as far as I know, but so what. France is notoriously hierarchical and elitist.
So it’s not saying much.
Britain is actually going backward on these measures. I posted before that Wales - for example - sends hardly anyone to Oxbridge anymore, to which someone said, so what?
London rental prices today are crowding out anyone apart from those born upper middle class from the professions.
Not really, if you are a graduate from a lower middle class or working class background and get a job in a London law firm or accountancy firm or tech company or bank you can certainly afford a London rental. In outer London certainly
Rental in Wormwood Scrubs isn't going to cut it, mate. Especially not for 40 years.
If you are a trainee in a corporate law firm you can soon afford rental in Finchley let alone the likes of Enfield, Bromley etc.
Wormwood Scrubs the government pays you rental and board
You are obviously unaware that Wormwood Scrubs is in the first instance a district of London. Indeed, one wonders what society you mix in if you jump to a different conclusion.
It isn't really. It's an open space, an area of common land. Maybe you could live in a tree house.
Marchers out and about today chanting pro-Houthi slogans.
The Houthis being of course such poor innocent victims of unprovoked US and UK aggression. The poor dears, with their slavery, Taliban-style gender politics and oh I almost forgot, their lobbing of missiles and drones at international shipping.
Perhaps media outlets should start prefacing mediaevalist groups like this with “right wing” or “far right”. Because they are.
I do think we are now on course for the largest Labour majority ever. And the Tories may never govern again.
On the latter point I heard the same nonsense between 1997 and 2010.
To be fair, it took the almost complete economic collapse of the West to get the Conservatives back close to power.
It was said after 1987 the Conservatives were the "natural Party of Government" and Labour "the natural party of Opposition". Some thought Blair would screw up after 1997 and the Conservatives would return in triumph after one term.
Who for instance, after the resounding Conservative victory in 2019, could have imagined we'd be where we are now - most expected a minimum two terms of Boris Johnson, he didn't make it to three years.
Trying to predict the future is fraught with peril - just look at my horse race betting account.
Two things massively derailed th government after Dec 2019. Covid and the war in Ukraine. Without those I think Johnson would still be in no 10, thinking about when to go to the nation.
No, because he was set to ‘self-destruct’ from the very beginning. If it hadn’t been the disgraced covid partying, it would soon have been something else.
It would have happened in the end, yes I agree with you. But there is no doubt that covid destroyed any chance of a period of calm government. I suspect that no Western Government in power for covid will do that well when next seeking election.
Emmanuel Macron says 'Hi!'
No, he says bye.
"When next seeking election"? He's constitutionally forbidden to run again, he's reached his term limit already while we were still dealing with Covid.
He was re-elected in 2022 Covid was largely a non-story by then; the impact had been fully felt. If covid was going to prevent MArcor being re-elected it would have done so in 2022.
Early 2022 was while Covid was still an issue and more importantly before the bills started coming due to be paid. When governments were still operating on largely free money from quantitative easing rather than quantitative tightening.
The ECB's base rate when Macron was re-elected was -0.5%, rather than 4.0% today.
I can't think of a Western Government re-elected since the banks started raising base rates and Macron can't fit that bill since he's term-limited.
EDIT: I firmly hope Biden will be the exception.
Well, ok but you've not so much moved the goalposts as swapped them for some others.
No I've not, the original goalposts were "next election" - well Macron won't have a next election as he's term limited. You invented your own goalposts whereby Macron had scored, but that's not a like-for-like that you invented that is comparable to anyone next seeking election.
Everyone next seeking election needs to do so with base rates back up etc and the era of free money that we had during Covid (and before) over. Macron does not fit that bill.
"I suspect that no Western Government in power for covid will do that well when next seeking election."
Macron was in power for covid and did well enough when next seeking election.
Next from now, and next from Covid are two completely different things.
"I suspect ... when next" means next from now, the past is neither a suspicion nor next.
Ok, I took it to mean 'when next after covid'.
Now though you really seem to be saying when next after base rate rises.
Whatever, I hope your theory is right regarding Sunak and wrong regarding Biden.
As do I.
Hopefully Trump is so vile he allows Biden to be an exception to the rule.
Unless Haley or someone else gets nominated, in which case I don't care if Biden loses.
Looks good for you on the Island. I might be in with a shout in Warminster (and classically south of the M4), but we won’t be sure for a couple more days I think.
Well I'm south of you, near Shaftesbury, and I'm not expecting any.
Latest ICON has us both back in the hunt.
Really only ICON. Most models still giving it all to Northern France.
All countries have elites, Britain’s issue is that they are primarily drawn from the same class, universities, and geography.
