Fixing Fujitsu software bugs in the Horizon IT system was too expensive. Flaws known since 1998. Fujitsu and Post Office gave false evidence to courts and let innocent people be convicted of fraud. Boosted profits and exec pay by destroying lives."
Why did Fujitsu need to have a fraud and litigation department? Litigation, I can understand. But fraud? What fraud and by whom was this department expecting to deal with?
The stuff coming out of Fujitsu - particularly the known bugs that they didn't tell the PO about and didn't bother to fix - will put that company firmly in the frame. This guy giving evidence now, who's a strange but seemingly honest fellow, told the inquiry yesterday that one bug generated errors if a subpostmaster was working on their terminal at 7pm, because at that time every day the central server ran some sort of housekeeping routine, and that the system couldn't tell whether a repeated entry from a subpostmaster's terminal was a separate transaction or duplicates. As details like this come out, the pattern of shortfalls that subpostmasters experienced becomes more understandable.
It’s as if they just invented transactional posing of sale systems specifically for the post office, because retail definitely hasn’t already been using them for several decades.
I mean, server routines running at 7pm, instead of in the middle of the night as everyone else does!
Please tell me it's not because 7pm in the UK is the middle of the night in Japan!
There have definitely been stranger reasons for such things!
It’s always something that makes sense at the time, when in the middle of a project, but looking back it seems totally weird.
Perhaps there were a bunch of other overnight routines that would fail if this one did, so they paid someone to sit in the office until 9pm to watch it, something like that.
Tories on 20%. Fukkers on 12% pre Farage. Sunak to give triumphant presser about how thanks to his canny skills in the Commons he will now Stop The Boats.
Tories. The abyss becons.
2024 is lining up to be the most spectacular general election since 1945. It's entirely plausible that Labour could end up with a 200+ majority. The Tories could end sub-100. Neither is anything like guaranteed but we ought to consider it a realistic possibility.
Sunak has got himself into a position where he isn't trusted as either a populist or a managerial type; he's chasing the RefUK vote but not getting it because he's merely highlighting their arguments without sorting them; driving right will consolidate the anti-Tory tactical vote on the left (which is in any case twice the size of the combined Con+RefUK vote); and meanwhile, the economic squeeze is still on for a lot of people, strikes are rife and the NHS cannot cope with demand, backlog and strikes.
But the problem for the Tories isn't Sunak (or not just him). The problem is their party and its record. Changing leaders yet again (for who?) isn't going to solve that and may make it even worse.
Sunak is a huge part of the problem. He's been Chancellor or PM for all but a relative handful of days in nearly four years.
And its not just that the buck stops with him, its what he's chosen to do and his priorities.
Hunt is far, far better. Despite Sunak, not because of him.
Hunt is basically the same - and as a long-serving Health Sec would be blamed personally for many of the current NHS problems (not without some justification). I don't see much more of a spark of the front-man to him than there is to Sunak. Anyway, Hunt finished last with only 18 votes out of 357 in the summer 2022 leadership election; he has little personal support and I don't see the MPs dumping Sunak to replace him with what they hope might be a slightly better version of the same, in order to lose less badly.
Question for non-Tories and former Tory voters who have fallen out of love with the party. Who of the current crop of MPs with leadership ambitions would you want to see as future leader? Not in terms of who's most beatable, but who would be most tolerable as a future PM?
I know who TSE would go for (though he's in the Lords), but others? I struggle with this. Would probably opt for whoever looks most presentable on the global stage. Until a few weeks ago I thought that was Cleverly (LOL).
As a former Tory, this is a conversation I have had of late with friends still in the party and we have agreed there is no one. Looking at the Cabinet, I would argue Mel Stride is the least weak.
The trouble is that, in 2019, the Tory party was shorn of its best talent. If we still had names such as Dominic Grieve, David Gauke, Sam Gyimah, Phillip Lee, Guto Bebb, Rory Stewart and Oliver Letwin in the frame (with 5 years more experience under their belts) it might be a wholly different picture.
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
Oh do be quiet
This country has imported 1.3 million people in two years. Voters are noticing. See @Cookie’s comments above
This level of immigration is literally unprecedented in our history. It has never happened before. People didn’t ask for it, polls show they don’t want it, Brexit was driven - in large part - by people trying to stop it
And your pitiful answer to all this is “just stop talking about it”
I'm not saying stop talking about it. That would be you with your "do be quiet".
Why does immigration being a genuine issue mean people should be able to bang on unchallenged about how we have to embrace far right talking points or they'll end up in power?
Part of the problem is that no one is saying, in politics, "For each head of net immigration, we need to build a bedroom, x percent of a hospital bed (staffed), y percent of a school place, z percent of pubic transport, alpha percent of road investment etc etc."
If you have a growing population, then you need more stuff. Because everyone needs a share.
You have been known to make this point before and there's not a great deal wrong with it. Population size (which includes projected net immigration) should indeed be a factor in decisions on infrastructure and public services. Of course it should.
But from this it doesn't follow that our struggling NHS and our housing crisis and our generally creaking public realm is because of immigration. That's the far right spin. That's what I mean by a far right talking point. It's a pov which should be rejected not pandered to imo.
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
The problem is a lack of discussion about the consequences of the various options. And the slight conflict between "Mass immigration is wonderful" and "To protect the environment and keep everyone happy, we must build no houses or places of employment."
See also
The NHS is overwhelmed Our rivers are full of shit as the sewage system can’t cope We have a national housing shortage crisis
And so on, and so forth
And yet at the same time we are told this has nothing to do with mass immigration and the population of the UK rising by 1.3 million people in just two years. Even the dumbest voter no longer buys this bollocks
It's not just the rivers that are full of shit. Anyway, I await the water companies coming along and saying that "the sewage problems aren't our fault, guv, it's all those immigrants what caused it".
Meanwhile, the government more or less ignores the large scale of legal migration to focus on the poor buggers trying to cross the Channel in this freezing weather, who constitute a small proportion of incomers. You couldn't make it up.
The focus on illegal migration is intentional and designed to ensure there is zero focus on the level of legal migration - and the lack of preparation we are doing to cope with that number of people
net (legal) migration was unusually high in 2022 due to the war in Ukraine, the humanitarian route for Hong Kong British National Overseas (BNO) status holders, an increase in international student numbers and high demand for workers in the health and care sector. These factors are to some extent temporary and so it is expected that net migration will fall over the next year or two, regardless of the progress or otherwise of the Rwanda plan.
True on 1 level (Hong Kong, Ukraine) but beyond that I have a bridge to sell you.
This analysis does a pretty good job of explaining why net migration levels are unlike to remain at their current high level:
The only question is whether the drop will come soon enough for the government to take the credit for it. Perhaps a reason for Sunak to hang on for a bit longer?
We get the 2023 figures in the autumn.
It will probably show a drop but it won’t show 0 which means for most people it will be way too high.
So yep the story may change but only to Tories have reduced numbers but not by enough..
There are a few areas of UK performance where PM Starmer could potentially be a lucky general, and unlike with Blair in 1997 the Tories won't be in a position to talk about golden legacies. None of these are by any means guaranteed but they are possible, and luck is an important variable in politics:
- Migration: both small boat and legal migration figures could well come down from their current high levels for purely organic reasons, and much of that could take place on Labour's watch. Biggest uncertainty here: wider conflict in the Middle East, and GBP-EUR FX rate (which has suppressed skilled EU migration since Brexit) - Inflation: Even though this is already well down, if it gets lower and stays there it'll be easier for Labour than the current government to take credit even though neither has much actual influence on the number - Government debt and deficit: if interest rates fall then the interest burden falls which could open up scope for more spending or holding taxes down - Economic growth: even a mini-rebound to 1.5%+ growth might be enough to feel like a turnaround - Wage growth: already started to happen and tends to lag commodity inflation. Could mean the real-terms cost of living squeeze starts to reverse - NHS waiting lists: even if Labour do nothing, I assume strike action will simmer down for a bit and any policies put in place to get through the post-Covid backlog by the current government may well only really bear fruit in the next parliament
Of course it quite possibly all go to shit particularly because of the fiscal deficit and those unrealistic spending cuts in Treasury forecasts, and then the Tories get to blame Labour unfairly.
I am trying to think what there is about the Middle East or the northern half of Africa or the Islamic world which suggests a reduction either in the supply of people with a lawful claim to asylum or a reduction in their preference for taking their chance of living somewhere in the more prosperous parts of the world.
Thus far I can think of nothing. There are 100s of millions of people from all those regions with a proper claim in the international law which the UK still entirely recognises.
Refugees tend to come in waves and these always wax and wane even if there's a longer term trend. The flows from Syria and Yemen have died down a bit, and the Albanian anomaly was already dealt with this year (I really don't get why the government haven't done more to try to take credit for reducing numbers there).
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
Oh do be quiet
This country has imported 1.3 million people in two years. Voters are noticing. See @Cookie’s comments above
This level of immigration is literally unprecedented in our history. It has never happened before. People didn’t ask for it, polls show they don’t want it, Brexit was driven - in large part - by people trying to stop it
And your pitiful answer to all this is “just stop talking about it”
I'm not saying stop talking about it. That would be you with your "do be quiet".
Why does immigration being a genuine issue mean people should be able to bang on unchallenged about how we have to embrace far right talking points or they'll end up in power?
Part of the problem is that no one is saying, in politics, "For each head of net immigration, we need to build a bedroom, x percent of a hospital bed (staffed), y percent of a school place, z percent of pubic transport, alpha percent of road investment etc etc."
If you have a growing population, then you need more stuff. Because everyone needs a share.
And that should be balanced out by the other side of the equation: immigrants provide us with labour and services that help our country grow. Sadly, I fear we're well out of balance.
What is the point of the country growing if the existing population do not share in the proceeds of growth?
The sad, glib, and entirely true answer is that it enables Sunak to boast to his peers that he has succeeded. Growth as a concept has become a peacock's tail.
To get back on topic, I’d like it noted that my ferocious new consumption regimen - sporadic fasting, calorific deficit, restricted booze intake - is having an effect. I have lost almost 10kg in 6 weeks
No doubt experts will say that is too fast but wow it is fast. I can face myself in the mirror. I can see RIBS
I am about 5kg from my target weight. Then - god willing - I will have FINALLY lost all the Covid blob and be back to where I was from 2005-2020
I'm down 4kg since Christmas - no booze, 40 mins light cardio every day, desire to binge eat gone when I'm not drunk / hungover.
Watch me put it all back on next month...
Dude. Bro. Mate. Well done!!
Don’t stop now. It’s all worth it. I suggest we team up together and egg each other on. I am determined to hit my target weight by Feb 8th (when I’m flying again probably). That gives me 3 weeks to lose about 5kg. Do-able!!
Let’s be weight watcher buddies
I'm in too.
I'm down 20 lbs since I started my diet in October. Going to remain on this diet until the summer, then see where I'm at.
Very minimal exercise, not changed alcohol consumption, just increased my meat and cheese intake and cut out carbs.
Went out for lunch with colleagues yesterday and had a steak and a shandy at the pub, just offered my chips and onion rings to others.
Really developed a taste for blue steaks lately. Never been that big of a fan of steaks, but been progressively going rarer until I've reached blue and now I love them.
-4 here. Very frosty. The light across the estuary is magnificent. I am sitting in my drawing room, bathed in sunshine.
-4 here, too, remarkably. Gloriously bright and clear. The radiator in the room where I work has mysteriously packed up. I have tried all the youtube fixes without success. So I am working in the kitchen.
we had -9 to start , sunshine and blue sky , now up to 2.8
Tories on 20%. Fukkers on 12% pre Farage. Sunak to give triumphant presser about how thanks to his canny skills in the Commons he will now Stop The Boats.
Tories. The abyss becons.
2024 is lining up to be the most spectacular general election since 1945. It's entirely plausible that Labour could end up with a 200+ majority. The Tories could end sub-100. Neither is anything like guaranteed but we ought to consider it a realistic possibility.
Sunak has got himself into a position where he isn't trusted as either a populist or a managerial type; he's chasing the RefUK vote but not getting it because he's merely highlighting their arguments without sorting them; driving right will consolidate the anti-Tory tactical vote on the left (which is in any case twice the size of the combined Con+RefUK vote); and meanwhile, the economic squeeze is still on for a lot of people, strikes are rife and the NHS cannot cope with demand, backlog and strikes.
But the problem for the Tories isn't Sunak (or not just him). The problem is their party and its record. Changing leaders yet again (for who?) isn't going to solve that and may make it even worse.
Sunak is a huge part of the problem. He's been Chancellor or PM for all but a relative handful of days in nearly four years.
And its not just that the buck stops with him, its what he's chosen to do and his priorities.
Hunt is far, far better. Despite Sunak, not because of him.
Hunt is basically the same - and as a long-serving Health Sec would be blamed personally for many of the current NHS problems (not without some justification). I don't see much more of a spark of the front-man to him than there is to Sunak. Anyway, Hunt finished last with only 18 votes out of 357 in the summer 2022 leadership election; he has little personal support and I don't see the MPs dumping Sunak to replace him with what they hope might be a slightly better version of the same, in order to lose less badly.
Question for non-Tories and former Tory voters who have fallen out of love with the party. Who of the current crop of MPs with leadership ambitions would you want to see as future leader? Not in terms of who's most beatable, but who would be most tolerable as a future PM?
I know who TSE would go for (though he's in the Lords), but others? I struggle with this. Would probably opt for whoever looks most presentable on the global stage. Until a few weeks ago I thought that was Cleverly (LOL).
As a former Tory, this is a conversation I have had of late with friends still in the party and we have agreed there is no one. Looking at the Cabinet, I would argue Mel Stride is the least weak.
The trouble is that, in 2019, the Tory party was shorn of its best talent. If we still had names such as Dominic Grieve, David Gauke, Sam Gyimah, Phillip Lee, Guto Bebb, Rory Stewart and Oliver Letwin in the frame (with 5 years more experience under their belts) it might be a wholly different picture.
Under 50s, mind. Not under 30s or 18-25s. Not only are the Conservatives at a level that requires heroic changing of minds as these generations age, but RefCon combined is only 15% showing that appealing to RefUKers is unlikely to win them back anyone other than their pensioner vote.
Always funny how Lib Dem support is essentially the same at all ages.
The Scottish sub samples continue, however unreliably, to be sub optimal for the SNP.
That 25% of former Tory voters would now vote Reform still feels impossible, but no centrist One Nation Tory would (?!) so it feels as if a Tory split of some sort is only a matter of time. Since this seems both impossible and irresistible it will be worth watching.
A governing party would be happy with that mid term. Of course, it's probably not all Rishi's fault - the Truss was also a brand-destroying moment. But if Boris had remained there would have been no Truss. So the only question is now: would the Boris magic have persisted to the current time?
No, because it wasn't Sunak who brought Johnson down; it was Johnson who brought Johnson down. His behaviour, his cowardliness, his covering from friends and allies, his lying, his petty and grumpy responses to criticism. His time had run out.
One way or another, he would have gone. Whether Truss would have gone on to do all the damage she did to the Tory brand in each scenario is another matter but either way, that wasn't Sunak's doing.
Johnson - who, let's remember, might well have supported Remain - is by far the most responsible for destroying the Tories, from the Brexit vote to undermining any sensible deal from May to his treatment of rebel MPs (while expecting, as usual, to be given licence for his own rebellions), to his damage to the norms of politics, to his behaviour and policies in office, to the corruption of appointments and expectations.
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
Oh do be quiet
This country has imported 1.3 million people in two years. Voters are noticing. See @Cookie’s comments above
This level of immigration is literally unprecedented in our history. It has never happened before. People didn’t ask for it, polls show they don’t want it, Brexit was driven - in large part - by people trying to stop it
And your pitiful answer to all this is “just stop talking about it”
I'm not saying stop talking about it. That would be you with your "do be quiet".
Why does immigration being a genuine issue mean people should be able to bang on unchallenged about how we have to embrace far right talking points or they'll end up in power?
I don’t even understand your points any more. I believe the technical description of your commentary is, in PB terms, “vapid bilge”
Really? I didn't think I was being obtuse. The far right thrive on anti-immigrant sentiment. Their agenda is to exploit the (genuine) issue of immigration to increase this sentiment amongst the public. You agree with that, I'd have thought?
And it's relevant to a discussion on immigration. Why wouldn't it be? You yourself were just highlighting the risk of the far right surfing to power on the back of anti-immigrant sentiment. Ok, so I quibbled with your wording. You said the far right were certain to triumph, which is hyperbole, so I replaced with "risk".
That's a bit clearer now, I hope. So what's your point anyway?
Does it not follow that if your overwhelming concern is the rise of the far right, you ought to want immigration to be as low as possible?
No that doesn't follow. Low as possible means none. Nativist Fortress Britain. It makes little sense to try and ward off the far right by embracing their goals.
To get back on topic, I’d like it noted that my ferocious new consumption regimen - sporadic fasting, calorific deficit, restricted booze intake - is having an effect. I have lost almost 10kg in 6 weeks
No doubt experts will say that is too fast but wow it is fast. I can face myself in the mirror. I can see RIBS
I am about 5kg from my target weight. Then - god willing - I will have FINALLY lost all the Covid blob and be back to where I was from 2005-2020
I'm down 4kg since Christmas - no booze, 40 mins light cardio every day, desire to binge eat gone when I'm not drunk / hungover.
Watch me put it all back on next month...
Dude. Bro. Mate. Well done!!
Don’t stop now. It’s all worth it. I suggest we team up together and egg each other on. I am determined to hit my target weight by Feb 8th (when I’m flying again probably). That gives me 3 weeks to lose about 5kg. Do-able!!
Let’s be weight watcher buddies
I'm in too.
I'm down 20 lbs since I started my diet in October. Going to remain on this diet until the summer, then see where I'm at.
Very minimal exercise, not changed alcohol consumption, just increased my meat and cheese intake and cut out carbs.
Went out for lunch with colleagues yesterday and had a steak and a shandy at the pub, just offered my chips and onion rings to others.
Really developed a taste for blue steaks lately. Never been that big of a fan of steaks, but been progressively going rarer until I've reached blue and now I love them.
Male vs female dieting approaches are interesting. Men are much keener on proper crash diets, no half measures. Even in my own much smaller scale diet (I am aiming to get back from 70kg after Christmas to my usual 67kg) I am finding myself doing it in a hard core way. Fasting and missing meals, cutting out almost all carbs etc.
I don't know if there are stats on this but I get the impression a lot of men put on major weight in their early middle age (or from the 30s until the 50s), then many shed it later. Whereas women seem either to stay thin throughout, or slowly but steadily put on weight through life and stay there.
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
Oh do be quiet
This country has imported 1.3 million people in two years. Voters are noticing. See @Cookie’s comments above
This level of immigration is literally unprecedented in our history. It has never happened before. People didn’t ask for it, polls show they don’t want it, Brexit was driven - in large part - by people trying to stop it
And your pitiful answer to all this is “just stop talking about it”
I'm not saying stop talking about it. That would be you with your "do be quiet".
Why does immigration being a genuine issue mean people should be able to bang on unchallenged about how we have to embrace far right talking points or they'll end up in power?
I don’t even understand your points any more. I believe the technical description of your commentary is, in PB terms, “vapid bilge”
Really? I didn't think I was being obtuse. The far right thrive on anti-immigrant sentiment. Their agenda is to exploit the (genuine) issue of immigration to increase this sentiment amongst the public. You agree with that, I'd have thought?
And it's relevant to a discussion on immigration. Why wouldn't it be? You yourself were just highlighting the risk of the far right surfing to power on the back of anti-immigrant sentiment. Ok, so I quibbled with your wording. You said the far right were certain to triumph, which is hyperbole, so I replaced with "risk".
