What sane person would vote for another five years of this?
Everyone who's done well out of this Government and anyone who's afraid of Labour. That, especially in the former category, encompasses a lot of people. And then there are the reflexive habit voters who turn up to put an X by the Tory on polling day and otherwise pay no attention at all to politics. That's also a lot of people.
I have no enthusiasm for this government. Yet there is only one alternative government: Labour. And in almost every respect in which I think the government are wrong, Labour are or have been just as wrong or are wronger. Labour aren't going to invest in infrastructure in the north or grow the economy or control immigration or fight back against the lunatic fringes of woke or make our lives more pleasant in any way. The worst and most inept and most disastrous thing this government has done - lockdown - Labour were urging them to do more and harder.
So while I've no motivation for more of the current shit, voting Conservative might be the only way to stop what looks to me like an even worse option. That's the only reason I can see the Cons might still get votes.
Labour might, I suppose, possibly build more houses. That's one respect in which they might be an improvement.
(For the record, I'm still undecided on who to vote for.)
There is no reason at all to believe Labour pledges on housing development. Firstly because there's no reason to believe politicians on almost any subject; secondly because an election performance strong enough to get Starmer into Downing Street will create a fresh cohort of suburbanite Labour MPs who will be every inch as Nimbyish as the Tories they replace; and thirdly because it would infuriate the wealthy grey vote, who are the only people (save for the extremely rich) who MPs actually care about, and who have a vested interest both in frustrating development anywhere near their own homes, and in choking off the supply of property full stop to ensure that their house prices continue to go up.
There is every indication, stretching back well before the immolation of the green spending pledges to the refusal of Reeves to countenance any measures either to reform the state pension or to shift the burden of taxation from earned incomes to assets, that Labour are just another Conservative Party, almost entirely in hock to Tory voters, Tory interests and Tory ideas. Their offer for the next election will be a commitment to change as little as possible so as not to upset the winners from the existing settlement. A Labour Government is about changing the name plates on office doors and the bums on the seats of ministerial limos and little else.
Something is going to change by the end of the decade. The only question is what.
The housing situation is already unsustainable - but, by 2030, the majority of millennials will be less than 20 years from retirement. The time for hoping to buy a home of their own will have passed for many. They'll have pension pots that won't come close to paying for the level of rent they can expect to pay in retirement.
Meanwhile, the boomer generation will be starting to pass away, and the shape of our population pyramid will ensure that their inherited wealth will be concentrated into ever-fewer hands.
Society will have bifurcated into those who've been able to get onto the property ladder, and the vast majority of working age who have no hope of ever doing so. Their experiences of life will be wholly different. The divide between the two is growing already and will be unbridgeable by then.
There'll be no hope, and no reward for ambition. The drag on our country's economy will be humongous.
What are our options - a massive house-building program? some form of catastrophic crash? mass emigration? riots? lynch mobs?
In the next few years, the government is going to have to - whether explicitly or implicitly - pick one.
The problem is supply sided. Screw the NIMBYs. Build build build.
NIMBYs are generally not wholly anti-development.
The real problem is or are the developers who have effectively rationed the amount of land available for development and build houses not to solve the housing crisis but to make profits for themselves and their shareholders.
Local Borough plans make it explicit the densities in any area yet developers constantly submit over-dense applications in the hope objections will be overturned, they will be allowed to build the developments they want and coin in the profits leaving the local infrastructure and population to deal with the consequences of 1200 homes when 800 would have been acceptable.
I realise this will be anathema to many but far from removing local planning (though I do accept some aspects of the application and consultation process need to be reformed), I would strengthen local powers to force developers to adhere to local density and other local provisions.
The other aspect of this is the capacity within the construction industry to support multiple projects, It seems there are a finite number of contractors, subbies and suppliers so in effect that rations and restricts any housebuilding programme as do the supply chains for building materials and distribution.
The local authorities should build their own houses, some for rent, some for sale. The housebuilders’ oligopoly needs to be challenged and only central or local government have the power to do so. Not enough construction workers, you say? Most of them are subbies who could work for Anytown Council as easily as they could work for Wimpey or Persimmon.
Yes, and doing so would provide a counter-cyclical support for the building trades, which would prevent the loss of productive capacity during lean times.
Thatcher all but banned councils from building new housing stock in the mid 80s. I understand the explanation for why she did it the time - trying to wrest control of local govt finance away from what she saw as the loony left.
But by the late 80s, Militant had been defeated, and the GLC was long gone. The entire basis of local government finance was changed in 1989. And again under Heseltine in 1992. And again by Prescott in 1999. But council house building wasn't freed up (partially) until 2007 (Ruth Kelly, I think?) or (more fully) by Eric Pickles in 2012-ish.
But by then, after more than a quarter of a century of being suppressed, local authority capacity to plan and build new housing stock had been destroyed. Rebuilding from nothing has taken a long time, and more than a decade later has still failed to regain the level seen in the early 80s.
This was a sector that was formerly responsible for about 0.5% (estimates seem to vary between 0.2% to 1.5%) of annual GDP growth. Destroyed. First as a deliberate political choice, and then by... carelessness? thoughtlessness? I guess the Major and Blair governments saw the private housebuilding sector chugging along merrily and didn't stop to consider the public sector?
It seems very weird to me - a clear unforced error. Perhaps even, in retrospect, the worst of Thatcher's mistakes.
And it doesn't take so many errors like that to accumulate before 4% average annual growth in the 80s becomes 3% in the 90s and 2000s, or 2% in the 2010s...
I don't think Council's would go back to mass housebuilding but they can commission more. What you need to create is a sustainable model to finance, build and maintain affordable housing on a vast scale. This involves changing the rules through which council's operate much of which is still a legacy of Thatcherism and poisoned central/local relations. It should be one of the first tasks of the next labour government.
Sorting out the financial situation of local government is going to be the first task of any government. Stoke-on-Trent is the latest to warn it's about to go belly up.
Councils have no money to spend on subsidised houses, so it simply isn't going to happen that way.
Local authority finances need to be drastically reformed. I don’t know where the money will come from, but unlike the 1980s, I would have more confidence in local government spending it wisely than I would have in central government spending it.
I’m sure he has suggested he’d vote Labour were it not for SKS?
These unthinking numbskulls need an Emmanuel Goldstein to spew at, and I think Leon is asleep
It was quite special earlier reading about @Anabobazina describing the new Labour MP like she was the Virgin Mary, and anyone who questioned this in the slightest were akin to the mobs who urged Pontius Pilate to crucify Jesus.
The tribalism is off the scale here now.
Only a small minority of posters are tribal. Unfortunately, you are part if that small minority.
Err, no. It's the majority of the football-team Labour crowd on here who are so far gone that they think it's "tribal" whenever they encounter someone who doesn't agree with them, and then, like woodlice, they all crawl out for a little invertebrate pile on.
I consistently make a lot of money betting on politics regardless of the political cycle, so my objectivity is both beyond question and evidenced with profits measured in real cash.
19 April - Stansted to Santiago de Compostela 13 May - Biarritz to Stansted
For a grand total of £71.39
I have to fly Ryanair, but still.. I think it'll cost me about the same to get to Stansted and back by train
I'm planning to walk from Santiago to Saint Jean Pied de Port (about 500 miles, I expect) in twenty days, then to get a bus to San Sebastian for a couple of nights and lots of great food, then the last night in Biarritz
I'm only going to book the first night's stay
I admire the ambition, but that is 25 miles a day for twenty days straight.
I've had a fun week, even before booking my flights. I made an old lady cry, and enjoyed it so much that I tried to make her cry again the next day
She's a spinster whose last sibling, a younger sister, died last year. She has some friends who she exchanges postcards with, but I think very little other contact except with her neighbours
I noticed that she hadn't posted any postcards in the local box for a couple of weeks, so I rang her bell the other day to make sure she was ok
She was so touched that I'd thought to check on her. She asked me to give her a hug, and she cried a bit when I did
I then gave her her mail, including a card. She said that was a card she'd been expecting for her birthday later in the week
I bought her a card that evening and posted it to her the next day. I haven't seen her since, but I bet I'm getting another hug
I’m sure he has suggested he’d vote Labour were it not for SKS?
These unthinking numbskulls need an Emmanuel Goldstein to spew at, and I think Leon is asleep
It was quite special earlier reading about @Anabobazina describing the new Labour MP like she was the Virgin Mary, and anyone who questioned this in the slightest were akin to the mobs who urged Pontius Pilate to crucify Jesus.
The tribalism is off the scale here now.
I think the tribalism is very much with you. I thought @Anabobazina posts were quite sweet and very much caught the mood from the interview with the candidate. It was a nice moment that will almost certainly not last bearing in mind what politics is like. Yours were just sour and bitter. Would have been nice to have been a little gracious.
And that is coming from me who in 69 years has never voted Labour in any election and still won't be.
You often make comments (you did also earlier today) about people's bias here and never see it in yourself.
"Quite sweet."
Lol. You're the biggest blind partisan idiot here.
By a country mile.
How the hell am I partisan if I have never voted Labour? I mean really the logic fail here is breathtaking.
You don't get it do you? You are spectacularly partisan and don't realise it so in your eyes everyone else is even if they clearly aren't.
I've had a fun week, even before booking my flights. I made an old lady cry, and enjoyed it so much that I tried to make her cry again the next day
She's a spinster whose last sibling, a younger sister, died last year. She has some friends who she exchanges postcards with, but I think very little other contact except with her neighbours
I noticed that she hadn't posted any postcards in the local box for a couple of weeks, so I rang her bell the other day to make sure she was ok
She was so touched that I'd thought to check on her. She asked me to give her a hug, and she cried a bit when I did
I then gave her her mail, including a card. She said that was a card she'd been expecting for her birthday later in the week
I bought her a card that evening and posted it to her the next day. I haven't seen her since, but I bet I'm getting another hug
The Post Office as a social service. Why can’t everyone be as caring as you?
What sane person would vote for another five years of this?
Everyone who's done well out of this Government and anyone who's afraid of Labour. That, especially in the former category, encompasses a lot of people. And then there are the reflexive habit voters who turn up to put an X by the Tory on polling day and otherwise pay no attention at all to politics. That's also a lot of people.
I have no enthusiasm for this government. Yet there is only one alternative government: Labour. And in almost every respect in which I think the government are wrong, Labour are or have been just as wrong or are wronger. Labour aren't going to invest in infrastructure in the north or grow the economy or control immigration or fight back against the lunatic fringes of woke or make our lives more pleasant in any way. The worst and most inept and most disastrous thing this government has done - lockdown - Labour were urging them to do more and harder.
So while I've no motivation for more of the current shit, voting Conservative might be the only way to stop what looks to me like an even worse option. That's the only reason I can see the Cons might still get votes.
Labour might, I suppose, possibly build more houses. That's one respect in which they might be an improvement.
(For the record, I'm still undecided on who to vote for.)
There is no reason at all to believe Labour pledges on housing development. Firstly because there's no reason to believe politicians on almost any subject; secondly because an election performance strong enough to get Starmer into Downing Street will create a fresh cohort of suburbanite Labour MPs who will be every inch as Nimbyish as the Tories they replace; and thirdly because it would infuriate the wealthy grey vote, who are the only people (save for the extremely rich) who MPs actually care about, and who have a vested interest both in frustrating development anywhere near their own homes, and in choking off the supply of property full stop to ensure that their house prices continue to go up.
There is every indication, stretching back well before the immolation of the green spending pledges to the refusal of Reeves to countenance any measures either to reform the state pension or to shift the burden of taxation from earned incomes to assets, that Labour are just another Conservative Party, almost entirely in hock to Tory voters, Tory interests and Tory ideas. Their offer for the next election will be a commitment to change as little as possible so as not to upset the winners from the existing settlement. A Labour Government is about changing the name plates on office doors and the bums on the seats of ministerial limos and little else.
Something is going to change by the end of the decade. The only question is what.
The housing situation is already unsustainable - but, by 2030, the majority of millennials will be less than 20 years from retirement. The time for hoping to buy a home of their own will have passed for many. They'll have pension pots that won't come close to paying for the level of rent they can expect to pay in retirement.
Meanwhile, the boomer generation will be starting to pass away, and the shape of our population pyramid will ensure that their inherited wealth will be concentrated into ever-fewer hands.
Society will have bifurcated into those who've been able to get onto the property ladder, and the vast majority of working age who have no hope of ever doing so. Their experiences of life will be wholly different. The divide between the two is growing already and will be unbridgeable by then.
There'll be no hope, and no reward for ambition. The drag on our country's economy will be humongous.
