And Ukraine? Johnson is of course Ukraine 's greatest advocate. Trump is not.
I have the horrible feeling you're looking for some consistency here. Trump is both the worst, and yet best option. I did not attend a party, and yet I did attend a party. I....
I am sure self interest plays a part, if Trump can come back after losing office to Biden in 2020 Boris will think, why not him too if Rishi loses the next general election to Starmer
I would gentle suggest you actually support Johnson's comments
I am waiting patiently for the moment when you call AI a "robust" system.
And then I will throw a lot of Post Office-flavoured ordure at you.
No system - not even AI - is or ever will be 100% correct or entirely reliable and those who think that every thing can be outsourced to any such system or that it alone can be relied on are being the biggest bloody fools around.
My code is 100% correct. As long as you don't press that button at the wrong point. I SAID.....
I am sure self interest plays a part, if Trump can come back after losing office to Biden in 2020 Boris will think, why not him too if Rishi loses the next general election to Starmer
He needs a seat in Parliament first, or to front a military coup.
Trump and Britain Trump, where did it all go wrong?
I am sure self interest plays a part, if Trump can come back after losing office to Biden in 2020 Boris will think, why not him too if Rishi loses the next general election to Starmer
He needs a seat in Parliament first, or to front a military coup.
Trump and Britain Trump, where did it all go wrong?
Of course the sooner Rishi loses the Tory leadership and control of CCHQ, the better for Boris' chances of returning to Parliament as well. Hence I expect Boris will be wishing Rishi well at the next general election with his fingers crossed firmly behind his back
I am waiting patiently for the moment when you call AI a "robust" system.
And then I will throw a lot of Post Office-flavoured ordure at you.
No system - not even AI - is or ever will be 100% correct or entirely reliable and those who think that every thing can be outsourced to any such system or that it alone can be relied on are being the biggest bloody fools around.
My code is 100% correct. As long as you don't press that button at the wrong point. I SAID.....
Program proving is about constructing a formal proof that the program you *think* you wrote is correct.
Bug free systems are possible. The Space Shuttle code was written with heavy testing, every line multiply reviewed etc. They stopped finding bugs quite early in the lifecycle - despite trying to find them, actively through the program.
And Ukraine? Johnson is of course Ukraine 's greatest advocate. Trump is not.
'Well, ask yourself first: which American president was the first to stand up for Ukraine, after Putin’s invasion of 2014?
Was it the great liberal internationalist Barack Obama? No sir-ree.
He did nothing to push Putin out of Ukraine, either from Crimea or the Donbas. Nor did the French, nor did the Germans, and nor, frankly, did the UK government of the day which decided — mystifyingly — to wash its hands of the matter and entrust the fate of the Ukrainians to the morally bankrupt ‘Normandy Format’.
It was Donald Trump who gave the Ukrainians those Javelin anti-tank weapons which — together with the UK NLAW missiles and other weapons — were so valuable to the Ukrainians in the battle for Kyiv; and it was at least partly thanks to that bold decision by Trump that the Ukrainians were able to stun the world and send Putin’s armies scuttling from the Ukrainian capital.'
That’s not what he says in the clip. Personally I think that if anyone can get here, however, and qualifies for asylum, then they should stay.
It’s what it says in the article
“ After seeing off the right-wing revolt over his Rwanda scheme, Rishi Sunak claimed that the Labour opposition has “no plan” to stop the boats.
He is wrong. Labour has a credible plan – but doesn’t really want to talk about it.
After a below-the-radar diplomatic offensive with EU leaders by Keir Starmer and shadow ministers, there is growing confidence inside Labour that a Starmer government could secure a returns agreement with the EU to allow migrants crossing the Channel to be sent back to France.”
That being so, with 70% plus now thinking Brexit was a mistake, Starmer is a fool not to fess up.
Some posters may be overly focused on 1979 as the turning point. The point still stands: the British governing class don’t seem to really care about *Britain*.
This is not even a left or right point, as it seems widely prevalent.
Ruling classes have always been self-serving.
Not entirely. A lot of them accepted that death or permanent injury in battle was the price tag that came attached to their privileges.
The current lot think that their privileges come for free.
Far too positive. The previous lot also thought that those without privileges should also go along willy-nilly to support them and suffer death or permament injury. And the common soldiers always had much worse medical and other treatment than the nobles or officers. Was still the case in the Great War - look at what happened to folk with PTSD. Orficers got a nice sanatorium; too many ORs got nine bullets at dawn.
Officers had many privileges. But, casualty rates were always highest among those ranked Second Lieutenant to Major. Inevitably, as they had to lead the attack.
Highest were the young subalterns straight out of public school. Lieutenant George in Blackadder. Life expectancy for junior officers at the start of the war? Six weeks.
It was shocking. I had a daily reminder at school for five years where every morning I would walk through the War Cloister which was the memorial to the school’s dead in WW1 and then added to with the WW2 dead. There were 500 boys names on there from WW1 and they were pretty much all around my age when I left or was pissing it up at university.
The one that always brought it home was John Thynne, Viscount Weymouth. Absolutely everything to live for in most other periods of life but dead at 21 pointlessly. At least he is remembered if only by a few people as there were millions who weren’t.
My old place put together a website which has the stories and details of every old boy they have records of who died in any war since foundation and some crazy stories. It’s obviously important to me as it could have been me but good that people care about their memories.
Given we're all above base misogyny on pb would it reasonable to advance Jill Biden as a Lady Macbeth figure. OGH reckons she is particularly keen for her husband to stand for President again. Why exactly? The public believe he is too old, losing his marbles and needs to go. He risks letting Trump back in. I don't buy the idea that if Biden goes it needs to be Kamala Harris replacing him. Where is the fan base that will create such a storm?
I am waiting patiently for the moment when you call AI a "robust" system.
And then I will throw a lot of Post Office-flavoured ordure at you.
No system - not even AI - is or ever will be 100% correct or entirely reliable and those who think that every thing can be outsourced to any such system or that it alone can be relied on are being the biggest bloody fools around.
My code is 100% correct. As long as you don't press that button at the wrong point. I SAID.....
Program proving is about constructing a formal proof that the program you *think* you wrote is correct.
Bug free systems are possible. The Space Shuttle code was written with heavy testing, every line multiply reviewed etc. They stopped finding bugs quite early in the lifecycle - despite trying to find them, actively through the program.
I think bug free systems are entirely possible. Then you let regular people use them. And then all bets are off.
This week one of my colleagues had to 'fix' a system where an import had 'gone wrong'. The office admin had done the import - but had put the word 'Yes' as every single persons surname in the spreadsheet they uploaded.
Could we have, in theory, stopped that 'bug' - yes! 100%. Did we ever envisage it? No...
And Ukraine? Johnson is of course Ukraine 's greatest advocate. Trump is not.
'Well, ask yourself first: which American president was the first to stand up for Ukraine, after Putin’s invasion of 2014?
Was it the great liberal internationalist Barack Obama? No sir-ree.
He did nothing to push Putin out of Ukraine, either from Crimea or the Donbas. Nor did the French, nor did the Germans, and nor, frankly, did the UK government of the day which decided — mystifyingly — to wash its hands of the matter and entrust the fate of the Ukrainians to the morally bankrupt ‘Normandy Format’.
It was Donald Trump who gave the Ukrainians those Javelin anti-tank weapons which — together with the UK NLAW missiles and other weapons — were so valuable to the Ukrainians in the battle for Kyiv; and it was at least partly thanks to that bold decision by Trump that the Ukrainians were able to stun the world and send Putin’s armies scuttling from the Ukrainian capital.'
That’s not what he says in the clip. Personally I think that if anyone can get here, however, and qualifies for asylum, then they should stay.
It’s what it says in the article
“ After seeing off the right-wing revolt over his Rwanda scheme, Rishi Sunak claimed that the Labour opposition has “no plan” to stop the boats.
He is wrong. Labour has a credible plan – but doesn’t really want to talk about it.
After a below-the-radar diplomatic offensive with EU leaders by Keir Starmer and shadow ministers, there is growing confidence inside Labour that a Starmer government could secure a returns agreement with the EU to allow migrants crossing the Channel to be sent back to France.”
That being so, with 70% plus now thinking Brexit was a mistake, Starmer is a fool not to fess up.
He'll have to eventually. I'll be very surprised if we don't rejoin, at least, the single market, in any Labour second term.
The both economic and electoral pressure for it, I think, by then, will be impossible to ignore.
Given we're all above base misogyny on pb would it reasonable to advance Jill Biden as a Lady Macbeth figure. OGH reckons she is particularly keen for her husband to stand for President again. Why exactly? The public believe he is too old, losing his marbles and needs to go. He risks letting Trump back in. I don't buy the idea that if Biden goes it needs to be Kamala Harris replacing him. Where is the fan base that will create such a storm?
Understandable, he'd only be under her feet all the time otherwise. Cluttering up the house, making a mess of the scatter cushions.
Given we're all above base misogyny on pb would it reasonable to advance Jill Biden as a Lady Macbeth figure. OGH reckons she is particularly keen for her husband to stand for President again. Why exactly? The public believe he is too old, losing his marbles and needs to go. He risks letting Trump back in. I don't buy the idea that if Biden goes it needs to be Kamala Harris replacing him. Where is the fan base that will create such a storm?
Does any alternative Democrat poll better against Trump or Haley or DeSantis than Biden? Not that I can see, indeed most poll worse
I was amused to read our three local Tory MPs' regular homilies in our local free paper this week.
Each MP majored on the shocking PO Scandal in outraged, hand-wringing terms. Each stuck the knife into Davey who 'has serious questions to answer'.
None has ever to my knowledge mentioned or shown any interest in the PO scandal before this month.
(No mention of Rwanda from any of them either.)
Individual MPs might think it will help them in the Blue Wall. But there is a real danger it will backfire on them nationally. I mean how many Tory post office ministers have there been?
I am waiting patiently for the moment when you call AI a "robust" system.
And then I will throw a lot of Post Office-flavoured ordure at you.
No system - not even AI - is or ever will be 100% correct or entirely reliable and those who think that every thing can be outsourced to any such system or that it alone can be relied on are being the biggest bloody fools around.
My code is 100% correct. As long as you don't press that button at the wrong point. I SAID.....