This is exactly the same in France. In fact, it's worse.
That makes it okay then?
The contention was that Britain had a unique issue.
It doesn't.
Britain is better than France as far as I know, but so what. France is notoriously hierarchical and elitist.
So it’s not saying much.
Britain is actually going backward on these measures. I posted before that Wales - for example - sends hardly anyone to Oxbridge anymore, to which someone said, so what?
London rental prices today are crowding out anyone apart from those born upper middle class from the professions.
Not really, if you are a graduate from a lower middle class or working class background and get a job in a London law firm or accountancy firm or tech company or bank you can certainly afford a London rental. In outer London certainly
Rental in Wormwood Scrubs isn't going to cut it, mate. Especially not for 40 years.
If you are a trainee in a corporate law firm you can soon afford rental in Finchley let alone the likes of Enfield, Bromley etc.
Wormwood Scrubs the government pays you rental and board
You are obviously unaware that Wormwood Scrubs is in the first instance a district of London. Indeed, one wonders what society you mix in if you jump to a different conclusion.
It isn't really. It's an open space, an area of common land. Maybe you could live in a tree house.
That's what I mean. Famous for being the site of the demonstration of caterpillar vehicles to Churchill WS et al in WW1 during the hunt for what became the tank.
AP - How will the Republican caucuses work in 2024?
There will be two main agenda items at every Republican caucus site: holding a binding vote for the party’s presidential nominee and electing delegates to attend county conventions, which is the next step in the multi-tiered process of electing delegates to attend the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee this summer.
The binding presidential vote functions essentially like a party-run primary, only with very limited polling hours and no accommodation for absentee voting, except for a tiny handful of overseas and military voters. There are speeches on behalf of various candidates before the voting and a variety of party business after the vote. Individual caucus chairs are allowed to exercise some discretion in how to conduct the vote, but the voting is done by secret ballot and there is no set list of candidates. Voters must be given the option to vote for any candidate they choose. In the past, some caucus sites have pre-printed the names of major candidates and provided a write-in option, but typically, voters vote by writing the name of a candidate on a blank slip of paper.
There is no walking around the caucus room to form candidate preference groups. That voting method was a feature of Democratic caucuses from 1972 to 2020 but is no longer in use by either party in 2024.
The Republican caucuses will convene statewide at 7 p.m. local time (8 p.m. EST), and begin with the election of a caucus chair and secretary. Only registered Republicans may participate in the caucuses and only in their designated home precincts. However, Iowans may register or change their party affiliation on caucus day. Voters must turn 18 by the November general election in order to participate.
Comments
My response in his shoes would go along the lines of: When the sub postmaster group asked to see me as the minister in charge about issues with Horizon, I did meet with them and then raised these issues with Post Office management who reassured me that these issues didn't exist. We now know they lied to me, and everyone else, to the extent that many innocent people were falsely convicted of crimes they didn't commit. I very much regret I didn't challenge them on their untruths as that might have helped the victims get justice earlier. What the Post Office did was was evil.
Reasonably factual, empathy with the victims, very clear where the real blame lies, but accepting there are things he could have done better.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-manchester-67971225
Awaab's Law: Tenants in mouldy homes in Rochdale told they breathe too much
Some residents living in social housing in Rochdale blighted by damp and mould said they had been told they were breathing too much.
The group, who shared their stories at a meeting at a local pub, all live in properties managed by Rochdale Boroughwide Housing (RBH).
The landlord was also responsible for the property where two-year-old Awaab Ishak died from exposure to mould.
RBH said it was working to carry out repairs to affected homes.
It is his Royal Navy attacking them
Question though: if the UK GE is after the POTUS election, which POTUS outcome helps Sunak best?
I don’t know if she will cause him problems or not. She did come across as someone who might be jumping on the bandwagon.
Jenkins and Williams being unavailable it is hard to spot among the pygmies of today the force which could do this, but the chance may come about for the first time since 1981. DYOR but don't bet the farm.
And yes the NHS is an issue, and all the other factors that have resulted post 2008. Yes, that’s the real hysteresis point.
They are apparently being rented at £350 a month. Someone is making a lot of profit.
Maybe the chairman of NatWest had a point when he said everyone can afford to buy a house.
One process, something Cyclefree has talked about, is whistleblowing. How do we support a culture that supports and allows whistleblowing?
We could also talk about the Third Way, the belief from Major to Blair to Brown to Cameron that there is a better way to bring together the best of the private and public sector. But I think this has often been illusory. PFIs turned out to be a very expensive mistake. Having a Post Office that is a standalone company, wholly owned by the government, seems to have led to the worst of the private and public sector being brought together.