What are our options - a massive house-building program? some form of catastrophic crash? mass emigration? riots? lynch mobs?
In the next few years, the government is going to have to - whether explicitly or implicitly - pick one.
The problem is supply sided. Screw the NIMBYs. Build build build.
NIMBYs are generally not wholly anti-development.
The real problem is or are the developers who have effectively rationed the amount of land available for development and build houses not to solve the housing crisis but to make profits for themselves and their shareholders.
Local Borough plans make it explicit the densities in any area yet developers constantly submit over-dense applications in the hope objections will be overturned, they will be allowed to build the developments they want and coin in the profits leaving the local infrastructure and population to deal with the consequences of 1200 homes when 800 would have been acceptable.
I realise this will be anathema to many but far from removing local planning (though I do accept some aspects of the application and consultation process need to be reformed), I would strengthen local powers to force developers to adhere to local density and other local provisions.
The other aspect of this is the capacity within the construction industry to support multiple projects, It seems there are a finite number of contractors, subbies and suppliers so in effect that rations and restricts any housebuilding programme as do the supply chains for building materials and distribution.
The local authorities should build their own houses, some for rent, some for sale. The housebuilders’ oligopoly needs to be challenged and only central or local government have the power to do so. Not enough construction workers, you say? Most of them are subbies who could work for Anytown Council as easily as they could work for Wimpey or Persimmon.
Yes, and doing so would provide a counter-cyclical support for the building trades, which would prevent the loss of productive capacity during lean times.
Thatcher all but banned councils from building new housing stock in the mid 80s. I understand the explanation for why she did it the time - trying to wrest control of local govt finance away from what she saw as the loony left.
But by the late 80s, Militant had been defeated, and the GLC was long gone. The entire basis of local government finance was changed in 1989. And again under Heseltine in 1992. And again by Prescott in 1999. But council house building wasn't freed up (partially) until 2007 (Ruth Kelly, I think?) or (more fully) by Eric Pickles in 2012-ish.
But by then, after more than a quarter of a century of being suppressed, local authority capacity to plan and build new housing stock had been destroyed. Rebuilding from nothing has taken a long time, and more than a decade later has still failed to regain the level seen in the early 80s.
This was a sector that was formerly responsible for about 0.5% (estimates seem to vary between 0.2% to 1.5%) of annual GDP growth. Destroyed. First as a deliberate political choice, and then by... carelessness? thoughtlessness? I guess the Major and Blair governments saw the private housebuilding sector chugging along merrily and didn't stop to consider the public sector?
It seems very weird to me - a clear unforced error. Perhaps even, in retrospect, the worst of Thatcher's mistakes.
And it doesn't take so many errors like that to accumulate before 4% average annual growth in the 80s becomes 3% in the 90s and 2000s, or 2% in the 2010s...
I don't think Council's would go back to mass housebuilding but they can commission more. What you need to create is a sustainable model to finance, build and maintain affordable housing on a vast scale. This involves changing the rules through which council's operate much of which is still a legacy of Thatcherism and poisoned central/local relations. It should be one of the first tasks of the next labour government.
Sorting out the financial situation of local government is going to be the first task of any government. Stoke-on-Trent is the latest to warn it's about to go belly up.
Councils have no money to spend on subsidised houses, so it simply isn't going to happen that way.
Local authority finances need to be drastically reformed. I don’t know where the money will come from, but unlike the 1980s, I would have more confidence in local government spending it wisely than I would have in central government spending it.
as always it depends on the council. take this for instance
an incinerator which is wedged between residential and industrial which no-one wanted except the council. god knows the initial cost to build but it cost two councils £100M to cancel the contract for it. after it had never been used.
over the whole saga the council has been run by labour and Tory/LD. I'd not trust any of them with any additional money.
but I'm sure that there are well run councils out there
$354.9 million and banned from running businesses in New York.
I think I have just experienced a near sexual thrill at that news.
Only a three year ban. If he were to be reelected, it wouldn’t even matter.
Two years for the spawn.
If relected, Trump and the Trumpists will zero out any Federal money for New York until they pay his legal expenses in this case, let alone the actual fine.
I’m sure he has suggested he’d vote Labour were it not for SKS?
These unthinking numbskulls need an Emmanuel Goldstein to spew at, and I think Leon is asleep
It was quite special earlier reading about @Anabobazina describing the new Labour MP like she was the Virgin Mary, and anyone who questioned this in the slightest were akin to the mobs who urged Pontius Pilate to crucify Jesus.
The tribalism is off the scale here now.
I think the tribalism is very much with you. I thought @Anabobazina posts were quite sweet and very much caught the mood from the interview with the candidate. It was a nice moment that will almost certainly not last bearing in mind what politics is like. Yours were just sour and bitter. Would have been nice to have been a little gracious.
And that is coming from me who in 69 years has never voted Labour in any election and still won't be.
You often make comments (you did also earlier today) about people's bias here and never see it in yourself.
"Quite sweet."
Lol. You're the biggest blind partisan idiot here.
By a country mile.
How the hell am I partisan if I have never voted Labour? I mean really the logic fail here is breathtaking.
You don't get it do you? You are spectacularly partisan and don't realise it so in your eyes everyone else is even if they clearly aren't.
I simply don't believe you. You ooze leftwingery with your every word.
And, no, I'm not partisan; I'm one of the most objective people on here.
The fact you can't see that is a sign of your own partisanship, not mine.
$354.9 million and banned from running businesses in New York.
I think I have just experienced a near sexual thrill at that news.
Is that less than expected. Had seen $550m banded about?
That was my punt from earlier, including compound interest and I was expecting something added on for the items identified in the Monitor's report from a few days ago.
Perhaps there will be another indictment for the rest of this stuff . There's the opportunity that NY could charge him with criminal fraud in addition to this civil fraud - some of the offences have parallels.
And there's a mountain of Jan 6 and Election things that have not been brought out. As Mr Big from Jan 06 I'd be expecting Mr Trump to have some charges around that landing on his doormat in due course, which I don't think have appeared yet.
550m is about right with 9% statutory interest and the 83m from the other suit
What sane person would vote for another five years of this?
Everyone who's done well out of this Government and anyone who's afraid of Labour. That, especially in the former category, encompasses a lot of people. And then there are the reflexive habit voters who turn up to put an X by the Tory on polling day and otherwise pay no attention at all to politics. That's also a lot of people.
I have no enthusiasm for this government. Yet there is only one alternative government: Labour. And in almost every respect in which I think the government are wrong, Labour are or have been just as wrong or are wronger. Labour aren't going to invest in infrastructure in the north or grow the economy or control immigration or fight back against the lunatic fringes of woke or make our lives more pleasant in any way. The worst and most inept and most disastrous thing this government has done - lockdown - Labour were urging them to do more and harder.
So while I've no motivation for more of the current shit, voting Conservative might be the only way to stop what looks to me like an even worse option. That's the only reason I can see the Cons might still get votes.
Labour might, I suppose, possibly build more houses. That's one respect in which they might be an improvement.
(For the record, I'm still undecided on who to vote for.)
There is no reason at all to believe Labour pledges on housing development. Firstly because there's no reason to believe politicians on almost any subject; secondly because an election performance strong enough to get Starmer into Downing Street will create a fresh cohort of suburbanite Labour MPs who will be every inch as Nimbyish as the Tories they replace; and thirdly because it would infuriate the wealthy grey vote, who are the only people (save for the extremely rich) who MPs actually care about, and who have a vested interest both in frustrating development anywhere near their own homes, and in choking off the supply of property full stop to ensure that their house prices continue to go up.
There is every indication, stretching back well before the immolation of the green spending pledges to the refusal of Reeves to countenance any measures either to reform the state pension or to shift the burden of taxation from earned incomes to assets, that Labour are just another Conservative Party, almost entirely in hock to Tory voters, Tory interests and Tory ideas. Their offer for the next election will be a commitment to change as little as possible so as not to upset the winners from the existing settlement. A Labour Government is about changing the name plates on office doors and the bums on the seats of ministerial limos and little else.
Something is going to change by the end of the decade. The only question is what.
The housing situation is already unsustainable - but, by 2030, the majority of millennials will be less than 20 years from retirement. The time for hoping to buy a home of their own will have passed for many. They'll have pension pots that won't come close to paying for the level of rent they can expect to pay in retirement.
Meanwhile, the boomer generation will be starting to pass away, and the shape of our population pyramid will ensure that their inherited wealth will be concentrated into ever-fewer hands.
Society will have bifurcated into those who've been able to get onto the property ladder, and the vast majority of working age who have no hope of ever doing so. Their experiences of life will be wholly different. The divide between the two is growing already and will be unbridgeable by then.
There'll be no hope, and no reward for ambition. The drag on our country's economy will be humongous.
What are our options - a massive house-building program? some form of catastrophic crash? mass emigration? riots? lynch mobs?
In the next few years, the government is going to have to - whether explicitly or implicitly - pick one.
The problem is supply sided. Screw the NIMBYs. Build build build.
NIMBYs are generally not wholly anti-development.
The real problem is or are the developers who have effectively rationed the amount of land available for development and build houses not to solve the housing crisis but to make profits for themselves and their shareholders.
Local Borough plans make it explicit the densities in any area yet developers constantly submit over-dense applications in the hope objections will be overturned, they will be allowed to build the developments they want and coin in the profits leaving the local infrastructure and population to deal with the consequences of 1200 homes when 800 would have been acceptable.
I realise this will be anathema to many but far from removing local planning (though I do accept some aspects of the application and consultation process need to be reformed), I would strengthen local powers to force developers to adhere to local density and other local provisions.
The other aspect of this is the capacity within the construction industry to support multiple projects, It seems there are a finite number of contractors, subbies and suppliers so in effect that rations and restricts any housebuilding programme as do the supply chains for building materials and distribution.
The local authorities should build their own houses, some for rent, some for sale. The housebuilders’ oligopoly needs to be challenged and only central or local government have the power to do so. Not enough construction workers, you say? Most of them are subbies who could work for Anytown Council as easily as they could work for Wimpey or Persimmon.
Yes, and doing so would provide a counter-cyclical support for the building trades, which would prevent the loss of productive capacity during lean times.
Thatcher all but banned councils from building new housing stock in the mid 80s. I understand the explanation for why she did it the time - trying to wrest control of local govt finance away from what she saw as the loony left.
But by the late 80s, Militant had been defeated, and the GLC was long gone. The entire basis of local government finance was changed in 1989. And again under Heseltine in 1992. And again by Prescott in 1999. But council house building wasn't freed up (partially) until 2007 (Ruth Kelly, I think?) or (more fully) by Eric Pickles in 2012-ish.
But by then, after more than a quarter of a century of being suppressed, local authority capacity to plan and build new housing stock had been destroyed. Rebuilding from nothing has taken a long time, and more than a decade later has still failed to regain the level seen in the early 80s.
This was a sector that was formerly responsible for about 0.5% (estimates seem to vary between 0.2% to 1.5%) of annual GDP growth. Destroyed. First as a deliberate political choice, and then by... carelessness? thoughtlessness? I guess the Major and Blair governments saw the private housebuilding sector chugging along merrily and didn't stop to consider the public sector?
It seems very weird to me - a clear unforced error. Perhaps even, in retrospect, the worst of Thatcher's mistakes.
And it doesn't take so many errors like that to accumulate before 4% average annual growth in the 80s becomes 3% in the 90s and 2000s, or 2% in the 2010s...
I don't think Council's would go back to mass housebuilding but they can commission more. What you need to create is a sustainable model to finance, build and maintain affordable housing on a vast scale. This involves changing the rules through which council's operate much of which is still a legacy of Thatcherism and poisoned central/local relations. It should be one of the first tasks of the next labour government.
Sorting out the financial situation of local government is going to be the first task of any government. Stoke-on-Trent is the latest to warn it's about to go belly up.
Councils have no money to spend on subsidised houses, so it simply isn't going to happen that way.
Local authority finances need to be drastically reformed. I don’t know where the money will come from, but unlike the 1980s, I would have more confidence in local government spending it wisely than I would have in central government spending it.
as always it depends on the council. take this for instance
an incinerator which is wedged between residential and industrial which no-one wanted except the council. god knows the initial cost to build but it cost two councils £100M to cancel the contract for it. after it had never been used.
over the whole saga the council has been run by labour and Tory/LD. I'd not trust any of them with any additional money.
but I'm sure that there are well run councils out there
Hampshire County Council planners originally tried that on with Veoila near me.
Labour 'will put Scotland at heart of government' - Anas Sarwar
Scotland will be at the heart of the next UK government if Labour are elected, Anas Sarwar has said.