Program proving is about constructing a formal proof that the program you *think* you wrote is correct.
Bug free systems are possible. The Space Shuttle code was written with heavy testing, every line multiply reviewed etc. They stopped finding bugs quite early in the lifecycle - despite trying to find them, actively through the program.
I think bug free systems are entirely possible. Then you let regular people use them. And then all bets are off.
This week one of my colleagues had to 'fix' a system where an import had 'gone wrong'. The office admin had done the import - but had put the word 'Yes' as every single persons surname in the spreadsheet they uploaded.
Could we have, in theory, stopped that 'bug' - yes! 100%. Did we ever envisage it? No...
My school had a pupil called BOBBY DROP TABLE STUDENTS.
Just found out that one of my favourite singers has died
I met Marlena Shaw on my first ever visit to Ronnie Scott's about fifteen years ago. I took a soul singer friend and we had a table right next to the stage
After her excellent show we went straight to the bar for another drink. We both said something like 'wow, that was amazing' as we looked back at the stage, and we saw her sitting alone at the nearest table to us. We looked at each other, dropped our jaws, looked back at her and she beckoned us over
We sat with her for at least half an hour, but not much more, which was quite astonishingly long enough for her to drink four rather large and expensive cocktails that I paid for
She was worth every penny. That half hour was joyful, and a memory I'll cherish forever
Everyone knows songs from her second album 'The Spice Of Life' (Woman Of The Ghetto and California Soul)
But I want to share a song I love from her first album 'Out Of Different Bags' (1967) called Nothing But Tears
Some posters may be overly focused on 1979 as the turning point. The point still stands: the British governing class don’t seem to really care about *Britain*.
This is not even a left or right point, as it seems widely prevalent.
Ruling classes have always been self-serving.
Not entirely. A lot of them accepted that death or permanent injury in battle was the price tag that came attached to their privileges.
The current lot think that their privileges come for free.
Far too positive. The previous lot also thought that those without privileges should also go along willy-nilly to support them and suffer death or permament injury. And the common soldiers always had much worse medical and other treatment than the nobles or officers. Was still the case in the Great War - look at what happened to folk with PTSD. Orficers got a nice sanatorium; too many ORs got nine bullets at dawn.
Officers had many privileges. But, casualty rates were always highest among those ranked Second Lieutenant to Major. Inevitably, as they had to lead the attack.
Highest were the young subalterns straight out of public school. Lieutenant George in Blackadder. Life expectancy for junior officers at the start of the war? Six weeks.
It was shocking. I had a daily reminder at school for five years where every morning I would walk through the War Cloister which was the memorial to the school’s dead in WW1 and then added to with the WW2 dead. There were 500 boys names on there from WW1 and they were pretty much all around my age when I left or was pissing it up at university.
The one that always brought it home was John Thynne, Viscount Weymouth. Absolutely everything to live for in most other periods of life but dead at 21 pointlessly. At least he is remembered if only by a few people as there were millions who weren’t.
My old place put together a website which has the stories and details of every old boy they have records of who died in any war since foundation and some crazy stories. It’s obviously important to me as it could have been me but good that people care about their memories.
Yeah, right. I must say I don't share Boris's confidence about Trump supporting Ukraine.
Buried in BJ's article is this. Is it correct?? Staggering if so.
"Remember that in 2008 the Eurozone and the U.S. had about the same GDP — even though the population of the Eurozone is much bigger.
"The Eurozone was worth $14.2 trillion, the U.S. $14.8 trillion. Fifteen years later the Eurozone is stagnant at $15 trillion — while the U.S. has rocketed ahead to an astonishing $26 trillion."
At some stage, and it’s not entirely clear when, the British governing class abandoned the British national *project*.
I think David Edgerton is probably the best writer on this, his thesis is that 1945 represented the creation of a new British state that was - contra to received opinion - surprisingly advanced and puissant - but that the neo-liberal age since 1979 has seen its slow and now rapid dismantlement.
Why should Britain retain the ability to manufacture steel? Why should Britain maintain armed forces and be concerned about Russian aggression? Why shouldn’t it import a million immigrants a year? Why shouldn’t Scotland go its own way? Why shouldn’t Britain run a massive trade deficit? Why should we keep the BBC?
The modern dispensation barely knows how to answer these questions.
He really records no post-war decline until Thatcher gets in? Wow. Must have blinkers like a Shire pony.
You're thinking economically, not nationally. Up to a point in the 20th century, the British patria was the Empire and the UK was a warfare state (his term), geared to producing ships and guns and coal to police the Empire and seas. Companies included Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) and Imperial Airways. Then it contracted and the British patria became the UK and the UK was a welfare state (his term), a process of adjustment over some decades. Companies include British Steel, British Coal, the National Health Service. During the neoliberal period this national base was abandoned and the British patria became diffuse, spreading out to Europe or Anglosphere or India or global, depending on taste.
Edgerton notes these patterns, and his book "The Fall And Rise Of The British Nation" summarises this. Gardenwalker described this summary.
The economy and the nation. The economy is just the nation in numbers.
Um, I'm surprised to hear you say that. The nation is a group of people who describe themselves as "us". The economy is what the people do. I am not my job. What we are is different from what we do.
They are two ways of looking at the same thing. One can see the nation through the lense of its economic activity, its health statistics, its religious choices etc. If one knew everything about everyone's actions as participants in the economy, one would know everything about them.
But my point is really that the dismantlement and sell-off of the nationalised industries cannot be critiqued without understanding how nationalisation had made them joke industries staffed by joke workers and producing joke products. It is nationalisation that is responsible for this, not privatisation. As an example, private enterprise covered the country in railways - nationalisation enabled their decimation. These things happened between 1945 and 1979.
Although it is easy to characterise them as joke industries, they did exist and produce things, including Concorde. Where losses were covered by the government and profits (if made) going to the government.
But now in our globalised times we work in industries where losses are covered by the goverment and profits (if made) go to the pension funds and venture capitalists of other countries.
We sold our souls and got an iPad. It's not obviously better.
Given we're all above base misogyny on pb would it reasonable to advance Jill Biden as a Lady Macbeth figure. OGH reckons she is particularly keen for her husband to stand for President again. Why exactly? The public believe he is too old, losing his marbles and needs to go. He risks letting Trump back in. I don't buy the idea that if Biden goes it needs to be Kamala Harris replacing him. Where is the fan base that will create such a storm?
Does any alternative Democrat poll better against Trump or Haley or DeSantis than Biden? Not that I can see, indeed most poll worse
Yeah, right. I must say I don't share Boris's confidence about Trump supporting Ukraine.
Buried in BJ's article is this. Is it correct?? Staggering if so.
"Remember that in 2008 the Eurozone and the U.S. had about the same GDP — even though the population of the Eurozone is much bigger.
"The Eurozone was worth $14.2 trillion, the U.S. $14.8 trillion. Fifteen years later the Eurozone is stagnant at $15 trillion — while the U.S. has rocketed ahead to an astonishing $26 trillion."
The US figures at least are correct and a significant chunk of that has come in Biden's Presidency as I pointed out yesterday. Perceptions that times are grim, much accentuated by wages that struggled to keep up with inflation, are changing fast. I expect the "right direction" and Biden's approval rating to change accordingly giving him an easy lead over Trump.
Just found out that one of my favourite singers has died
I met Marlena Shaw on my first ever visit to Ronnie Scott's about fifteen years ago. I took a soul singer friend and we had a table right next to the stage
After her excellent show we went straight to the bar for another drink. We both said something like 'wow, that was amazing' as we looked back at the stage, and we saw her sitting alone at the nearest table to us. We looked at each other, dropped our jaws, looked back at her and she beckoned us over
We sat with her for at least half an hour, but not much more, which was quite astonishingly long enough for her to drink four rather large and expensive cocktails that I paid for
She was worth every penny. That half hour was joyful, and a memory I'll cherish forever
Everyone knows songs from her second album 'The Spice Of Life' (Woman Of The Ghetto and California Soul)
But I want to share a song I love from her first album 'Out Of Different Bags' (1967) called Nothing But Tears
Somewhat hyprocritical given your own less than enthusiastic support of the Rwanda Bill. (Of course the Bishops voting against the government ironically makes disestablishment less likely given the almost certain incoming Starmer government can count on the Bishops votes in the Lords on a number of issues such as that).
Not that if the Bishops were removed from the Lords, which could well happen along with most life peers and all hereditaries if Labour does deliver on its desire for a largely elected upper house, would that automatically mean disestablishment anyway. The Lutheran Church of Denmark is the established church in Denmark and Denmark doesn't even have an upper house at all now
Given we're all above base misogyny on pb would it reasonable to advance Jill Biden as a Lady Macbeth figure. OGH reckons she is particularly keen for her husband to stand for President again. Why exactly? The public believe he is too old, losing his marbles and needs to go. He risks letting Trump back in. I don't buy the idea that if Biden goes it needs to be Kamala Harris replacing him. Where is the fan base that will create such a storm?
It's not exactly that it *needs* to be Kamala Harris who would replace him but the problem is that you need a process to pick someone else that doesn't leave important parts of the party thinking they woz robbed. Aside from the k-hive, which is a thing, it's tricky to say you're going to have a black woman as VP, then have an undemocratic process where you push her aside at the last minute, particularly if you go with the popular alternative solution of Gavin Newsom who is a white man with good hair and no national experience.
One solution might be if Biden were to persuade his delegates to pick a *different* black woman, but who? If Stacey Abrams had won the GA governor race then she'd have a spikey electability story but she lost. You end up having to resort to non-politicians like Michelle Obama or Oprah Winfrey and it all starts to get a bit silly.
It would be different if there were actual primaries and some alternative candidate beat Kamala Harris straight up, but there isn't time for that. The one way you might be able to do it is to take the late races as a kind of democratic proxy where the Biden delegates support whoever did well there, but this could easily go horribly wrong and turn into a massive bad-tempered food fight going all the way up to the convention.
Given we're all above base misogyny on pb would it reasonable to advance Jill Biden as a Lady Macbeth figure. OGH reckons she is particularly keen for her husband to stand for President again. Why exactly? The public believe he is too old, losing his marbles and needs to go. He risks letting Trump back in. I don't buy the idea that if Biden goes it needs to be Kamala Harris replacing him. Where is the fan base that will create such a storm?