That's a bit clearer now, I hope. So what's your point anyway?
Just more vapid bilge, I’m afraid
But it is interesting how bewildered and confounded you are, by this issue: dwindling into incoherence like the robot in Kubrick’s 2001
Yawn. But ok, you just want to bang on and not engage with other viewpoints. I guess I can't stop you.
At the moment, your comments are either uninteresting, inane or incomprehensible. It's not a good basis for debate, sorry
I'm hoping this is a phase, as you can, when you are on form, be a good sparring partner
Perhaps it is post-Tenerife blues? - if so, my sympathies
To get back on topic, I’d like it noted that my ferocious new consumption regimen - sporadic fasting, calorific deficit, restricted booze intake - is having an effect. I have lost almost 10kg in 6 weeks
No doubt experts will say that is too fast but wow it is fast. I can face myself in the mirror. I can see RIBS
I am about 5kg from my target weight. Then - god willing - I will have FINALLY lost all the Covid blob and be back to where I was from 2005-2020
I'm down 4kg since Christmas - no booze, 40 mins light cardio every day, desire to binge eat gone when I'm not drunk / hungover.
Watch me put it all back on next month...
Dude. Bro. Mate. Well done!!
Don’t stop now. It’s all worth it. I suggest we team up together and egg each other on. I am determined to hit my target weight by Feb 8th (when I’m flying again probably). That gives me 3 weeks to lose about 5kg. Do-able!!
Let’s be weight watcher buddies
I'm in too.
I'm down 20 lbs since I started my diet in October. Going to remain on this diet until the summer, then see where I'm at.
Very minimal exercise, not changed alcohol consumption, just increased my meat and cheese intake and cut out carbs.
Went out for lunch with colleagues yesterday and had a steak and a shandy at the pub, just offered my chips and onion rings to others.
Really developed a taste for blue steaks lately. Never been that big of a fan of steaks, but been progressively going rarer until I've reached blue and now I love them.
Good for you - others may decry youi diet, but if it works for you and you feel good, well done
Here at least is one thing to unite at least half a ton of PBers. We are all trying to shift the lard
I was going to make the same point. Polling was more volatile than now, but I think everyone has amnesia about quite how unpopular Johnson was in the dying days of his premiership. And in my view it would have continued to deteriorate for Johnson: any Covid rally to the flag effect was gone, the similar Ukraine effect was declining, and we had inevitably poor local election and byelection results still to come along with a huge surge in inflation that hadn't yet happened, and rising interest rates. All of those would have hit Johnson's approval ratings and VI.
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
Oh do be quiet
This country has imported 1.3 million people in two years. Voters are noticing. See @Cookie’s comments above
This level of immigration is literally unprecedented in our history. It has never happened before. People didn’t ask for it, polls show they don’t want it, Brexit was driven - in large part - by people trying to stop it
And your pitiful answer to all this is “just stop talking about it”
I'm not saying stop talking about it. That would be you with your "do be quiet".
Why does immigration being a genuine issue mean people should be able to bang on unchallenged about how we have to embrace far right talking points or they'll end up in power?
I don’t even understand your points any more. I believe the technical description of your commentary is, in PB terms, “vapid bilge”
Really? I didn't think I was being obtuse. The far right thrive on anti-immigrant sentiment. Their agenda is to exploit the (genuine) issue of immigration to increase this sentiment amongst the public. You agree with that, I'd have thought?
And it's relevant to a discussion on immigration. Why wouldn't it be? You yourself were just highlighting the risk of the far right surfing to power on the back of anti-immigrant sentiment. Ok, so I quibbled with your wording. You said the far right were certain to triumph, which is hyperbole, so I replaced with "risk".
That's a bit clearer now, I hope. So what's your point anyway?
Does it not follow that if your overwhelming concern is the rise of the far right, you ought to want immigration to be as low as possible?
No that doesn't follow. Low as possible means none. Nativist Fortress Britain. It makes little sense to try and ward off the far right by embracing their goals.
If its net migration as low as possible, it could be Charles expelling everyone else. Although that might leave him in a bit of a quandary over how to get dressed in the mornings.
To get back on topic, I’d like it noted that my ferocious new consumption regimen - sporadic fasting, calorific deficit, restricted booze intake - is having an effect. I have lost almost 10kg in 6 weeks
No doubt experts will say that is too fast but wow it is fast. I can face myself in the mirror. I can see RIBS
I am about 5kg from my target weight. Then - god willing - I will have FINALLY lost all the Covid blob and be back to where I was from 2005-2020
I'm down 4kg since Christmas - no booze, 40 mins light cardio every day, desire to binge eat gone when I'm not drunk / hungover.
Watch me put it all back on next month...
Dude. Bro. Mate. Well done!!
Don’t stop now. It’s all worth it. I suggest we team up together and egg each other on. I am determined to hit my target weight by Feb 8th (when I’m flying again probably). That gives me 3 weeks to lose about 5kg. Do-able!!
Let’s be weight watcher buddies
I'm in too.
I'm down 20 lbs since I started my diet in October. Going to remain on this diet until the summer, then see where I'm at.
Very minimal exercise, not changed alcohol consumption, just increased my meat and cheese intake and cut out carbs.
Went out for lunch with colleagues yesterday and had a steak and a shandy at the pub, just offered my chips and onion rings to others.
Really developed a taste for blue steaks lately. Never been that big of a fan of steaks, but been progressively going rarer until I've reached blue and now I love them.
Good for you - others may decry youi diet, but if it works for you and you feel good, well done
Here at least is one thing to unite at least half a ton of PBers. We are all trying to shift the lard
To get back on topic, I’d like it noted that my ferocious new consumption regimen - sporadic fasting, calorific deficit, restricted booze intake - is having an effect. I have lost almost 10kg in 6 weeks
No doubt experts will say that is too fast but wow it is fast. I can face myself in the mirror. I can see RIBS
I am about 5kg from my target weight. Then - god willing - I will have FINALLY lost all the Covid blob and be back to where I was from 2005-2020
I'm down 4kg since Christmas - no booze, 40 mins light cardio every day, desire to binge eat gone when I'm not drunk / hungover.
Watch me put it all back on next month...
Dude. Bro. Mate. Well done!!
Don’t stop now. It’s all worth it. I suggest we team up together and egg each other on. I am determined to hit my target weight by Feb 8th (when I’m flying again probably). That gives me 3 weeks to lose about 5kg. Do-able!!
Let’s be weight watcher buddies
I'm in too.
I'm down 20 lbs since I started my diet in October. Going to remain on this diet until the summer, then see where I'm at.
Very minimal exercise, not changed alcohol consumption, just increased my meat and cheese intake and cut out carbs.
Went out for lunch with colleagues yesterday and had a steak and a shandy at the pub, just offered my chips and onion rings to others.
Really developed a taste for blue steaks lately. Never been that big of a fan of steaks, but been progressively going rarer until I've reached blue and now I love them.
Good for you - others may decry youi diet, but if it works for you and you feel good, well done
Here at least is one thing to unite at least half a ton of PBers. We are all trying to shift the lard
Half a ton of PBers is the problem.
But probably only equates to 5-6 PBers? May well be a few tonnes (I know what a tonne is, hazy t best on a ton - is it similar-ish?) of PBers actually dieting
I note TimS trying to get down to under 70kg, but I'm ~80kg and well within BMI healthy range, so I'd guess most of our PB dieters are either >80kg or short enough to look up to Sunak!
ETA: Ah, tonne and ton are quite close, only ~16kg/35lb in it
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
Oh do be quiet
This country has imported 1.3 million people in two years. Voters are noticing. See @Cookie’s comments above
This level of immigration is literally unprecedented in our history. It has never happened before. People didn’t ask for it, polls show they don’t want it, Brexit was driven - in large part - by people trying to stop it
And your pitiful answer to all this is “just stop talking about it”
I'm not saying stop talking about it. That would be you with your "do be quiet".
Why does immigration being a genuine issue mean people should be able to bang on unchallenged about how we have to embrace far right talking points or they'll end up in power?
Part of the problem is that no one is saying, in politics, "For each head of net immigration, we need to build a bedroom, x percent of a hospital bed (staffed), y percent of a school place, z percent of pubic transport, alpha percent of road investment etc etc."
If you have a growing population, then you need more stuff. Because everyone needs a share.
You have been known to make this point before and there's not a great deal wrong with it. Population size (which includes projected net immigration) should indeed be a factor in decisions on infrastructure and public services. Of course it should.
But from this it doesn't follow that our struggling NHS and our housing crisis and our generally creaking public realm is because of immigration. That's the far right spin. That's what I mean by a far right talking point. It's a pov which should be rejected not pandered to imo.
Besides, there are reasons why the UK government has kept the immigration taps on.
One large group of people are here because the way the UK makes university finances work is to have lots of foreign students paying high fees. The nature of their studies barely matters- we need the money they bring in. Or pay for universities ourselves.
Another large group of people are here because, without them, we can't staff health and social care systems. I suppose we could replace them with Britons in useless non-jobs. I suggest we start with travel journalists.
(Alternatively, we could acknowledge that that's where we are, be grateful that there are people prepared to prop up the British state and make proper provision for them.)
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
The problem is a lack of discussion about the consequences of the various options. And the slight conflict between "Mass immigration is wonderful" and "To protect the environment and keep everyone happy, we must build no houses or places of employment."
See also
The NHS is overwhelmed Our rivers are full of shit as the sewage system can’t cope We have a national housing shortage crisis
And so on, and so forth
And yet at the same time we are told this has nothing to do with mass immigration and the population of the UK rising by 1.3 million people in just two years. Even the dumbest voter no longer buys this bollocks
We have a shortage of housing because we refuse to let people build houses to cope with our population growth.
There's absolutely nothing wrong whatsoever with immigration, so long as we have sufficient investment to keep up with population growth.
The problem is when we have rising population and no investment.
So you don’t think 1.3 million in 2 years is too many? (Plus illegals, of course)
How many is too many then? 2 million a year? 5 million? Or is fhere no limit in your eyes, and all immigration of any levels is good and fine?
No limit in my eyes so long as investment and infrastructure grows correspondingly.
I couldn't care less if our population in England by the end of the century is 60 million, 100 million or a billion, so long as we invest accordingly and have growing living standards what bloody difference does it make?
Because most of us don’t want to see England’s green and pleasant land finally and completely covered with your fucking hideous Barratt Home red brick semis
You really are quite crazy. You know that, right?
If we increased the number of people living in apartments to French levels we could increase both housing provision and the size our green spaces at the same time.
No need for this kind of bickering at all.
Screw that.
Unless the people moving into apartments WANT to. Rather than being forced to do so as they can't afford the alternative.
The housing shortage is largely affecting young individuals and couples who cannot get on the property ladder, especially in the larger cities, and they are almost as a matter of course looking for apartments unless they live somewhere very cheap.
I didn't move from flat to house until I was on my 3rd move 11 years after buying my first flat, and I'm a lucky GenXer who could actually afford to be a first time buyer in 2000.
Just invert the argument to show how silly it is. Would knocking down Edinburgh's tenements and replacing them with Barratts worsen or improve the city's housing crisis?
That's not an inversion.
This country has an abundance of undeveloped land to build housing on, less than 5% of our country is developed for housing even including green spaces like gardens etc - we can easily build many more houses and barely affect how much greenery there is in this country.
There is no shortage of land, just a shortage of willpower to fix the problem. Its not about houses versus apartments, its about construction versus refusal to do so.
"Undeveloped" = farmland competing with Australian meat farmers, presuimably.
We need food here - and produced here - not imported from overseas.
There's a whole wide world we can import food from. I have steaks in my freezer that are labelled "product of Uruguay". As I'm currently on a carnivore diet, I recently started bulk-ordering meat from online and they're both cheaper and better quality than the British ones that I was previously buying from the supermarket.
There is not a whole wide world we can import houses from to put roofs over people's heads.
In a hierarchy of needs, putting our land to good use in housing should come well before food. Everyone needs both but food can be imported, houses can't.
I'd rather someone have food imported and put in their freezer, within their own home, than for someone to be homeless and freezing themselves.
You blubbering idiot , fine till there is a shortage or the boats cannot get through etc then you are eating yourself or your house dumbo.
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
The problem is a lack of discussion about the consequences of the various options. And the slight conflict between "Mass immigration is wonderful" and "To protect the environment and keep everyone happy, we must build no houses or places of employment."
See also
The NHS is overwhelmed Our rivers are full of shit as the sewage system can’t cope We have a national housing shortage crisis
And so on, and so forth
And yet at the same time we are told this has nothing to do with mass immigration and the population of the UK rising by 1.3 million people in just two years. Even the dumbest voter no longer buys this bollocks
We have a shortage of housing because we refuse to let people build houses to cope with our population growth.
There's absolutely nothing wrong whatsoever with immigration, so long as we have sufficient investment to keep up with population growth.
The problem is when we have rising population and no investment.
So you don’t think 1.3 million in 2 years is too many? (Plus illegals, of course)
How many is too many then? 2 million a year? 5 million? Or is fhere no limit in your eyes, and all immigration of any levels is good and fine?
No limit in my eyes so long as investment and infrastructure grows correspondingly.
I couldn't care less if our population in England by the end of the century is 60 million, 100 million or a billion, so long as we invest accordingly and have growing living standards what bloody difference does it make?
Because most of us don’t want to see England’s green and pleasant land finally and completely covered with your fucking hideous Barratt Home red brick semis
You really are quite crazy. You know that, right?
If we increased the number of people living in apartments to French levels we could increase both housing provision and the size our green spaces at the same time.
No need for this kind of bickering at all.
Screw that.
Unless the people moving into apartments WANT to. Rather than being forced to do so as they can't afford the alternative.
The housing shortage is largely affecting young individuals and couples who cannot get on the property ladder, especially in the larger cities, and they are almost as a matter of course looking for apartments unless they live somewhere very cheap.
I didn't move from flat to house until I was on my 3rd move 11 years after buying my first flat, and I'm a lucky GenXer who could actually afford to be a first time buyer in 2000.
Which is why we need to enable people to build more houses (almost) anywhere they want. Or apartments if they want that.
Let people choose what they want, don't artificially constrain the market.
That combined with a land value tax to replace some of our income tax burden would work nicely - financial reason not to be too profligate with land.
Remove some of the height restrictions in London by closing City Airport and liberalising planning and we could add several million units here by turning the whole of East London into a British Kowloon.
Move Heathrow offshore. Use the concrete gravity platform technology of Troll B etc - think a series of giant (million tons of concrete each) floating tables, sunk to the seabed.
The new town of Heathrow has the power, water etc for zillions of people. Public transport on a massive scale *already* built. Plus the collapse in pollution in West London.
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
Oh do be quiet
This country has imported 1.3 million people in two years. Voters are noticing. See @Cookie’s comments above
This level of immigration is literally unprecedented in our history. It has never happened before. People didn’t ask for it, polls show they don’t want it, Brexit was driven - in large part - by people trying to stop it
And your pitiful answer to all this is “just stop talking about it”
I'm not saying stop talking about it. That would be you with your "do be quiet".
Why does immigration being a genuine issue mean people should be able to bang on unchallenged about how we have to embrace far right talking points or they'll end up in power?
I don’t even understand your points any more. I believe the technical description of your commentary is, in PB terms, “vapid bilge”
Really? I didn't think I was being obtuse. The far right thrive on anti-immigrant sentiment. Their agenda is to exploit the (genuine) issue of immigration to increase this sentiment amongst the public. You agree with that, I'd have thought?
And it's relevant to a discussion on immigration. Why wouldn't it be? You yourself were just highlighting the risk of the far right surfing to power on the back of anti-immigrant sentiment. Ok, so I quibbled with your wording. You said the far right were certain to triumph, which is hyperbole, so I replaced with "risk".
That's a bit clearer now, I hope. So what's your point anyway?
Does it not follow that if your overwhelming concern is the rise of the far right, you ought to want immigration to be as low as possible?
No that doesn't follow. Low as possible means none. Nativist Fortress Britain. It makes little sense to try and ward off the far right by embracing their goals.
Low immigration is a moderate position that used to be shared by every party in this country.
The goal of the far right in Europe is increasingly becoming repatration on a massive scale. From their perspective, further high levels of immigration might actually be welcome in the short term because it will help them gain power.
Tories on 20%. Fukkers on 12% pre Farage. Sunak to give triumphant presser about how thanks to his canny skills in the Commons he will now Stop The Boats.
Tories. The abyss becons.
2024 is lining up to be the most spectacular general election since 1945. It's entirely plausible that Labour could end up with a 200+ majority. The Tories could end sub-100. Neither is anything like guaranteed but we ought to consider it a realistic possibility.
Sunak has got himself into a position where he isn't trusted as either a populist or a managerial type; he's chasing the RefUK vote but not getting it because he's merely highlighting their arguments without sorting them; driving right will consolidate the anti-Tory tactical vote on the left (which is in any case twice the size of the combined Con+RefUK vote); and meanwhile, the economic squeeze is still on for a lot of people, strikes are rife and the NHS cannot cope with demand, backlog and strikes.
But the problem for the Tories isn't Sunak (or not just him). The problem is their party and its record. Changing leaders yet again (for who?) isn't going to solve that and may make it even worse.
Sunak is a huge part of the problem. He's been Chancellor or PM for all but a relative handful of days in nearly four years.
And its not just that the buck stops with him, its what he's chosen to do and his priorities.
Hunt is far, far better. Despite Sunak, not because of him.
Hunt is basically the same - and as a long-serving Health Sec would be blamed personally for many of the current NHS problems (not without some justification). I don't see much more of a spark of the front-man to him than there is to Sunak. Anyway, Hunt finished last with only 18 votes out of 357 in the summer 2022 leadership election; he has little personal support and I don't see the MPs dumping Sunak to replace him with what they hope might be a slightly better version of the same, in order to lose less badly.
Question for non-Tories and former Tory voters who have fallen out of love with the party. Who of the current crop of MPs with leadership ambitions would you want to see as future leader? Not in terms of who's most beatable, but who would be most tolerable as a future PM?
I know who TSE would go for (though he's in the Lords), but others? I struggle with this. Would probably opt for whoever looks most presentable on the global stage. Until a few weeks ago I thought that was Cleverly (LOL).
As a former Tory, this is a conversation I have had of late with friends still in the party and we have agreed there is no one. Looking at the Cabinet, I would argue Mel Stride is the least weak.
The trouble is that, in 2019, the Tory party was shorn of its best talent. If we still had names such as Dominic Grieve, David Gauke, Sam Gyimah, Phillip Lee, Guto Bebb, Rory Stewart and Oliver Letwin in the frame (with 5 years more experience under their belts) it might be a wholly different picture.
The fact that several of these names have since either properly joined, or talked about working with, Lib Dems and Labour, I'd suggest they wouldn't be very strong Tory PMs....
My theory is the post election leadership candidates will be:
Steve Barclay Suella Liz Truss Tom T Gove Dowden
I think Jenrick, Stride and Hancock are are in danger of losing their seats, but if not, then add them in the mix.
I foresee Barclay, Tom T, Gove and Suella emerging from that.
Frankly I think any of these would be far better than Sunak.
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
The problem is a lack of discussion about the consequences of the various options. And the slight conflict between "Mass immigration is wonderful" and "To protect the environment and keep everyone happy, we must build no houses or places of employment."
See also
The NHS is overwhelmed Our rivers are full of shit as the sewage system can’t cope We have a national housing shortage crisis
And so on, and so forth
And yet at the same time we are told this has nothing to do with mass immigration and the population of the UK rising by 1.3 million people in just two years. Even the dumbest voter no longer buys this bollocks
We have a shortage of housing because we refuse to let people build houses to cope with our population growth.