The Scottish Labour leader told delegates at his party conference that the SNP and the Tories were the "very best of frenemies", using each other as cover for their own failings.
Sorry, I laughed. I just couldn’t help myself.
I do wonder what is goingf to happen when the SKS poilicies hit the Slab doctrines.
19 April - Stansted to Santiago de Compostela 13 May - Biarritz to Stansted
For a grand total of £71.39
I have to fly Ryanair, but still.. I think it'll cost me about the same to get to Stansted and back by train
I'm planning to walk from Santiago to Saint Jean Pied de Port (about 500 miles, I expect) in twenty days, then to get a bus to San Sebastian for a couple of nights and lots of great food, then the last night in Biarritz
I'm only going to book the first night's stay
I admire the ambition, but that is 25 miles a day for twenty days straight.
Caesar would be impressed
“Thirteen! Thirteen!”
Tredecim milia passuum! Tredecim milia passuum! surely.
IMO the government has done well in the balancing act of helping people generally and helping the vulnerable even more while still encouraging greater energy efficiency.
I don't know who made the choices Sunak, Hunt, Shapps or someone else but they deserve some credit.
What sane person would vote for another five years of this?
Everyone who's done well out of this Government and anyone who's afraid of Labour. That, especially in the former category, encompasses a lot of people. And then there are the reflexive habit voters who turn up to put an X by the Tory on polling day and otherwise pay no attention at all to politics. That's also a lot of people.
I have no enthusiasm for this government. Yet there is only one alternative government: Labour. And in almost every respect in which I think the government are wrong, Labour are or have been just as wrong or are wronger. Labour aren't going to invest in infrastructure in the north or grow the economy or control immigration or fight back against the lunatic fringes of woke or make our lives more pleasant in any way. The worst and most inept and most disastrous thing this government has done - lockdown - Labour were urging them to do more and harder.
So while I've no motivation for more of the current shit, voting Conservative might be the only way to stop what looks to me like an even worse option. That's the only reason I can see the Cons might still get votes.
Labour might, I suppose, possibly build more houses. That's one respect in which they might be an improvement.
(For the record, I'm still undecided on who to vote for.)
There is no reason at all to believe Labour pledges on housing development. Firstly because there's no reason to believe politicians on almost any subject; secondly because an election performance strong enough to get Starmer into Downing Street will create a fresh cohort of suburbanite Labour MPs who will be every inch as Nimbyish as the Tories they replace; and thirdly because it would infuriate the wealthy grey vote, who are the only people (save for the extremely rich) who MPs actually care about, and who have a vested interest both in frustrating development anywhere near their own homes, and in choking off the supply of property full stop to ensure that their house prices continue to go up.
There is every indication, stretching back well before the immolation of the green spending pledges to the refusal of Reeves to countenance any measures either to reform the state pension or to shift the burden of taxation from earned incomes to assets, that Labour are just another Conservative Party, almost entirely in hock to Tory voters, Tory interests and Tory ideas. Their offer for the next election will be a commitment to change as little as possible so as not to upset the winners from the existing settlement. A Labour Government is about changing the name plates on office doors and the bums on the seats of ministerial limos and little else.
Something is going to change by the end of the decade. The only question is what.
The housing situation is already unsustainable - but, by 2030, the majority of millennials will be less than 20 years from retirement. The time for hoping to buy a home of their own will have passed for many. They'll have pension pots that won't come close to paying for the level of rent they can expect to pay in retirement.
Meanwhile, the boomer generation will be starting to pass away, and the shape of our population pyramid will ensure that their inherited wealth will be concentrated into ever-fewer hands.
Society will have bifurcated into those who've been able to get onto the property ladder, and the vast majority of working age who have no hope of ever doing so. Their experiences of life will be wholly different. The divide between the two is growing already and will be unbridgeable by then.
There'll be no hope, and no reward for ambition. The drag on our country's economy will be humongous.
What are our options - a massive house-building program? some form of catastrophic crash? mass emigration? riots? lynch mobs?
In the next few years, the government is going to have to - whether explicitly or implicitly - pick one.
The problem is supply sided. Screw the NIMBYs. Build build build.
NIMBYs are generally not wholly anti-development.
The real problem is or are the developers who have effectively rationed the amount of land available for development and build houses not to solve the housing crisis but to make profits for themselves and their shareholders.
Local Borough plans make it explicit the densities in any area yet developers constantly submit over-dense applications in the hope objections will be overturned, they will be allowed to build the developments they want and coin in the profits leaving the local infrastructure and population to deal with the consequences of 1200 homes when 800 would have been acceptable.
I realise this will be anathema to many but far from removing local planning (though I do accept some aspects of the application and consultation process need to be reformed), I would strengthen local powers to force developers to adhere to local density and other local provisions.
The other aspect of this is the capacity within the construction industry to support multiple projects, It seems there are a finite number of contractors, subbies and suppliers so in effect that rations and restricts any housebuilding programme as do the supply chains for building materials and distribution.
The local authorities should build their own houses, some for rent, some for sale. The housebuilders’ oligopoly needs to be challenged and only central or local government have the power to do so. Not enough construction workers, you say? Most of them are subbies who could work for Anytown Council as easily as they could work for Wimpey or Persimmon.
Yes, and doing so would provide a counter-cyclical support for the building trades, which would prevent the loss of productive capacity during lean times.
Thatcher all but banned councils from building new housing stock in the mid 80s. I understand the explanation for why she did it the time - trying to wrest control of local govt finance away from what she saw as the loony left.
But by the late 80s, Militant had been defeated, and the GLC was long gone. The entire basis of local government finance was changed in 1989. And again under Heseltine in 1992. And again by Prescott in 1999. But council house building wasn't freed up (partially) until 2007 (Ruth Kelly, I think?) or (more fully) by Eric Pickles in 2012-ish.
But by then, after more than a quarter of a century of being suppressed, local authority capacity to plan and build new housing stock had been destroyed. Rebuilding from nothing has taken a long time, and more than a decade later has still failed to regain the level seen in the early 80s.
This was a sector that was formerly responsible for about 0.5% (estimates seem to vary between 0.2% to 1.5%) of annual GDP growth. Destroyed. First as a deliberate political choice, and then by... carelessness? thoughtlessness? I guess the Major and Blair governments saw the private housebuilding sector chugging along merrily and didn't stop to consider the public sector?
It seems very weird to me - a clear unforced error. Perhaps even, in retrospect, the worst of Thatcher's mistakes.
And it doesn't take so many errors like that to accumulate before 4% average annual growth in the 80s becomes 3% in the 90s and 2000s, or 2% in the 2010s...
I don't think Council's would go back to mass housebuilding but they can commission more. What you need to create is a sustainable model to finance, build and maintain affordable housing on a vast scale. This involves changing the rules through which council's operate much of which is still a legacy of Thatcherism and poisoned central/local relations. It should be one of the first tasks of the next labour government.
Sorting out the financial situation of local government is going to be the first task of any government. Stoke-on-Trent is the latest to warn it's about to go belly up.
Councils have no money to spend on subsidised houses, so it simply isn't going to happen that way.
Local authority finances need to be drastically reformed. I don’t know where the money will come from, but unlike the 1980s, I would have more confidence in local government spending it wisely than I would have in central government spending it.
as always it depends on the council. take this for instance
an incinerator which is wedged between residential and industrial which no-one wanted except the council. god knows the initial cost to build but it cost two councils £100M to cancel the contract for it. after it had never been used.
over the whole saga the council has been run by labour and Tory/LD. I'd not trust any of them with any additional money.
but I'm sure that there are well run councils out there
I know a fair bit about that; it was a mess (literally and figuratively) from the very start. For one thing, the site was far too small for the size of the incinerator. It *could* have worked, but would have relied on everything working perfectly all the time. If it didn't, where do you store all the stuff to be incinerated? It was also near a load of new housing.
If you want to build something like this, give it plenty of space. Because operations never go as planned, space insulates you from any neighbours, and can always be used for expansion later.
This scheme was almost designed to fail. What I don't know is *why* the decision was made to make it. I bet the people who made thar decision aren't going to be paying any of the money...
IMO the government has done well in the balancing act of helping people generally and helping the vulnerable even more while still encouraging greater energy efficiency.
I don't know who made the choices Sunak, Hunt, Shapps or someone else but they deserve some credit.
Just in time for an October- November election !!!!!!!
$354.9 million and banned from running businesses in New York.
I think I have just experienced a near sexual thrill at that news.
Is that less than expected. Had seen $550m banded about?
That was my punt from earlier, including compound interest and I was expecting something added on for the items identified in the Monitor's report from a few days ago.
Perhaps there will be another indictment for the rest of this stuff . There's the opportunity that NY could charge him with criminal fraud in addition to this civil fraud - some of the offences have parallels.
And there's a mountain of Jan 6 and Election things that have not been brought out. As Mr Big from Jan 06 I'd be expecting Mr Trump to have some charges around that landing on his doormat in due course, which I don't think have appeared yet.
550m is about right with 9% statutory interest and the 83m from the other suit
On the interest, the charges relate to business activities going back to iirc 2016 (statue of limitations 6 years?), so interest would perhaps be rather more. Again, I'm not THAT far down the rabbit warren.
I can see a whole shoal of new defamation actions coming in - he has defamed and threatened a *lot* of people, not just in this case.
Listening to CNN, they are talking mainly about the HUGE!! UNPRECENTED!! verdict - which seems strange. And how it is victimless - aiui the victims are treated in these cases as being the people of NY who have suffered from loss of dodged taxes etc.
And how it could damage business confidence in Real Estate, and how all the other real estate wallahs are worried. I wonder if they all know something about how they do business.
Labour 'will put Scotland at heart of government' - Anas Sarwar
Scotland will be at the heart of the next UK government if Labour are elected, Anas Sarwar has said.
The Scottish Labour leader told delegates at his party conference that the SNP and the Tories were the "very best of frenemies", using each other as cover for their own failings.
Sorry, I laughed. I just couldn’t help myself.
I do wonder what is goingf to happen when the SKS poilicies hit the Slab doctrines.
IMO the government has done well in the balancing act of helping people generally and helping the vulnerable even more while still encouraging greater energy efficiency.
I don't know who made the choices Sunak, Hunt, Shapps or someone else but they deserve some credit.
Too little, too late, I'm afraid.
That said, in future, I expect electric energy to get cheaper and cheaper as we move away from gas and onto renewables, which just keep tumbling.
IMO the government has done well in the balancing act of helping people generally and helping the vulnerable even more while still encouraging greater energy efficiency.
I don't know who made the choices Sunak, Hunt, Shapps or someone else but they deserve some credit.
Just in time for an October- November election !!!!!!!
Looks like CPI sub 2% could be on for the summer. I wouldn't have projected that this time last year.
What sane person would vote for another five years of this?
Everyone who's done well out of this Government and anyone who's afraid of Labour. That, especially in the former category, encompasses a lot of people. And then there are the reflexive habit voters who turn up to put an X by the Tory on polling day and otherwise pay no attention at all to politics. That's also a lot of people.
I have no enthusiasm for this government. Yet there is only one alternative government: Labour. And in almost every respect in which I think the government are wrong, Labour are or have been just as wrong or are wronger. Labour aren't going to invest in infrastructure in the north or grow the economy or control immigration or fight back against the lunatic fringes of woke or make our lives more pleasant in any way. The worst and most inept and most disastrous thing this government has done - lockdown - Labour were urging them to do more and harder.
So while I've no motivation for more of the current shit, voting Conservative might be the only way to stop what looks to me like an even worse option. That's the only reason I can see the Cons might still get votes.
Labour might, I suppose, possibly build more houses. That's one respect in which they might be an improvement.
(For the record, I'm still undecided on who to vote for.)
There is no reason at all to believe Labour pledges on housing development. Firstly because there's no reason to believe politicians on almost any subject; secondly because an election performance strong enough to get Starmer into Downing Street will create a fresh cohort of suburbanite Labour MPs who will be every inch as Nimbyish as the Tories they replace; and thirdly because it would infuriate the wealthy grey vote, who are the only people (save for the extremely rich) who MPs actually care about, and who have a vested interest both in frustrating development anywhere near their own homes, and in choking off the supply of property full stop to ensure that their house prices continue to go up.
There is every indication, stretching back well before the immolation of the green spending pledges to the refusal of Reeves to countenance any measures either to reform the state pension or to shift the burden of taxation from earned incomes to assets, that Labour are just another Conservative Party, almost entirely in hock to Tory voters, Tory interests and Tory ideas. Their offer for the next election will be a commitment to change as little as possible so as not to upset the winners from the existing settlement. A Labour Government is about changing the name plates on office doors and the bums on the seats of ministerial limos and little else.