Does any alternative Democrat poll better against Trump or Haley or DeSantis than Biden? Not that I can see, indeed most poll worse
A coastal California governor is also hardly likely to hold the rustbelt swing states Biden won in 2020 either. Winning California isn't a problem for Democrats, even Hillary won it by a landslide in 2016, winning Pennsylvania and Michigan is where the election will be won
Some posters may be overly focused on 1979 as the turning point. The point still stands: the British governing class don’t seem to really care about *Britain*.
This is not even a left or right point, as it seems widely prevalent.
Ruling classes have always been self-serving.
Not entirely. A lot of them accepted that death or permanent injury in battle was the price tag that came attached to their privileges.
The current lot think that their privileges come for free.
Far too positive. The previous lot also thought that those without privileges should also go along willy-nilly to support them and suffer death or permament injury. And the common soldiers always had much worse medical and other treatment than the nobles or officers. Was still the case in the Great War - look at what happened to folk with PTSD. Orficers got a nice sanatorium; too many ORs got nine bullets at dawn.
Officers had many privileges. But, casualty rates were always highest among those ranked Second Lieutenant to Major. Inevitably, as they had to lead the attack.
Highest were the young subalterns straight out of public school. Lieutenant George in Blackadder. Life expectancy for junior officers at the start of the war? Six weeks.
It was shocking. I had a daily reminder at school for five years where every morning I would walk through the War Cloister which was the memorial to the school’s dead in WW1 and then added to with the WW2 dead. There were 500 boys names on there from WW1 and they were pretty much all around my age when I left or was pissing it up at university.
The one that always brought it home was John Thynne, Viscount Weymouth. Absolutely everything to live for in most other periods of life but dead at 21 pointlessly. At least he is remembered if only by a few people as there were millions who weren’t.
My old place put together a website which has the stories and details of every old boy they have records of who died in any war since foundation and some crazy stories. It’s obviously important to me as it could have been me but good that people care about their memories.
At my school they had a plaque with the names of a couple of lads who had, apparently, died fighting at Culloden.
Also, we were never taught about Culloden.
Which side?
Honestly, the idea of “sides” is so passé. I like to think that everyone, whichever “side” was part of a beautiful blend of different thoughts and beliefs coming together in this place we call earth, sometimes a battlefield, sometimes a wellness retreat. I’m sure that if the opposing parties at Culloden had been lucky enough to have lived today they would have settled their differences in the calm and friendly sphere of social media.
Somewhat hyprocritical given your own less than enthusiastic support of the Rwanda Bill. (Of course the Bishops voting against the government ironically makes disestablishment less likely given the almost certain incoming Starmer government can count on the Bishops votes in the Lords on a number of issues such as that).
Not that if the Bishops were removed from the Lords, which could well happen along with most life peers and all hereditaries if Labour does deliver on its desire for a largely elected upper house, would that automatically mean disestablishment anyway. The Lutheran Church of Denmark is the established church in Denmark and Denmark doesn't even have an upper house at all now
Some posters may be overly focused on 1979 as the turning point. The point still stands: the British governing class don’t seem to really care about *Britain*.
This is not even a left or right point, as it seems widely prevalent.
Ruling classes have always been self-serving.
Not entirely. A lot of them accepted that death or permanent injury in battle was the price tag that came attached to their privileges.
The current lot think that their privileges come for free.
Far too positive. The previous lot also thought that those without privileges should also go along willy-nilly to support them and suffer death or permament injury. And the common soldiers always had much worse medical and other treatment than the nobles or officers. Was still the case in the Great War - look at what happened to folk with PTSD. Orficers got a nice sanatorium; too many ORs got nine bullets at dawn.
Officers had many privileges. But, casualty rates were always highest among those ranked Second Lieutenant to Major. Inevitably, as they had to lead the attack.
Highest were the young subalterns straight out of public school. Lieutenant George in Blackadder. Life expectancy for junior officers at the start of the war? Six weeks.
It was shocking. I had a daily reminder at school for five years where every morning I would walk through the War Cloister which was the memorial to the school’s dead in WW1 and then added to with the WW2 dead. There were 500 boys names on there from WW1 and they were pretty much all around my age when I left or was pissing it up at university.
The one that always brought it home was John Thynne, Viscount Weymouth. Absolutely everything to live for in most other periods of life but dead at 21 pointlessly. At least he is remembered if only by a few people as there were millions who weren’t.
My old place put together a website which has the stories and details of every old boy they have records of who died in any war since foundation and some crazy stories. It’s obviously important to me as it could have been me but good that people care about their memories.
At my school they had a plaque with the names of a couple of lads who had, apparently, died fighting at Culloden.
Also, we were never taught about Culloden.
Which side?
Honestly, the idea of “sides” is so passé. I like to think that everyone, whichever “side” was part of a beautiful blend of different thoughts and beliefs coming together in this place we call earth, sometimes a battlefield, sometimes a wellness retreat. I’m sure that if the opposing parties at Culloden had been lucky enough to have lived today they would have settled their differences in the calm and friendly sphere of social media.
It's bad enough that we have an established church, but that they get guaranteed places in our legislature is completely nuts for a supposedly modern country.
1/ As Britain shivers in winter's grip and high-profile #Tory rebels quit after the #Rwanda Bill, how are the #polls shaping up? #Labour stretches its lead by three to 25 points.
🔴 Lab 48% (+3) 🔵 Con 23% (NC) 🟠 LD 9% (-2) ⚪ Ref 10% (-1) 🟢 Green 5% (NC) 🟡 SNP 3% (NC)
1/ As Britain shivers in winter's grip and high-profile #Tory rebels quit after the #Rwanda Bill, how are the #polls shaping up? #Labour stretches its lead by three to 25 points.
🔴 Lab 48% (+3) 🔵 Con 23% (NC) 🟠 LD 9% (-2) ⚪ Ref 10% (-1) 🟢 Green 5% (NC) 🟡 SNP 3% (NC)
Given we're all above base misogyny on pb would it reasonable to advance Jill Biden as a Lady Macbeth figure. OGH reckons she is particularly keen for her husband to stand for President again. Why exactly? The public believe he is too old, losing his marbles and needs to go. He risks letting Trump back in. I don't buy the idea that if Biden goes it needs to be Kamala Harris replacing him. Where is the fan base that will create such a storm?
It's not exactly that it *needs* to be Kamala Harris who would replace him but the problem is that you need a process to pick someone else that doesn't leave important parts of the party thinking they woz robbed. Aside from the k-hive, which is a thing, it's tricky to say you're going to have a black woman as VP, then have an undemocratic process where you push her aside at the last minute, particularly if you go with the popular alternative solution of Gavin Newsom who is a white man with good hair and no national experience.
One solution might be if Biden were to persuade his delegates to pick a *different* black woman, but who? If Stacey Abrams had won the GA governor race then she'd have a spikey electability story but she lost. You end up having to resort to non-politicians like Michelle Obama or Oprah Winfrey and it all starts to get a bit silly.
It would be different if there were actual primaries and some alternative candidate beat Kamala Harris straight up, but there isn't time for that. The one way you might be able to do it is to take the late races as a kind of democratic proxy where the Biden delegates support whoever did well there, but this could easily go horribly wrong and turn into a massive bad-tempered food fight going all the way up to the convention.
Yes, the Kamala Harris problem needs to be dealt with somehow.
I still think it’s possible (but unlikely), that Biden can persuade Sonia Sotomayor to retire at 70, and push Harris onto the Supreme Court. That leads to a vacancy for Veep, which some sort of a limited party primary process can resolve, and Biden can stand aside at the Convention in favour of the chosen one.
Just watched One Life about Sir Nicholas Winton. Very moving and highly recommended. It might not win any awards but it is well worth watching, even if only to remember a remarkable man.
1/ As Britain shivers in winter's grip and high-profile #Tory rebels quit after the #Rwanda Bill, how are the #polls shaping up? #Labour stretches its lead by three to 25 points.
🔴 Lab 48% (+3) 🔵 Con 23% (NC) 🟠 LD 9% (-2) ⚪ Ref 10% (-1) 🟢 Green 5% (NC) 🟡 SNP 3% (NC)
Astonishingly the same poll finds 19% of UK voters would feel positive about Trump winning the US presidency again but only 18% would feel positive about a Biden re election.
Albeit 57% would feel negative about another Trump presidency, to only 38% negative about a Biden re election
It's bad enough that we have an established church, but that they get guaranteed places in our legislature is completely nuts for a supposedly modern country.
Rubbish, Denmark and Iceland (and effectively Greece) also have established churches and are fine places to live in. Being the established church also ensures all residents of a Parish have an automatic right to a marriage or funeral in their local C of E church.
The Lords is a fully unelected revising chamber, made up of appointed Lords, hereditary peers and a few Bishops (less than 5% in a still 46% Christian nation).
Just watched One Life about Sir Nicholas Winton. Very moving and highly recommended. It might not win any awards but it is well worth watching, even if only to remember a remarkable man.
Yes, my cousin told me much the same this week.
That, and Poor Things, are the compulsory things to watch at the moment, I've been told.
I was amused to read our three local Tory MPs' regular homilies in our local free paper this week.
Each MP majored on the shocking PO Scandal in outraged, hand-wringing terms. Each stuck the knife into Davey who 'has serious questions to answer'.
None has ever to my knowledge mentioned or shown any interest in the PO scandal before this month.
(No mention of Rwanda from any of them either.)
Interesting that the Tories are targeting Davey so much. It's not like the Lib Dems are doing particularly well in the headline polls.
Suggests that the Blue Wall is under serious threat now. Also that the Lib Dem/Labour vote might be much more efficient than the Yougov MRP illustrates, with Labour piling on in the northern marginals/Scotland, and the Lib Dems elsewhere.
At some point Sunak have to revert to a rearguard action - abandon the north to Labour and meet the Lib Dems head on. But that would mean u-turning on all the anti-green rhetoric, leaving a huge gap for Reform.
I was amused to read our three local Tory MPs' regular homilies in our local free paper this week.
Each MP majored on the shocking PO Scandal in outraged, hand-wringing terms. Each stuck the knife into Davey who 'has serious questions to answer'.
None has ever to my knowledge mentioned or shown any interest in the PO scandal before this month.