There's absolutely nothing wrong whatsoever with immigration, so long as we have sufficient investment to keep up with population growth.
The problem is when we have rising population and no investment.
So you don’t think 1.3 million in 2 years is too many? (Plus illegals, of course)
How many is too many then? 2 million a year? 5 million? Or is fhere no limit in your eyes, and all immigration of any levels is good and fine?
No limit in my eyes so long as investment and infrastructure grows correspondingly.
I couldn't care less if our population in England by the end of the century is 60 million, 100 million or a billion, so long as we invest accordingly and have growing living standards what bloody difference does it make?
Because most of us don’t want to see England’s green and pleasant land finally and completely covered with your fucking hideous Barratt Home red brick semis
You really are quite crazy. You know that, right?
If we increased the number of people living in apartments to French levels we could increase both housing provision and the size our green spaces at the same time.
No need for this kind of bickering at all.
Screw that.
Unless the people moving into apartments WANT to. Rather than being forced to do so as they can't afford the alternative.
The housing shortage is largely affecting young individuals and couples who cannot get on the property ladder, especially in the larger cities, and they are almost as a matter of course looking for apartments unless they live somewhere very cheap.
I didn't move from flat to house until I was on my 3rd move 11 years after buying my first flat, and I'm a lucky GenXer who could actually afford to be a first time buyer in 2000.
Just invert the argument to show how silly it is. Would knocking down Edinburgh's tenements and replacing them with Barratts worsen or improve the city's housing crisis?
That's not an inversion.
This country has an abundance of undeveloped land to build housing on, less than 5% of our country is developed for housing even including green spaces like gardens etc - we can easily build many more houses and barely affect how much greenery there is in this country.
There is no shortage of land, just a shortage of willpower to fix the problem. Its not about houses versus apartments, its about construction versus refusal to do so.
"Undeveloped" = farmland competing with Australian meat farmers, presuimably.
We need food here - and produced here - not imported from overseas.
Why?
Why do we need 70% of our land dedicated to food and 5% dedicated to housing?
If we were to treble let alone marginally increase our land dedicated to housing we could still have 60% of our land dedicated to food. Why is that insufficient?
How about our farmers just become more intensive and competitive?
Some people are not morons and do not like eating intensive cheap shit
It might be worth a look at Q1/Q2 again, on the basis that if the Lords block Rwanda Sunak could try and call a “stop the boats” election.
I think this is much less likely than November, given Sunak’s sensibilities seem to be to play for time, and it might not allow time for another giveaway budget, but might be one to watch.
To get back on topic, I’d like it noted that my ferocious new consumption regimen - sporadic fasting, calorific deficit, restricted booze intake - is having an effect. I have lost almost 10kg in 6 weeks
No doubt experts will say that is too fast but wow it is fast. I can face myself in the mirror. I can see RIBS
I am about 5kg from my target weight. Then - god willing - I will have FINALLY lost all the Covid blob and be back to where I was from 2005-2020
I'm down 4kg since Christmas - no booze, 40 mins light cardio every day, desire to binge eat gone when I'm not drunk / hungover.
Watch me put it all back on next month...
Dude. Bro. Mate. Well done!!
Don’t stop now. It’s all worth it. I suggest we team up together and egg each other on. I am determined to hit my target weight by Feb 8th (when I’m flying again probably). That gives me 3 weeks to lose about 5kg. Do-able!!
Let’s be weight watcher buddies
I'm in too.
I'm down 20 lbs since I started my diet in October. Going to remain on this diet until the summer, then see where I'm at.
Very minimal exercise, not changed alcohol consumption, just increased my meat and cheese intake and cut out carbs.
Went out for lunch with colleagues yesterday and had a steak and a shandy at the pub, just offered my chips and onion rings to others.
Really developed a taste for blue steaks lately. Never been that big of a fan of steaks, but been progressively going rarer until I've reached blue and now I love them.
Male vs female dieting approaches are interesting. Men are much keener on proper crash diets, no half measures. Even in my own much smaller scale diet (I am aiming to get back from 70kg after Christmas to my usual 67kg) I am finding myself doing it in a hard core way. Fasting and missing meals, cutting out almost all carbs etc.
I don't know if there are stats on this but I get the impression a lot of men put on major weight in their early middle age (or from the 30s until the 50s), then many shed it later. Whereas women seem either to stay thin throughout, or slowly but steadily put on weight through life and stay there.
Fasting is easier for a lot of people because it is so simple. JUST DON'T EAT
Counting calories and weighing tofu and eating only endives between 3pm and tea time is far too fiddly and people, understandably, give up: it is simultaneously joyless and hard mental work
Also it is SLOW. And this is the second advantage of fasting. With fasts you see results quickly, you drop kilos in days, your bones start re-emerging in a week or two, and that is encouraging, and that makes you want to carry on, rather than give up at the slow progress
The disadvantage of fasting is that is is quite easy to put it back on in a jiffy. That's when and why you need to be vigilant.
My old method was, whenever I went over 82kg I simply didn't eat until it went back under 82kg, and I weighed myself daily. Simple but very efficient, it worked for 15 years until the damn pandemic. I intend to return to this regime once - if - when - I hit my target
I've also noted that my blood pressure is way down. Another plus
Right. Now work. And black tea, Then some HIIT, Then I've earned a G&T
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
Oh do be quiet
This country has imported 1.3 million people in two years. Voters are noticing. See @Cookie’s comments above
This level of immigration is literally unprecedented in our history. It has never happened before. People didn’t ask for it, polls show they don’t want it, Brexit was driven - in large part - by people trying to stop it
And your pitiful answer to all this is “just stop talking about it”
I'm not saying stop talking about it. That would be you with your "do be quiet".
Why does immigration being a genuine issue mean people should be able to bang on unchallenged about how we have to embrace far right talking points or they'll end up in power?
Part of the problem is that no one is saying, in politics, "For each head of net immigration, we need to build a bedroom, x percent of a hospital bed (staffed), y percent of a school place, z percent of pubic transport, alpha percent of road investment etc etc."
If you have a growing population, then you need more stuff. Because everyone needs a share.
You have been known to make this point before and there's not a great deal wrong with it. Population size (which includes projected net immigration) should indeed be a factor in decisions on infrastructure and public services. Of course it should.
But from this it doesn't follow that our struggling NHS and our housing crisis and our generally creaking public realm is because of immigration. That's the far right spin. That's what I mean by a far right talking point. It's a pov which should be rejected not pandered to imo.
Wrong.
The planning process, policies and mind set of government are still set to an age of a gently increasing or static population.
If we *had* had no net immigration, then we wouldn't need to do more than renew existing infrastructure.
We are now 8 million homes behind. And it is getting worse.
The reason we need more houses and more of everything else is immigration. This isn't blaming anyone. People need somewhere to sleep. And everything else.
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
The problem is a lack of discussion about the consequences of the various options. And the slight conflict between "Mass immigration is wonderful" and "To protect the environment and keep everyone happy, we must build no houses or places of employment."
See also
The NHS is overwhelmed Our rivers are full of shit as the sewage system can’t cope We have a national housing shortage crisis
And so on, and so forth
And yet at the same time we are told this has nothing to do with mass immigration and the population of the UK rising by 1.3 million people in just two years. Even the dumbest voter no longer buys this bollocks
We have a shortage of housing because we refuse to let people build houses to cope with our population growth.
There's absolutely nothing wrong whatsoever with immigration, so long as we have sufficient investment to keep up with population growth.
The problem is when we have rising population and no investment.
So you don’t think 1.3 million in 2 years is too many? (Plus illegals, of course)
How many is too many then? 2 million a year? 5 million? Or is fhere no limit in your eyes, and all immigration of any levels is good and fine?
No limit in my eyes so long as investment and infrastructure grows correspondingly.
I couldn't care less if our population in England by the end of the century is 60 million, 100 million or a billion, so long as we invest accordingly and have growing living standards what bloody difference does it make?
Because most of us don’t want to see England’s green and pleasant land finally and completely covered with your fucking hideous Barratt Home red brick semis
You really are quite crazy. You know that, right?
If we increased the number of people living in apartments to French levels we could increase both housing provision and the size our green spaces at the same time.
No need for this kind of bickering at all.
Screw that.
Unless the people moving into apartments WANT to. Rather than being forced to do so as they can't afford the alternative.
The housing shortage is largely affecting young individuals and couples who cannot get on the property ladder, especially in the larger cities, and they are almost as a matter of course looking for apartments unless they live somewhere very cheap.
I didn't move from flat to house until I was on my 3rd move 11 years after buying my first flat, and I'm a lucky GenXer who could actually afford to be a first time buyer in 2000.
Which is why we need to enable people to build more houses (almost) anywhere they want. Or apartments if they want that.
Let people choose what they want, don't artificially constrain the market.
That combined with a land value tax to replace some of our income tax burden would work nicely - financial reason not to be too profligate with land.
Remove some of the height restrictions in London by closing City Airport and liberalising planning and we could add several million units here by turning the whole of East London into a British Kowloon.
Move Heathrow offshore. Use the concrete gravity platform technology of Troll B etc - think a series of giant (million tons of concrete each) floating tables, sunk to the seabed.
The new town of Heathrow has the power, water etc for zillions of people. Public transport on a massive scale *already* built. Plus the collapse in pollution in West London.
One topic, along with Ukraine, where Boris had the right idea.
Tories on 20%. Fukkers on 12% pre Farage. Sunak to give triumphant presser about how thanks to his canny skills in the Commons he will now Stop The Boats.
Tories. The abyss becons.
2024 is lining up to be the most spectacular general election since 1945. It's entirely plausible that Labour could end up with a 200+ majority. The Tories could end sub-100. Neither is anything like guaranteed but we ought to consider it a realistic possibility.
Sunak has got himself into a position where he isn't trusted as either a populist or a managerial type; he's chasing the RefUK vote but not getting it because he's merely highlighting their arguments without sorting them; driving right will consolidate the anti-Tory tactical vote on the left (which is in any case twice the size of the combined Con+RefUK vote); and meanwhile, the economic squeeze is still on for a lot of people, strikes are rife and the NHS cannot cope with demand, backlog and strikes.
But the problem for the Tories isn't Sunak (or not just him). The problem is their party and its record. Changing leaders yet again (for who?) isn't going to solve that and may make it even worse.
Sunak is a huge part of the problem. He's been Chancellor or PM for all but a relative handful of days in nearly four years.
And its not just that the buck stops with him, its what he's chosen to do and his priorities.
Hunt is far, far better. Despite Sunak, not because of him.
Hunt is basically the same - and as a long-serving Health Sec would be blamed personally for many of the current NHS problems (not without some justification). I don't see much more of a spark of the front-man to him than there is to Sunak. Anyway, Hunt finished last with only 18 votes out of 357 in the summer 2022 leadership election; he has little personal support and I don't see the MPs dumping Sunak to replace him with what they hope might be a slightly better version of the same, in order to lose less badly.
Question for non-Tories and former Tory voters who have fallen out of love with the party. Who of the current crop of MPs with leadership ambitions would you want to see as future leader? Not in terms of who's most beatable, but who would be most tolerable as a future PM?
I know who TSE would go for (though he's in the Lords), but others? I struggle with this. Would probably opt for whoever looks most presentable on the global stage. Until a few weeks ago I thought that was Cleverly (LOL).
As a former Tory, this is a conversation I have had of late with friends still in the party and we have agreed there is no one. Looking at the Cabinet, I would argue Mel Stride is the least weak.
The trouble is that, in 2019, the Tory party was shorn of its best talent. If we still had names such as Dominic Grieve, David Gauke, Sam Gyimah, Phillip Lee, Guto Bebb, Rory Stewart and Oliver Letwin in the frame (with 5 years more experience under their belts) it might be a wholly different picture.
The fact that several of these names have since either properly joined, or talked about working with, Lib Dems and Labour, I'd suggest they wouldn't be very strong Tory PMs....
My theory is the post election leadership candidates will be:
Steve Barclay Suella Liz Truss Tom T Gove Dowden
I think Jenrick, Stride and Hancock are are in danger of losing their seats, but if not, then add them in the mix.
I foresee Barclay, Tom T, Gove and Suella emerging from that.
Frankly I think any of these would be far better than Sunak.
Badenoch and Mordaunt (if the latter keeps her seat) have to be in that mix, surely?
If the final 4 is as per your list, then god help us, because that strikes me as a certainty that Suella will be LOTO.
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
Oh do be quiet
This country has imported 1.3 million people in two years. Voters are noticing. See @Cookie’s comments above
This level of immigration is literally unprecedented in our history. It has never happened before. People didn’t ask for it, polls show they don’t want it, Brexit was driven - in large part - by people trying to stop it
And your pitiful answer to all this is “just stop talking about it”
I'm not saying stop talking about it. That would be you with your "do be quiet".
Why does immigration being a genuine issue mean people should be able to bang on unchallenged about how we have to embrace far right talking points or they'll end up in power?
Part of the problem is that no one is saying, in politics, "For each head of net immigration, we need to build a bedroom, x percent of a hospital bed (staffed), y percent of a school place, z percent of pubic transport, alpha percent of road investment etc etc."
If you have a growing population, then you need more stuff. Because everyone needs a share.
You have been known to make this point before and there's not a great deal wrong with it. Population size (which includes projected net immigration) should indeed be a factor in decisions on infrastructure and public services. Of course it should.
But from this it doesn't follow that our struggling NHS and our housing crisis and our generally creaking public realm is because of immigration. That's the far right spin. That's what I mean by a far right talking point. It's a pov which should be rejected not pandered to imo.
Wrong.
The planning process, policies and mind set of government are still set to an age of a gently increasing or static population.
If we *had* had no net immigration, then we wouldn't need to do more than renew existing infrastructure.
We are now 8 million homes behind. And it is getting worse.
The reason we need more houses and more of everything else is immigration. This isn't blaming anyone. People need somewhere to sleep. And everything else.
Yep, the fault is the planning system etc that you named.
We need to adapt to the world as it is, not the world as we pretend it is.
Our population is higher than it was and growing. That means massive investment is needed, just to stand still.
No reason not to do the investment, but we need to.
Part of the problem is an attitude that has viewed migrants through a lens of "well they're not pensioners, so not demanding pension or much healthcare, so even someone on minimum wage is productive" - while completely neglecting the counter investment side of the equation.
Tories on 20%. Fukkers on 12% pre Farage. Sunak to give triumphant presser about how thanks to his canny skills in the Commons he will now Stop The Boats.
Tories. The abyss becons.
2024 is lining up to be the most spectacular general election since 1945. It's entirely plausible that Labour could end up with a 200+ majority. The Tories could end sub-100. Neither is anything like guaranteed but we ought to consider it a realistic possibility.
Sunak has got himself into a position where he isn't trusted as either a populist or a managerial type; he's chasing the RefUK vote but not getting it because he's merely highlighting their arguments without sorting them; driving right will consolidate the anti-Tory tactical vote on the left (which is in any case twice the size of the combined Con+RefUK vote); and meanwhile, the economic squeeze is still on for a lot of people, strikes are rife and the NHS cannot cope with demand, backlog and strikes.
But the problem for the Tories isn't Sunak (or not just him). The problem is their party and its record. Changing leaders yet again (for who?) isn't going to solve that and may make it even worse.
Sunak is a huge part of the problem. He's been Chancellor or PM for all but a relative handful of days in nearly four years.
And its not just that the buck stops with him, its what he's chosen to do and his priorities.
Hunt is far, far better. Despite Sunak, not because of him.
Hunt is basically the same - and as a long-serving Health Sec would be blamed personally for many of the current NHS problems (not without some justification). I don't see much more of a spark of the front-man to him than there is to Sunak. Anyway, Hunt finished last with only 18 votes out of 357 in the summer 2022 leadership election; he has little personal support and I don't see the MPs dumping Sunak to replace him with what they hope might be a slightly better version of the same, in order to lose less badly.
Question for non-Tories and former Tory voters who have fallen out of love with the party. Who of the current crop of MPs with leadership ambitions would you want to see as future leader? Not in terms of who's most beatable, but who would be most tolerable as a future PM?
I know who TSE would go for (though he's in the Lords), but others? I struggle with this. Would probably opt for whoever looks most presentable on the global stage. Until a few weeks ago I thought that was Cleverly (LOL).
As a former Tory, this is a conversation I have had of late with friends still in the party and we have agreed there is no one. Looking at the Cabinet, I would argue Mel Stride is the least weak.
The trouble is that, in 2019, the Tory party was shorn of its best talent. If we still had names such as Dominic Grieve, David Gauke, Sam Gyimah, Phillip Lee, Guto Bebb, Rory Stewart and Oliver Letwin in the frame (with 5 years more experience under their belts) it might be a wholly different picture.
The fact that several of these names have since either properly joined, or talked about working with, Lib Dems and Labour, I'd suggest they wouldn't be very strong Tory PMs....
My theory is the post election leadership candidates will be:
Steve Barclay Suella Liz Truss Tom T Gove Dowden
I think Jenrick, Stride and Hancock are are in danger of losing their seats, but if not, then add them in the mix.
I foresee Barclay, Tom T, Gove and Suella emerging from that.
Frankly I think any of these would be far better than Sunak.
Hancock is standing down and in any case is clearly a discredited figure now within politics. Nick Timothy has been chosen to replace him as Tory candidate in West Suffolk (23k / 45% majority; should be retainable even in an a Blair-like landslide).
Under 50s, mind. Not under 30s or 18-25s. Not only are the Conservatives at a level that requires heroic changing of minds as these generations age, but RefCon combined is only 15% showing that appealing to RefUKers is unlikely to win them back anyone other than their pensioner vote.
Always funny how Lib Dem support is essentially the same at all ages.
There's a whole wide world we can import food from. I have steaks in my freezer that are labelled "product of Uruguay". As I'm currently on a carnivore diet, I recently started bulk-ordering meat from online and they're both cheaper and better quality than the British ones that I was previously buying from the supermarket.
There is not a whole wide world we can import houses from to put roofs over people's heads.
In a hierarchy of needs, putting our land to good use in housing should come well before food. Everyone needs both but food can be imported, houses can't.
I'd rather someone have food imported and put in their freezer, within their own home, than for someone to be homeless and freezing themselves.
You blubbering idiot , fine till there is a shortage or the boats cannot get through etc then you are eating yourself or your house dumbo.
If there's a shortage or boats can't get through then all the more reason to have a home of your own and a well-stocked freezer.
-4 here. Very frosty. The light across the estuary is magnificent. I am sitting in my drawing room, bathed in sunshine.
-4 here, too, remarkably. Gloriously bright and clear. The radiator in the room where I work has mysteriously packed up. I have tried all the youtube fixes without success. So I am working in the kitchen.
we had -9 to start , sunshine and blue sky , now up to 2.8
Still below zero here. Really unusally cold. Manchester might not have the balmiest climate, but nor does it often get cold.
To get back on topic, I’d like it noted that my ferocious new consumption regimen - sporadic fasting, calorific deficit, restricted booze intake - is having an effect. I have lost almost 10kg in 6 weeks
No doubt experts will say that is too fast but wow it is fast. I can face myself in the mirror. I can see RIBS
I am about 5kg from my target weight. Then - god willing - I will have FINALLY lost all the Covid blob and be back to where I was from 2005-2020
I'm down 4kg since Christmas - no booze, 40 mins light cardio every day, desire to binge eat gone when I'm not drunk / hungover.
Watch me put it all back on next month...