Something is going to change by the end of the decade. The only question is what.
The housing situation is already unsustainable - but, by 2030, the majority of millennials will be less than 20 years from retirement. The time for hoping to buy a home of their own will have passed for many. They'll have pension pots that won't come close to paying for the level of rent they can expect to pay in retirement.
Meanwhile, the boomer generation will be starting to pass away, and the shape of our population pyramid will ensure that their inherited wealth will be concentrated into ever-fewer hands.
Society will have bifurcated into those who've been able to get onto the property ladder, and the vast majority of working age who have no hope of ever doing so. Their experiences of life will be wholly different. The divide between the two is growing already and will be unbridgeable by then.
There'll be no hope, and no reward for ambition. The drag on our country's economy will be humongous.
What are our options - a massive house-building program? some form of catastrophic crash? mass emigration? riots? lynch mobs?
In the next few years, the government is going to have to - whether explicitly or implicitly - pick one.
The problem is supply sided. Screw the NIMBYs. Build build build.
NIMBYs are generally not wholly anti-development.
The real problem is or are the developers who have effectively rationed the amount of land available for development and build houses not to solve the housing crisis but to make profits for themselves and their shareholders.
Local Borough plans make it explicit the densities in any area yet developers constantly submit over-dense applications in the hope objections will be overturned, they will be allowed to build the developments they want and coin in the profits leaving the local infrastructure and population to deal with the consequences of 1200 homes when 800 would have been acceptable.
I realise this will be anathema to many but far from removing local planning (though I do accept some aspects of the application and consultation process need to be reformed), I would strengthen local powers to force developers to adhere to local density and other local provisions.
The other aspect of this is the capacity within the construction industry to support multiple projects, It seems there are a finite number of contractors, subbies and suppliers so in effect that rations and restricts any housebuilding programme as do the supply chains for building materials and distribution.
The local authorities should build their own houses, some for rent, some for sale. The housebuilders’ oligopoly needs to be challenged and only central or local government have the power to do so. Not enough construction workers, you say? Most of them are subbies who could work for Anytown Council as easily as they could work for Wimpey or Persimmon.
Yes, and doing so would provide a counter-cyclical support for the building trades, which would prevent the loss of productive capacity during lean times.
Thatcher all but banned councils from building new housing stock in the mid 80s. I understand the explanation for why she did it the time - trying to wrest control of local govt finance away from what she saw as the loony left.
But by the late 80s, Militant had been defeated, and the GLC was long gone. The entire basis of local government finance was changed in 1989. And again under Heseltine in 1992. And again by Prescott in 1999. But council house building wasn't freed up (partially) until 2007 (Ruth Kelly, I think?) or (more fully) by Eric Pickles in 2012-ish.
But by then, after more than a quarter of a century of being suppressed, local authority capacity to plan and build new housing stock had been destroyed. Rebuilding from nothing has taken a long time, and more than a decade later has still failed to regain the level seen in the early 80s.
This was a sector that was formerly responsible for about 0.5% (estimates seem to vary between 0.2% to 1.5%) of annual GDP growth. Destroyed. First as a deliberate political choice, and then by... carelessness? thoughtlessness? I guess the Major and Blair governments saw the private housebuilding sector chugging along merrily and didn't stop to consider the public sector?
It seems very weird to me - a clear unforced error. Perhaps even, in retrospect, the worst of Thatcher's mistakes.
And it doesn't take so many errors like that to accumulate before 4% average annual growth in the 80s becomes 3% in the 90s and 2000s, or 2% in the 2010s...
I don't think Council's would go back to mass housebuilding but they can commission more. What you need to create is a sustainable model to finance, build and maintain affordable housing on a vast scale. This involves changing the rules through which council's operate much of which is still a legacy of Thatcherism and poisoned central/local relations. It should be one of the first tasks of the next labour government.
Sorting out the financial situation of local government is going to be the first task of any government. Stoke-on-Trent is the latest to warn it's about to go belly up.
Councils have no money to spend on subsidised houses, so it simply isn't going to happen that way.
Local authority finances need to be drastically reformed. I don’t know where the money will come from, but unlike the 1980s, I would have more confidence in local government spending it wisely than I would have in central government spending it.
as always it depends on the council. take this for instance
an incinerator which is wedged between residential and industrial which no-one wanted except the council. god knows the initial cost to build but it cost two councils £100M to cancel the contract for it. after it had never been used.
over the whole saga the council has been run by labour and Tory/LD. I'd not trust any of them with any additional money.
but I'm sure that there are well run councils out there
I know a fair bit about that; it was a mess (literally and figuratively) from the very start. For one thing, the site was far too small for the size of the incinerator. It *could* have worked, but would have relied on everything working perfectly all the time. If it didn't, where do you store all the stuff to be incinerated? It was also near a load of new housing.
If you want to build something like this, give it plenty of space. Because operations never go as planned, space insulates you from any neighbours, and can always be used for expansion later.
This scheme was almost designed to fail. What I don't know is *why* the decision was made to make it. I bet the people who made thar decision aren't going to be paying any of the money...
It's on the edge of my council ward and my councillor (next Labour MP for Derby South) pushed it through. it was then 'too costly to cancel' by the Tory/LD council only to be cancelled by the same Labour Councillor when they got back in.
I have reasons to believe that when the GE campaign starts 'things will come out' and he may not make it to election day.
My strangest learning of the week is in relation to the NI Govt discussing raising a little bit of revenue as part of their new settlement (£113m vs ~£3.5bn subsidy) and then declaring that they won't do it, even if they talked about it.
And then finding that NI does it's water charges partly on the same basis as the Roman Republic in about 100AD - on the diameter of the pipe. https://www.niwater.com/measured-charges/
What sane person would vote for another five years of this?
Everyone who's done well out of this Government and anyone who's afraid of Labour. That, especially in the former category, encompasses a lot of people. And then there are the reflexive habit voters who turn up to put an X by the Tory on polling day and otherwise pay no attention at all to politics. That's also a lot of people.
I have no enthusiasm for this government. Yet there is only one alternative government: Labour. And in almost every respect in which I think the government are wrong, Labour are or have been just as wrong or are wronger. Labour aren't going to invest in infrastructure in the north or grow the economy or control immigration or fight back against the lunatic fringes of woke or make our lives more pleasant in any way. The worst and most inept and most disastrous thing this government has done - lockdown - Labour were urging them to do more and harder.
So while I've no motivation for more of the current shit, voting Conservative might be the only way to stop what looks to me like an even worse option. That's the only reason I can see the Cons might still get votes.
Labour might, I suppose, possibly build more houses. That's one respect in which they might be an improvement.
(For the record, I'm still undecided on who to vote for.)
There is no reason at all to believe Labour pledges on housing development. Firstly because there's no reason to believe politicians on almost any subject; secondly because an election performance strong enough to get Starmer into Downing Street will create a fresh cohort of suburbanite Labour MPs who will be every inch as Nimbyish as the Tories they replace; and thirdly because it would infuriate the wealthy grey vote, who are the only people (save for the extremely rich) who MPs actually care about, and who have a vested interest both in frustrating development anywhere near their own homes, and in choking off the supply of property full stop to ensure that their house prices continue to go up.
There is every indication, stretching back well before the immolation of the green spending pledges to the refusal of Reeves to countenance any measures either to reform the state pension or to shift the burden of taxation from earned incomes to assets, that Labour are just another Conservative Party, almost entirely in hock to Tory voters, Tory interests and Tory ideas. Their offer for the next election will be a commitment to change as little as possible so as not to upset the winners from the existing settlement. A Labour Government is about changing the name plates on office doors and the bums on the seats of ministerial limos and little else.
Something is going to change by the end of the decade. The only question is what.
The housing situation is already unsustainable - but, by 2030, the majority of millennials will be less than 20 years from retirement. The time for hoping to buy a home of their own will have passed for many. They'll have pension pots that won't come close to paying for the level of rent they can expect to pay in retirement.
Meanwhile, the boomer generation will be starting to pass away, and the shape of our population pyramid will ensure that their inherited wealth will be concentrated into ever-fewer hands.
Society will have bifurcated into those who've been able to get onto the property ladder, and the vast majority of working age who have no hope of ever doing so. Their experiences of life will be wholly different. The divide between the two is growing already and will be unbridgeable by then.
There'll be no hope, and no reward for ambition. The drag on our country's economy will be humongous.
What are our options - a massive house-building program? some form of catastrophic crash? mass emigration? riots? lynch mobs?
In the next few years, the government is going to have to - whether explicitly or implicitly - pick one.
The problem is supply sided. Screw the NIMBYs. Build build build.
NIMBYs are generally not wholly anti-development.
The real problem is or are the developers who have effectively rationed the amount of land available for development and build houses not to solve the housing crisis but to make profits for themselves and their shareholders.
Local Borough plans make it explicit the densities in any area yet developers constantly submit over-dense applications in the hope objections will be overturned, they will be allowed to build the developments they want and coin in the profits leaving the local infrastructure and population to deal with the consequences of 1200 homes when 800 would have been acceptable.
I realise this will be anathema to many but far from removing local planning (though I do accept some aspects of the application and consultation process need to be reformed), I would strengthen local powers to force developers to adhere to local density and other local provisions.
The other aspect of this is the capacity within the construction industry to support multiple projects, It seems there are a finite number of contractors, subbies and suppliers so in effect that rations and restricts any housebuilding programme as do the supply chains for building materials and distribution.
The local authorities should build their own houses, some for rent, some for sale. The housebuilders’ oligopoly needs to be challenged and only central or local government have the power to do so. Not enough construction workers, you say? Most of them are subbies who could work for Anytown Council as easily as they could work for Wimpey or Persimmon.
Yes, and doing so would provide a counter-cyclical support for the building trades, which would prevent the loss of productive capacity during lean times.
Thatcher all but banned councils from building new housing stock in the mid 80s. I understand the explanation for why she did it the time - trying to wrest control of local govt finance away from what she saw as the loony left.
But by the late 80s, Militant had been defeated, and the GLC was long gone. The entire basis of local government finance was changed in 1989. And again under Heseltine in 1992. And again by Prescott in 1999. But council house building wasn't freed up (partially) until 2007 (Ruth Kelly, I think?) or (more fully) by Eric Pickles in 2012-ish.
But by then, after more than a quarter of a century of being suppressed, local authority capacity to plan and build new housing stock had been destroyed. Rebuilding from nothing has taken a long time, and more than a decade later has still failed to regain the level seen in the early 80s.
This was a sector that was formerly responsible for about 0.5% (estimates seem to vary between 0.2% to 1.5%) of annual GDP growth. Destroyed. First as a deliberate political choice, and then by... carelessness? thoughtlessness? I guess the Major and Blair governments saw the private housebuilding sector chugging along merrily and didn't stop to consider the public sector?
It seems very weird to me - a clear unforced error. Perhaps even, in retrospect, the worst of Thatcher's mistakes.
And it doesn't take so many errors like that to accumulate before 4% average annual growth in the 80s becomes 3% in the 90s and 2000s, or 2% in the 2010s...
Still no sensible details from Starmer about how his house building policy would work.
In the first place, building houses costs money. In practical terms that means redeploying labour from some other productive activity. We currently enjoy full employment. There isn't a readily-available land army of recently demobbed navvies, brickies, chippies and sparkies as there was in 1945. We could import them, of course, but each would bring a housing requirement of his own.
Commercial developers are reluctant to flood the market and drive house prices down below the cost of construction. It's all very well decrying this as profit-seeking venality, but if you were dependent for your wage or pension on a solvent developer you'd see the point.
Local authorities do not in general have the infrastructure to build or manage social housing. In most cases their residual impossible-to-sell properties have been transferred to housing associations that are even less efficient than municipal housing departments of sacred memory - partly because they're spread over half a dozen counties managing a smorgasbord of flats and tenures ranging from leaseholders to shared-ownership to solvent renters to insolvent renters (who are therefore dependent on the state to pay their rent).
No doubt these issues could be addressed with a plan.
IMO the government has done well in the balancing act of helping people generally and helping the vulnerable even more while still encouraging greater energy efficiency.
I don't know who made the choices Sunak, Hunt, Shapps or someone else but they deserve some credit.
Too little, too late, I'm afraid.
That said, in future, I expect electric energy to get cheaper and cheaper as we move away from gas and onto renewables, which just keep tumbling.
Especially if people continue to use energy more efficiently.
The last two years have been a disruptive factor which, painful it may have been for many, will produce long term benefits.