(No mention of Rwanda from any of them either.)
Interesting that the Tories are targeting Davey so much. It's not like the Lib Dems are doing particularly well in the headline polls.
Suggests that the Blue Wall is under serious threat now. Also that the Lib Dem/Labour vote might be much more efficient than the Yougov MRP illustrates, with Labour piling on in the northern marginals/Scotland, and the Lib Dems elsewhere.
All three of these MPs know that the LibDems are a real threat to their seats.
I am waiting patiently for the moment when you call AI a "robust" system.
And then I will throw a lot of Post Office-flavoured ordure at you.
No system - not even AI - is or ever will be 100% correct or entirely reliable and those who think that every thing can be outsourced to any such system or that it alone can be relied on are being the biggest bloody fools around.
My code is 100% correct. As long as you don't press that button at the wrong point. I SAID.....
Program proving is about constructing a formal proof that the program you *think* you wrote is correct.
Bug free systems are possible. The Space Shuttle code was written with heavy testing, every line multiply reviewed etc. They stopped finding bugs quite early in the lifecycle - despite trying to find them, actively through the program.
Yes, I think the real problem for most software is that a team following the kind of practices you need to make their work bug-free wouldn't be competitive. You have to go much slower, produce much less code, and spend way more money on it. In practice the market doesn't seem to care much that stuff sometimes breaks and sometimes your personal information gets leaked or whatever.
However I imagine AI would be a different kind of problem because by definition it's trying to do things where there's no objective definition of "correct". It's basically a tool to say, "in this situation, based on patterns I've seen, it's common for this to be the answer you want". Even if you write the AI bot code exactly as you intend, you'll still run into cases where it does the wrong thing.
It's bad enough that we have an established church, but that they get guaranteed places in our legislature is completely nuts for a supposedly modern country.
Rubbish, Denmark and Iceland (and effectively Greece) also have established churches and are fine places to live in. Being the established church also ensures all residents of a Parish have an automatic right to a marriage or funeral in their local C of E church.
The Lords is a fully unelected revising chamber, made up of appointed Lords, hereditary peers and a few Bishops (less than 5% in a still 46% Christian nation).
Put another way, why wouldn't you want people who are experts in ideas of good and bad casting their eye over legislation? And whilst plenty of other experts are available (and there probably should be more such people in the Lords than they currently are), and the Church of England isn't perfect, we could do a lot worse. I mean a lot lot worse.
A better question is for the government to note that the bishops have voted with the government five times and against 276 times and ask themselves whether those numbers contain useful information.
(Insert David Mitchell "are we the baddies?" gif here.)
Just watched One Life about Sir Nicholas Winton. Very moving and highly recommended. It might not win any awards but it is well worth watching, even if only to remember a remarkable man.
That film of him in That's Life is remarkable and has me in tears. 2 mins in you will see one of the children he saved - Rudolf Wessely. His son, Simon, is now Professor Sir Simon Wesselly, eminent psychiatrist (and also a personal friend).
1/ As Britain shivers in winter's grip and high-profile #Tory rebels quit after the #Rwanda Bill, how are the #polls shaping up? #Labour stretches its lead by three to 25 points.
🔴 Lab 48% (+3) 🔵 Con 23% (NC) 🟠 LD 9% (-2) ⚪ Ref 10% (-1) 🟢 Green 5% (NC) 🟡 SNP 3% (NC)
Astonishingly the same poll finds 19% of UK voters would feel positive about Trump winning the US presidency again but only 18% would feel positive about a Biden re election.
Albeit 57% would feel negative about another Trump presidency, to only 38% negative about a Biden re election
Yeah, right. I must say I don't share Boris's confidence about Trump supporting Ukraine.
Buried in BJ's article is this. Is it correct?? Staggering if so.
"Remember that in 2008 the Eurozone and the U.S. had about the same GDP — even though the population of the Eurozone is much bigger.
"The Eurozone was worth $14.2 trillion, the U.S. $14.8 trillion. Fifteen years later the Eurozone is stagnant at $15 trillion — while the U.S. has rocketed ahead to an astonishing $26 trillion."
The US figures at least are correct and a significant chunk of that has come in Biden's Presidency as I pointed out yesterday. Perceptions that times are grim, much accentuated by wages that struggled to keep up with inflation, are changing fast. I expect the "right direction" and Biden's approval rating to change accordingly giving him an easy lead over Trump.
I don't, for two reasons
The concepts of "economic growth" and "people's feeling of prosperity" have become decoupled. It's possible for the former to rise and the latter to fall and I think that's what's happening
People don't necessarily rate their well-being by prosperity. Prosperity is like oxygen: if you don't have enough it's the highest priority, but if you do it's irrelevant. People seem to be exercised by the culture war, and although I think it's the indulgence of the prosperous, they don't think that, and they have votes.
Some posters may be overly focused on 1979 as the turning point. The point still stands: the British governing class don’t seem to really care about *Britain*.
This is not even a left or right point, as it seems widely prevalent.
Ruling classes have always been self-serving.
Not entirely. A lot of them accepted that death or permanent injury in battle was the price tag that came attached to their privileges.
The current lot think that their privileges come for free.
Far too positive. The previous lot also thought that those without privileges should also go along willy-nilly to support them and suffer death or permament injury. And the common soldiers always had much worse medical and other treatment than the nobles or officers. Was still the case in the Great War - look at what happened to folk with PTSD. Orficers got a nice sanatorium; too many ORs got nine bullets at dawn.
Officers had many privileges. But, casualty rates were always highest among those ranked Second Lieutenant to Major. Inevitably, as they had to lead the attack.
Oh, sure. Very much so. But they also claimed the right to be the leaders merely on social grounds. Leading to more deaths than otherwise.
The changes in recrruitment from the WW1 and peacetime norm to the more omnivorous type during WW2 are interesting. As is the utter spite and hatred which Evelyn Waugh, that snob and wannabe aristo, had for any not of the right sort: one thinks of Corporal and Captain Trimmer.
Worth pointing out that for all his personal foibles, and they were legion, Waugh's "Sword of Honour" trilogy is quite possibly the finest fictional account to come out of the Second World War. Required reading if your interested in the Greek campaign, or just enjoy superlative writing.
Oh, indeed, as I had just said, ratther more earthily, two posts down!
Edit: Read it when I was at school, and several times since.
Funny how distinguished WW2 fiction has been delivered through trilogies. As well as Waugh, there's the three volumes from Anthony Powell's Dance to the Music of Time (Valley of Bones, Soldier's Art, Military Philosophers) and Olivia Manning's Fortunes of War.
I was actually wondering whether you would rate those as well! I have a very soft spot for Keith Douglas, but that isn't a novel.
It's bad enough that we have an established church, but that they get guaranteed places in our legislature is completely nuts for a supposedly modern country.
Rubbish, Denmark and Iceland (and effectively Greece) also have established churches and are fine places to live in. Being the established church also ensures all residents of a Parish have an automatic right to a marriage or funeral in their local C of E church.
The Lords is a fully unelected revising chamber, made up of appointed Lords, hereditary peers and a few Bishops (less than 5% in a still 46% Christian nation).
Put another way, why wouldn't you want people who are experts in ideas of good and bad casting their eye over legislation? And whilst plenty of other experts are available (and there probably should be more such people in the Lords than they currently are), and the Church of England isn't perfect, we could do a lot worse. I mean a lot lot worse.
A better question is for the government to note that the bishops have voted with the government five times and against 276 times and ask themselves whether those numbers contain useful information.
(Insert David Mitchell "are we the baddies?" gif here.)
As Bishops tend to vote on Biblical and what they see as Christian principles, you would expect them to vote with Labour on issues like asylum, welfare, spending on the NHS etc and more conservatively on social issues like euthanasia, abortion and same sex marriage.
Though as on social issues even the C of E has become more liberal than it was and there is little difference now between the Tories and Labour on those issues either, the Bishops votes with Labour on the former become more visible
It's bad enough that we have an established church, but that they get guaranteed places in our legislature is completely nuts for a supposedly modern country.
Why? The Church of England is nothing to do with religion. It’s about vague niceness and cups of tea with too much milk.
Given we're all above base misogyny on pb would it reasonable to advance Jill Biden as a Lady Macbeth figure. OGH reckons she is particularly keen for her husband to stand for President again. Why exactly? The public believe he is too old, losing his marbles and needs to go. He risks letting Trump back in. I don't buy the idea that if Biden goes it needs to be Kamala Harris replacing him. Where is the fan base that will create such a storm?
It's not exactly that it *needs* to be Kamala Harris who would replace him but the problem is that you need a process to pick someone else that doesn't leave important parts of the party thinking they woz robbed. Aside from the k-hive, which is a thing, it's tricky to say you're going to have a black woman as VP, then have an undemocratic process where you push her aside at the last minute, particularly if you go with the popular alternative solution of Gavin Newsom who is a white man with good hair and no national experience.
One solution might be if Biden were to persuade his delegates to pick a *different* black woman, but who? If Stacey Abrams had won the GA governor race then she'd have a spikey electability story but she lost. You end up having to resort to non-politicians like Michelle Obama or Oprah Winfrey and it all starts to get a bit silly.
It would be different if there were actual primaries and some alternative candidate beat Kamala Harris straight up, but there isn't time for that. The one way you might be able to do it is to take the late races as a kind of democratic proxy where the Biden delegates support whoever did well there, but this could easily go horribly wrong and turn into a massive bad-tempered food fight going all the way up to the convention.
Yes, the Kamala Harris problem needs to be dealt with somehow.
I still think it’s possible (but unlikely), that Biden can persuade Sonia Sotomayor to retire at 70, and push Harris onto the Supreme Court. That leads to a vacancy for Veep, which some sort of a limited party primary process can resolve, and Biden can stand aside at the Convention in favour of the chosen one.
IDK, that's complicated and it has a lot of moving parts. Starting with, you don't just have to persuade Sonia Sotomayor to retire, and Kamala Harris to agree to take the job instead of taking her chances at the presidency, you also have persuade every single Democratic senator to vote to confirm her. She's clearly not a judge, and this whole operation smells kind of sordid and machiavellian, so it's very plausible that one of them would say no.
I am sure self interest plays a part, if Trump can come back after losing office to Biden in 2020 Boris will think, why not him too if Rishi loses the next general election to Starmer
He'll say anything that gets him attention. It doesn't need to make sense.