Dude. Bro. Mate. Well done!!
Don’t stop now. It’s all worth it. I suggest we team up together and egg each other on. I am determined to hit my target weight by Feb 8th (when I’m flying again probably). That gives me 3 weeks to lose about 5kg. Do-able!!
Let’s be weight watcher buddies
I'm in too.
I'm down 20 lbs since I started my diet in October. Going to remain on this diet until the summer, then see where I'm at.
Very minimal exercise, not changed alcohol consumption, just increased my meat and cheese intake and cut out carbs.
Went out for lunch with colleagues yesterday and had a steak and a shandy at the pub, just offered my chips and onion rings to others.
Really developed a taste for blue steaks lately. Never been that big of a fan of steaks, but been progressively going rarer until I've reached blue and now I love them.
Good for you - others may decry youi diet, but if it works for you and you feel good, well done
Here at least is one thing to unite at least half a ton of PBers. We are all trying to shift the lard
Half a ton of PBers is the problem.
But probably only equates to 5-6 PBers? May well be a few tonnes (I know what a tonne is, hazy t best on a ton - is it similar-ish?) of PBers actually dieting
I note TimS trying to get down to under 70kg, but I'm ~80kg and well within BMI healthy range, so I'd guess most of our PB dieters are either >80kg or short enough to look up to Sunak!
ETA: Ah, tonne and ton are quite close, only ~16kg/35lb in it
I am doing dry January and gone vegetarian too for the month (will make an exception to both for my Burns Night!). Not specifically trying to lose weight, but have lost a couple of kg.
My blood pressure has got dramatically better by about 20mmHg for both systolic and diastolic readings, which has given me pause for thought. I don't mind staying vegetarian, but teetotal? The horror! The horror!
To get back on topic, I’d like it noted that my ferocious new consumption regimen - sporadic fasting, calorific deficit, restricted booze intake - is having an effect. I have lost almost 10kg in 6 weeks
No doubt experts will say that is too fast but wow it is fast. I can face myself in the mirror. I can see RIBS
I am about 5kg from my target weight. Then - god willing - I will have FINALLY lost all the Covid blob and be back to where I was from 2005-2020
I'm down 4kg since Christmas - no booze, 40 mins light cardio every day, desire to binge eat gone when I'm not drunk / hungover.
Watch me put it all back on next month...
Dude. Bro. Mate. Well done!!
Don’t stop now. It’s all worth it. I suggest we team up together and egg each other on. I am determined to hit my target weight by Feb 8th (when I’m flying again probably). That gives me 3 weeks to lose about 5kg. Do-able!!
Let’s be weight watcher buddies
Pb weight watchers is on!
For me it's entirely about skipping the wine in the evenings (600 calories)
From that, I have less desire to snack (another 400 calories) plus more energy in the week for light cardio.
Considered ozempic but I just had to drop the wine...
To get back on topic, I’d like it noted that my ferocious new consumption regimen - sporadic fasting, calorific deficit, restricted booze intake - is having an effect. I have lost almost 10kg in 6 weeks
No doubt experts will say that is too fast but wow it is fast. I can face myself in the mirror. I can see RIBS
I am about 5kg from my target weight. Then - god willing - I will have FINALLY lost all the Covid blob and be back to where I was from 2005-2020
I'm down 4kg since Christmas - no booze, 40 mins light cardio every day, desire to binge eat gone when I'm not drunk / hungover.
Watch me put it all back on next month...
Dude. Bro. Mate. Well done!!
Don’t stop now. It’s all worth it. I suggest we team up together and egg each other on. I am determined to hit my target weight by Feb 8th (when I’m flying again probably). That gives me 3 weeks to lose about 5kg. Do-able!!
Let’s be weight watcher buddies
I'm in too.
I'm down 20 lbs since I started my diet in October. Going to remain on this diet until the summer, then see where I'm at.
Very minimal exercise, not changed alcohol consumption, just increased my meat and cheese intake and cut out carbs.
Went out for lunch with colleagues yesterday and had a steak and a shandy at the pub, just offered my chips and onion rings to others.
Really developed a taste for blue steaks lately. Never been that big of a fan of steaks, but been progressively going rarer until I've reached blue and now I love them.
Male vs female dieting approaches are interesting. Men are much keener on proper crash diets, no half measures. Even in my own much smaller scale diet (I am aiming to get back from 70kg after Christmas to my usual 67kg) I am finding myself doing it in a hard core way. Fasting and missing meals, cutting out almost all carbs etc.
I don't know if there are stats on this but I get the impression a lot of men put on major weight in their early middle age (or from the 30s until the 50s), then many shed it later. Whereas women seem either to stay thin throughout, or slowly but steadily put on weight through life and stay there.
Fasting is easier for a lot of people because it is so simple. JUST DON'T EAT
Counting calories and weighing tofu and eating only endives between 3pm and tea time is far too fiddly and people, understandably, give up: it is simultaneously joyless and hard mental work
Also it is SLOW. And this is the second advantage of fasting. With fasts you see results quickly, you drop kilos in days, your bones start re-emerging in a week or two, and that is encouraging, and that makes you want to carry on, rather than give up at the slow progress
The disadvantage of fasting is that is is quite easy to put it back on in a jiffy. That's when and why you need to be vigilant.
My old method was, whenever I went over 82kg I simply didn't eat until it went back under 82kg, and I weighed myself daily. Simple but very efficient, it worked for 15 years until the damn pandemic. I intend to return to this regime once - if - when - I hit my target
I've also noted that my blood pressure is way down. Another plus
Right. Now work. And black tea, Then some HIIT, Then I've earned a G&T
You don't have to weigh tofu. It has next to no calories, and you won't be tempted to eat too much of it anyway.
Probably better than fasting, if you can stomach it. Keeps up the protein intake.
Under 50s, mind. Not under 30s or 18-25s. Not only are the Conservatives at a level that requires heroic changing of minds as these generations age, but RefCon combined is only 15% showing that appealing to RefUKers is unlikely to win them back anyone other than their pensioner vote.
Always funny how Lib Dem support is essentially the same at all ages.
That is startling. I wonder if other posters are seeing that generational divide?
Too busy right now to look but may investigate later.
Under 50s, mind. Not under 30s or 18-25s. Not only are the Conservatives at a level that requires heroic changing of minds as these generations age, but RefCon combined is only 15% showing that appealing to RefUKers is unlikely to win them back anyone other than their pensioner vote.
Always funny how Lib Dem support is essentially the same at all ages.
That's because if you're voting Lib Dem in your 20s, you're already 50+ in your ways.
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
Oh do be quiet
This country has imported 1.3 million people in two years. Voters are noticing. See @Cookie’s comments above
This level of immigration is literally unprecedented in our history. It has never happened before. People didn’t ask for it, polls show they don’t want it, Brexit was driven - in large part - by people trying to stop it
And your pitiful answer to all this is “just stop talking about it”
I'm not saying stop talking about it. That would be you with your "do be quiet".
Why does immigration being a genuine issue mean people should be able to bang on unchallenged about how we have to embrace far right talking points or they'll end up in power?
I'm not sure I follow. Your logic appears to be 'we mustn't be against immigration or the far right will get in.' Which seems to be not only the wrong way around, but also counter-productive.
The logic goes: 1 - Voters are really concerned about such really quite large and noticeable numbers of immigration. (Almost always they won't have an issue with individual immigrants, but they don't want to import quite so many people, for many reasons e.g. impact on housing, impact on their kids schools.) 2 - Most parties either refuse to talk about immigration or talk about it but don't actually do anything about it. 3 - The only parties which appear to care about the issue are far right ones. 4 - Therefore people vote far right.
Most people aren't particularly far right in any sense. But most people don't see the risk of inflaming far right sentiment as a worse bogey than all others. If the far right are the only parties who will address the issue they care about, people will vote for them.
Step 3 doesn't always go that way. There is that far left party in Germany which is also against immigration. And people are voting for that party too.
That isn't my logic. Immigration is a genuine issue. Esp in a time of large people movements. We need policies to control it and address people's reasonable concerns.
This is perfectly compatible with recognizing the need to not pander to far right talking points about the country being 'swamped' and 'ruined' and a 'soft touch for foreigners' etc.
Too much of that emotive b/s and Leon's fears (that the far right will gain real traction here) might be realised.
Well swamped is clearly an emotive word. But how would you describe what is happening? There are clearly an awful lot of new people arriving. More than at any time in history, in either absolute or relative terms.
You appear to be suggesting that talking about immigration is a bigger problem than immigration, because the former plays into the hands of the far right. I would argue the opposite - that not talking about immigration plays into the hands of the far right.
I'm not suggesting that. There's talking about immigration and there's talking about immigration. Eg:
"Immigration in recent years has been too high. We need to bring it down to a sustainable level. Let's discuss how."
"The country just can't cope with all this immigration. We're sinking under the weight of it. We have a crisis in public services and that's why. Too many immigrants."
The first sets up the debate we want. The second the one we don't want. The second is the far right populist framing.
Under 50s, mind. Not under 30s or 18-25s. Not only are the Conservatives at a level that requires heroic changing of minds as these generations age, but RefCon combined is only 15% showing that appealing to RefUKers is unlikely to win them back anyone other than their pensioner vote.
Always funny how Lib Dem support is essentially the same at all ages.
That is startling. I wonder if other posters are seeing that generational divide?
Too busy right now to look but may investigate later.
Pretty similar figures. The Tory focus on their core vote of nativist pensioners and homeowners has won them elections, but has a cliff edge.
Even folk like me who are approaching retirement would like to see economic redistribution to the young, and that is a far better spur to economic growth than tax cuts for the rich and retired such as IHT.
Fixing Fujitsu software bugs in the Horizon IT system was too expensive. Flaws known since 1998. Fujitsu and Post Office gave false evidence to courts and let innocent people be convicted of fraud. Boosted profits and exec pay by destroying lives."
Why did Fujitsu need to have a fraud and litigation department? Litigation, I can understand. But fraud? What fraud and by whom was this department expecting to deal with?
The stuff coming out of Fujitsu - particularly the known bugs that they didn't tell the PO about and didn't bother to fix - will put that company firmly in the frame. This guy giving evidence now, who's a strange but seemingly honest fellow, told the inquiry yesterday that one bug generated errors if a subpostmaster was working on their terminal at 7pm, because at that time every day the central server ran some sort of housekeeping routine, and that the system couldn't tell whether a repeated entry from a subpostmaster's terminal was a separate transaction or duplicates. As details like this come out, the pattern of shortfalls that subpostmasters experienced becomes more understandable.
It’s as if they just invented transactional posing of sale systems specifically for the post office, because retail definitely hasn’t already been using them for several decades.
I mean, server routines running at 7pm, instead of in the middle of the night as everyone else does!
Please tell me it's not because 7pm in the UK is the middle of the night in Japan!
No idea if it's connected but in Japan IIUC banks are the one place they're not working late or at weekends. They kick the customers out at 3:30pm, then they're supposed to make sure everything is reconciled to the last yen by 17:00. They have another hour or so to do admin stuff that doesn't involve customer funds then everybody leaves and they lock up, and nobody is allowed in. For a long time they even closed the ATMs. You can use their carpark for free in the evening and at weekends because there's nobody there to tell you off. It's better to do scheduled stuff earlier than later in case it overruns, so on Japanese rules I can imagine 19:00 would be the optimal time to schedule stuff...
Under 50s, mind. Not under 30s or 18-25s. Not only are the Conservatives at a level that requires heroic changing of minds as these generations age, but RefCon combined is only 15% showing that appealing to RefUKers is unlikely to win them back anyone other than their pensioner vote.
Always funny how Lib Dem support is essentially the same at all ages.
That is startling. I wonder if other posters are seeing that generational divide?
Too busy right now to look but may investigate later.
Pretty similar figures. The Tory focus on their core vote of nativist pensioners and homeowners has won them elections, but has a cliff edge.
Even folk like me who are approaching retirement would like to see economic redistribution to the young, and that is a far better spur to economic growth than tax cuts for the rich and retired such as IHT.
This might be counterintuitive but mass immigration is one of the primary ways in which pensioners have been pandered to at the expense of the young, because it holds up house prices and holds down the price of labour.
On topic, given responses to the poll quoted in the header, and the fact that the Tories are around 20% in the polls, how does the 'will of the people' thing work ?
It is a rare politician who takes on a complex problem that offers little electoral dividend just ahead of an election they expect to lose. This reality is troubling Labour strategists who fear that Conservatives are parking a number of issues in the file marked “another party’s problem”. One such toxic parcel is the brewing financial crisis in UK higher education.
Curious @malcolmg in your turnip-world what homeless people are supposed to be eating in your hypothetical shortage?
Ensuring people have a roof of their own over their head eases problems and builds resilience.
In your fantasy view it would be bricks or concrete. In mine it would home grown produce. Provided by charities as now in both instances. If they had a roof over their head then their would be no homeless, just starving.
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
The problem is a lack of discussion about the consequences of the various options. And the slight conflict between "Mass immigration is wonderful" and "To protect the environment and keep everyone happy, we must build no houses or places of employment."
See also
The NHS is overwhelmed Our rivers are full of shit as the sewage system can’t cope We have a national housing shortage crisis
And so on, and so forth
And yet at the same time we are told this has nothing to do with mass immigration and the population of the UK rising by 1.3 million people in just two years. Even the dumbest voter no longer buys this bollocks
We have a shortage of housing because we refuse to let people build houses to cope with our population growth.
There's absolutely nothing wrong whatsoever with immigration, so long as we have sufficient investment to keep up with population growth.
The problem is when we have rising population and no investment.
So you don’t think 1.3 million in 2 years is too many? (Plus illegals, of course)
How many is too many then? 2 million a year? 5 million? Or is fhere no limit in your eyes, and all immigration of any levels is good and fine?
No limit in my eyes so long as investment and infrastructure grows correspondingly.
I couldn't care less if our population in England by the end of the century is 60 million, 100 million or a billion, so long as we invest accordingly and have growing living standards what bloody difference does it make?
Because most of us don’t want to see England’s green and pleasant land finally and completely covered with your fucking hideous Barratt Home red brick semis
You really are quite crazy. You know that, right?
If we increased the number of people living in apartments to French levels we could increase both housing provision and the size our green spaces at the same time.
No need for this kind of bickering at all.
Screw that.
Unless the people moving into apartments WANT to. Rather than being forced to do so as they can't afford the alternative.
The housing shortage is largely affecting young individuals and couples who cannot get on the property ladder, especially in the larger cities, and they are almost as a matter of course looking for apartments unless they live somewhere very cheap.
I didn't move from flat to house until I was on my 3rd move 11 years after buying my first flat, and I'm a lucky GenXer who could actually afford to be a first time buyer in 2000.
Just invert the argument to show how silly it is. Would knocking down Edinburgh's tenements and replacing them with Barratts worsen or improve the city's housing crisis?
That's not an inversion.
This country has an abundance of undeveloped land to build housing on, less than 5% of our country is developed for housing even including green spaces like gardens etc - we can easily build many more houses and barely affect how much greenery there is in this country.
There is no shortage of land, just a shortage of willpower to fix the problem. Its not about houses versus apartments, its about construction versus refusal to do so.
"Undeveloped" = farmland competing with Australian meat farmers, presuimably.
We need food here - and produced here - not imported from overseas.
Bart si not right in the tattie Carnyx
Talking about tatties, the place where I come from has been increased about 5x and he still thinks we don't do enough. Huge loss of good arable farmland for growing tatties and corn too (some used for trading estates though mostd of the old factories have been used already for that and housing). They've started using childrens' play spaces for housing, too, though seem to have stopped.
Fixing Fujitsu software bugs in the Horizon IT system was too expensive. Flaws known since 1998. Fujitsu and Post Office gave false evidence to courts and let innocent people be convicted of fraud. Boosted profits and exec pay by destroying lives."
Why did Fujitsu need to have a fraud and litigation department? Litigation, I can understand. But fraud? What fraud and by whom was this department expecting to deal with?
The stuff coming out of Fujitsu - particularly the known bugs that they didn't tell the PO about and didn't bother to fix - will put that company firmly in the frame. This guy giving evidence now, who's a strange but seemingly honest fellow, told the inquiry yesterday that one bug generated errors if a subpostmaster was working on their terminal at 7pm, because at that time every day the central server ran some sort of housekeeping routine, and that the system couldn't tell whether a repeated entry from a subpostmaster's terminal was a separate transaction or duplicates. As details like this come out, the pattern of shortfalls that subpostmasters experienced becomes more understandable.
It’s as if they just invented transactional posing of sale systems specifically for the post office, because retail definitely hasn’t already been using them for several decades.
I mean, server routines running at 7pm, instead of in the middle of the night as everyone else does!
Please tell me it's not because 7pm in the UK is the middle of the night in Japan!
No idea if it's connected but in Japan IIUC banks are the one place they're not working late or at weekends. They kick the customers out at 3:30pm, then they're supposed to make sure everything is reconciled to the last yen by 17:00. They have another hour or so to do admin stuff that doesn't involve customer funds then everybody leaves and they lock up, and nobody is allowed in. For a long time they even closed the ATMs. You can use their carpark for free in the evening and at weekends because there's nobody there to tell you off. It's better to do scheduled stuff earlier than later in case it overruns, so on Japanese rules I can imagine 19:00 would be the optimal time to schedule stuff...
It's a neat theory but the ICL bit of Fujitsu built the Horizon mess.
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
Oh do be quiet
This country has imported 1.3 million people in two years. Voters are noticing. See @Cookie’s comments above
This level of immigration is literally unprecedented in our history. It has never happened before. People didn’t ask for it, polls show they don’t want it, Brexit was driven - in large part - by people trying to stop it
And your pitiful answer to all this is “just stop talking about it”
I'm not saying stop talking about it. That would be you with your "do be quiet".
Why does immigration being a genuine issue mean people should be able to bang on unchallenged about how we have to embrace far right talking points or they'll end up in power?
I don’t even understand your points any more. I believe the technical description of your commentary is, in PB terms, “vapid bilge”
Really? I didn't think I was being obtuse. The far right thrive on anti-immigrant sentiment. Their agenda is to exploit the (genuine) issue of immigration to increase this sentiment amongst the public. You agree with that, I'd have thought?
And it's relevant to a discussion on immigration. Why wouldn't it be? You yourself were just highlighting the risk of the far right surfing to power on the back of anti-immigrant sentiment. Ok, so I quibbled with your wording. You said the far right were certain to triumph, which is hyperbole, so I replaced with "risk".
That's a bit clearer now, I hope. So what's your point anyway?
Does it not follow that if your overwhelming concern is the rise of the far right, you ought to want immigration to be as low as possible?
No that doesn't follow. Low as possible means none. Nativist Fortress Britain. It makes little sense to try and ward off the far right by embracing their goals.
Low immigration is a moderate position that used to be shared by every party in this country.
The goal of the far right in Europe is increasingly becoming repatration on a massive scale. From their perspective, further high levels of immigration might actually be welcome in the short term because it will help them gain power.
You mean they want to rub the noses of the indigenes (sic) in diversity?
Fixing Fujitsu software bugs in the Horizon IT system was too expensive. Flaws known since 1998. Fujitsu and Post Office gave false evidence to courts and let innocent people be convicted of fraud. Boosted profits and exec pay by destroying lives."
Why did Fujitsu need to have a fraud and litigation department? Litigation, I can understand. But fraud? What fraud and by whom was this department expecting to deal with?