On the various cases against Trump, the Jan 6 indictment paints a pretty terrible picture. However the other cases against him appear more vexatious, even based on how they are reported in the mainstream media, it looks from the latter like the 'liberal establishment' has thrown everything in trying to bring him down via the courts, which is perhaps how prospective voters view the situation - an establishment conspiring against Trump.
What is frustrating is that the more serious problem, the Jan 6 indictment is disappearing in the noise, perceived as something for political/constitutional enthusiasts to pore over and agonise about, but not pivotal or determinative for other voters, and the future of democracy.
What I would also comment, is that people will probably see the Jan 6 thing and the various claims as a reckless stunt. Trump is being dragged through the courts for this, but there are lots of things that go on in politics and government that never get to any court, for instance claims about 'intelligence' being a compelling reason to go to war, leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths, when no such intelligence existed.
Trump could have avoided every single case against him by, you know, obeying the law, not sexually assaulting someone, not then repeatedly libelling her, not lying about property valuations, and not trying to overthrow an election result. Most politicians do not find this difficult. Most people do not find this difficult. Stop making pathetic excuses for the guy.
The extra one I noticed is that he and all his organisations are banned from getting loans from banks operating in NY for 3 years. That will not help with finding the bond in order to appeal.
And stronger external controls on the business imposed for at least 3 years.
I’m sure he has suggested he’d vote Labour were it not for SKS?
These unthinking numbskulls need an Emmanuel Goldstein to spew at, and I think Leon is asleep
It was quite special earlier reading about @Anabobazina describing the new Labour MP like she was the Virgin Mary, and anyone who questioned this in the slightest were akin to the mobs who urged Pontius Pilate to crucify Jesus.
The tribalism is off the scale here now.
I think the tribalism is very much with you. I thought @Anabobazina posts were quite sweet and very much caught the mood from the interview with the candidate. It was a nice moment that will almost certainly not last bearing in mind what politics is like. Yours were just sour and bitter. Would have been nice to have been a little gracious.
And that is coming from me who in 69 years has never voted Labour in any election and still won't be.
You often make comments (you did also earlier today) about people's bias here and never see it in yourself.
"Quite sweet."
Lol. You're the biggest blind partisan idiot here.
By a country mile.
How the hell am I partisan if I have never voted Labour? I mean really the logic fail here is breathtaking.
You don't get it do you? You are spectacularly partisan and don't realise it so in your eyes everyone else is even if they clearly aren't.
I simply don't believe you. You ooze leftwingery with your every word.
And, no, I'm not partisan; I'm one of the most objective people on here.
The fact you can't see that is a sign of your own partisanship, not mine.
I just burst out laughing.
You think I am left wing? Try reading my 10,000 odd posts. I am very socially liberal and financially pretty libertarian. Try asking @hyufd with whom I have had a few discussions/arguments along these lines. He knows my political stance very well. Or @BartholomewRoberts with whom I share a lot in common (although we disagree on a couple of things also strongly and I am not as cut and dry as him on issues). Or just about anyone here. I could best be described as a not particularly politically correct Orange Booker.
And that makes me a left winger does it? Only if you are right of Attila the Hun.
The fact that you think you are objective and not partisan yet you think I am a Labour supporter really does show how deluded and partisan you really are.
You are probably one of the most partisan people here and yet you don't have a clue that you are. It really is quite sad. Why don't you ask people if they think you are biased? You just might get a shock.
I might not support Labour, but I am gracious enough to accept they won the by elections and the candidate at Wellingborough came over, for a change for a politician, as quite normal when interviewed by Sky. Yet you are so partisan you couldn't see that.
IMO the government has done well in the balancing act of helping people generally and helping the vulnerable even more while still encouraging greater energy efficiency.
I don't know who made the choices Sunak, Hunt, Shapps or someone else but they deserve some credit.
I agree.
Huge amounts of support have been provided, and whilst it has been a very difficult time the government did shield a lot of people from the worst of the rises, but despite that I have heard lots of vox pops along the lines of "the govenment's done nothing" (£40 billion was spent) or "they didn't help me" when almost everybody benefitted from capping, and most could get further help.
Most people have not got a clue just how massive their energy bills would have been without the government's interventions. It was certainly a tough situation for many families, but without government support it would have been ruinous for millions of people.
Government's don't get praised for the things they prevent, they get blamed for what does happen, but yes in the big picture the government did a pretty good job.
My strangest learning of the week is in relation to the NI Govt discussing raising a little bit of revenue as part of their new settlement (£113m vs ~£3.5bn subsidy) and then declaring that they won't do it, even if they talked about it.
And then finding that NI does it's water charges partly on the same basis as the Roman Republic in about 100AD - on the diameter of the pipe. https://www.niwater.com/measured-charges/
OT Emerson did a load of head-to-head polls on different Dems. Biden has a 1 percent deficit against Trump, and everyone else does worse. The "generic white male Dem with good hair" golden boy Newsom is down 10 points. Some of that may be people not knowing who he is but also gives Trump 1 point more.
This is right after an entire news cycle all about Biden's age. I think the upshot is that the voters think Biden's too old, but that's not stopping anybody voting for him.
On the various cases against Trump, the Jan 6 indictment paints a pretty terrible picture. However the other cases against him appear more vexatious, even based on how they are reported in the mainstream media, it looks from the latter like the 'liberal establishment' has thrown everything in trying to bring him down via the courts, which is perhaps how prospective voters view the situation - an establishment conspiring against Trump.
What is frustrating is that the more serious problem, the Jan 6 indictment is disappearing in the noise, perceived as something for political/constitutional enthusiasts to pore over and agonise about, but not pivotal or determinative for other voters, and the future of democracy.
What I would also comment, is that people will probably see the Jan 6 thing and the various claims as a reckless stunt. Trump is being dragged through the courts for this, but there are lots of things that go on in politics and government that never get to any court, for instance claims about 'intelligence' being a compelling reason to go to war, leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths, when no such intelligence existed.
Trump could have avoided every single case against him by, you know, obeying the law, not sexually assaulting someone, not then repeatedly libelling her, not lying about property valuations, and not trying to overthrow an election result. Most politicians do not find this difficult. Most people do not find this difficult. Stop making pathetic excuses for the guy.
Trump is a member of the Legally Challenged Community.
OT Emerson did a load of head-to-head polls on different Dems. Biden has a 1 percent deficit against Trump, and everyone else does worse. The "generic white male Dem with good hair" golden boy Newsom is down 10 points. Some of that may be people not knowing who he is but also gives Trump 1 point more.
This is right after an entire news cycle all about Biden's age. I think the upshot is that the voters think Biden's too old, but that's not stopping anybody voting for him.
Maybe... but hypothetical polling is often pretty unreliable. Not that I think a different Dem candidate would poll much higher than Biden. I suspect if you could swap Biden out for, say, Newsom, then Newsom would be polling pretty much the same as Biden is now.
On the various cases against Trump, the Jan 6 indictment paints a pretty terrible picture. However the other cases against him appear more vexatious, even based on how they are reported in the mainstream media, it looks from the latter like the 'liberal establishment' has thrown everything in trying to bring him down via the courts, which is perhaps how prospective voters view the situation - an establishment conspiring against Trump.
What is frustrating is that the more serious problem, the Jan 6 indictment is disappearing in the noise, perceived as something for political/constitutional enthusiasts to pore over and agonise about, but not pivotal or determinative for other voters, and the future of democracy.
What I would also comment, is that people will probably see the Jan 6 thing and the various claims as a reckless stunt. Trump is being dragged through the courts for this, but there are lots of things that go on in politics and government that never get to any court, for instance claims about 'intelligence' being a compelling reason to go to war, leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths, when no such intelligence existed.
Trump could have avoided every single case against him by, you know, obeying the law, not sexually assaulting someone, not then repeatedly libelling her, not lying about property valuations, and not trying to overthrow an election result. Most politicians do not find this difficult. Most people do not find this difficult. Stop making pathetic excuses for the guy.
Trump is a member of the Legally Challenged Community.
Expecting him to obey the law is Ableist.
The Republicans had a dozen other candidates they could have picked as their Presidential candidate WHO ARE NOT SERIAL LAW BREAKERS. It is the Republicans' fault they appear to be going with Trump. The liberal establishment didn't make them do that.
On partisanship. Most people on here are partisan in that we have opinions which mostly line up with a party mostly. When our opinions shift - or the opinions of parties shift - we may find ourselves lined up with a different party.
The "most partisan" posters have been resolutely against the party in the past which they are accused of shilling for in the present. Myself included.
This is politics. Parties win. They lose. Sometimes they do brilliant things, sometimes terrible things. If your interest is politics, then even when you are positively aligned with any given party you have to respect the craft when another party does something brilliant, when another politician does something decent. And decry the idiocy when your own side do the stupid.
If you can't do that, you lose. If you can't accept reality, you lose. If you think your side is pure as the driven snow - they must be because you think it and must be right, you lose.
What sane person would vote for another five years of this?
Everyone who's done well out of this Government and anyone who's afraid of Labour. That, especially in the former category, encompasses a lot of people. And then there are the reflexive habit voters who turn up to put an X by the Tory on polling day and otherwise pay no attention at all to politics. That's also a lot of people.
I have no enthusiasm for this government. Yet there is only one alternative government: Labour. And in almost every respect in which I think the government are wrong, Labour are or have been just as wrong or are wronger. Labour aren't going to invest in infrastructure in the north or grow the economy or control immigration or fight back against the lunatic fringes of woke or make our lives more pleasant in any way. The worst and most inept and most disastrous thing this government has done - lockdown - Labour were urging them to do more and harder.
So while I've no motivation for more of the current shit, voting Conservative might be the only way to stop what looks to me like an even worse option. That's the only reason I can see the Cons might still get votes.
Labour might, I suppose, possibly build more houses. That's one respect in which they might be an improvement.
(For the record, I'm still undecided on who to vote for.)
There is no reason at all to believe Labour pledges on housing development. Firstly because there's no reason to believe politicians on almost any subject; secondly because an election performance strong enough to get Starmer into Downing Street will create a fresh cohort of suburbanite Labour MPs who will be every inch as Nimbyish as the Tories they replace; and thirdly because it would infuriate the wealthy grey vote, who are the only people (save for the extremely rich) who MPs actually care about, and who have a vested interest both in frustrating development anywhere near their own homes, and in choking off the supply of property full stop to ensure that their house prices continue to go up.
There is every indication, stretching back well before the immolation of the green spending pledges to the refusal of Reeves to countenance any measures either to reform the state pension or to shift the burden of taxation from earned incomes to assets, that Labour are just another Conservative Party, almost entirely in hock to Tory voters, Tory interests and Tory ideas. Their offer for the next election will be a commitment to change as little as possible so as not to upset the winners from the existing settlement. A Labour Government is about changing the name plates on office doors and the bums on the seats of ministerial limos and little else.
Something is going to change by the end of the decade. The only question is what.
The housing situation is already unsustainable - but, by 2030, the majority of millennials will be less than 20 years from retirement. The time for hoping to buy a home of their own will have passed for many. They'll have pension pots that won't come close to paying for the level of rent they can expect to pay in retirement.
Meanwhile, the boomer generation will be starting to pass away, and the shape of our population pyramid will ensure that their inherited wealth will be concentrated into ever-fewer hands.
Society will have bifurcated into those who've been able to get onto the property ladder, and the vast majority of working age who have no hope of ever doing so. Their experiences of life will be wholly different. The divide between the two is growing already and will be unbridgeable by then.
There'll be no hope, and no reward for ambition. The drag on our country's economy will be humongous.
What are our options - a massive house-building program? some form of catastrophic crash? mass emigration? riots? lynch mobs?
In the next few years, the government is going to have to - whether explicitly or implicitly - pick one.
The problem is supply sided. Screw the NIMBYs. Build build build.
NIMBYs are generally not wholly anti-development.
.
That depends on the NIMBY. It is certainly true that developers are not to be trusted, and so there will be legitimate concerns with many developments which objectors will raise. But if you've ever seen vast numbers of people (and more probelmatically, their representatives) suddenly express concern about the overdevelopment of ugly scrubland, suddenly develop a fervent desire to find and protect possibly non existent bats and newts, and express fear of dangerous highways impacts which have no evidence to back them up, then you'll know that there are large numbers of NIMBY's who are wholly anti-development.
Indeed, where there are legitimate concerns, which is often, a person is not even a NIMBY at all, the whole point of a NIMBY is that their expressed concerns are a pretext for their real objection.
What sane person would vote for another five years of this?