At some stage, and it’s not entirely clear when, the British governing class abandoned the British national *project*.
I think David Edgerton is probably the best writer on this, his thesis is that 1945 represented the creation of a new British state that was - contra to received opinion - surprisingly advanced and puissant - but that the neo-liberal age since 1979 has seen its slow and now rapid dismantlement.
Why should Britain retain the ability to manufacture steel? Why should Britain maintain armed forces and be concerned about Russian aggression? Why shouldn’t it import a million immigrants a year? Why shouldn’t Scotland go its own way? Why shouldn’t Britain run a massive trade deficit? Why should we keep the BBC?
The modern dispensation barely knows how to answer these questions.
He really records no post-war decline until Thatcher gets in? Wow. Must have blinkers like a Shire pony.
You're thinking economically, not nationally. Up to a point in the 20th century, the British patria was the Empire and the UK was a warfare state (his term), geared to producing ships and guns and coal to police the Empire and seas. Companies included Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) and Imperial Airways. Then it contracted and the British patria became the UK and the UK was a welfare state (his term), a process of adjustment over some decades. Companies include British Steel, British Coal, the National Health Service. During the neoliberal period this national base was abandoned and the British patria became diffuse, spreading out to Europe or Anglosphere or India or global, depending on taste.
Edgerton notes these patterns, and his book "The Fall And Rise Of The British Nation" summarises this. Gardenwalker described this summary.
The economy and the nation. The economy is just the nation in numbers.
Um, I'm surprised to hear you say that. The nation is a group of people who describe themselves as "us". The economy is what the people do. I am not my job. What we are is different from what we do.
They are two ways of looking at the same thing. One can see the nation through the lense of its economic activity, its health statistics, its religious choices etc. If one knew everything about everyone's actions as participants in the economy, one would know everything about them.
But my point is really that the dismantlement and sell-off of the nationalised industries cannot be critiqued without understanding how nationalisation had made them joke industries staffed by joke workers and producing joke products. It is nationalisation that is responsible for this, not privatisation. As an example, private enterprise covered the country in railways - nationalisation enabled their decimation. These things happened between 1945 and 1979.
Although it is easy to characterise them as joke industries, they did exist and produce things, including Concorde. Where losses were covered by the government and profits (if made) going to the government.
But now in our globalised times we work in industries where losses are covered by the goverment and profits (if made) go to the pension funds and venture capitalists of other countries.
We sold our souls and got an iPad. It's not obviously better.
Certainly. But like everyone getting the supercold because of lockdowns, we must recognise that it was the public ownership that destroyed them as much as the coup de grace of being exposed to market forces. The best way would appear to be the American way - grow the businesses in a free market environment, and when it comes to foreign takeovers, cheat and step on necks to stop it happening. We're sort of the opposite. Our Rolls Royces, ICIs, Great Western Railways, Austins etc. grew out of capitalism, were then 'helped' by decades of state ownership, then the withered remains were released to be swallowed by bigger beasts in the jungle.
"Secret government talks are being held next week to get the scrapped HS2 high-speed rail link back on track.
A cross-party plan has been drawn up to complete the northern stretch of the line, ensuring the private sector foots most of the massive bill – not taxpayers.
The blueprint will be discussed behind closed doors at a White-hall meeting between Transport Secretary Mark Harper and the mayors representing cities at both ends of the route."
Yeah, right. I must say I don't share Boris's confidence about Trump supporting Ukraine.
Buried in BJ's article is this. Is it correct?? Staggering if so.
"Remember that in 2008 the Eurozone and the U.S. had about the same GDP — even though the population of the Eurozone is much bigger.
"The Eurozone was worth $14.2 trillion, the U.S. $14.8 trillion. Fifteen years later the Eurozone is stagnant at $15 trillion — while the U.S. has rocketed ahead to an astonishing $26 trillion."
The US figures at least are correct and a significant chunk of that has come in Biden's Presidency as I pointed out yesterday. Perceptions that times are grim, much accentuated by wages that struggled to keep up with inflation, are changing fast. I expect the "right direction" and Biden's approval rating to change accordingly giving him an easy lead over Trump.
I don't, for two reasons
The concepts of "economic growth" and "people's feeling of prosperity" have become decoupled. It's possible for the former to rise and the latter to fall and I think that's what's happening
People don't necessarily rate their well-being by prosperity. Prosperity is like oxygen: if you don't have enough it's the highest priority, but if you do it's irrelevant. People seem to be exercised by the culture war, and although I think it's the indulgence of the prosperous, they don't think that, and they have votes.
Yes, it's not quite the case that US Americans feel themselves to be twice as well off as they were in 2008.
It's bad enough that we have an established church, but that they get guaranteed places in our legislature is completely nuts for a supposedly modern country.
Rubbish, Denmark and Iceland (and effectively Greece) also have established churches and are fine places to live in. Being the established church also ensures all residents of a Parish have an automatic right to a marriage or funeral in their local C of E church.
The Lords is a fully unelected revising chamber, made up of appointed Lords, hereditary peers and a few Bishops (less than 5% in a still 46% Christian nation).
Put another way, why wouldn't you want people who are experts in ideas of good and bad casting their eye over legislation? And whilst plenty of other experts are available (and there probably should be more such people in the Lords than they currently are), and the Church of England isn't perfect, we could do a lot worse. I mean a lot lot worse.
A better question is for the government to note that the bishops have voted with the government five times and against 276 times and ask themselves whether those numbers contain useful information.
(Insert David Mitchell "are we the baddies?" gif here.)
As Bishops tend to vote on Biblical and what they see as Christian principles, you would expect them to vote with Labour on issues like asylum, welfare, spending on the NHS etc and more conservatively on social issues like euthanasia, abortion and same sex marriage.
Though as on social issues even the C of E has become more liberal than it was and there is little difference now between the Tories and Labour on those issues either, the Bishops votes with Labour on the former become more visible
Come to think of it, Tory Party members who take their C of E membership seriously might want to ask themselves if those Bishops aren't telling them, so to speak, they are in the wrong Party. Or perhaps Church.
The *whole point* of a hierarchy with bishops etc is that you damn well do what the bishops tell you. Or you might as well be damned - or just go home.
If I was Biden and I didn't think I was up to a run, but I wanted to maximize the Dems' chances, I think what I'd do would be to wait until around April/May then stand down *as president*.
Whatever you think about Kamala Harris, she's good at delivering the lines her team gives her. She'd get a honeymoon, there would be a huge media buzz about her being the first woman president, she wouldn't have to pander to the Dem primary voters and she could drive the news agenda with whatever it took to appeal to the voters she needed to reach to beat Trump. She's ambitious and Biden's team are good, I'm sure they could improve her image. Shoot some shoplifters, I dunno, whatever it took.
At some stage, and it’s not entirely clear when, the British governing class abandoned the British national *project*.
I think David Edgerton is probably the best writer on this, his thesis is that 1945 represented the creation of a new British state that was - contra to received opinion - surprisingly advanced and puissant - but that the neo-liberal age since 1979 has seen its slow and now rapid dismantlement.
Why should Britain retain the ability to manufacture steel? Why should Britain maintain armed forces and be concerned about Russian aggression? Why shouldn’t it import a million immigrants a year? Why shouldn’t Scotland go its own way? Why shouldn’t Britain run a massive trade deficit? Why should we keep the BBC?
The modern dispensation barely knows how to answer these questions.
He really records no post-war decline until Thatcher gets in? Wow. Must have blinkers like a Shire pony.
You're thinking economically, not nationally. Up to a point in the 20th century, the British patria was the Empire and the UK was a warfare state (his term), geared to producing ships and guns and coal to police the Empire and seas. Companies included Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) and Imperial Airways. Then it contracted and the British patria became the UK and the UK was a welfare state (his term), a process of adjustment over some decades. Companies include British Steel, British Coal, the National Health Service. During the neoliberal period this national base was abandoned and the British patria became diffuse, spreading out to Europe or Anglosphere or India or global, depending on taste.
Edgerton notes these patterns, and his book "The Fall And Rise Of The British Nation" summarises this. Gardenwalker described this summary.
The economy and the nation. The economy is just the nation in numbers.
Um, I'm surprised to hear you say that. The nation is a group of people who describe themselves as "us". The economy is what the people do. I am not my job. What we are is different from what we do.
They are two ways of looking at the same thing. One can see the nation through the lense of its economic activity, its health statistics, its religious choices etc. If one knew everything about everyone's actions as participants in the economy, one would know everything about them.
But my point is really that the dismantlement and sell-off of the nationalised industries cannot be critiqued without understanding how nationalisation had made them joke industries staffed by joke workers and producing joke products. It is nationalisation that is responsible for this, not privatisation. As an example, private enterprise covered the country in railways - nationalisation enabled their decimation. These things happened between 1945 and 1979.
Although it is easy to characterise them as joke industries, they did exist and produce things, including Concorde. Where losses were covered by the government and profits (if made) going to the government.
But now in our globalised times we work in industries where losses are covered by the goverment and profits (if made) go to the pension funds and venture capitalists of other countries.
We sold our souls and got an iPad. It's not obviously better.
Certainly. But like everyone getting the supercold because of lockdowns, we must recognise that it was the public ownership that destroyed them as much as the coup de grace of being exposed to market forces. The best way would appear to be the American way - grow the businesses in a free market environment, and when it comes to foreign takeovers, cheat and step on necks to stop it happening. We're sort of the opposite. Our Rolls Royces, ICIs, Great Western Railways, Austins etc. grew out of capitalism, were then 'helped' by decades of state ownership, then the withered remains were released to be swallowed by bigger beasts in the jungle.
Concorde was a classic of the government picking winners.
The father of one of my school friends lost his job in the Air Ministry and got black balled in the U.K. aviation industry for writing a report that pointed out why it wasn’t a good idea, during the early development phase.
"Secret government talks are being held next week to get the scrapped HS2 high-speed rail link back on track.
A cross-party plan has been drawn up to complete the northern stretch of the line, ensuring the private sector foots most of the massive bill – not taxpayers.
The blueprint will be discussed behind closed doors at a White-hall meeting between Transport Secretary Mark Harper and the mayors representing cities at both ends of the route."