The stuff coming out of Fujitsu - particularly the known bugs that they didn't tell the PO about and didn't bother to fix - will put that company firmly in the frame. This guy giving evidence now, who's a strange but seemingly honest fellow, told the inquiry yesterday that one bug generated errors if a subpostmaster was working on their terminal at 7pm, because at that time every day the central server ran some sort of housekeeping routine, and that the system couldn't tell whether a repeated entry from a subpostmaster's terminal was a separate transaction or duplicates. As details like this come out, the pattern of shortfalls that subpostmasters experienced becomes more understandable.
It’s as if they just invented transactional posing of sale systems specifically for the post office, because retail definitely hasn’t already been using them for several decades.
I mean, server routines running at 7pm, instead of in the middle of the night as everyone else does!
Please tell me it's not because 7pm in the UK is the middle of the night in Japan!
No idea if it's connected but in Japan IIUC banks are the one place they're not working late or at weekends. They kick the customers out at 3:30pm, then they're supposed to make sure everything is reconciled to the last yen by 17:00. They have another hour or so to do admin stuff that doesn't involve customer funds then everybody leaves and they lock up, and nobody is allowed in. For a long time they even closed the ATMs. You can use their carpark for free in the evening and at weekends because there's nobody there to tell you off. It's better to do scheduled stuff earlier than later in case it overruns, so on Japanese rules I can imagine 19:00 would be the optimal time to schedule stuff...
It's a neat theory but the ICL bit of Fujitsu built the Horizon mess.
7pm sounds like "What's after hours, but not too late?"
Plenty of stuff in finance runs around then, because (some) market(s) close at 16:30
Tories on 20%. Fukkers on 12% pre Farage. Sunak to give triumphant presser about how thanks to his canny skills in the Commons he will now Stop The Boats.
Tories. The abyss becons.
2024 is lining up to be the most spectacular general election since 1945. It's entirely plausible that Labour could end up with a 200+ majority. The Tories could end sub-100. Neither is anything like guaranteed but we ought to consider it a realistic possibility.
Sunak has got himself into a position where he isn't trusted as either a populist or a managerial type; he's chasing the RefUK vote but not getting it because he's merely highlighting their arguments without sorting them; driving right will consolidate the anti-Tory tactical vote on the left (which is in any case twice the size of the combined Con+RefUK vote); and meanwhile, the economic squeeze is still on for a lot of people, strikes are rife and the NHS cannot cope with demand, backlog and strikes.
But the problem for the Tories isn't Sunak (or not just him). The problem is their party and its record. Changing leaders yet again (for who?) isn't going to solve that and may make it even worse.
Sunak is a huge part of the problem. He's been Chancellor or PM for all but a relative handful of days in nearly four years.
And its not just that the buck stops with him, its what he's chosen to do and his priorities.
Hunt is far, far better. Despite Sunak, not because of him.
Hunt is basically the same - and as a long-serving Health Sec would be blamed personally for many of the current NHS problems (not without some justification). I don't see much more of a spark of the front-man to him than there is to Sunak. Anyway, Hunt finished last with only 18 votes out of 357 in the summer 2022 leadership election; he has little personal support and I don't see the MPs dumping Sunak to replace him with what they hope might be a slightly better version of the same, in order to lose less badly.
Question for non-Tories and former Tory voters who have fallen out of love with the party. Who of the current crop of MPs with leadership ambitions would you want to see as future leader? Not in terms of who's most beatable, but who would be most tolerable as a future PM?
I know who TSE would go for (though he's in the Lords), but others? I struggle with this. Would probably opt for whoever looks most presentable on the global stage. Until a few weeks ago I thought that was Cleverly (LOL).
As a former Tory, this is a conversation I have had of late with friends still in the party and we have agreed there is no one. Looking at the Cabinet, I would argue Mel Stride is the least weak.
The trouble is that, in 2019, the Tory party was shorn of its best talent. If we still had names such as Dominic Grieve, David Gauke, Sam Gyimah, Phillip Lee, Guto Bebb, Rory Stewart and Oliver Letwin in the frame (with 5 years more experience under their belts) it might be a wholly different picture.
The fact that several of these names have since either properly joined, or talked about working with, Lib Dems and Labour, I'd suggest they wouldn't be very strong Tory PMs....
My theory is the post election leadership candidates will be:
Steve Barclay Suella Liz Truss Tom T Gove Dowden
I think Jenrick, Stride and Hancock are are in danger of losing their seats, but if not, then add them in the mix.
I foresee Barclay, Tom T, Gove and Suella emerging from that.
Frankly I think any of these would be far better than Sunak.
Hancock is standing down and in any case is clearly a discredited figure now within politics. Nick Timothy has been chosen to replace him as Tory candidate in West Suffolk (23k / 45% majority; should be retainable even in an a Blair-like landslide).
Oh thanks for that - somehow this passed me by, or I forgot!
Tories on 20%. Fukkers on 12% pre Farage. Sunak to give triumphant presser about how thanks to his canny skills in the Commons he will now Stop The Boats.
Tories. The abyss becons.
2024 is lining up to be the most spectacular general election since 1945. It's entirely plausible that Labour could end up with a 200+ majority. The Tories could end sub-100. Neither is anything like guaranteed but we ought to consider it a realistic possibility.
Sunak has got himself into a position where he isn't trusted as either a populist or a managerial type; he's chasing the RefUK vote but not getting it because he's merely highlighting their arguments without sorting them; driving right will consolidate the anti-Tory tactical vote on the left (which is in any case twice the size of the combined Con+RefUK vote); and meanwhile, the economic squeeze is still on for a lot of people, strikes are rife and the NHS cannot cope with demand, backlog and strikes.
But the problem for the Tories isn't Sunak (or not just him). The problem is their party and its record. Changing leaders yet again (for who?) isn't going to solve that and may make it even worse.
Sunak is a huge part of the problem. He's been Chancellor or PM for all but a relative handful of days in nearly four years.
And its not just that the buck stops with him, its what he's chosen to do and his priorities.
Hunt is far, far better. Despite Sunak, not because of him.
Hunt is basically the same - and as a long-serving Health Sec would be blamed personally for many of the current NHS problems (not without some justification). I don't see much more of a spark of the front-man to him than there is to Sunak. Anyway, Hunt finished last with only 18 votes out of 357 in the summer 2022 leadership election; he has little personal support and I don't see the MPs dumping Sunak to replace him with what they hope might be a slightly better version of the same, in order to lose less badly.
Question for non-Tories and former Tory voters who have fallen out of love with the party. Who of the current crop of MPs with leadership ambitions would you want to see as future leader? Not in terms of who's most beatable, but who would be most tolerable as a future PM?
I know who TSE would go for (though he's in the Lords), but others? I struggle with this. Would probably opt for whoever looks most presentable on the global stage. Until a few weeks ago I thought that was Cleverly (LOL).
As a former Tory, this is a conversation I have had of late with friends still in the party and we have agreed there is no one. Looking at the Cabinet, I would argue Mel Stride is the least weak.
The trouble is that, in 2019, the Tory party was shorn of its best talent. If we still had names such as Dominic Grieve, David Gauke, Sam Gyimah, Phillip Lee, Guto Bebb, Rory Stewart and Oliver Letwin in the frame (with 5 years more experience under their belts) it might be a wholly different picture.
The fact that several of these names have since either properly joined, or talked about working with, Lib Dems and Labour, I'd suggest they wouldn't be very strong Tory PMs....
My theory is the post election leadership candidates will be:
Steve Barclay Suella Liz Truss Tom T Gove Dowden
I think Jenrick, Stride and Hancock are are in danger of losing their seats, but if not, then add them in the mix.
I foresee Barclay, Tom T, Gove and Suella emerging from that.
Frankly I think any of these would be far better than Sunak.
Badenoch and Mordaunt (if the latter keeps her seat) have to be in that mix, surely?
If the final 4 is as per your list, then god help us, because that strikes me as a certainty that Suella will be LOTO.
Could well be, but Mordaunt very unlikely to keep her seat and I think Badenoch might actually wait this one out. Especially if Gove runs....
It is a rare politician who takes on a complex problem that offers little electoral dividend just ahead of an election they expect to lose. This reality is troubling Labour strategists who fear that Conservatives are parking a number of issues in the file marked “another party’s problem”. One such toxic parcel is the brewing financial crisis in UK higher education.
Irony is that the damage is done (or at best there are a couple of months left) before the issue becomes critical and a cascade effect starts to take effect.
If the election is in the autumn I don’t think it will be fixable (but reality is we may already be too far gone for it to be fixable).
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
Oh do be quiet
This country has imported 1.3 million people in two years. Voters are noticing. See @Cookie’s comments above
This level of immigration is literally unprecedented in our history. It has never happened before. People didn’t ask for it, polls show they don’t want it, Brexit was driven - in large part - by people trying to stop it
And your pitiful answer to all this is “just stop talking about it”
I'm not saying stop talking about it. That would be you with your "do be quiet".
Why does immigration being a genuine issue mean people should be able to bang on unchallenged about how we have to embrace far right talking points or they'll end up in power?
Part of the problem is that no one is saying, in politics, "For each head of net immigration, we need to build a bedroom, x percent of a hospital bed (staffed), y percent of a school place, z percent of pubic transport, alpha percent of road investment etc etc."
If you have a growing population, then you need more stuff. Because everyone needs a share.
You have been known to make this point before and there's not a great deal wrong with it. Population size (which includes projected net immigration) should indeed be a factor in decisions on infrastructure and public services. Of course it should.
But from this it doesn't follow that our struggling NHS and our housing crisis and our generally creaking public realm is because of immigration. That's the far right spin. That's what I mean by a far right talking point. It's a pov which should be rejected not pandered to imo.
Wrong.
The planning process, policies and mind set of government are still set to an age of a gently increasing or static population.
If we *had* had no net immigration, then we wouldn't need to do more than renew existing infrastructure.
We are now 8 million homes behind. And it is getting worse.
The reason we need more houses and more of everything else is immigration. This isn't blaming anyone. People need somewhere to sleep. And everything else.
No, it's the far right spin that is wrong. There are many factors contributing to our various crises (NHS, housing, the CJS, transport etc). To pluck out and enshrine immigration as the culprit, to say it's all because we let too many immigrants in, this is simplistic and loaded.
On topic, given responses to the poll quoted in the header, and the fact that the Tories are around 20% in the polls, how does the 'will of the people' thing work ?
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
Oh do be quiet
This country has imported 1.3 million people in two years. Voters are noticing. See @Cookie’s comments above
This level of immigration is literally unprecedented in our history. It has never happened before. People didn’t ask for it, polls show they don’t want it, Brexit was driven - in large part - by people trying to stop it
And your pitiful answer to all this is “just stop talking about it”
I'm not saying stop talking about it. That would be you with your "do be quiet".
Why does immigration being a genuine issue mean people should be able to bang on unchallenged about how we have to embrace far right talking points or they'll end up in power?
Part of the problem is that no one is saying, in politics, "For each head of net immigration, we need to build a bedroom, x percent of a hospital bed (staffed), y percent of a school place, z percent of pubic transport, alpha percent of road investment etc etc."
If you have a growing population, then you need more stuff. Because everyone needs a share.
You have been known to make this point before and there's not a great deal wrong with it. Population size (which includes projected net immigration) should indeed be a factor in decisions on infrastructure and public services. Of course it should.
But from this it doesn't follow that our struggling NHS and our housing crisis and our generally creaking public realm is because of immigration. That's the far right spin. That's what I mean by a far right talking point. It's a pov which should be rejected not pandered to imo.
Wrong.
The planning process, policies and mind set of government are still set to an age of a gently increasing or static population.
If we *had* had no net immigration, then we wouldn't need to do more than renew existing infrastructure.
We are now 8 million homes behind. And it is getting worse.
The reason we need more houses and more of everything else is immigration. This isn't blaming anyone. People need somewhere to sleep. And everything else.
No, it's the far right spin that is wrong. There are many factors contributing to our various crises (NHS, housing, the CJS, transport etc). To pluck out and enshrine immigration as the culprit, to say it's all because we let too many immigrants in, this is simplistic and loaded.
Is it possible that the level of immigration was indeed too high, mixed in with the other factors of course?
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
Oh do be quiet
This country has imported 1.3 million people in two years. Voters are noticing. See @Cookie’s comments above
This level of immigration is literally unprecedented in our history. It has never happened before. People didn’t ask for it, polls show they don’t want it, Brexit was driven - in large part - by people trying to stop it
And your pitiful answer to all this is “just stop talking about it”
I'm not saying stop talking about it. That would be you with your "do be quiet".
Why does immigration being a genuine issue mean people should be able to bang on unchallenged about how we have to embrace far right talking points or they'll end up in power?
Part of the problem is that no one is saying, in politics, "For each head of net immigration, we need to build a bedroom, x percent of a hospital bed (staffed), y percent of a school place, z percent of pubic transport, alpha percent of road investment etc etc."
If you have a growing population, then you need more stuff. Because everyone needs a share.
You have been known to make this point before and there's not a great deal wrong with it. Population size (which includes projected net immigration) should indeed be a factor in decisions on infrastructure and public services. Of course it should.
But from this it doesn't follow that our struggling NHS and our housing crisis and our generally creaking public realm is because of immigration. That's the far right spin. That's what I mean by a far right talking point. It's a pov which should be rejected not pandered to imo.
Wrong.
The planning process, policies and mind set of government are still set to an age of a gently increasing or static population.
If we *had* had no net immigration, then we wouldn't need to do more than renew existing infrastructure.
We are now 8 million homes behind. And it is getting worse.
The reason we need more houses and more of everything else is immigration. This isn't blaming anyone. People need somewhere to sleep. And everything else.
No, it's the far right spin that is wrong. There are many factors contributing to our various crises (NHS, housing, the CJS, transport etc). To pluck out and enshrine immigration as the culprit, to say it's all because we let too many immigrants in, this is simplistic and loaded.
We need more because there are more people. Denial is not just a river in Egypt.
It is a rare politician who takes on a complex problem that offers little electoral dividend just ahead of an election they expect to lose. This reality is troubling Labour strategists who fear that Conservatives are parking a number of issues in the file marked “another party’s problem”. One such toxic parcel is the brewing financial crisis in UK higher education.
Not sure about that. If the current government started tackling the many complex problems that they should, they'd probably make a complete mess of it and make Labour's inheritance even worse.
Tories on 20%. Fukkers on 12% pre Farage. Sunak to give triumphant presser about how thanks to his canny skills in the Commons he will now Stop The Boats.
Tories. The abyss becons.
2024 is lining up to be the most spectacular general election since 1945. It's entirely plausible that Labour could end up with a 200+ majority. The Tories could end sub-100. Neither is anything like guaranteed but we ought to consider it a realistic possibility.
Sunak has got himself into a position where he isn't trusted as either a populist or a managerial type; he's chasing the RefUK vote but not getting it because he's merely highlighting their arguments without sorting them; driving right will consolidate the anti-Tory tactical vote on the left (which is in any case twice the size of the combined Con+RefUK vote); and meanwhile, the economic squeeze is still on for a lot of people, strikes are rife and the NHS cannot cope with demand, backlog and strikes.
But the problem for the Tories isn't Sunak (or not just him). The problem is their party and its record. Changing leaders yet again (for who?) isn't going to solve that and may make it even worse.
Sunak is a huge part of the problem. He's been Chancellor or PM for all but a relative handful of days in nearly four years.
And its not just that the buck stops with him, its what he's chosen to do and his priorities.
Hunt is far, far better. Despite Sunak, not because of him.
Hunt is basically the same - and as a long-serving Health Sec would be blamed personally for many of the current NHS problems (not without some justification). I don't see much more of a spark of the front-man to him than there is to Sunak. Anyway, Hunt finished last with only 18 votes out of 357 in the summer 2022 leadership election; he has little personal support and I don't see the MPs dumping Sunak to replace him with what they hope might be a slightly better version of the same, in order to lose less badly.
Question for non-Tories and former Tory voters who have fallen out of love with the party. Who of the current crop of MPs with leadership ambitions would you want to see as future leader? Not in terms of who's most beatable, but who would be most tolerable as a future PM?
I know who TSE would go for (though he's in the Lords), but others? I struggle with this. Would probably opt for whoever looks most presentable on the global stage. Until a few weeks ago I thought that was Cleverly (LOL).
As a former Tory, this is a conversation I have had of late with friends still in the party and we have agreed there is no one. Looking at the Cabinet, I would argue Mel Stride is the least weak.
The trouble is that, in 2019, the Tory party was shorn of its best talent. If we still had names such as Dominic Grieve, David Gauke, Sam Gyimah, Phillip Lee, Guto Bebb, Rory Stewart and Oliver Letwin in the frame (with 5 years more experience under their belts) it might be a wholly different picture.
The fact that several of these names have since either properly joined, or talked about working with, Lib Dems and Labour, I'd suggest they wouldn't be very strong Tory PMs....
My theory is the post election leadership candidates will be:
Steve Barclay Suella Liz Truss Tom T Gove Dowden
I think Jenrick, Stride and Hancock are are in danger of losing their seats, but if not, then add them in the mix.
I foresee Barclay, Tom T, Gove and Suella emerging from that.
Frankly I think any of these would be far better than Sunak.
Badenoch and Mordaunt (if the latter keeps her seat) have to be in that mix, surely?
If the final 4 is as per your list, then god help us, because that strikes me as a certainty that Suella will be LOTO.
Could well be, but Mordaunt very unlikely to keep her seat and I think Badenoch might actually wait this one out. Especially if Gove runs....
Things I never thought I'd say, but Gove might actually be the sensible choice. If the Conservatives can jump straight to the Michael Howard stage of grief, there's a chance of Gove creating space for an actually electable leader to emerge.
But my impression is that a lot of Conservatives are rather looking forward to going fully bonkers for a bit, or have already done so.
On topic, given responses to the poll quoted in the header, and the fact that the Tories are around 20% in the polls, how does the 'will of the people' thing work ?
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
The problem is a lack of discussion about the consequences of the various options. And the slight conflict between "Mass immigration is wonderful" and "To protect the environment and keep everyone happy, we must build no houses or places of employment."
See also
The NHS is overwhelmed Our rivers are full of shit as the sewage system can’t cope We have a national housing shortage crisis
And so on, and so forth
And yet at the same time we are told this has nothing to do with mass immigration and the population of the UK rising by 1.3 million people in just two years. Even the dumbest voter no longer buys this bollocks
We have a shortage of housing because we refuse to let people build houses to cope with our population growth.
There's absolutely nothing wrong whatsoever with immigration, so long as we have sufficient investment to keep up with population growth.
The problem is when we have rising population and no investment.
So you don’t think 1.3 million in 2 years is too many? (Plus illegals, of course)
How many is too many then? 2 million a year? 5 million? Or is fhere no limit in your eyes, and all immigration of any levels is good and fine?
No limit in my eyes so long as investment and infrastructure grows correspondingly.
I couldn't care less if our population in England by the end of the century is 60 million, 100 million or a billion, so long as we invest accordingly and have growing living standards what bloody difference does it make?
Because most of us don’t want to see England’s green and pleasant land finally and completely covered with your fucking hideous Barratt Home red brick semis
You really are quite crazy. You know that, right?
If we increased the number of people living in apartments to French levels we could increase both housing provision and the size our green spaces at the same time.
No need for this kind of bickering at all.
Screw that.
Unless the people moving into apartments WANT to. Rather than being forced to do so as they can't afford the alternative.
The housing shortage is largely affecting young individuals and couples who cannot get on the property ladder, especially in the larger cities, and they are almost as a matter of course looking for apartments unless they live somewhere very cheap.
I didn't move from flat to house until I was on my 3rd move 11 years after buying my first flat, and I'm a lucky GenXer who could actually afford to be a first time buyer in 2000.