(Edited to include an apostrophe…).
"When next seeking election"? He's constitutionally forbidden to run again, he's reached his term limit already while we were still dealing with Covid.
True enough . . . but NOT near enough to help Hamilton.
Almost by definition, the managerial classes are going (more likely than not) going to be educated at top universities.
Is this a new phenomena? Maybe if it is, it's because more people are educated at university.
So, we're still growing faster than the other EU countries but the gap is narrower than it was.
Choose to interpret that how you like.
The ECB's base rate when Macron was re-elected was -0.5%, rather than 4.0% today.
I can't think of a Western Government re-elected since the banks started raising base rates and Macron can't fit that bill since he's term-limited.
EDIT: I firmly hope Biden will be the exception.
It’s interesting that a number of polls now show the Lib Dems essentially unchanged despite Davey’s personal ratings taking a hit. I wonder if this is relatively sophisticated voters distinguishing between the leader and the party, as did those who quite liked Rishi but hated the Tories early in his leadership.
That phenomenon doesn’t last though. Ed needs to get his popularity up or it’s going to be a drag on the LD vote.
All Nippon Airways Flight 1182 was on a domestic journey heading to Toyama airport but then headed back to the Sapporo-New Chitose airport."
https://news.sky.com/story/japan-passenger-plane-turns-back-to-airport-after-cockpit-window-crack-found-mid-air-13047273
Messy, because PP won more seats but had fewer allies, but he's still in the Moncloa.
Yes. I switch to a new deal 1st February. My cut is an increase of £170. Just like the Tory tax cuts, the new lower number is a higher number.
Another culture is the one of non-exec directors choosing other non-execs who are already non-execs on several other boards. The very term 'gravy train' seems to have been invented for this.
Far better suggestion than Macron, as you say its messy but he just about clung on.
It’s almost impossible NOT to grow your economy when you have 1.3m net migrants in just 2 years. Sadly the per capita figures will be much less heartening - Brexit or no Brexit
Since then, Covid and the war in Ukraine has rather messed with the economy its so hard to make reasonable comparisons yet, but I doubt we're doing worse than the Eurozone per capita then either.
Wish me luck.
If so, it was nice knowing you.
The recent trade figures, suggest that it has hit Britain’s role as a EU entrepôt to the extent that it has even damaged Britain’s export performance to the US. The auto and pharma industries are hit more than most, services relatively unscathed.
This is not at all controversial, except on GB News, certain pubs in Middlesbrough, and on PB.
HTH!
Why on earth would anyone choose 2010 as a starting point for the UK’s Brexity economic performance?
But I can't remember
In the interests of transparency, an interesting study recently suggested that performance was better if you use available labour force as denominator.
1. France, as a country with the same population size, same GDP, and a very different economic and industrial policy
2. The Netherlands, as the other global maritime nation with a similar history as entrepôt, cradle of capitalism and largely urban and coastal economy.
Germany is a very different country, as is Italy.
I should have remembered Sunak is not sensible.
And because it takes a decade to measure more than just semi-random annual swings anyway, and that was the last decade we had with data not artificially screwed up due to Covid etc
If Brexit had genuinely affected our investment etc from 2016 onwards, then it would have shown up in the data showing 2016 onwards. It does not.
Everyone next seeking election needs to do so with base rates back up etc and the era of free money that we had during Covid (and before) over. Macron does not fit that bill.
And I'd fear for my own safety.
Or is that too stark a warning?
Euro Area up 12.97%
United Kingdom up 13.27%
Funny how we're at the bottom, when we're ahead of the Euro Area. Funny definition of bottom.
"Despite Brexit", taking a reasonable view of the past performance of the economy since the last change of Government, the UK has outperformed the Euro Area. So I'm curious how hubristic you are and how much more than the Euro Area we should have ourperformed them had Brexit not happened in your eyes?
You must take us all for fools.
Governments are obsessed that property prices should not fall while if you invest in business you:
Risk losing your money if things go wrong
Risk demands for windfall taxes if things go right
Plus business investment tends to involve more work than property investment.
Turchin is the most interesting of the named theorists in the thread header (sorry, Malmesbury!) because, as the thread header astutely points out, an elite class has always existed. It just changes over time.
Malmesbury's NU10K is interesting in that it attempts to define who those elites are, in the present day. I'd go a little further and say that the UK is cursed by managerialism, by people who think their job is to manage, rather than improve. To keep things ticking over. Essentially the NU10K are all "quiet quitters".