Everyone who's done well out of this Government and anyone who's afraid of Labour. That, especially in the former category, encompasses a lot of people. And then there are the reflexive habit voters who turn up to put an X by the Tory on polling day and otherwise pay no attention at all to politics. That's also a lot of people.
I have no enthusiasm for this government. Yet there is only one alternative government: Labour. And in almost every respect in which I think the government are wrong, Labour are or have been just as wrong or are wronger. Labour aren't going to invest in infrastructure in the north or grow the economy or control immigration or fight back against the lunatic fringes of woke or make our lives more pleasant in any way. The worst and most inept and most disastrous thing this government has done - lockdown - Labour were urging them to do more and harder.
So while I've no motivation for more of the current shit, voting Conservative might be the only way to stop what looks to me like an even worse option. That's the only reason I can see the Cons might still get votes.
Labour might, I suppose, possibly build more houses. That's one respect in which they might be an improvement.
(For the record, I'm still undecided on who to vote for.)
There is no reason at all to believe Labour pledges on housing development. Firstly because there's no reason to believe politicians on almost any subject; secondly because an election performance strong enough to get Starmer into Downing Street will create a fresh cohort of suburbanite Labour MPs who will be every inch as Nimbyish as the Tories they replace; and thirdly because it would infuriate the wealthy grey vote, who are the only people (save for the extremely rich) who MPs actually care about, and who have a vested interest both in frustrating development anywhere near their own homes, and in choking off the supply of property full stop to ensure that their house prices continue to go up.
There is every indication, stretching back well before the immolation of the green spending pledges to the refusal of Reeves to countenance any measures either to reform the state pension or to shift the burden of taxation from earned incomes to assets, that Labour are just another Conservative Party, almost entirely in hock to Tory voters, Tory interests and Tory ideas. Their offer for the next election will be a commitment to change as little as possible so as not to upset the winners from the existing settlement. A Labour Government is about changing the name plates on office doors and the bums on the seats of ministerial limos and little else.
Something is going to change by the end of the decade. The only question is what.
The housing situation is already unsustainable - but, by 2030, the majority of millennials will be less than 20 years from retirement. The time for hoping to buy a home of their own will have passed for many. They'll have pension pots that won't come close to paying for the level of rent they can expect to pay in retirement.
Meanwhile, the boomer generation will be starting to pass away, and the shape of our population pyramid will ensure that their inherited wealth will be concentrated into ever-fewer hands.
Society will have bifurcated into those who've been able to get onto the property ladder, and the vast majority of working age who have no hope of ever doing so. Their experiences of life will be wholly different. The divide between the two is growing already and will be unbridgeable by then.
There'll be no hope, and no reward for ambition. The drag on our country's economy will be humongous.
What are our options - a massive house-building program? some form of catastrophic crash? mass emigration? riots? lynch mobs?
In the next few years, the government is going to have to - whether explicitly or implicitly - pick one.
The problem is supply sided. Screw the NIMBYs. Build build build.
NIMBYs are generally not wholly anti-development.
The real problem is or are the developers who have effectively rationed the amount of land available for development and build houses not to solve the housing crisis but to make profits for themselves and their shareholders.
Local Borough plans make it explicit the densities in any area yet developers constantly submit over-dense applications in the hope objections will be overturned, they will be allowed to build the developments they want and coin in the profits leaving the local infrastructure and population to deal with the consequences of 1200 homes when 800 would have been acceptable.
I realise this will be anathema to many but far from removing local planning (though I do accept some aspects of the application and consultation process need to be reformed), I would strengthen local powers to force developers to adhere to local density and other local provisions.
The other aspect of this is the capacity within the construction industry to support multiple projects, It seems there are a finite number of contractors, subbies and suppliers so in effect that rations and restricts any housebuilding programme as do the supply chains for building materials and distribution.
The local authorities should build their own houses, some for rent, some for sale. The housebuilders’ oligopoly needs to be challenged and only central or local government have the power to do so. Not enough construction workers, you say? Most of them are subbies who could work for Anytown Council as easily as they could work for Wimpey or Persimmon.
Yes, and doing so would provide a counter-cyclical support for the building trades, which would prevent the loss of productive capacity during lean times.
Thatcher all but banned councils from building new housing stock in the mid 80s. I understand the explanation for why she did it the time - trying to wrest control of local govt finance away from what she saw as the loony left.
But by the late 80s, Militant had been defeated, and the GLC was long gone. The entire basis of local government finance was changed in 1989. And again under Heseltine in 1992. And again by Prescott in 1999. But council house building wasn't freed up (partially) until 2007 (Ruth Kelly, I think?) or (more fully) by Eric Pickles in 2012-ish.
But by then, after more than a quarter of a century of being suppressed, local authority capacity to plan and build new housing stock had been destroyed. Rebuilding from nothing has taken a long time, and more than a decade later has still failed to regain the level seen in the early 80s.
This was a sector that was formerly responsible for about 0.5% (estimates seem to vary between 0.2% to 1.5%) of annual GDP growth. Destroyed. First as a deliberate political choice, and then by... carelessness? thoughtlessness? I guess the Major and Blair governments saw the private housebuilding sector chugging along merrily and didn't stop to consider the public sector?
It seems very weird to me - a clear unforced error. Perhaps even, in retrospect, the worst of Thatcher's mistakes.
And it doesn't take so many errors like that to accumulate before 4% average annual growth in the 80s becomes 3% in the 90s and 2000s, or 2% in the 2010s...
I don't think Council's would go back to mass housebuilding but they can commission more. What you need to create is a sustainable model to finance, build and maintain affordable housing on a vast scale. This involves changing the rules through which council's operate much of which is still a legacy of Thatcherism and poisoned central/local relations. It should be one of the first tasks of the next labour government.
Sorting out the financial situation of local government is going to be the first task of any government. Stoke-on-Trent is the latest to warn it's about to go belly up.
First task? That'll be the day. Patch it up with a bit more cash and try to sort it out toward the end of the parliamentary term more like.
On the various cases against Trump, the Jan 6 indictment paints a pretty terrible picture. However the other cases against him appear more vexatious, even based on how they are reported in the mainstream media, it looks from the latter like the 'liberal establishment' has thrown everything in trying to bring him down via the courts, which is perhaps how prospective voters view the situation - an establishment conspiring against Trump.
What is frustrating is that the more serious problem, the Jan 6 indictment is disappearing in the noise, perceived as something for political/constitutional enthusiasts to pore over and agonise about, but not pivotal or determinative for other voters, and the future of democracy.
What I would also comment, is that people will probably see the Jan 6 thing and the various claims as a reckless stunt. Trump is being dragged through the courts for this, but there are lots of things that go on in politics and government that never get to any court, for instance claims about 'intelligence' being a compelling reason to go to war, leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths, when no such intelligence existed.
Trump could have avoided every single case against him by, you know, obeying the law, not sexually assaulting someone, not then repeatedly libelling her, not lying about property valuations, and not trying to overthrow an election result. Most politicians do not find this difficult. Most people do not find this difficult. Stop making pathetic excuses for the guy.
From reporting the hush money case (which unfortunately will be the first one to actually go to trial) is going to be trickier to prove than some of the others, but as for some of the rest it looks like the man has operated his finances and businesses as a chaotic mess, and it's just that being rich and powerful allows you to get away with that for a long time. Increased time and hatred of him has shone a light on it, but it's still there, and things like the documents case is just his personal weirdness at play - even some of his lawyers had said to just cooperate already, but he acted like a toddler and there he is. Lucky for him who the judge is there, it'll never go to trial before the election.
As with many cases judicial comments, there are humorous descriptions though. Memory is a tricky thing On direct examination by plaintiff, Ivanka Trump had no recollection of any of the events that gave rise to this action; no number of emails or documents with her signature served to refresh her recollection. Notably, on cross-examination by defendants’ counsel, Ms. Trump suddenly and vividly recalled details of the projects and her interactions with Vrablic. For example, after testifying on direct examination that she could not recall any of the details of her father’s personal guarantee of the Old Post Office loan, on cross-examination, she suddenly recalled: “There was a step down of the guarant[ee], if I recall, once the property was operational.”
On the various cases against Trump, the Jan 6 indictment paints a pretty terrible picture. However the other cases against him appear more vexatious, even based on how they are reported in the mainstream media, it looks from the latter like the 'liberal establishment' has thrown everything in trying to bring him down via the courts, which is perhaps how prospective voters view the situation - an establishment conspiring against Trump.
What is frustrating is that the more serious problem, the Jan 6 indictment is disappearing in the noise, perceived as something for political/constitutional enthusiasts to pore over and agonise about, but not pivotal or determinative for other voters, and the future of democracy.
What I would also comment, is that people will probably see the Jan 6 thing and the various claims as a reckless stunt. Trump is being dragged through the courts for this, but there are lots of things that go on in politics and government that never get to any court, for instance claims about 'intelligence' being a compelling reason to go to war, leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths, when no such intelligence existed.
Trump could have avoided every single case against him by, you know, obeying the law, not sexually assaulting someone, not then repeatedly libelling her, not lying about property valuations, and not trying to overthrow an election result. Most politicians do not find this difficult. Most people do not find this difficult. Stop making pathetic excuses for the guy.
Trump is a member of the Legally Challenged Community.
On the various cases against Trump, the Jan 6 indictment paints a pretty terrible picture. However the other cases against him appear more vexatious, even based on how they are reported in the mainstream media, it looks from the latter like the 'liberal establishment' has thrown everything in trying to bring him down via the courts, which is perhaps how prospective voters view the situation - an establishment conspiring against Trump.
What is frustrating is that the more serious problem, the Jan 6 indictment is disappearing in the noise, perceived as something for political/constitutional enthusiasts to pore over and agonise about, but not pivotal or determinative for other voters, and the future of democracy.
What I would also comment, is that people will probably see the Jan 6 thing and the various claims as a reckless stunt. Trump is being dragged through the courts for this, but there are lots of things that go on in politics and government that never get to any court, for instance claims about 'intelligence' being a compelling reason to go to war, leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths, when no such intelligence existed.
Trump could have avoided every single case against him by, you know, obeying the law, not sexually assaulting someone, not then repeatedly libelling her, not lying about property valuations, and not trying to overthrow an election result. Most politicians do not find this difficult. Most people do not find this difficult. Stop making pathetic excuses for the guy.
Trump is a member of the Legally Challenged Community.
Expecting him to obey the law is Ableist.
The Republicans had a dozen other candidates they could have picked as their Presidential candidate WHO ARE NOT SERIAL LAW BREAKERS. It is the Republicans' fault they appear to be going with Trump. The liberal establishment didn't make them do that.
When he first took over the party there were Republicans who were appalled. When he was the candidate and President they backed him of course, but occasionally they'd still criticise him when he went too far. Now 95% of them genuinely appear to think that a failure to follow Trump in all things is disloyalty, even when he was not even an announced candidate. There's very little to indicate they do not mean it - we know the 5% who do not believe it, they are the ones who keep mostly quiet, announce they are standing down next time, then usually support him anyway even when he insults them.
For a nation which is so individual, where states and congress and the executive and the courts have their own agendas and powerbrokers, it's a remarkable transformation.
Christ, why aren't we all working as unpersuasive expert witnesses? From the NY case
44 Professor Bartov bills at the rate of $1,350 per hour and has billed approximately 650 hours in this engagement. TT 6443. 45 As the Court previously observed, Dr. Bartov suffered essentially the same fate testifying before the Hon. Barry Ostrager in People v Exxon Mobil Corp., 65 Misc 3d 1233(A) (Sup Ct, NY County 2019) (“the Court rejects Dr Bartov’s expert testimony as unpersuasive and, in the case of his testimony about the Mobile Bay facility, finds Dr. Bartov’s testimony to be flatly contradicted by the weight of the evidence”).
19 April - Stansted to Santiago de Compostela 13 May - Biarritz to Stansted
For a grand total of £71.39
I have to fly Ryanair, but still.. I think it'll cost me about the same to get to Stansted and back by train
I'm planning to walk from Santiago to Saint Jean Pied de Port (about 500 miles, I expect) in twenty days, then to get a bus to San Sebastian for a couple of nights and lots of great food, then the last night in Biarritz
I'm only going to book the first night's stay
I admire the ambition, but that is 25 miles a day for twenty days straight.
Caesar would be impressed
“Thirteen! Thirteen!”
Tredecim milia passuum! Tredecim milia passuum! surely.
On the various cases against Trump, the Jan 6 indictment paints a pretty terrible picture. However the other cases against him appear more vexatious, even based on how they are reported in the mainstream media, it looks from the latter like the 'liberal establishment' has thrown everything in trying to bring him down via the courts, which is perhaps how prospective voters view the situation - an establishment conspiring against Trump.