Just invert the argument to show how silly it is. Would knocking down Edinburgh's tenements and replacing them with Barratts worsen or improve the city's housing crisis?
That's not an inversion.
This country has an abundance of undeveloped land to build housing on, less than 5% of our country is developed for housing even including green spaces like gardens etc - we can easily build many more houses and barely affect how much greenery there is in this country.
There is no shortage of land, just a shortage of willpower to fix the problem. Its not about houses versus apartments, its about construction versus refusal to do so.
"Undeveloped" = farmland competing with Australian meat farmers, presuimably.
We need food here - and produced here - not imported from overseas.
Bart si not right in the tattie Carnyx
Talking about tatties, the place where I come from has been increased about 5x and he still thinks we don't do enough. Huge loss of good arable farmland for growing tatties and corn too (some used for trading estates though mostd of the old factories have been used already for that and housing). They've started using childrens' play spaces for housing, too, though seem to have stopped.
"The UK is largely self-sufficient in production of grains, producing over 100% of domestic consumption of oats and barley and over 90% of wheat. Average yields over recent decades have been broadly stable but fluctuate from year to year as a result of better or worse weather. Increasingly unpredictable and extreme weather as a result of climate change is likely to exacerbate these fluctuations. Wheat yields in 2020 were the lowest since 1981 due to of unusually bad weather. However, preliminary data indicates they have since increased in 2021.
In meat, milk, and eggs, the UK produces roughly equivalent volume to what it consumes. In 2020 it produced 61kg of meat, 227L of milk and 172 eggs per person per year. By value, the UK is a net importer of dairy and beef. This reflects UK consumer preferences for eating higher value products, while lower value products are exported.
The UK produces a significant proportion of its other crop needs, including around 60% of sugar beet, 70% of potatoes and 80% of oilseeds. Apart from a recent pest-related reduction in oilseeds, these proportions have remained stable over the last ten years. Climate change represents a risk to production both in terms of making conditions unsuitable for some crops and allowing new pests to proliferate but it may also benefit new types of crops.
The UK produces over 50% of vegetables consumed domestically, but only 16% of fruit. 93% of domestic consumption of fresh vegetables was fulfilled by domestic and European production, while fruit supply is more widely spread across the EU, Africa, the Americas, and the UK.
The UK both produces and consumes fish and seafood, but is a net importer overall. UK consumer preference is for fish mainly caught outside UK waters, such as cod, haddock, tuna, and shrimp and prawns. This means that the UK exports much of what it catches and imports much of what it eats. Supply sources for imports are diverse, with northwest Europe and China the most significant sources. Most of the fisheries which supply UK imports are well managed and have sustainable stocks, although climate change presents a risk to fish stocks. The UK has a significant fishing fleet which mainly exports to the EU, US and China. Important exports include herring, mackerel, salmon and nephrops (scampi)."
It is a rare politician who takes on a complex problem that offers little electoral dividend just ahead of an election they expect to lose. This reality is troubling Labour strategists who fear that Conservatives are parking a number of issues in the file marked “another party’s problem”. One such toxic parcel is the brewing financial crisis in UK higher education.
Not sure about that. If the current government started tackling the many complex problems that they should, they'd probably make a complete mess of it and make Labour's inheritance even worse.
On day 1 the best plan for Labour will be to ask for the current plan to fix XYZ and implement the exact opposite
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
Oh do be quiet
This country has imported 1.3 million people in two years. Voters are noticing. See @Cookie’s comments above
This level of immigration is literally unprecedented in our history. It has never happened before. People didn’t ask for it, polls show they don’t want it, Brexit was driven - in large part - by people trying to stop it
And your pitiful answer to all this is “just stop talking about it”
I'm not saying stop talking about it. That would be you with your "do be quiet".
Why does immigration being a genuine issue mean people should be able to bang on unchallenged about how we have to embrace far right talking points or they'll end up in power?
I don’t even understand your points any more. I believe the technical description of your commentary is, in PB terms, “vapid bilge”
Really? I didn't think I was being obtuse. The far right thrive on anti-immigrant sentiment. Their agenda is to exploit the (genuine) issue of immigration to increase this sentiment amongst the public. You agree with that, I'd have thought?
And it's relevant to a discussion on immigration. Why wouldn't it be? You yourself were just highlighting the risk of the far right surfing to power on the back of anti-immigrant sentiment. Ok, so I quibbled with your wording. You said the far right were certain to triumph, which is hyperbole, so I replaced with "risk".
That's a bit clearer now, I hope. So what's your point anyway?
Does it not follow that if your overwhelming concern is the rise of the far right, you ought to want immigration to be as low as possible?
No that doesn't follow. Low as possible means none. Nativist Fortress Britain. It makes little sense to try and ward off the far right by embracing their goals.
Low immigration is a moderate position that used to be shared by every party in this country.
The goal of the far right in Europe is increasingly becoming repatration on a massive scale. From their perspective, further high levels of immigration might actually be welcome in the short term because it will help them gain power.
I think almost everyone agrees that the levels of the last couple of years aren't sustainable. But let's tackle the issue without giving succour to far right rhetoric, goals, or talking points.
On topic, given responses to the poll quoted in the header, and the fact that the Tories are around 20% in the polls, how does the 'will of the people' thing work ?
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
Oh do be quiet
This country has imported 1.3 million people in two years. Voters are noticing. See @Cookie’s comments above
This level of immigration is literally unprecedented in our history. It has never happened before. People didn’t ask for it, polls show they don’t want it, Brexit was driven - in large part - by people trying to stop it
And your pitiful answer to all this is “just stop talking about it”
I'm not saying stop talking about it. That would be you with your "do be quiet".
Why does immigration being a genuine issue mean people should be able to bang on unchallenged about how we have to embrace far right talking points or they'll end up in power?
I don’t even understand your points any more. I believe the technical description of your commentary is, in PB terms, “vapid bilge”
Really? I didn't think I was being obtuse. The far right thrive on anti-immigrant sentiment. Their agenda is to exploit the (genuine) issue of immigration to increase this sentiment amongst the public. You agree with that, I'd have thought?
And it's relevant to a discussion on immigration. Why wouldn't it be? You yourself were just highlighting the risk of the far right surfing to power on the back of anti-immigrant sentiment. Ok, so I quibbled with your wording. You said the far right were certain to triumph, which is hyperbole, so I replaced with "risk".
That's a bit clearer now, I hope. So what's your point anyway?
Does it not follow that if your overwhelming concern is the rise of the far right, you ought to want immigration to be as low as possible?
No that doesn't follow. Low as possible means none. Nativist Fortress Britain. It makes little sense to try and ward off the far right by embracing their goals.
Low immigration is a moderate position that used to be shared by every party in this country.
The goal of the far right in Europe is increasingly becoming repatration on a massive scale. From their perspective, further high levels of immigration might actually be welcome in the short term because it will help them gain power.
I think almost everyone agrees that the levels of the last couple of years aren't sustainable. But let's tackle the issue without giving succour to far right rhetoric, goals, or talking points.
I find it amusing to see many still saying "we need to talk about immigration - it's not racist to do so, and we mustn't be silenced".
Nobody seems to talk about anything fucking else at the moment.
On topic, given responses to the poll quoted in the header, and the fact that the Tories are around 20% in the polls, how does the 'will of the people' thing work ?
An interesting question arises. What does Rishi/the government in fact (ignoring as usual everything they say) prefer from the basic options:
a) For someone else (Lords, Courts and Lawyers) as a body or collectively to ensure nothing can happen while this government endures
or
b) For the Lords and Courts/Lawyers to act so as to make implementation possible this side of an election, running risks including it very visibly not stopping the boats and/or media stories about 6 year old Syrian (Syriac Christian) little girls being snatched from or with their teddies in the middle of the night to be handcuffed to a plane.
I think that becomes the real question, and it isn't easy. It shows they should never have got themselves where they are.
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
The problem is a lack of discussion about the consequences of the various options. And the slight conflict between "Mass immigration is wonderful" and "To protect the environment and keep everyone happy, we must build no houses or places of employment."
See also
The NHS is overwhelmed Our rivers are full of shit as the sewage system can’t cope We have a national housing shortage crisis
And so on, and so forth
And yet at the same time we are told this has nothing to do with mass immigration and the population of the UK rising by 1.3 million people in just two years. Even the dumbest voter no longer buys this bollocks
We have a shortage of housing because we refuse to let people build houses to cope with our population growth.
There's absolutely nothing wrong whatsoever with immigration, so long as we have sufficient investment to keep up with population growth.
The problem is when we have rising population and no investment.
So you don’t think 1.3 million in 2 years is too many? (Plus illegals, of course)
How many is too many then? 2 million a year? 5 million? Or is fhere no limit in your eyes, and all immigration of any levels is good and fine?
No limit in my eyes so long as investment and infrastructure grows correspondingly.
I couldn't care less if our population in England by the end of the century is 60 million, 100 million or a billion, so long as we invest accordingly and have growing living standards what bloody difference does it make?
Because most of us don’t want to see England’s green and pleasant land finally and completely covered with your fucking hideous Barratt Home red brick semis
You really are quite crazy. You know that, right?
If we increased the number of people living in apartments to French levels we could increase both housing provision and the size our green spaces at the same time.
No need for this kind of bickering at all.
Screw that.
Unless the people moving into apartments WANT to. Rather than being forced to do so as they can't afford the alternative.
The housing shortage is largely affecting young individuals and couples who cannot get on the property ladder, especially in the larger cities, and they are almost as a matter of course looking for apartments unless they live somewhere very cheap.
I didn't move from flat to house until I was on my 3rd move 11 years after buying my first flat, and I'm a lucky GenXer who could actually afford to be a first time buyer in 2000.
Just invert the argument to show how silly it is. Would knocking down Edinburgh's tenements and replacing them with Barratts worsen or improve the city's housing crisis?
That's not an inversion.
This country has an abundance of undeveloped land to build housing on, less than 5% of our country is developed for housing even including green spaces like gardens etc - we can easily build many more houses and barely affect how much greenery there is in this country.
There is no shortage of land, just a shortage of willpower to fix the problem. Its not about houses versus apartments, its about construction versus refusal to do so.
"Undeveloped" = farmland competing with Australian meat farmers, presuimably.
We need food here - and produced here - not imported from overseas.
Bart si not right in the tattie Carnyx
Talking about tatties, the place where I come from has been increased about 5x and he still thinks we don't do enough. Huge loss of good arable farmland for growing tatties and corn too (some used for trading estates though mostd of the old factories have been used already for that and housing). They've started using childrens' play spaces for housing, too, though seem to have stopped.
"The UK is largely self-sufficient in production of grains, producing over 100% of domestic consumption of oats and barley and over 90% of wheat. Average yields over recent decades have been broadly stable but fluctuate from year to year as a result of better or worse weather. Increasingly unpredictable and extreme weather as a result of climate change is likely to exacerbate these fluctuations. Wheat yields in 2020 were the lowest since 1981 due to of unusually bad weather. However, preliminary data indicates they have since increased in 2021.
In meat, milk, and eggs, the UK produces roughly equivalent volume to what it consumes. In 2020 it produced 61kg of meat, 227L of milk and 172 eggs per person per year. By value, the UK is a net importer of dairy and beef. This reflects UK consumer preferences for eating higher value products, while lower value products are exported.
The UK produces a significant proportion of its other crop needs, including around 60% of sugar beet, 70% of potatoes and 80% of oilseeds. Apart from a recent pest-related reduction in oilseeds, these proportions have remained stable over the last ten years. Climate change represents a risk to production both in terms of making conditions unsuitable for some crops and allowing new pests to proliferate but it may also benefit new types of crops.
The UK produces over 50% of vegetables consumed domestically, but only 16% of fruit. 93% of domestic consumption of fresh vegetables was fulfilled by domestic and European production, while fruit supply is more widely spread across the EU, Africa, the Americas, and the UK.
The UK both produces and consumes fish and seafood, but is a net importer overall. UK consumer preference is for fish mainly caught outside UK waters, such as cod, haddock, tuna, and shrimp and prawns. This means that the UK exports much of what it catches and imports much of what it eats. Supply sources for imports are diverse, with northwest Europe and China the most significant sources. Most of the fisheries which supply UK imports are well managed and have sustainable stocks, although climate change presents a risk to fish stocks. The UK has a significant fishing fleet which mainly exports to the EU, US and China. Important exports include herring, mackerel, salmon and nephrops (scampi)."
Wow it's almost like trade is a good thing... Allows us to produce what we're good at and consume what we want to... Maybe this is something we should be encouraging.
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
Oh do be quiet
This country has imported 1.3 million people in two years. Voters are noticing. See @Cookie’s comments above
This level of immigration is literally unprecedented in our history. It has never happened before. People didn’t ask for it, polls show they don’t want it, Brexit was driven - in large part - by people trying to stop it
And your pitiful answer to all this is “just stop talking about it”
I'm not saying stop talking about it. That would be you with your "do be quiet".
Why does immigration being a genuine issue mean people should be able to bang on unchallenged about how we have to embrace far right talking points or they'll end up in power?
I don’t even understand your points any more. I believe the technical description of your commentary is, in PB terms, “vapid bilge”
Really? I didn't think I was being obtuse. The far right thrive on anti-immigrant sentiment. Their agenda is to exploit the (genuine) issue of immigration to increase this sentiment amongst the public. You agree with that, I'd have thought?
And it's relevant to a discussion on immigration. Why wouldn't it be? You yourself were just highlighting the risk of the far right surfing to power on the back of anti-immigrant sentiment. Ok, so I quibbled with your wording. You said the far right were certain to triumph, which is hyperbole, so I replaced with "risk".
That's a bit clearer now, I hope. So what's your point anyway?
Does it not follow that if your overwhelming concern is the rise of the far right, you ought to want immigration to be as low as possible?
No that doesn't follow. Low as possible means none. Nativist Fortress Britain. It makes little sense to try and ward off the far right by embracing their goals.
If its net migration as low as possible, it could be Charles expelling everyone else. Although that might leave him in a bit of a quandary over how to get dressed in the mornings.
There might be a toothbrush/toothpaste issue. How to get the one onto the other?
Tories on 20%. Fukkers on 12% pre Farage. Sunak to give triumphant presser about how thanks to his canny skills in the Commons he will now Stop The Boats.
Tories. The abyss becons.
2024 is lining up to be the most spectacular general election since 1945. It's entirely plausible that Labour could end up with a 200+ majority. The Tories could end sub-100. Neither is anything like guaranteed but we ought to consider it a realistic possibility.
Sunak has got himself into a position where he isn't trusted as either a populist or a managerial type; he's chasing the RefUK vote but not getting it because he's merely highlighting their arguments without sorting them; driving right will consolidate the anti-Tory tactical vote on the left (which is in any case twice the size of the combined Con+RefUK vote); and meanwhile, the economic squeeze is still on for a lot of people, strikes are rife and the NHS cannot cope with demand, backlog and strikes.
But the problem for the Tories isn't Sunak (or not just him). The problem is their party and its record. Changing leaders yet again (for who?) isn't going to solve that and may make it even worse.
Sunak is a huge part of the problem. He's been Chancellor or PM for all but a relative handful of days in nearly four years.
And its not just that the buck stops with him, its what he's chosen to do and his priorities.
Hunt is far, far better. Despite Sunak, not because of him.
Hunt is basically the same - and as a long-serving Health Sec would be blamed personally for many of the current NHS problems (not without some justification). I don't see much more of a spark of the front-man to him than there is to Sunak. Anyway, Hunt finished last with only 18 votes out of 357 in the summer 2022 leadership election; he has little personal support and I don't see the MPs dumping Sunak to replace him with what they hope might be a slightly better version of the same, in order to lose less badly.
Question for non-Tories and former Tory voters who have fallen out of love with the party. Who of the current crop of MPs with leadership ambitions would you want to see as future leader? Not in terms of who's most beatable, but who would be most tolerable as a future PM?
I know who TSE would go for (though he's in the Lords), but others? I struggle with this. Would probably opt for whoever looks most presentable on the global stage. Until a few weeks ago I thought that was Cleverly (LOL).
As a former Tory, this is a conversation I have had of late with friends still in the party and we have agreed there is no one. Looking at the Cabinet, I would argue Mel Stride is the least weak.
The trouble is that, in 2019, the Tory party was shorn of its best talent. If we still had names such as Dominic Grieve, David Gauke, Sam Gyimah, Phillip Lee, Guto Bebb, Rory Stewart and Oliver Letwin in the frame (with 5 years more experience under their belts) it might be a wholly different picture.
The fact that several of these names have since either properly joined, or talked about working with, Lib Dems and Labour, I'd suggest they wouldn't be very strong Tory PMs....
My theory is the post election leadership candidates will be:
Steve Barclay Suella Liz Truss Tom T Gove Dowden
I think Jenrick, Stride and Hancock are are in danger of losing their seats, but if not, then add them in the mix.
I foresee Barclay, Tom T, Gove and Suella emerging from that.
Frankly I think any of these would be far better than Sunak.
Badenoch and Mordaunt (if the latter keeps her seat) have to be in that mix, surely?
If the final 4 is as per your list, then god help us, because that strikes me as a certainty that Suella will be LOTO.
Could well be, but Mordaunt very unlikely to keep her seat and I think Badenoch might actually wait this one out. Especially if Gove runs....
Things I never thought I'd say, but Gove might actually be the sensible choice. If the Conservatives can jump straight to the Michael Howard stage of grief, there's a chance of Gove creating space for an actually electable leader to emerge.
But my impression is that a lot of Conservatives are rather looking forward to going fully bonkers for a bit, or have already done so.
Personally, I don't see Gove getting to the final two. There will be enough 'stop Gove' mentality if he got into the final 3, I suspect.
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
Oh do be quiet
This country has imported 1.3 million people in two years. Voters are noticing. See @Cookie’s comments above
This level of immigration is literally unprecedented in our history. It has never happened before. People didn’t ask for it, polls show they don’t want it, Brexit was driven - in large part - by people trying to stop it
And your pitiful answer to all this is “just stop talking about it”
I'm not saying stop talking about it. That would be you with your "do be quiet".
Why does immigration being a genuine issue mean people should be able to bang on unchallenged about how we have to embrace far right talking points or they'll end up in power?
I don’t even understand your points any more. I believe the technical description of your commentary is, in PB terms, “vapid bilge”
Really? I didn't think I was being obtuse. The far right thrive on anti-immigrant sentiment. Their agenda is to exploit the (genuine) issue of immigration to increase this sentiment amongst the public. You agree with that, I'd have thought?
And it's relevant to a discussion on immigration. Why wouldn't it be? You yourself were just highlighting the risk of the far right surfing to power on the back of anti-immigrant sentiment. Ok, so I quibbled with your wording. You said the far right were certain to triumph, which is hyperbole, so I replaced with "risk".
That's a bit clearer now, I hope. So what's your point anyway?
Does it not follow that if your overwhelming concern is the rise of the far right, you ought to want immigration to be as low as possible?
No that doesn't follow. Low as possible means none. Nativist Fortress Britain. It makes little sense to try and ward off the far right by embracing their goals.
Low immigration is a moderate position that used to be shared by every party in this country.
The goal of the far right in Europe is increasingly becoming repatration on a massive scale. From their perspective, further high levels of immigration might actually be welcome in the short term because it will help them gain power.
I think almost everyone agrees that the levels of the last couple of years aren't sustainable. But let's tackle the issue without giving succour to far right rhetoric, goals, or talking points.
I find it amusing to see many still saying "we need to talk about immigration - it's not racist to do so, and we mustn't be silenced".
Nobody seems to talk about anything fucking else at the moment.