Without the oil crisis, wouldn't Concorde have been a winner.
Germany, France and Sweden, amongst many other countries , have more correctly picked ( and at arm's length managed ) winners so many times that they've left us trailing in their manufacturing wake.
If I was Biden and I didn't think I was up to a run, but I wanted to maximize the Dems' chance, I think what I'd do would be to wait until around April/May then stand down *as president*.
Whatever you think about Kamala Harris, she's good at delivering the lines her team gives her. She'd get a honeymoon, there would be a huge media buzz about her being the first woman president, she wouldn't have to pander to the Dem primary voters and she could drive the news agenda with whatever it took to appeal to the voters she needed to reach to beat Trump. She's ambitious and Biden's team are good, I'm sure they could improve her image. Shoot some shoplifters, I dunno, whatever it took.
I cannot see how it could be deemed undemocratic for another candidate to stand against the running mate from the last election. Sounds more like an elected Monarchy.
It's bad enough that we have an established church, but that they get guaranteed places in our legislature is completely nuts for a supposedly modern country.
Rubbish, Denmark and Iceland (and effectively Greece) also have established churches and are fine places to live in. Being the established church also ensures all residents of a Parish have an automatic right to a marriage or funeral in their local C of E church.
The Lords is a fully unelected revising chamber, made up of appointed Lords, hereditary peers and a few Bishops (less than 5% in a still 46% Christian nation).
Put another way, why wouldn't you want people who are experts in ideas of good and bad casting their eye over legislation? And whilst plenty of other experts are available (and there probably should be more such people in the Lords than they currently are), and the Church of England isn't perfect, we could do a lot worse. I mean a lot lot worse.
A better question is for the government to note that the bishops have voted with the government five times and against 276 times and ask themselves whether those numbers contain useful information.
(Insert David Mitchell "are we the baddies?" gif here.)
As Bishops tend to vote on Biblical and what they see as Christian principles, you would expect them to vote with Labour on issues like asylum, welfare, spending on the NHS etc and more conservatively on social issues like euthanasia, abortion and same sex marriage.
Though as on social issues even the C of E has become more liberal than it was and there is little difference now between the Tories and Labour on those issues either, the Bishops votes with Labour on the former become more visible
Come to think of it, Tory Party members who take their C of E membership seriously might want to ask themselves if those Bishops aren't telling them, so to speak, they are in the wrong Party. Or perhaps Church.
The *whole point* of a hierarchy with bishops etc is that you damn well do what the bishops tell you. Or you might as well be damned - or just go home.
Not quite, the C of E is not a fully episcopal controlled church like the Roman Catholic church for instance, where what the Pope and Vatican and Cardinals and senior Bishops say goes for Catholics worldwide. Nor is it a fully evangelical Protestant church without Bishops like the Baptists or Presbyterians.
The C of E's policy and laws are proposed by Bishops but decided and approved by Synod and Synod includes a House of ordinary Clergy and a House of Laity as well as the House of Bishops
At some stage, and it’s not entirely clear when, the British governing class abandoned the British national *project*.
I think David Edgerton is probably the best writer on this, his thesis is that 1945 represented the creation of a new British state that was - contra to received opinion - surprisingly advanced and puissant - but that the neo-liberal age since 1979 has seen its slow and now rapid dismantlement.
Why should Britain retain the ability to manufacture steel? Why should Britain maintain armed forces and be concerned about Russian aggression? Why shouldn’t it import a million immigrants a year? Why shouldn’t Scotland go its own way? Why shouldn’t Britain run a massive trade deficit? Why should we keep the BBC?
The modern dispensation barely knows how to answer these questions.
He really records no post-war decline until Thatcher gets in? Wow. Must have blinkers like a Shire pony.
You're thinking economically, not nationally. Up to a point in the 20th century, the British patria was the Empire and the UK was a warfare state (his term), geared to producing ships and guns and coal to police the Empire and seas. Companies included Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) and Imperial Airways. Then it contracted and the British patria became the UK and the UK was a welfare state (his term), a process of adjustment over some decades. Companies include British Steel, British Coal, the National Health Service. During the neoliberal period this national base was abandoned and the British patria became diffuse, spreading out to Europe or Anglosphere or India or global, depending on taste.
Edgerton notes these patterns, and his book "The Fall And Rise Of The British Nation" summarises this. Gardenwalker described this summary.
The economy and the nation. The economy is just the nation in numbers.
Um, I'm surprised to hear you say that. The nation is a group of people who describe themselves as "us". The economy is what the people do. I am not my job. What we are is different from what we do.
They are two ways of looking at the same thing. One can see the nation through the lense of its economic activity, its health statistics, its religious choices etc. If one knew everything about everyone's actions as participants in the economy, one would know everything about them.
But my point is really that the dismantlement and sell-off of the nationalised industries cannot be critiqued without understanding how nationalisation had made them joke industries staffed by joke workers and producing joke products. It is nationalisation that is responsible for this, not privatisation. As an example, private enterprise covered the country in railways - nationalisation enabled their decimation. These things happened between 1945 and 1979.
Although it is easy to characterise them as joke industries, they did exist and produce things, including Concorde. Where losses were covered by the government and profits (if made) going to the government.
But now in our globalised times we work in industries where losses are covered by the goverment and profits (if made) go to the pension funds and venture capitalists of other countries.
We sold our souls and got an iPad. It's not obviously better.
Certainly. But like everyone getting the supercold because of lockdowns, we must recognise that it was the public ownership that destroyed them as much as the coup de grace of being exposed to market forces. The best way would appear to be the American way - grow the businesses in a free market environment, and when it comes to foreign takeovers, cheat and step on necks to stop it happening. We're sort of the opposite. Our Rolls Royces, ICIs, Great Western Railways, Austins etc. grew out of capitalism, were then 'helped' by decades of state ownership, then the withered remains were released to be swallowed by bigger beasts in the jungle.
Concorde was a classic of the government picking winners.
The father of one of my school friends lost his job in the Air Ministry and got black balled in the U.K. aviation industry for writing a report that pointed out why it wasn’t a good idea, during the early development phase.
And in that instance, it largely worked, until (arguably) the US destroyed it out of jealousy.
I do have some sympathy for Viewcode's arguments. If we can't create world beating companies and nurture them to adulthood, a firesale of nationalised industries seems counter productive. That's why I don't support the Tories proposed sell-off of Channel 4, or selling off the Beeb. Nice as an idea, but the reality is they would be quickly asset-stripped and plundered of IP, making a few Brits very rich and able to move to Monaco, and long term making more money for the US media corporations.
Without the oil crisis, wouldn't Concorde have been a winner.
Germany, France and Sweden, amongst many other countries , have more correctly picked ( or managed ) winners so many times that they've left us trailing in their manafacturing wake.
Supersonic overflights (or lack of permission for, over foreign countries), and maintenance/operational costs, were the problem. Even with the UK and French Governments writing off all the development costs, I believe.
Nothing wrong with the design of the plane in itself. Amazing effort for the 1960s.
"Secret government talks are being held next week to get the scrapped HS2 high-speed rail link back on track.
A cross-party plan has been drawn up to complete the northern stretch of the line, ensuring the private sector foots most of the massive bill – not taxpayers.
The blueprint will be discussed behind closed doors at a White-hall meeting between Transport Secretary Mark Harper and the mayors representing cities at both ends of the route."
Just watched One Life about Sir Nicholas Winton. Very moving and highly recommended. It might not win any awards but it is well worth watching, even if only to remember a remarkable man.
That film of him in That's Life is remarkable and has me in tears. 2 mins in you will see one of the children he saved - Rudolf Wessely. His son, Simon, is now Professor Sir Simon Wesselly, eminent psychiatrist (and also a personal friend).
It's bad enough that we have an established church, but that they get guaranteed places in our legislature is completely nuts for a supposedly modern country.
Rubbish, Denmark and Iceland (and effectively Greece) also have established churches and are fine places to live in. Being the established church also ensures all residents of a Parish have an automatic right to a marriage or funeral in their local C of E church.
The Lords is a fully unelected revising chamber, made up of appointed Lords, hereditary peers and a few Bishops (less than 5% in a still 46% Christian nation).
"Secret government talks are being held next week to get the scrapped HS2 high-speed rail link back on track.
A cross-party plan has been drawn up to complete the northern stretch of the line, ensuring the private sector foots most of the massive bill – not taxpayers.
The blueprint will be discussed behind closed doors at a White-hall meeting between Transport Secretary Mark Harper and the mayors representing cities at both ends of the route."
Andy Street's been busy at work by sound of it then.
1/ As Britain shivers in winter's grip and high-profile #Tory rebels quit after the #Rwanda Bill, how are the #polls shaping up? #Labour stretches its lead by three to 25 points.
🔴 Lab 48% (+3) 🔵 Con 23% (NC) 🟠 LD 9% (-2) ⚪ Ref 10% (-1) 🟢 Green 5% (NC) 🟡 SNP 3% (NC)
It's bad enough that we have an established church, but that they get guaranteed places in our legislature is completely nuts for a supposedly modern country.
Rubbish, Denmark and Iceland (and effectively Greece) also have established churches and are fine places to live in. Being the established church also ensures all residents of a Parish have an automatic right to a marriage or funeral in their local C of E church.
The Lords is a fully unelected revising chamber, made up of appointed Lords, hereditary peers and a few Bishops (less than 5% in a still 46% Christian nation).
Put another way, why wouldn't you want people who are experts in ideas of good and bad casting their eye over legislation? And whilst plenty of other experts are available (and there probably should be more such people in the Lords than they currently are), and the Church of England isn't perfect, we could do a lot worse. I mean a lot lot worse.
A better question is for the government to note that the bishops have voted with the government five times and against 276 times and ask themselves whether those numbers contain useful information.
(Insert David Mitchell "are we the baddies?" gif here.)
As Bishops tend to vote on Biblical and what they see as Christian principles, you would expect them to vote with Labour on issues like asylum, welfare, spending on the NHS etc and more conservatively on social issues like euthanasia, abortion and same sex marriage.
Though as on social issues even the C of E has become more liberal than it was and there is little difference now between the Tories and Labour on those issues either, the Bishops votes with Labour on the former become more visible
Come to think of it, Tory Party members who take their C of E membership seriously might want to ask themselves if those Bishops aren't telling them, so to speak, they are in the wrong Party. Or perhaps Church.