What is frustrating is that the more serious problem, the Jan 6 indictment is disappearing in the noise, perceived as something for political/constitutional enthusiasts to pore over and agonise about, but not pivotal or determinative for other voters, and the future of democracy.
What I would also comment, is that people will probably see the Jan 6 thing and the various claims as a reckless stunt. Trump is being dragged through the courts for this, but there are lots of things that go on in politics and government that never get to any court, for instance claims about 'intelligence' being a compelling reason to go to war, leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths, when no such intelligence existed.
Trump could have avoided every single case against him by, you know, obeying the law, not sexually assaulting someone, not then repeatedly libelling her, not lying about property valuations, and not trying to overthrow an election result. Most politicians do not find this difficult. Most people do not find this difficult. Stop making pathetic excuses for the guy.
From reporting the hush money case (which unfortunately will be the first one to actually go to trial) is going to be trickier to prove than some of the others, but as for some of the rest it looks like the man has operated his finances and businesses as a chaotic mess, and it's just that being rich and powerful allows you to get away with that for a long time. Increased time and hatred of him has shone a light on it, but it's still there, and things like the documents case is just his personal weirdness at play - even some of his lawyers had said to just cooperate already, but he acted like a toddler and there he is. Lucky for him who the judge is there, it'll never go to trial before the election.
As with many cases judicial comments, there are humorous descriptions though. Memory is a tricky thing On direct examination by plaintiff, Ivanka Trump had no recollection of any of the events that gave rise to this action; no number of emails or documents with her signature served to refresh her recollection. Notably, on cross-examination by defendants’ counsel, Ms. Trump suddenly and vividly recalled details of the projects and her interactions with Vrablic. For example, after testifying on direct examination that she could not recall any of the details of her father’s personal guarantee of the Old Post Office loan, on cross-examination, she suddenly recalled: “There was a step down of the guarant[ee], if I recall, once the property was operational.”
You say the "hush money case [...] will be the first one to actually go to trial". I am confused. We just had a trial, which came shortly after another trial. Hush money is third, and that only works if you ignore all the older stuff (e.g. Trump Foundation case in 2018).
OT Emerson did a load of head-to-head polls on different Dems. Biden has a 1 percent deficit against Trump, and everyone else does worse. The "generic white male Dem with good hair" golden boy Newsom is down 10 points. Some of that may be people not knowing who he is but also gives Trump 1 point more.
This is right after an entire news cycle all about Biden's age. I think the upshot is that the voters think Biden's too old, but that's not stopping anybody voting for him.
Maybe... but hypothetical polling is often pretty unreliable. Not that I think a different Dem candidate would poll much higher than Biden. I suspect if you could swap Biden out for, say, Newsom, then Newsom would be polling pretty much the same as Biden is now.
I disagree. Biden has a knack for attracting elderly working class white people that no other Dem can match. In the Trump era these people are a key swing demographic. I don't see any other part of the electorate that another Dem reaches that would compensate.
You can say that Wellingborough was the worse result for Con and that local decisions on candidates played a part, but in essence, you had a market town shire by-election vs an outer metropolitan by-election in Avon as was. Selby or Tamworth vs, to a degree, Uxbridge*.
That Labour got less swing in the latter is not surprising given current trends.
I still reckon GE ends in an 8-16 point Labour lead, with even the smaller lead and decent vote efficiency delivering a Labour majority of a couple of dozen. Nothing has changed.
* to note that Uxbridge was genuinely the hardest Con seat Labour took on in the last 12 months in terms of local election pointers, the 17% Con lead was higher and with less third party vote to squeeze than even Mid Beds. The Uxbridge pivot that both parties have done, based on low GE 19 swing is a misreading of that by election result.
On the various cases against Trump, the Jan 6 indictment paints a pretty terrible picture. However the other cases against him appear more vexatious, even based on how they are reported in the mainstream media, it looks from the latter like the 'liberal establishment' has thrown everything in trying to bring him down via the courts, which is perhaps how prospective voters view the situation - an establishment conspiring against Trump.
What is frustrating is that the more serious problem, the Jan 6 indictment is disappearing in the noise, perceived as something for political/constitutional enthusiasts to pore over and agonise about, but not pivotal or determinative for other voters, and the future of democracy.
What I would also comment, is that people will probably see the Jan 6 thing and the various claims as a reckless stunt. Trump is being dragged through the courts for this, but there are lots of things that go on in politics and government that never get to any court, for instance claims about 'intelligence' being a compelling reason to go to war, leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths, when no such intelligence existed.
Trump could have avoided every single case against him by, you know, obeying the law, not sexually assaulting someone, not then repeatedly libelling her, not lying about property valuations, and not trying to overthrow an election result. Most politicians do not find this difficult. Most people do not find this difficult. Stop making pathetic excuses for the guy.
From reporting the hush money case (which unfortunately will be the first one to actually go to trial) is going to be trickier to prove than some of the others, but as for some of the rest it looks like the man has operated his finances and businesses as a chaotic mess, and it's just that being rich and powerful allows you to get away with that for a long time. Increased time and hatred of him has shone a light on it, but it's still there, and things like the documents case is just his personal weirdness at play - even some of his lawyers had said to just cooperate already, but he acted like a toddler and there he is. Lucky for him who the judge is there, it'll never go to trial before the election.
As with many cases judicial comments, there are humorous descriptions though. Memory is a tricky thing On direct examination by plaintiff, Ivanka Trump had no recollection of any of the events that gave rise to this action; no number of emails or documents with her signature served to refresh her recollection. Notably, on cross-examination by defendants’ counsel, Ms. Trump suddenly and vividly recalled details of the projects and her interactions with Vrablic. For example, after testifying on direct examination that she could not recall any of the details of her father’s personal guarantee of the Old Post Office loan, on cross-examination, she suddenly recalled: “There was a step down of the guarant[ee], if I recall, once the property was operational.”
You say the "hush money case [...] will be the first one to actually go to trial". I am confused. We just had a trial, which came shortly after another trial. Hush money is third, and that only works if you ignore all the older stuff (e.g. Trump Foundation case in 2018).
I meant I believe it's the first criminal trial (hush money, mar a lago documents, georgia election interfence, federal election interference)
Last quote from me from the judgement, but its good to know where the famous pornography definition quote comes from.
Materiality has been one of the great red herrings of this case all along. Faced with clear evidence of a misstatement, a person can always shout that “it’s immaterial.” Absolute perfection, including with numbers, exists only in heaven. If fraud is insignificant, then, like most things in life, it just does not matter. As an ancient maxim has it, de minimis non curat lex, the law is not concerned with trifles. Neither is this Court.
But that is not what we have here. Whether viewed in relative (percentage) or absolute (numerical) terms, objectively (the governing standard) or subjectively (how the lenders viewed them), defendants’ misstatements were material. United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously, or infamously, declared that he could not define pornography, but that he knew it when he saw it. Jacobellis v State of Ohio, 378 US 184, 197 (1964). The frauds found here leap off the page and shock the conscience
On the various cases against Trump, the Jan 6 indictment paints a pretty terrible picture. However the other cases against him appear more vexatious, even based on how they are reported in the mainstream media, it looks from the latter like the 'liberal establishment' has thrown everything in trying to bring him down via the courts, which is perhaps how prospective voters view the situation - an establishment conspiring against Trump.
What is frustrating is that the more serious problem, the Jan 6 indictment is disappearing in the noise, perceived as something for political/constitutional enthusiasts to pore over and agonise about, but not pivotal or determinative for other voters, and the future of democracy.
What I would also comment, is that people will probably see the Jan 6 thing and the various claims as a reckless stunt. Trump is being dragged through the courts for this, but there are lots of things that go on in politics and government that never get to any court, for instance claims about 'intelligence' being a compelling reason to go to war, leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths, when no such intelligence existed.
Trump could have avoided every single case against him by, you know, obeying the law, not sexually assaulting someone, not then repeatedly libelling her, not lying about property valuations, and not trying to overthrow an election result. Most politicians do not find this difficult. Most people do not find this difficult. Stop making pathetic excuses for the guy.
From reporting the hush money case (which unfortunately will be the first one to actually go to trial) is going to be trickier to prove than some of the others, but as for some of the rest it looks like the man has operated his finances and businesses as a chaotic mess, and it's just that being rich and powerful allows you to get away with that for a long time. Increased time and hatred of him has shone a light on it, but it's still there, and things like the documents case is just his personal weirdness at play - even some of his lawyers had said to just cooperate already, but he acted like a toddler and there he is. Lucky for him who the judge is there, it'll never go to trial before the election.
As with many cases judicial comments, there are humorous descriptions though. Memory is a tricky thing On direct examination by plaintiff, Ivanka Trump had no recollection of any of the events that gave rise to this action; no number of emails or documents with her signature served to refresh her recollection. Notably, on cross-examination by defendants’ counsel, Ms. Trump suddenly and vividly recalled details of the projects and her interactions with Vrablic. For example, after testifying on direct examination that she could not recall any of the details of her father’s personal guarantee of the Old Post Office loan, on cross-examination, she suddenly recalled: “There was a step down of the guarant[ee], if I recall, once the property was operational.”
You say the "hush money case [...] will be the first one to actually go to trial". I am confused. We just had a trial, which came shortly after another trial. Hush money is third, and that only works if you ignore all the older stuff (e.g. Trump Foundation case in 2018).
I meant I believe it's the first criminal trial (hush money, mar a lago documents, georgia election interfence, federal election interference)
Last quote from me from the judgement, but its good to know where the famous pornography definition quote comes from.
Materiality has been one of the great red herrings of this case all along. Faced with clear evidence of a misstatement, a person can always shout that “it’s immaterial.” Absolute perfection, including with numbers, exists only in heaven. If fraud is insignificant, then, like most things in life, it just does not matter. As an ancient maxim has it, de minimis non curat lex, the law is not concerned with trifles. Neither is this Court.
But that is not what we have here. Whether viewed in relative (percentage) or absolute (numerical) terms, objectively (the governing standard) or subjectively (how the lenders viewed them), defendants’ misstatements were material. United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously, or infamously, declared that he could not define pornography, but that he knew it when he saw it. Jacobellis v State of Ohio, 378 US 184, 197 (1964). The frauds found here leap off the page and shock the conscience
Gotcha. OK.
I don't understand why the recently ruled fraud case was civil, but hush money is criminal. They seem of a similar ilk. But that is what they are: one civil, one criminal.
I’m sure he has suggested he’d vote Labour were it not for SKS?
These unthinking numbskulls need an Emmanuel Goldstein to spew at, and I think Leon is asleep
It was quite special earlier reading about @Anabobazina describing the new Labour MP like she was the Virgin Mary, and anyone who questioned this in the slightest were akin to the mobs who urged Pontius Pilate to crucify Jesus.
The tribalism is off the scale here now.
I think the tribalism is very much with you. I thought @Anabobazina posts were quite sweet and very much caught the mood from the interview with the candidate. It was a nice moment that will almost certainly not last bearing in mind what politics is like. Yours were just sour and bitter. Would have been nice to have been a little gracious.
And that is coming from me who in 69 years has never voted Labour in any election and still won't be.
You often make comments (you did also earlier today) about people's bias here and never see it in yourself.
Lol. I missed all these bantz because I was watching a romcom with the missus.
“anyone who questioned this in the slightest were akin to the mobs who urged Pontius Pilate to crucify Jesus”
On the various cases against Trump, the Jan 6 indictment paints a pretty terrible picture. However the other cases against him appear more vexatious, even based on how they are reported in the mainstream media, it looks from the latter like the 'liberal establishment' has thrown everything in trying to bring him down via the courts, which is perhaps how prospective voters view the situation - an establishment conspiring against Trump.
What is frustrating is that the more serious problem, the Jan 6 indictment is disappearing in the noise, perceived as something for political/constitutional enthusiasts to pore over and agonise about, but not pivotal or determinative for other voters, and the future of democracy.
What I would also comment, is that people will probably see the Jan 6 thing and the various claims as a reckless stunt. Trump is being dragged through the courts for this, but there are lots of things that go on in politics and government that never get to any court, for instance claims about 'intelligence' being a compelling reason to go to war, leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths, when no such intelligence existed.
Trump could have avoided every single case against him by, you know, obeying the law, not sexually assaulting someone, not then repeatedly libelling her, not lying about property valuations, and not trying to overthrow an election result. Most politicians do not find this difficult. Most people do not find this difficult. Stop making pathetic excuses for the guy.