We are where we are because having elected government after government that promised to reduce immigration, all they've done is increase it.
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
Oh do be quiet
This country has imported 1.3 million people in two years. Voters are noticing. See @Cookie’s comments above
This level of immigration is literally unprecedented in our history. It has never happened before. People didn’t ask for it, polls show they don’t want it, Brexit was driven - in large part - by people trying to stop it
And your pitiful answer to all this is “just stop talking about it”
I'm not saying stop talking about it. That would be you with your "do be quiet".
Why does immigration being a genuine issue mean people should be able to bang on unchallenged about how we have to embrace far right talking points or they'll end up in power?
I don’t even understand your points any more. I believe the technical description of your commentary is, in PB terms, “vapid bilge”
Really? I didn't think I was being obtuse. The far right thrive on anti-immigrant sentiment. Their agenda is to exploit the (genuine) issue of immigration to increase this sentiment amongst the public. You agree with that, I'd have thought?
And it's relevant to a discussion on immigration. Why wouldn't it be? You yourself were just highlighting the risk of the far right surfing to power on the back of anti-immigrant sentiment. Ok, so I quibbled with your wording. You said the far right were certain to triumph, which is hyperbole, so I replaced with "risk".
That's a bit clearer now, I hope. So what's your point anyway?
Does it not follow that if your overwhelming concern is the rise of the far right, you ought to want immigration to be as low as possible?
No that doesn't follow. Low as possible means none. Nativist Fortress Britain. It makes little sense to try and ward off the far right by embracing their goals.
Low immigration is a moderate position that used to be shared by every party in this country.
The goal of the far right in Europe is increasingly becoming repatration on a massive scale. From their perspective, further high levels of immigration might actually be welcome in the short term because it will help them gain power.
I think almost everyone agrees that the levels of the last couple of years aren't sustainable. But let's tackle the issue without giving succour to far right rhetoric, goals, or talking points.
I find it amusing to see many still saying "we need to talk about immigration - it's not racist to do so, and we mustn't be silenced".
Nobody seems to talk about anything fucking else at the moment.
We are where we are because having elected government after government that promised to reduce immigration, all they've done is increase it.
Yes, though I'd replace the word 'elected' with 'Tory'. It started with Cameron and the 'tens of thousands' stuff. I don't recall Labour 1997-2010 talking much about reducing immigration.
Maybe so, but nationalism is the raison d'etre of the SNP. "Rise up and be a nation again" and a' that.
We want to run our own affairs, not be stuck as a colony of a much larger neighbour who decides everything we do. What bit of that is hard for unionists to understand, just because you are fat and happy in England ruling the roost does not mean we can be kept prisoners forever.
Tories on 20%. Fukkers on 12% pre Farage. Sunak to give triumphant presser about how thanks to his canny skills in the Commons he will now Stop The Boats.
Tories. The abyss becons.
2024 is lining up to be the most spectacular general election since 1945. It's entirely plausible that Labour could end up with a 200+ majority. The Tories could end sub-100. Neither is anything like guaranteed but we ought to consider it a realistic possibility.
Sunak has got himself into a position where he isn't trusted as either a populist or a managerial type; he's chasing the RefUK vote but not getting it because he's merely highlighting their arguments without sorting them; driving right will consolidate the anti-Tory tactical vote on the left (which is in any case twice the size of the combined Con+RefUK vote); and meanwhile, the economic squeeze is still on for a lot of people, strikes are rife and the NHS cannot cope with demand, backlog and strikes.
But the problem for the Tories isn't Sunak (or not just him). The problem is their party and its record. Changing leaders yet again (for who?) isn't going to solve that and may make it even worse.
Sunak is a huge part of the problem. He's been Chancellor or PM for all but a relative handful of days in nearly four years.
And its not just that the buck stops with him, its what he's chosen to do and his priorities.
Hunt is far, far better. Despite Sunak, not because of him.
Hunt is basically the same - and as a long-serving Health Sec would be blamed personally for many of the current NHS problems (not without some justification). I don't see much more of a spark of the front-man to him than there is to Sunak. Anyway, Hunt finished last with only 18 votes out of 357 in the summer 2022 leadership election; he has little personal support and I don't see the MPs dumping Sunak to replace him with what they hope might be a slightly better version of the same, in order to lose less badly.
Question for non-Tories and former Tory voters who have fallen out of love with the party. Who of the current crop of MPs with leadership ambitions would you want to see as future leader? Not in terms of who's most beatable, but who would be most tolerable as a future PM?
I know who TSE would go for (though he's in the Lords), but others? I struggle with this. Would probably opt for whoever looks most presentable on the global stage. Until a few weeks ago I thought that was Cleverly (LOL).
As a former Tory, this is a conversation I have had of late with friends still in the party and we have agreed there is no one. Looking at the Cabinet, I would argue Mel Stride is the least weak.
The trouble is that, in 2019, the Tory party was shorn of its best talent. If we still had names such as Dominic Grieve, David Gauke, Sam Gyimah, Phillip Lee, Guto Bebb, Rory Stewart and Oliver Letwin in the frame (with 5 years more experience under their belts) it might be a wholly different picture.
The fact that several of these names have since either properly joined, or talked about working with, Lib Dems and Labour, I'd suggest they wouldn't be very strong Tory PMs....
My theory is the post election leadership candidates will be:
Steve Barclay Suella Liz Truss Tom T Gove Dowden
I think Jenrick, Stride and Hancock are are in danger of losing their seats, but if not, then add them in the mix.
I foresee Barclay, Tom T, Gove and Suella emerging from that.
Frankly I think any of these would be far better than Sunak.
Badenoch and Mordaunt (if the latter keeps her seat) have to be in that mix, surely?
If the final 4 is as per your list, then god help us, because that strikes me as a certainty that Suella will be LOTO.
Could well be, but Mordaunt very unlikely to keep her seat and I think Badenoch might actually wait this one out. Especially if Gove runs....
Things I never thought I'd say, but Gove might actually be the sensible choice. If the Conservatives can jump straight to the Michael Howard stage of grief, there's a chance of Gove creating space for an actually electable leader to emerge.
But my impression is that a lot of Conservatives are rather looking forward to going fully bonkers for a bit, or have already done so.
See a Doctor , if Gove is the answer we are a bona fide Banana Rrepublic
Maybe so, but nationalism is the raison d'etre of the SNP. "Rise up and be a nation again" and a' that.
An interesting question would be how supportive the SNP would be of an English political movement with a similar 'self determination' programme one of whose central aims was separation from Scotland and the unification of Ireland.
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
Oh do be quiet
This country has imported 1.3 million people in two years. Voters are noticing. See @Cookie’s comments above
This level of immigration is literally unprecedented in our history. It has never happened before. People didn’t ask for it, polls show they don’t want it, Brexit was driven - in large part - by people trying to stop it
And your pitiful answer to all this is “just stop talking about it”
I'm not saying stop talking about it. That would be you with your "do be quiet".
Why does immigration being a genuine issue mean people should be able to bang on unchallenged about how we have to embrace far right talking points or they'll end up in power?
I don’t even understand your points any more. I believe the technical description of your commentary is, in PB terms, “vapid bilge”
Really? I didn't think I was being obtuse. The far right thrive on anti-immigrant sentiment. Their agenda is to exploit the (genuine) issue of immigration to increase this sentiment amongst the public. You agree with that, I'd have thought?
And it's relevant to a discussion on immigration. Why wouldn't it be? You yourself were just highlighting the risk of the far right surfing to power on the back of anti-immigrant sentiment. Ok, so I quibbled with your wording. You said the far right were certain to triumph, which is hyperbole, so I replaced with "risk".
That's a bit clearer now, I hope. So what's your point anyway?
Just more vapid bilge, I’m afraid
But it is interesting how bewildered and confounded you are, by this issue: dwindling into incoherence like the robot in Kubrick’s 2001
Yawn. But ok, you just want to bang on and not engage with other viewpoints. I guess I can't stop you.
At the moment, your comments are either uninteresting, inane or incomprehensible. It's not a good basis for debate, sorry
I'm hoping this is a phase, as you can, when you are on form, be a good sparring partner
Perhaps it is post-Tenerife blues? - if so, my sympathies
I certainly do have those. Brrrr. Not just the great weather there either. Also the bold primary colours and the longer days. It's like I lived in a Van Gogh painting for a week and have been brutally ejected.
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
Oh do be quiet
This country has imported 1.3 million people in two years. Voters are noticing. See @Cookie’s comments above
This level of immigration is literally unprecedented in our history. It has never happened before. People didn’t ask for it, polls show they don’t want it, Brexit was driven - in large part - by people trying to stop it
And your pitiful answer to all this is “just stop talking about it”
I'm not saying stop talking about it. That would be you with your "do be quiet".
Why does immigration being a genuine issue mean people should be able to bang on unchallenged about how we have to embrace far right talking points or they'll end up in power?
I don’t even understand your points any more. I believe the technical description of your commentary is, in PB terms, “vapid bilge”
Really? I didn't think I was being obtuse. The far right thrive on anti-immigrant sentiment. Their agenda is to exploit the (genuine) issue of immigration to increase this sentiment amongst the public. You agree with that, I'd have thought?
And it's relevant to a discussion on immigration. Why wouldn't it be? You yourself were just highlighting the risk of the far right surfing to power on the back of anti-immigrant sentiment. Ok, so I quibbled with your wording. You said the far right were certain to triumph, which is hyperbole, so I replaced with "risk".
That's a bit clearer now, I hope. So what's your point anyway?
Does it not follow that if your overwhelming concern is the rise of the far right, you ought to want immigration to be as low as possible?
No that doesn't follow. Low as possible means none. Nativist Fortress Britain. It makes little sense to try and ward off the far right by embracing their goals.
Low immigration is a moderate position that used to be shared by every party in this country.
The goal of the far right in Europe is increasingly becoming repatration on a massive scale. From their perspective, further high levels of immigration might actually be welcome in the short term because it will help them gain power.
I think almost everyone agrees that the levels of the last couple of years aren't sustainable. But let's tackle the issue without giving succour to far right rhetoric, goals, or talking points.
I find it amusing to see many still saying "we need to talk about immigration - it's not racist to do so, and we mustn't be silenced".
Nobody seems to talk about anything fucking else at the moment.
We are where we are because having elected government after government that promised to reduce immigration, all they've done is increase it.
Yes, though I'd replace the word 'elected' with 'Tory'. It started with Cameron and the 'tens of thousands' stuff. I don't recall Labour 1997-2010 talking much about reducing immigration.
The government Monday proposed tighter immigration controls and said only skilled workers who speak English would be allowed to settle in Britain permanently.
Home Secretary Charles Clarke said the government also would fingerprint all foreigners applying for visas to stop them from remaining in Britain once their permits expire.
Maybe so, but nationalism is the raison d'etre of the SNP. "Rise up and be a nation again" and a' that.
We want to run our own affairs, not be stuck as a colony of a much larger neighbour who decides everything we do. What bit of that is hard for unionists to understand, just because you are fat and happy in England ruling the roost does not mean we can be kept prisoners forever.
We are trying our very best to keep up but the deep fried mars bar is hard to compete with in the lardy stakes.
Maybe so, but nationalism is the raison d'etre of the SNP. "Rise up and be a nation again" and a' that.
An interesting question would be how supportive the SNP would be of an English political movement with a similar 'self determination' programme one of whose central aims was separation from Scotland and the unification of Ireland.
Obviously 100% but no way England will ever willingly release the golden goose
Tories on 20%. Fukkers on 12% pre Farage. Sunak to give triumphant presser about how thanks to his canny skills in the Commons he will now Stop The Boats.
Tories. The abyss becons.
2024 is lining up to be the most spectacular general election since 1945. It's entirely plausible that Labour could end up with a 200+ majority. The Tories could end sub-100. Neither is anything like guaranteed but we ought to consider it a realistic possibility.
Sunak has got himself into a position where he isn't trusted as either a populist or a managerial type; he's chasing the RefUK vote but not getting it because he's merely highlighting their arguments without sorting them; driving right will consolidate the anti-Tory tactical vote on the left (which is in any case twice the size of the combined Con+RefUK vote); and meanwhile, the economic squeeze is still on for a lot of people, strikes are rife and the NHS cannot cope with demand, backlog and strikes.
But the problem for the Tories isn't Sunak (or not just him). The problem is their party and its record. Changing leaders yet again (for who?) isn't going to solve that and may make it even worse.
Sunak is a huge part of the problem. He's been Chancellor or PM for all but a relative handful of days in nearly four years.
And its not just that the buck stops with him, its what he's chosen to do and his priorities.
Hunt is far, far better. Despite Sunak, not because of him.
Hunt is basically the same - and as a long-serving Health Sec would be blamed personally for many of the current NHS problems (not without some justification). I don't see much more of a spark of the front-man to him than there is to Sunak. Anyway, Hunt finished last with only 18 votes out of 357 in the summer 2022 leadership election; he has little personal support and I don't see the MPs dumping Sunak to replace him with what they hope might be a slightly better version of the same, in order to lose less badly.
Question for non-Tories and former Tory voters who have fallen out of love with the party. Who of the current crop of MPs with leadership ambitions would you want to see as future leader? Not in terms of who's most beatable, but who would be most tolerable as a future PM?
I know who TSE would go for (though he's in the Lords), but others? I struggle with this. Would probably opt for whoever looks most presentable on the global stage. Until a few weeks ago I thought that was Cleverly (LOL).
As a former Tory, this is a conversation I have had of late with friends still in the party and we have agreed there is no one. Looking at the Cabinet, I would argue Mel Stride is the least weak.
The trouble is that, in 2019, the Tory party was shorn of its best talent. If we still had names such as Dominic Grieve, David Gauke, Sam Gyimah, Phillip Lee, Guto Bebb, Rory Stewart and Oliver Letwin in the frame (with 5 years more experience under their belts) it might be a wholly different picture.
The fact that several of these names have since either properly joined, or talked about working with, Lib Dems and Labour, I'd suggest they wouldn't be very strong Tory PMs....
My theory is the post election leadership candidates will be:
Steve Barclay Suella Liz Truss Tom T Gove Dowden
I think Jenrick, Stride and Hancock are are in danger of losing their seats, but if not, then add them in the mix.
I foresee Barclay, Tom T, Gove and Suella emerging from that.
Frankly I think any of these would be far better than Sunak.
Badenoch and Mordaunt (if the latter keeps her seat) have to be in that mix, surely?
If the final 4 is as per your list, then god help us, because that strikes me as a certainty that Suella will be LOTO.
Could well be, but Mordaunt very unlikely to keep her seat and I think Badenoch might actually wait this one out. Especially if Gove runs....
Things I never thought I'd say, but Gove might actually be the sensible choice. If the Conservatives can jump straight to the Michael Howard stage of grief, there's a chance of Gove creating space for an actually electable leader to emerge.
But my impression is that a lot of Conservatives are rather looking forward to going fully bonkers for a bit, or have already done so.
Personally, I don't see Gove getting to the final two. There will be enough 'stop Gove' mentality if he got into the final 3, I suspect.
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
Oh do be quiet
This country has imported 1.3 million people in two years. Voters are noticing. See @Cookie’s comments above
This level of immigration is literally unprecedented in our history. It has never happened before. People didn’t ask for it, polls show they don’t want it, Brexit was driven - in large part - by people trying to stop it
And your pitiful answer to all this is “just stop talking about it”
I'm not saying stop talking about it. That would be you with your "do be quiet".
Why does immigration being a genuine issue mean people should be able to bang on unchallenged about how we have to embrace far right talking points or they'll end up in power?
I don’t even understand your points any more. I believe the technical description of your commentary is, in PB terms, “vapid bilge”
Really? I didn't think I was being obtuse. The far right thrive on anti-immigrant sentiment. Their agenda is to exploit the (genuine) issue of immigration to increase this sentiment amongst the public. You agree with that, I'd have thought?
And it's relevant to a discussion on immigration. Why wouldn't it be? You yourself were just highlighting the risk of the far right surfing to power on the back of anti-immigrant sentiment. Ok, so I quibbled with your wording. You said the far right were certain to triumph, which is hyperbole, so I replaced with "risk".
That's a bit clearer now, I hope. So what's your point anyway?
Does it not follow that if your overwhelming concern is the rise of the far right, you ought to want immigration to be as low as possible?
No that doesn't follow. Low as possible means none. Nativist Fortress Britain. It makes little sense to try and ward off the far right by embracing their goals.
Low immigration is a moderate position that used to be shared by every party in this country.
The goal of the far right in Europe is increasingly becoming repatration on a massive scale. From their perspective, further high levels of immigration might actually be welcome in the short term because it will help them gain power.
I think almost everyone agrees that the levels of the last couple of years aren't sustainable. But let's tackle the issue without giving succour to far right rhetoric, goals, or talking points.
I find it amusing to see many still saying "we need to talk about immigration - it's not racist to do so, and we mustn't be silenced".
Nobody seems to talk about anything fucking else at the moment.
We are where we are because having elected government after government that promised to reduce immigration, all they've done is increase it.
Yes, though I'd replace the word 'elected' with 'Tory'. It started with Cameron and the 'tens of thousands' stuff. I don't recall Labour 1997-2010 talking much about reducing immigration.
They most certainly did. “British jobs for British workers” and all that. New Labour flirted very much with tough talk on immigration throughout their time in office.
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
Oh do be quiet
This country has imported 1.3 million people in two years. Voters are noticing. See @Cookie’s comments above
This level of immigration is literally unprecedented in our history. It has never happened before. People didn’t ask for it, polls show they don’t want it, Brexit was driven - in large part - by people trying to stop it
And your pitiful answer to all this is “just stop talking about it”
I'm not saying stop talking about it. That would be you with your "do be quiet".
Why does immigration being a genuine issue mean people should be able to bang on unchallenged about how we have to embrace far right talking points or they'll end up in power?
I don’t even understand your points any more. I believe the technical description of your commentary is, in PB terms, “vapid bilge”
Really? I didn't think I was being obtuse. The far right thrive on anti-immigrant sentiment. Their agenda is to exploit the (genuine) issue of immigration to increase this sentiment amongst the public. You agree with that, I'd have thought?
And it's relevant to a discussion on immigration. Why wouldn't it be? You yourself were just highlighting the risk of the far right surfing to power on the back of anti-immigrant sentiment. Ok, so I quibbled with your wording. You said the far right were certain to triumph, which is hyperbole, so I replaced with "risk".
That's a bit clearer now, I hope. So what's your point anyway?
Does it not follow that if your overwhelming concern is the rise of the far right, you ought to want immigration to be as low as possible?
No that doesn't follow. Low as possible means none. Nativist Fortress Britain. It makes little sense to try and ward off the far right by embracing their goals.
Low immigration is a moderate position that used to be shared by every party in this country.
The goal of the far right in Europe is increasingly becoming repatration on a massive scale. From their perspective, further high levels of immigration might actually be welcome in the short term because it will help them gain power.
That's being missed in the narrative and there's a real risk that where it ends up.
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
Oh do be quiet
This country has imported 1.3 million people in two years. Voters are noticing. See @Cookie’s comments above
This level of immigration is literally unprecedented in our history. It has never happened before. People didn’t ask for it, polls show they don’t want it, Brexit was driven - in large part - by people trying to stop it
And your pitiful answer to all this is “just stop talking about it”
I'm not saying stop talking about it. That would be you with your "do be quiet".
Why does immigration being a genuine issue mean people should be able to bang on unchallenged about how we have to embrace far right talking points or they'll end up in power?