The *whole point* of a hierarchy with bishops etc is that you damn well do what the bishops tell you. Or you might as well be damned - or just go home.
Not quite, the C of E is not a fully episcopal controlled church like the Roman Catholic church for instance, where what the Pope and Vatican and Cardinals and senior Bishops say goes for Catholics worldwide. Nor is it a fully evangelical Protestant church without Bishops like the Baptists or Presbyterians.
The C of E's policy and laws are proposed by Bishops but decided and approved by Synod and Synod includes a House of ordinary Clergy and a House of Laity as well as the House of Bishops
Thank you. Even so, unless the Bishops in the HoL radically diverge from Synod, the point must still stand?
It's bad enough that we have an established church, but that they get guaranteed places in our legislature is completely nuts for a supposedly modern country.
Rubbish, Denmark and Iceland (and effectively Greece) also have established churches and are fine places to live in. Being the established church also ensures all residents of a Parish have an automatic right to a marriage or funeral in their local C of E church.
The Lords is a fully unelected revising chamber, made up of appointed Lords, hereditary peers and a few Bishops (less than 5% in a still 46% Christian nation).
Guaranteeing those rights could be perfectly possible through other legislation (and, indeed, guaranteeing the same ceremonies in equivalent recognised religions for qualified individuals). That said, I'd question why anyone should be able to just rock up at a church and get married. They should at least have to declare themselves to believe in the religion in question and for that to not be obviously false.
As for the Lords, it shouldn't be a revising chamber and for most of its history it wasn't. It should be far closer in power to the Commons, to act as a check on the excesses of the latter - which means it needs legitimacy, which means it should be elected. There's no point describing how its composed without justifying why it should be so composed, and there isn't any such justification bar tradition and inertia (and the vested interests in the Commons wanting to keep it powerless and without mandate).
That said, I wouldn't get rid of the bishops until it was properly elected. Glacial piecemeal progress has been the practice over the last 115 years and is the best barrier to proper reform.
If I was Biden and I didn't think I was up to a run, but I wanted to maximize the Dems' chance, I think what I'd do would be to wait until around April/May then stand down *as president*.
Whatever you think about Kamala Harris, she's good at delivering the lines her team gives her. She'd get a honeymoon, there would be a huge media buzz about her being the first woman president, she wouldn't have to pander to the Dem primary voters and she could drive the news agenda with whatever it took to appeal to the voters she needed to reach to beat Trump. She's ambitious and Biden's team are good, I'm sure they could improve her image. Shoot some shoplifters, I dunno, whatever it took.
I cannot see how it could be deemed undemocratic for another candidate to stand against the running mate from the last election. Sounds more like an elected Monarchy.
I don't think anyone's saying it would be undemocratic for someone else to run against her. If Biden were to announce that he wouldn't run tomorrow it would likely be a total shitshow, probably resulting in Kamala Harris as nominee but having sustained damage and endorsed unpopular positions, but it wouldn't be undemocratic.
But if Biden held off until April/May then handed over the presidency, it would be too late. He already has the delegates and the ballot deadlines have passed. If you want to run against your incumbent president after most of the votes have already been cast and the delegates elected then I guess you can... If you do a good job you might win a delegate in Guam...
Without the oil crisis, wouldn't Concorde have been a winner.
Germany, France and Sweden, amongst many other countries , have more correctly picked ( or managed ) winners so many times that they've left us trailing in their manafacturing wake.
Supersonic overflights (or lack of permission for, over foreign countries), and maintenance/operational costs, were the problem. Even with the UK and French Governments writing off all the development costs, I believe.
Nothing wrong with the design of the plane in itself. Amazing effort for the 1960s.
It was 1950's tech. I knew somebody who prepared a deep-dive report on Concorde. She discovered it was only kept running by a small army of guys making replacement parts in garden sheds.
It's bad enough that we have an established church, but that they get guaranteed places in our legislature is completely nuts for a supposedly modern country.
Rubbish, Denmark and Iceland (and effectively Greece) also have established churches and are fine places to live in. Being the established church also ensures all residents of a Parish have an automatic right to a marriage or funeral in their local C of E church.
The Lords is a fully unelected revising chamber, made up of appointed Lords, hereditary peers and a few Bishops (less than 5% in a still 46% Christian nation).
Guaranteeing those rights could be perfectly possible through other legislation (and, indeed, guaranteeing the same ceremonies in equivalent recognised religions for qualified individuals). That said, I'd question why anyone should be able to just rock up at a church and get married. They should at least have to declare themselves to believe in the religion in question and for that to not be obviously false.
As for the Lords, it shouldn't be a revising chamber and for most of its history it wasn't. It should be far closer in power to the Commons, to act as a check on the excesses of the latter - which means it needs legitimacy, which means it should be elected. There's no point describing how its composed without justifying why it should be so composed, and there isn't any such justification bar tradition and inertia (and the vested interests in the Commons wanting to keep it powerless and without mandate).
That said, I wouldn't get rid of the bishops until it was properly elected. Glacial piecemeal progress has been the practice over the last 115 years and is the best barrier to proper reform.
No it couldn't, either you have an established state church or you don't. If you don't want one fine but C of E Vicars would then be entirely within their rights to refuse you a wedding or funeral in your nearest C of E church unless you are baptised in the C of E and attend church a reasonable amount of times. As say most RC priests require for those getting Catholic weddings.
An elected Senate replacing the House of Lords would often lead to US style deadlock, with the Senate often voting down legislation passed by the Commons and blocking it entirely rather than just revising it as the appointed Lords does
He won't, he will cut income tax and most likely an IHT cut or abolition will be in the manifesto as a carrot for the core vote and Reform voters to vote Tory again
He won't, he will cut income tax and most likely an IHT cut or abolition will be in the manifesto as a carrot for the core vote and Reform voters to vote Tory again
Agree. Ideally he will increase personal allowances.
He won't, he will cut income tax and most likely an IHT cut or abolition will be in the manifesto as a carrot for the core vote and Reform voters to vote Tory again
IHT for the core vote? Will the core vote even pay IHT?
It will no doubt come as a great shock to this site that the story in the Mail doesn't come close to the headline. Several family members represented by a particular solicitor are apparently "instructing" their solicitors to make a complaint. No such complaint seems to have been made as yet, let alone investigated, let alone resulted in a charge.
Given the precedent of Operation Branchform proceedings are somewhat unlikely to be in this decade.
He won't, he will cut income tax and most likely an IHT cut or abolition will be in the manifesto as a carrot for the core vote and Reform voters to vote Tory again
IHT for the core vote? Will the core vote even pay IHT?
In fairness to @HYUFD it is a principle for him and like minded Tories.
Without the oil crisis, wouldn't Concorde have been a winner.
Germany, France and Sweden, amongst many other countries , have more correctly picked ( and at arm's length managed ) winners so many times that they've left us trailing in their manufacturing wake.
No, it wouldn’t.
To start with the idea was that increasing speed came with fuel efficiency. You’d get there before you ran out of fuel if you went fast enough. It turned out that you needed to cruise at Mach 3 to (kind of) make that work. This was understood by the late 50s. The American built 2 completely different systems, the A-12/SR-71 and the B-70, based on this idea. Both turned out to have horrendous maintenance costs and availability.
So Concorde was built for Mach 2, since that was doable and cheaper. Without the fuel efficiency, it could barely make it across the Atlantic. The final, fatal crash was caused, in part, by overloading with fuel.
Concorde was also terribly inefficient when flying subsonically. And despite what the advocates say, flying over populations supersonically was never going to happen.
All of which was why a large, and growing, group of engineers around the world were arguing for big, subsonic widebody airliners from the early fifties.
It will no doubt come as a great shock to this site that the story in the Mail doesn't come close to the headline. Several family members represented by a particular solicitor are apparently "instructing" their solicitors to make a complaint. No such complaint seems to have been made as yet, let alone investigated, let alone resulted in a charge.
Given the precedent of Operation Branchform proceedings are somewhat unlikely to be in this decade.
Thanks; the wording of the headline had seemed suspiciously specific but I couldn't find the actual story.
He won't, he will cut income tax and most likely an IHT cut or abolition will be in the manifesto as a carrot for the core vote and Reform voters to vote Tory again
IHT for the core vote? Will the core vote even pay IHT?
In fairness to @HYUFD it is a principle for him and like minded Tories.
In fairness to @HYUFD most of the remaining Tory vote aren't bright enough to know they aren't rich enough to be impacted by it...
He won't, he will cut income tax and most likely an IHT cut or abolition will be in the manifesto as a carrot for the core vote and Reform voters to vote Tory again
IHT for the core vote? Will the core vote even pay IHT?
No. But they're being gaslighted to panic by the sort of statement we see on here ad lib. Like wqhen a certain one of us says that the average house is worth as much as the single individual allowance in Xchester. Carefully omitting the RNRB, and the full transferability of allowance to a spouse.
Comments
Should be:
Johnson is of course Johnson's greatest advocate.
It's never been more complex than that. So why is he saying this now?
Trump and Britain Trump, where did it all go wrong?
Each MP majored on the shocking PO Scandal in outraged, hand-wringing terms. Each stuck the knife into Davey who 'has serious questions to answer'.
None has ever to my knowledge mentioned or shown any interest in the PO scandal before this month.
(No mention of Rwanda from any of them either.)
Bug free systems are possible. The Space Shuttle code was written with heavy testing, every line multiply reviewed etc. They stopped finding bugs quite early in the lifecycle - despite trying to find them, actively through the program.
Was it the great liberal internationalist Barack Obama? No sir-ree.
He did nothing to push Putin out of Ukraine, either from Crimea or the Donbas. Nor did the French, nor did the Germans, and nor, frankly, did the UK government of the day which decided — mystifyingly — to wash its hands of the matter and entrust the fate of the Ukrainians to the morally bankrupt ‘Normandy Format’.
It was Donald Trump who gave the Ukrainians those Javelin anti-tank weapons which — together with the UK NLAW missiles and other weapons — were so valuable to the Ukrainians in the battle for Kyiv; and it was at least partly thanks to that bold decision by Trump that the Ukrainians were able to stun the world and send Putin’s armies scuttling from the Ukrainian capital.'