But the reason why Turchin is so interesting is because his theory of overproduction of elites chimes so well with what we're seeing in (and sorry I'm going to say it), woke. When you believe you should have elite status, but your job lacks that kind of status, you resort to alternative signalling. In the past, someone might have worn Cartier or Rolex to signify their 'elite' status. But these days, it's about beliefs. A Washington Post journalist can't afford a Rolex, in fact they're likely living in a four person house share given salaries these days. So instead they adopt the virtues and mores of the 'elite' which Goodwin describes, which is overwhelmingly metropolitan and socially liberal.
And so it becomes a competition among wannabe-elites for who can signal the most 'liberal' opinions. This not only explains the "capture" of the media and universities -formerly high status professions- by "woke", it also explains the shift towards ever more radical opinions, as surplus wannabe-elites constantly try to out-do each other in status signalling.
Those who aren't part of the game - the red wall in the UK or the rust belt in the US, are just baffled by it all. To them it just looks like people who've gone mad, who've lost their sense of common sense. And so the divide between the wokerati and the rest grows year on year. With the inevitable polarisation of politics that comes with it, that we have seen in recent years.
Macron was in power for covid and did well enough when next seeking election.
A : Not during the last recession before Covid.
B : The date of the last change of Government
C : A date that allows us to view a decade of data.
D : Brexit campaign, Brexit referendum and Brexit itself all happened within the period measured.
How is that unreasonable? If Brexit was so catastrophic, it would show up within that decade's data. That it does not, means it either was not bad, or that it was a piddly rounding error drowned out by other factors.
Diplomat: "The leaks in the hours before the attack really pissed off the US to the extent that engagement on the political side suddenly evaporated"
[@thetimes]
https://twitter.com/PolitlcsUK/status/1746260012102570234?t=OeKyv5eUj2ylDZVzbANhbw&s=19
"I suspect ... when next" means next from now, the past is neither a suspicion nor next.
We convened top Iowa journalists to discuss who’s really got the edge in the first 2024 contest.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/01/12/iowa-caucus-roundtable-00135171
Now though you really seem to be saying when next after base rate rises.
Whatever, I hope your theory is right regarding Sunak and wrong regarding Biden.
@AgnesCPoirier
·
6h
Yesterday, the youngest carpenter of #NotreDame, the 19-year-old Leonard, tied the traditional bouquet on top of the completed nave roof.
https://twitter.com/AgnesCPoirier/status/1746182435941814560
Only the better class of Speccie hacks get sent to the 'Ville.
From 2010 to 2022 the UK has grown from ~72 to ~92, growth of approximately 27.7%
From 2010 to 2022 the Euro Area has grown from ~86 to ~106, growth of approximately 24.7%
So it seems from a reading of that data, that the UK has outshone the Euro Area with particularly fantastic results for the UK in Q2 2016 being a dramatic spike in investment.
What could have happened in the past decade and a bit, to result in such a dramatic spike in investment in Q2 2016 and more investment growth overall from 2010 to present?
https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/grossdomesticproductgdp/bulletins/businessinvestment/latest#business-investment-data
Hopefully Trump is so vile he allows Biden to be an exception to the rule.
Unless Haley or someone else gets nominated, in which case I don't care if Biden loses.
THE 9.9 PERCENT
The New Aristocracy That Is Entrenching Inequality and Warping Our Culture
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/18/books/review/the-99-percent-matthew-stewart.html
There will be two main agenda items at every Republican caucus site: holding a binding vote for the party’s presidential nominee and electing delegates to attend county conventions, which is the next step in the multi-tiered process of electing delegates to attend the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee this summer.
The binding presidential vote functions essentially like a party-run primary, only with very limited polling hours and no accommodation for absentee voting, except for a tiny handful of overseas and military voters. There are speeches on behalf of various candidates before the voting and a variety of party business after the vote. Individual caucus chairs are allowed to exercise some discretion in how to conduct the vote, but the voting is done by secret ballot and there is no set list of candidates. Voters must be given the option to vote for any candidate they choose. In the past, some caucus sites have pre-printed the names of major candidates and provided a write-in option, but typically, voters vote by writing the name of a candidate on a blank slip of paper.
There is no walking around the caucus room to form candidate preference groups. That voting method was a feature of Democratic caucuses from 1972 to 2020 but is no longer in use by either party in 2024.
The Republican caucuses will convene statewide at 7 p.m. local time (8 p.m. EST), and begin with the election of a caucus chair and secretary. Only registered Republicans may participate in the caucuses and only in their designated home precincts. However, Iowans may register or change their party affiliation on caucus day. Voters must turn 18 by the November general election in order to participate.
https://apnews.com/article/how-iowa-caucus-works-2024-democrats-republicans-592ab40b9b9b948c0540f2cf132bab5c