I don’t even understand your points any more. I believe the technical description of your commentary is, in PB terms, “vapid bilge”
Really? I didn't think I was being obtuse. The far right thrive on anti-immigrant sentiment. Their agenda is to exploit the (genuine) issue of immigration to increase this sentiment amongst the public. You agree with that, I'd have thought?
And it's relevant to a discussion on immigration. Why wouldn't it be? You yourself were just highlighting the risk of the far right surfing to power on the back of anti-immigrant sentiment. Ok, so I quibbled with your wording. You said the far right were certain to triumph, which is hyperbole, so I replaced with "risk".
That's a bit clearer now, I hope. So what's your point anyway?
Does it not follow that if your overwhelming concern is the rise of the far right, you ought to want immigration to be as low as possible?
No that doesn't follow. Low as possible means none. Nativist Fortress Britain. It makes little sense to try and ward off the far right by embracing their goals.
Low immigration is a moderate position that used to be shared by every party in this country.
The goal of the far right in Europe is increasingly becoming repatration on a massive scale. From their perspective, further high levels of immigration might actually be welcome in the short term because it will help them gain power.
I think almost everyone agrees that the levels of the last couple of years aren't sustainable. But let's tackle the issue without giving succour to far right rhetoric, goals, or talking points.
I find it amusing to see many still saying "we need to talk about immigration - it's not racist to do so, and we mustn't be silenced".
Nobody seems to talk about anything fucking else at the moment.
We are where we are because having elected government after government that promised to reduce immigration, all they've done is increase it.
Yes, though I'd replace the word 'elected' with 'Tory'. It started with Cameron and the 'tens of thousands' stuff. I don't recall Labour 1997-2010 talking much about reducing immigration.
They most certainly did. “British jobs for British workers” and all that. New Labour flirted very much with tough talk on immigration throughout their time in office.
In fact their rhetoric was more 'extreme' in many cases. John Reid as Home Secretary talked of "foreigners stealing our benefits" and boasted about "throwing out" record numbers of asylum seekers.
Tories on 20%. Fukkers on 12% pre Farage. Sunak to give triumphant presser about how thanks to his canny skills in the Commons he will now Stop The Boats.
Tories. The abyss becons.
2024 is lining up to be the most spectacular general election since 1945. It's entirely plausible that Labour could end up with a 200+ majority. The Tories could end sub-100. Neither is anything like guaranteed but we ought to consider it a realistic possibility.
Sunak has got himself into a position where he isn't trusted as either a populist or a managerial type; he's chasing the RefUK vote but not getting it because he's merely highlighting their arguments without sorting them; driving right will consolidate the anti-Tory tactical vote on the left (which is in any case twice the size of the combined Con+RefUK vote); and meanwhile, the economic squeeze is still on for a lot of people, strikes are rife and the NHS cannot cope with demand, backlog and strikes.
But the problem for the Tories isn't Sunak (or not just him). The problem is their party and its record. Changing leaders yet again (for who?) isn't going to solve that and may make it even worse.
Sunak is a huge part of the problem. He's been Chancellor or PM for all but a relative handful of days in nearly four years.
And its not just that the buck stops with him, its what he's chosen to do and his priorities.
Hunt is far, far better. Despite Sunak, not because of him.
Hunt is basically the same - and as a long-serving Health Sec would be blamed personally for many of the current NHS problems (not without some justification). I don't see much more of a spark of the front-man to him than there is to Sunak. Anyway, Hunt finished last with only 18 votes out of 357 in the summer 2022 leadership election; he has little personal support and I don't see the MPs dumping Sunak to replace him with what they hope might be a slightly better version of the same, in order to lose less badly.
Question for non-Tories and former Tory voters who have fallen out of love with the party. Who of the current crop of MPs with leadership ambitions would you want to see as future leader? Not in terms of who's most beatable, but who would be most tolerable as a future PM?
I know who TSE would go for (though he's in the Lords), but others? I struggle with this. Would probably opt for whoever looks most presentable on the global stage. Until a few weeks ago I thought that was Cleverly (LOL).
As a former Tory, this is a conversation I have had of late with friends still in the party and we have agreed there is no one. Looking at the Cabinet, I would argue Mel Stride is the least weak.
The trouble is that, in 2019, the Tory party was shorn of its best talent. If we still had names such as Dominic Grieve, David Gauke, Sam Gyimah, Phillip Lee, Guto Bebb, Rory Stewart and Oliver Letwin in the frame (with 5 years more experience under their belts) it might be a wholly different picture.
The fact that several of these names have since either properly joined, or talked about working with, Lib Dems and Labour, I'd suggest they wouldn't be very strong Tory PMs....
My theory is the post election leadership candidates will be:
Steve Barclay Suella Liz Truss Tom T Gove Dowden
I think Jenrick, Stride and Hancock are are in danger of losing their seats, but if not, then add them in the mix.
I foresee Barclay, Tom T, Gove and Suella emerging from that.
Frankly I think any of these would be far better than Sunak.
Badenoch and Mordaunt (if the latter keeps her seat) have to be in that mix, surely?
If the final 4 is as per your list, then god help us, because that strikes me as a certainty that Suella will be LOTO.
Could well be, but Mordaunt very unlikely to keep her seat and I think Badenoch might actually wait this one out. Especially if Gove runs....
Things I never thought I'd say, but Gove might actually be the sensible choice. If the Conservatives can jump straight to the Michael Howard stage of grief, there's a chance of Gove creating space for an actually electable leader to emerge.
But my impression is that a lot of Conservatives are rather looking forward to going fully bonkers for a bit, or have already done so.
Oh, they are going to go fully bonkers alright. They will be flirting very much with the political movements that have seen parties like FdI, RN, PVV and the AfD achieve success in Europe.
But while I think they’re going to go off the deep end, there is risk there. We shouldn’t just rely on the old mantra that the parties at the centre always win in British politics. If Labour are seen to have failed to get a grip on things in their first term, the danger grows. We should all be hoping that the next Labour government enjoys at least some moderate successes, to give the Tory Party or its replacement time to come to its senses.
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
The problem is a lack of discussion about the consequences of the various options. And the slight conflict between "Mass immigration is wonderful" and "To protect the environment and keep everyone happy, we must build no houses or places of employment."
See also
The NHS is overwhelmed Our rivers are full of shit as the sewage system can’t cope We have a national housing shortage crisis
And so on, and so forth
And yet at the same time we are told this has nothing to do with mass immigration and the population of the UK rising by 1.3 million people in just two years. Even the dumbest voter no longer buys this bollocks
We have a shortage of housing because we refuse to let people build houses to cope with our population growth.
There's absolutely nothing wrong whatsoever with immigration, so long as we have sufficient investment to keep up with population growth.
The problem is when we have rising population and no investment.
So you don’t think 1.3 million in 2 years is too many? (Plus illegals, of course)
How many is too many then? 2 million a year? 5 million? Or is fhere no limit in your eyes, and all immigration of any levels is good and fine?
No limit in my eyes so long as investment and infrastructure grows correspondingly.
I couldn't care less if our population in England by the end of the century is 60 million, 100 million or a billion, so long as we invest accordingly and have growing living standards what bloody difference does it make?
Because most of us don’t want to see England’s green and pleasant land finally and completely covered with your fucking hideous Barratt Home red brick semis
You really are quite crazy. You know that, right?
If we increased the number of people living in apartments to French levels we could increase both housing provision and the size our green spaces at the same time.
No need for this kind of bickering at all.
Screw that.
Unless the people moving into apartments WANT to. Rather than being forced to do so as they can't afford the alternative.
The housing shortage is largely affecting young individuals and couples who cannot get on the property ladder, especially in the larger cities, and they are almost as a matter of course looking for apartments unless they live somewhere very cheap.
I didn't move from flat to house until I was on my 3rd move 11 years after buying my first flat, and I'm a lucky GenXer who could actually afford to be a first time buyer in 2000.
Just invert the argument to show how silly it is. Would knocking down Edinburgh's tenements and replacing them with Barratts worsen or improve the city's housing crisis?
That's not an inversion.
This country has an abundance of undeveloped land to build housing on, less than 5% of our country is developed for housing even including green spaces like gardens etc - we can easily build many more houses and barely affect how much greenery there is in this country.
There is no shortage of land, just a shortage of willpower to fix the problem. Its not about houses versus apartments, its about construction versus refusal to do so.
"Undeveloped" = farmland competing with Australian meat farmers, presuimably.
We need food here - and produced here - not imported from overseas.
Bart si not right in the tattie Carnyx
Talking about tatties, the place where I come from has been increased about 5x and he still thinks we don't do enough. Huge loss of good arable farmland for growing tatties and corn too (some used for trading estates though mostd of the old factories have been used already for that and housing). They've started using childrens' play spaces for housing, too, though seem to have stopped.
We don't do enough, that's not an opinion its a fact.
You being deluded doesn't solve the chronic housing shortage in this country.
Comments
It’s always something that makes sense at the time, when in the middle of a project, but looking back it seems totally weird.
Perhaps there were a bunch of other overnight routines that would fail if this one did, so they paid someone to sit in the office until 9pm to watch it, something like that.
The trouble is that, in 2019, the Tory party was shorn of its best talent. If we still had names such as Dominic Grieve, David Gauke, Sam Gyimah, Phillip Lee, Guto Bebb, Rory Stewart and Oliver Letwin in the frame (with 5 years more experience under their belts) it might be a wholly different picture.
But from this it doesn't follow that our struggling NHS and our housing crisis and our generally creaking public realm is because of immigration. That's the far right spin. That's what I mean by a far right talking point. It's a pov which should be rejected not pandered to imo.
I'm down 20 lbs since I started my diet in October. Going to remain on this diet until the summer, then see where I'm at.
Very minimal exercise, not changed alcohol consumption, just increased my meat and cheese intake and cut out carbs.
Went out for lunch with colleagues yesterday and had a steak and a shandy at the pub, just offered my chips and onion rings to others.
Really developed a taste for blue steaks lately. Never been that big of a fan of steaks, but been progressively going rarer until I've reached blue and now I love them.
That 25% of former Tory voters would now vote Reform still feels impossible, but no centrist One Nation Tory would (?!) so it feels as if a Tory split of some sort is only a matter of time. Since this seems both impossible and irresistible it will be worth watching.
https://d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/TheTimes_VI_Immigration_Cons_240117_W.pdf
One way or another, he would have gone. Whether Truss would have gone on to do all the damage she did to the Tory brand in each scenario is another matter but either way, that wasn't Sunak's doing.
Johnson - who, let's remember, might well have supported Remain - is by far the most responsible for destroying the Tories, from the Brexit vote to undermining any sensible deal from May to his treatment of rebel MPs (while expecting, as usual, to be given licence for his own rebellions), to his damage to the norms of politics, to his behaviour and policies in office, to the corruption of appointments and expectations.
I don't know if there are stats on this but I get the impression a lot of men put on major weight in their early middle age (or from the 30s until the 50s), then many shed it later. Whereas women seem either to stay thin throughout, or slowly but steadily put on weight through life and stay there.
I'm hoping this is a phase, as you can, when you are on form, be a good sparring partner
Perhaps it is post-Tenerife blues? - if so, my sympathies
Cherry-picking.
Other YouGovs in July 2022 were as follows:
6-7th July
Lab 40
Con 29
13-14th July
Lab 40
Con 29
21-22nd July
Lab 37
Con 33
27-28th July
Lab 35
Con 34
Here at least is one thing to unite at least half a ton of PBers. We are all trying to shift the lard
I note TimS trying to get down to under 70kg, but I'm ~80kg and well within BMI healthy range, so I'd guess most of our PB dieters are either >80kg or short enough to look up to Sunak!
ETA: Ah, tonne and ton are quite close, only ~16kg/35lb in it
One large group of people are here because the way the UK makes university finances work is to have lots of foreign students paying high fees. The nature of their studies barely matters- we need the money they bring in. Or pay for universities ourselves.
Another large group of people are here because, without them, we can't staff health and social care systems. I suppose we could replace them with Britons in useless non-jobs. I suggest we start with travel journalists.
(Alternatively, we could acknowledge that that's where we are, be grateful that there are people prepared to prop up the British state and make proper provision for them.)
The new town of Heathrow has the power, water etc for zillions of people. Public transport on a massive scale *already* built. Plus the collapse in pollution in West London.
The goal of the far right in Europe is increasingly becoming repatration on a massive scale. From their perspective, further high levels of immigration might actually be welcome in the short term because it will help them gain power.
My theory is the post election leadership candidates will be:
Steve Barclay
Suella
Liz Truss
Tom T
Gove
Dowden
I think Jenrick, Stride and Hancock are are in danger of losing their seats, but if not, then add them in the mix.
I foresee Barclay, Tom T, Gove and Suella emerging from that.
Frankly I think any of these would be far better than Sunak.
It might be worth a look at Q1/Q2 again, on the basis that if the Lords block Rwanda Sunak could try and call a “stop the boats” election.
I think this is much less likely than November, given Sunak’s sensibilities seem to be to play for time, and it might not allow time for another giveaway budget, but might be one to watch.
Counting calories and weighing tofu and eating only endives between 3pm and tea time is far too fiddly and people, understandably, give up: it is simultaneously joyless and hard mental work
Also it is SLOW. And this is the second advantage of fasting. With fasts you see results quickly, you drop kilos in days, your bones start re-emerging in a week or two, and that is encouraging, and that makes you want to carry on, rather than give up at the slow progress
The disadvantage of fasting is that is is quite easy to put it back on in a jiffy. That's when and why you need to be vigilant.
My old method was, whenever I went over 82kg I simply didn't eat until it went back under 82kg, and I weighed myself daily. Simple but very efficient, it worked for 15 years until the damn pandemic. I intend to return to this regime once - if - when - I hit my target
I've also noted that my blood pressure is way down. Another plus
Right. Now work. And black tea, Then some HIIT, Then I've earned a G&T
The planning process, policies and mind set of government are still set to an age of a gently increasing or static population.
If we *had* had no net immigration, then we wouldn't need to do more than renew existing infrastructure.
We are now 8 million homes behind. And it is getting worse.
The reason we need more houses and more of everything else is immigration. This isn't blaming anyone. People need somewhere to sleep. And everything else.
If the final 4 is as per your list, then god help us, because that strikes me as a certainty that Suella will be LOTO.
We need to adapt to the world as it is, not the world as we pretend it is.
Our population is higher than it was and growing. That means massive investment is needed, just to stand still.
No reason not to do the investment, but we need to.
Part of the problem is an attitude that has viewed migrants through a lens of "well they're not pensioners, so not demanding pension or much healthcare, so even someone on minimum wage is productive" - while completely neglecting the counter investment side of the equation.
Ensuring people have a roof of their own over their head eases problems and builds resilience.
My blood pressure has got dramatically better by about 20mmHg for both systolic and diastolic readings, which has given me pause for thought. I don't mind staying vegetarian, but teetotal? The horror! The horror!
For me it's entirely about skipping the wine in the evenings (600 calories)
From that, I have less desire to snack (another 400 calories) plus more energy in the week for light cardio.
Considered ozempic but I just had to drop the wine...
It has next to no calories, and you won't be tempted to eat too much of it anyway.
Probably better than fasting, if you can stomach it. Keeps up the protein intake.
Too busy right now to look but may investigate later.
@tompeck
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23m
I really don’t get how Rishi Sunak can’t see that going “back to square one with Labour” is exactly what the voters want.
"Immigration in recent years has been too high. We need to bring it down to a sustainable level. Let's discuss how."
"The country just can't cope with all this immigration. We're sinking under the weight of it. We have a crisis in public services and that's why. Too many immigrants."
The first sets up the debate we want. The second the one we don't want. The second is the far right populist framing.
It's all "talking about it".
Even folk like me who are approaching retirement would like to see economic redistribution to the young, and that is a far better spur to economic growth than tax cuts for the rich and retired such as IHT.
https://x.com/calumam/status/1747933719447372275
Perhaps he should rename the SNP: "Slightly left of Labour".
Rishi Sunak challenges House of Lords to accept ‘the will of the people’ and pass Rwanda bill
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2024/jan/18/rishi-sunak-press-conference-rwanda-bill-conservatives-labour-fujitsu-post-office-horizon-uk-politics-latest
It is a rare politician who takes on a complex problem that offers little electoral dividend just ahead of an election they expect to lose. This reality is troubling Labour strategists who fear that Conservatives are parking a number of issues in the file marked “another party’s problem”. One such toxic parcel is the brewing financial crisis in UK higher education.
https://www.ft.com/content/4fa23203-22f0-4b95-b7a6-5cdbd3bdb7e5?shareType=nongift
Also "Party" has negative connotations to some people.
If they had a roof over their head then their would be no homeless, just starving.
Plenty of stuff in finance runs around then, because (some) market(s) close at 16:30
If the election is in the autumn I don’t think it will be fixable (but reality is we may already be too far gone for it to be fixable).
But my impression is that a lot of Conservatives are rather looking forward to going fully bonkers for a bit, or have already done so.
In meat, milk, and eggs, the UK produces roughly equivalent volume to what it consumes. In 2020 it produced 61kg of meat, 227L of milk and 172 eggs per person per year. By value, the UK is a net importer of dairy and beef. This reflects UK consumer preferences for eating higher value products, while lower value products are exported.
The UK produces a significant proportion of its other crop needs, including around 60% of sugar beet, 70% of potatoes and 80% of oilseeds. Apart from a recent pest-related reduction in oilseeds, these proportions have remained stable over the last ten years. Climate change represents a risk to production both in terms of making conditions unsuitable for some crops and allowing new pests to proliferate but it may also benefit new types of crops.
The UK produces over 50% of vegetables consumed domestically, but only 16% of fruit. 93% of domestic consumption of fresh vegetables was fulfilled by domestic and European production, while fruit supply is more widely spread across the EU, Africa, the Americas, and the UK.
The UK both produces and consumes fish and seafood, but is a net importer overall. UK consumer preference is for fish mainly caught outside UK waters, such as cod, haddock, tuna, and shrimp and prawns. This means that the UK exports much of what it catches and imports much of what it eats. Supply sources for imports are diverse, with northwest Europe and China the most significant sources. Most of the fisheries which supply UK imports are well managed and have sustainable stocks, although climate change presents a risk to fish stocks. The UK has a significant fishing fleet which mainly exports to the EU, US and China. Important exports include herring, mackerel, salmon and nephrops (scampi)."
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/united-kingdom-food-security-report-2021/united-kingdom-food-security-report-2021-theme-2-uk-food-supply-sources
(with apologies to "Yes Minister")
Nobody seems to talk about anything fucking else at the moment.
a) For someone else (Lords, Courts and Lawyers) as a body or collectively to ensure nothing can happen while this government endures
or
b) For the Lords and Courts/Lawyers to act so as to make implementation possible this side of an election, running risks including it very visibly not stopping the boats and/or media stories about 6 year old Syrian (Syriac Christian) little girls being snatched from or with their teddies in the middle of the night to be handcuffed to a plane.
I think that becomes the real question, and it isn't easy. It shows they should never have got themselves where they are.
https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna6929302
2005: Blair seeks to curb immigration to Britain
The government Monday proposed tighter immigration controls and said only skilled workers who speak English would be allowed to settle in Britain permanently.
Home Secretary Charles Clarke said the government also would fingerprint all foreigners applying for visas to stop them from remaining in Britain once their permits expire.
But while I think they’re going to go off the deep end, there is risk there. We shouldn’t just rely on the old mantra that the parties at the centre always win in British politics. If Labour are seen to have failed to get a grip on things in their first term, the danger grows. We should all be hoping that the next Labour government enjoys at least some moderate successes, to give the Tory Party or its replacement time to come to its senses.
You being deluded doesn't solve the chronic housing shortage in this country.