Also, we were never taught about Culloden.
This week one of my colleagues had to 'fix' a system where an import had 'gone wrong'. The office admin had done the import - but had put the word 'Yes' as every single persons surname in the spreadsheet they uploaded.
Could we have, in theory, stopped that 'bug' - yes! 100%. Did we ever envisage it? No...
The both economic and electoral pressure for it, I think, by then, will be impossible to ignore.
Their database got screwed too.
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/327:_Exploits_of_a_Mom
I met Marlena Shaw on my first ever visit to Ronnie Scott's about fifteen years ago. I took a soul singer friend and we had a table right next to the stage
After her excellent show we went straight to the bar for another drink. We both said something like 'wow, that was amazing' as we looked back at the stage, and we saw her sitting alone at the nearest table to us. We looked at each other, dropped our jaws, looked back at her and she beckoned us over
We sat with her for at least half an hour, but not much more, which was quite astonishingly long enough for her to drink four rather large and expensive cocktails that I paid for
She was worth every penny. That half hour was joyful, and a memory I'll cherish forever
Everyone knows songs from her second album 'The Spice Of Life' (Woman Of The Ghetto and California Soul)
But I want to share a song I love from her first album 'Out Of Different Bags' (1967) called Nothing But Tears
https://youtu.be/o1TpIQCgJs0?si=g7gLpA9sjx0ZvwW9
Buried in BJ's article is this. Is it correct?? Staggering if so.
"Remember that in 2008 the Eurozone and the U.S. had about the same GDP — even though the population of the Eurozone is much bigger.
"The Eurozone was worth $14.2 trillion, the U.S. $14.8 trillion. Fifteen years later the Eurozone is stagnant at $15 trillion — while the U.S. has rocketed ahead to an astonishing $26 trillion."
But now in our globalised times we work in industries where losses are covered by the goverment and profits (if made) go to the pension funds and venture capitalists of other countries.
We sold our souls and got an iPad. It's not obviously better.
EXCL - Bishops in the House of Lords voted with the government in just five votes in an entire year.
They voted against the government whip 276 times.
Bishops are expected to mount a new war on Rishi Sunak's Rwanda Bill when it returns to the Lords
https://twitter.com/kateferguson4/status/1748777441827446795
Minnie Ripperton was another Queen, of this realm.
Not that if the Bishops were removed from the Lords, which could well happen along with most life peers and all hereditaries if Labour does deliver on its desire for a largely elected upper house, would that automatically mean disestablishment anyway. The Lutheran Church of Denmark is the established church in Denmark and Denmark doesn't even have an upper house at all now
One solution might be if Biden were to persuade his delegates to pick a *different* black woman, but who? If Stacey Abrams had won the GA governor race then she'd have a spikey electability story but she lost. You end up having to resort to non-politicians like Michelle Obama or Oprah Winfrey and it all starts to get a bit silly.
It would be different if there were actual primaries and some alternative candidate beat Kamala Harris straight up, but there isn't time for that. The one way you might be able to do it is to take the late races as a kind of democratic proxy where the Biden delegates support whoever did well there, but this could easily go horribly wrong and turn into a massive bad-tempered food fight going all the way up to the convention.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2024/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_newsom-8331.html
A coastal California governor is also hardly likely to hold the rustbelt swing states Biden won in 2020 either. Winning California isn't a problem for Democrats, even Hillary won it by a landslide in 2016, winning Pennsylvania and Michigan is where the election will be won
https://blackmorevale.net/latest-issue/ p31 and p33
Imagine if Keir Starmer hated Britain as much as Johnson does?
1/ As Britain shivers in winter's grip and high-profile #Tory rebels quit after the #Rwanda Bill, how are the #polls shaping up? #Labour stretches its lead by three to 25 points.
🔴 Lab 48% (+3)
🔵 Con 23% (NC)
🟠 LD 9% (-2)
⚪ Ref 10% (-1)
🟢 Green 5% (NC)
🟡 SNP 3% (NC)
https://twitter.com/wethinkpolling/status/1748360644867354898
I still think it’s possible (but unlikely), that Biden can persuade Sonia Sotomayor to retire at 70, and push Harris onto the Supreme Court. That leads to a vacancy for Veep, which some sort of a limited party primary process can resolve, and Biden can stand aside at the Convention in favour of the chosen one.
Just watched One Life about Sir Nicholas Winton. Very moving and highly recommended. It might not win any awards but it is well worth watching, even if only to remember a remarkable man.
Albeit 57% would feel negative about another Trump presidency, to only 38% negative about a Biden re election
https://x.com/wethinkpolling/status/1748360658909859882?s=20
The Lords is a fully unelected revising chamber, made up of appointed Lords, hereditary peers and a few Bishops (less than 5% in a still 46% Christian nation).
That, and Poor Things, are the compulsory things to watch at the moment, I've been told.
Suggests that the Blue Wall is under serious threat now. Also that the Lib Dem/Labour vote might be much more efficient than the Yougov MRP illustrates, with Labour piling on in the northern marginals/Scotland, and the Lib Dems elsewhere.
At some point Sunak have to revert to a rearguard action - abandon the north to Labour and meet the Lib Dems head on. But that would mean u-turning on all the anti-green rhetoric, leaving a huge gap for Reform.
However I imagine AI would be a different kind of problem because by definition it's trying to do things where there's no objective definition of "correct". It's basically a tool to say, "in this situation, based on patterns I've seen, it's common for this to be the answer you want". Even if you write the AI bot code exactly as you intend, you'll still run into cases where it does the wrong thing.
A better question is for the government to note that the bishops have voted with the government five times and against 276 times and ask themselves whether those numbers contain useful information.
(Insert David Mitchell "are we the baddies?" gif here.)
https://youtu.be/OqqbM1B-mPY?si=MmnSq8uROSiA6RWQ
Less surprising is UK Net Approval ratings: Starmer +7; Sunak -25 Ouch!
Though as on social issues even the C of E has become more liberal than it was and there is little difference now between the Tories and Labour on those issues either, the Bishops votes with Labour on the former become more visible
It doesn't need to make sense.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1858019/HS2-revived-private-finance
"Secret government talks are being held next week to get the scrapped HS2 high-speed rail link back on track.
A cross-party plan has been drawn up to complete the northern stretch of the line, ensuring the private sector foots most of the massive bill – not taxpayers.
The blueprint will be discussed behind closed doors at a White-hall meeting between Transport Secretary Mark Harper and the mayors representing cities at both ends of the route."
The *whole point* of a hierarchy with bishops etc is that you damn well do what the bishops tell you. Or you might as well be damned - or just go home.
Whatever you think about Kamala Harris, she's good at delivering the lines her team gives her. She'd get a honeymoon, there would be a huge media buzz about her being the first woman president, she wouldn't have to pander to the Dem primary voters and she could drive the news agenda with whatever it took to appeal to the voters she needed to reach to beat Trump. She's ambitious and Biden's team are good, I'm sure they could improve her image. Shoot some shoplifters, I dunno, whatever it took.
The father of one of my school friends lost his job in the Air Ministry and got black balled in the U.K. aviation industry for writing a report that pointed out why it wasn’t a good idea, during the early development phase.
Germany, France and Sweden, amongst many other countries , have more correctly picked ( and at arm's length managed ) winners so many times that they've left us trailing in their manufacturing wake.
And the Tories are now onto their way as doing almost as badly as under Truss.
The C of E's policy and laws are proposed by Bishops but decided and approved by Synod and Synod includes a House of ordinary Clergy and a House of Laity as well as the House of Bishops
I do have some sympathy for Viewcode's arguments. If we can't create world beating companies and nurture them to adulthood, a firesale of nationalised industries seems counter productive. That's why I don't support the Tories proposed sell-off of Channel 4, or selling off the Beeb. Nice as an idea, but the reality is they would be quickly asset-stripped and plundered of IP, making a few Brits very rich and able to move to Monaco, and long term making more money for the US media corporations.
Nothing wrong with the design of the plane in itself. Amazing effort for the 1960s.
👍 Approve: 37% (+2)
👎 Disapprove: 30% (-3)
😐 Neither: 33% (NC)
https://x.com/wethinkpolling/status/1748360647790690673
How will SKS recover from this latest blow?
No chance of that blowing up...
As for the Lords, it shouldn't be a revising chamber and for most of its history it wasn't. It should be far closer in power to the Commons, to act as a check on the excesses of the latter - which means it needs legitimacy, which means it should be elected. There's no point describing how its composed without justifying why it should be so composed, and there isn't any such justification bar tradition and inertia (and the vested interests in the Commons wanting to keep it powerless and without mandate).
That said, I wouldn't get rid of the bishops until it was properly elected. Glacial piecemeal progress has been the practice over the last 115 years and is the best barrier to proper reform.
But if Biden held off until April/May then handed over the presidency, it would be too late. He already has the delegates and the ballot deadlines have passed. If you want to run against your incumbent president after most of the votes have already been cast and the delegates elected then I guess you can... If you do a good job you might win a delegate in Guam...
Quite incredible.
Our hearts are supposed to bleed, and we will be expected to cheer in the Spring, when Jeremy Hunt cancels a tax that only affects the uber-rich.
https://x.com/Eyeswideopen69/status/1748694288261665129
An elected Senate replacing the House of Lords would often lead to US style deadlock, with the Senate often voting down legislation passed by the Commons and blocking it entirely rather than just revising it as the appointed Lords does
Given the precedent of Operation Branchform proceedings are somewhat unlikely to be in this decade.
To start with the idea was that increasing speed came with fuel efficiency. You’d get there before you ran out of fuel if you went fast enough. It turned out that you needed to cruise at Mach 3 to (kind of) make that work. This was understood by the late 50s. The American built 2 completely different systems, the A-12/SR-71 and the B-70, based on this idea. Both turned out to have horrendous maintenance costs and availability.
So Concorde was built for Mach 2, since that was doable and cheaper. Without the fuel efficiency, it could barely make it across the Atlantic. The final, fatal crash was caused, in part, by overloading with fuel.
Concorde was also terribly inefficient when flying subsonically. And despite what the advocates say, flying over populations supersonically was never going to happen.
All of which was why a large, and growing, group of engineers around the world were arguing for big, subsonic widebody airliners from the early fifties.