From reporting the hush money case (which unfortunately will be the first one to actually go to trial) is going to be trickier to prove than some of the others, but as for some of the rest it looks like the man has operated his finances and businesses as a chaotic mess, and it's just that being rich and powerful allows you to get away with that for a long time. Increased time and hatred of him has shone a light on it, but it's still there, and things like the documents case is just his personal weirdness at play - even some of his lawyers had said to just cooperate already, but he acted like a toddler and there he is. Lucky for him who the judge is there, it'll never go to trial before the election.
As with many cases judicial comments, there are humorous descriptions though. Memory is a tricky thing On direct examination by plaintiff, Ivanka Trump had no recollection of any of the events that gave rise to this action; no number of emails or documents with her signature served to refresh her recollection. Notably, on cross-examination by defendants’ counsel, Ms. Trump suddenly and vividly recalled details of the projects and her interactions with Vrablic. For example, after testifying on direct examination that she could not recall any of the details of her father’s personal guarantee of the Old Post Office loan, on cross-examination, she suddenly recalled: “There was a step down of the guarant[ee], if I recall, once the property was operational.”
You say the "hush money case [...] will be the first one to actually go to trial". I am confused. We just had a trial, which came shortly after another trial. Hush money is third, and that only works if you ignore all the older stuff (e.g. Trump Foundation case in 2018).
I meant I believe it's the first criminal trial (hush money, mar a lago documents, georgia election interfence, federal election interference)
Last quote from me from the judgement, but its good to know where the famous pornography definition quote comes from.
Materiality has been one of the great red herrings of this case all along. Faced with clear evidence of a misstatement, a person can always shout that “it’s immaterial.” Absolute perfection, including with numbers, exists only in heaven. If fraud is insignificant, then, like most things in life, it just does not matter. As an ancient maxim has it, de minimis non curat lex, the law is not concerned with trifles. Neither is this Court.
But that is not what we have here. Whether viewed in relative (percentage) or absolute (numerical) terms, objectively (the governing standard) or subjectively (how the lenders viewed them), defendants’ misstatements were material. United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously, or infamously, declared that he could not define pornography, but that he knew it when he saw it. Jacobellis v State of Ohio, 378 US 184, 197 (1964). The frauds found here leap off the page and shock the conscience
Gotcha. OK.
I don't understand why the recently ruled fraud case was civil, but hush money is criminal. They seem of a similar ilk. But they are.
I think a lot of people are confused on why it was not taken forward as criminal - different offices, different decisions I guess. It honestly looks way worse than the hush money one, which IIRC has some real questionmarks around whether the acts are sufficient given the times involved.
But I also honestly don't think any of this moves the dial at all - people's minds are made up and I don't believe that negative outcomes in cases will hurt Trump anymore (I don't believe the polls that say otherwise), nor that a failure to convict him make people think he's ok after all. It's barmy, but there is.
Add to that few of the criminal cases will conclude before the election, and appeals will drag those on beyond it, and it's just a shame that they weren't able to move a bit more quickly.
IMO the government has done well in the balancing act of helping people generally and helping the vulnerable even more while still encouraging greater energy efficiency.
I don't know who made the choices Sunak, Hunt, Shapps or someone else but they deserve some credit.
I agree.
Huge amounts of support have been provided, and whilst it has been a very difficult time the government did shield a lot of people from the worst of the rises, but despite that I have heard lots of vox pops along the lines of "the govenment's done nothing" (£40 billion was spent) or "they didn't help me" when almost everybody benefitted from capping, and most could get further help.
Most people have not got a clue just how massive their energy bills would have been without the government's interventions. It was certainly a tough situation for many families, but without government support it would have been ruinous for millions of people.
Government's don't get praised for the things they prevent, they get blamed for what does happen, but yes in the big picture the government did a pretty good job.
Its a mixture of things:
People don't realise what's being done - the £2,500 cap being an example People forgot what's been done - I'd forgotten about the £150 council tax rebate myself People quickly feel entitled to even more help - so think the £400 should be continued
On the various cases against Trump, the Jan 6 indictment paints a pretty terrible picture. However the other cases against him appear more vexatious, even based on how they are reported in the mainstream media, it looks from the latter like the 'liberal establishment' has thrown everything in trying to bring him down via the courts, which is perhaps how prospective voters view the situation - an establishment conspiring against Trump.
What is frustrating is that the more serious problem, the Jan 6 indictment is disappearing in the noise, perceived as something for political/constitutional enthusiasts to pore over and agonise about, but not pivotal or determinative for other voters, and the future of democracy.
What I would also comment, is that people will probably see the Jan 6 thing and the various claims as a reckless stunt. Trump is being dragged through the courts for this, but there are lots of things that go on in politics and government that never get to any court, for instance claims about 'intelligence' being a compelling reason to go to war, leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths, when no such intelligence existed.
Trump could have avoided every single case against him by, you know, obeying the law, not sexually assaulting someone, not then repeatedly libelling her, not lying about property valuations, and not trying to overthrow an election result. Most politicians do not find this difficult. Most people do not find this difficult. Stop making pathetic excuses for the guy.
From reporting the hush money case (which unfortunately will be the first one to actually go to trial) is going to be trickier to prove than some of the others, but as for some of the rest it looks like the man has operated his finances and businesses as a chaotic mess, and it's just that being rich and powerful allows you to get away with that for a long time. Increased time and hatred of him has shone a light on it, but it's still there, and things like the documents case is just his personal weirdness at play - even some of his lawyers had said to just cooperate already, but he acted like a toddler and there he is. Lucky for him who the judge is there, it'll never go to trial before the election.
As with many cases judicial comments, there are humorous descriptions though. Memory is a tricky thing On direct examination by plaintiff, Ivanka Trump had no recollection of any of the events that gave rise to this action; no number of emails or documents with her signature served to refresh her recollection. Notably, on cross-examination by defendants’ counsel, Ms. Trump suddenly and vividly recalled details of the projects and her interactions with Vrablic. For example, after testifying on direct examination that she could not recall any of the details of her father’s personal guarantee of the Old Post Office loan, on cross-examination, she suddenly recalled: “There was a step down of the guarant[ee], if I recall, once the property was operational.”
You say the "hush money case [...] will be the first one to actually go to trial". I am confused. We just had a trial, which came shortly after another trial. Hush money is third, and that only works if you ignore all the older stuff (e.g. Trump Foundation case in 2018).
I meant I believe it's the first criminal trial (hush money, mar a lago documents, georgia election interfence, federal election interference)
Last quote from me from the judgement, but its good to know where the famous pornography definition quote comes from.
Materiality has been one of the great red herrings of this case all along. Faced with clear evidence of a misstatement, a person can always shout that “it’s immaterial.” Absolute perfection, including with numbers, exists only in heaven. If fraud is insignificant, then, like most things in life, it just does not matter. As an ancient maxim has it, de minimis non curat lex, the law is not concerned with trifles. Neither is this Court.
But that is not what we have here. Whether viewed in relative (percentage) or absolute (numerical) terms, objectively (the governing standard) or subjectively (how the lenders viewed them), defendants’ misstatements were material. United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously, or infamously, declared that he could not define pornography, but that he knew it when he saw it. Jacobellis v State of Ohio, 378 US 184, 197 (1964). The frauds found here leap off the page and shock the conscience
Gotcha. OK.
I don't understand why the recently ruled fraud case was civil, but hush money is criminal. They seem of a similar ilk. But that is what they are: one civil, one criminal.
(The 2022 New York case was also criminal, but that was against the Trump Organization rather than Trump personally, with the Trump Corporation found guilty on 9 charges and the Trump Payroll Corporation on 8 charges, and Allen Weisselberg going to jail for 5 months.)
Re energy; one of the few decent things the Tories have achieved over the last decade has been the growth in renewables (especially wind), and yet thanks to Rishi’s characteristically, tortuously shite politics he’s wrangled himself into a position where his own optics require him to drive a mini bulldozer thumbs-aloft into a turbine.
OT Emerson did a load of head-to-head polls on different Dems. Biden has a 1 percent deficit against Trump, and everyone else does worse. The "generic white male Dem with good hair" golden boy Newsom is down 10 points. Some of that may be people not knowing who he is but also gives Trump 1 point more.
This is right after an entire news cycle all about Biden's age. I think the upshot is that the voters think Biden's too old, but that's not stopping anybody voting for him.
Maybe... but hypothetical polling is often pretty unreliable. Not that I think a different Dem candidate would poll much higher than Biden. I suspect if you could swap Biden out for, say, Newsom, then Newsom would be polling pretty much the same as Biden is now.
I disagree. Biden has a knack for attracting elderly working class white people that no other Dem can match. In the Trump era these people are a key swing demographic. I don't see any other part of the electorate that another Dem reaches that would compensate.
All those people Biden is losing because people think he is senile?
Re energy; one of the few decent things the Tories have achieved over the last decade has been the growth in renewables (especially wind), and yet thanks to Rishi’s characteristically, tortuously shite politics he’s wrangled himself into a position where his own optics require him to drive a mini bulldozer thumbs-aloft into a turbine.
OT Emerson did a load of head-to-head polls on different Dems. Biden has a 1 percent deficit against Trump, and everyone else does worse. The "generic white male Dem with good hair" golden boy Newsom is down 10 points. Some of that may be people not knowing who he is but also gives Trump 1 point more.
This is right after an entire news cycle all about Biden's age. I think the upshot is that the voters think Biden's too old, but that's not stopping anybody voting for him.
Maybe... but hypothetical polling is often pretty unreliable. Not that I think a different Dem candidate would poll much higher than Biden. I suspect if you could swap Biden out for, say, Newsom, then Newsom would be polling pretty much the same as Biden is now.
I disagree. Biden has a knack for attracting elderly working class white people that no other Dem can match. In the Trump era these people are a key swing demographic. I don't see any other part of the electorate that another Dem reaches that would compensate.
All those people Biden is losing because people think he is senile?
I think most voters are Red or Blue, pro- or anti-Trump. There's a fairly narrow slice, I suggest, for whom the choice of the Dem candidate actually matters. However, elections are won or lost on narrow slices.
OT Emerson did a load of head-to-head polls on different Dems. Biden has a 1 percent deficit against Trump, and everyone else does worse. The "generic white male Dem with good hair" golden boy Newsom is down 10 points. Some of that may be people not knowing who he is but also gives Trump 1 point more.
This is right after an entire news cycle all about Biden's age. I think the upshot is that the voters think Biden's too old, but that's not stopping anybody voting for him.
Maybe... but hypothetical polling is often pretty unreliable. Not that I think a different Dem candidate would poll much higher than Biden. I suspect if you could swap Biden out for, say, Newsom, then Newsom would be polling pretty much the same as Biden is now.
I disagree. Biden has a knack for attracting elderly working class white people that no other Dem can match. In the Trump era these people are a key swing demographic. I don't see any other part of the electorate that another Dem reaches that would compensate.
All those people Biden is losing because people think he is senile?
The polling doesn't show that happening. If you've got a highly unpopular opponent, and people don't want to vote for the incumbent because they think he's senile, you should see even candidates who aren't very well-known outpolling the incumbent. In particular you should at least see some move from the opponent to "don't know". That's not what's happening. The closest guy in the race to a generic Dem makes Trump's numbers go *up*.
So the voters either don't really believe that Biden is senile even in the week when the media is running stories about his age constantly, or they believe it but they don't really care.
On the various cases against Trump, the Jan 6 indictment paints a pretty terrible picture. However the other cases against him appear more vexatious, even based on how they are reported in the mainstream media, it looks from the latter like the 'liberal establishment' has thrown everything in trying to bring him down via the courts, which is perhaps how prospective voters view the situation - an establishment conspiring against Trump.
What is frustrating is that the more serious problem, the Jan 6 indictment is disappearing in the noise, perceived as something for political/constitutional enthusiasts to pore over and agonise about, but not pivotal or determinative for other voters, and the future of democracy.
What I would also comment, is that people will probably see the Jan 6 thing and the various claims as a reckless stunt. Trump is being dragged through the courts for this, but there are lots of things that go on in politics and government that never get to any court, for instance claims about 'intelligence' being a compelling reason to go to war, leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths, when no such intelligence existed.
Trump could have avoided every single case against him by, you know, obeying the law, not sexually assaulting someone, not then repeatedly libelling her, not lying about property valuations, and not trying to overthrow an election result. Most politicians do not find this difficult. Most people do not find this difficult. Stop making pathetic excuses for the guy.
From reporting the hush money case (which unfortunately will be the first one to actually go to trial) is going to be trickier to prove than some of the others, but as for some of the rest it looks like the man has operated his finances and businesses as a chaotic mess, and it's just that being rich and powerful allows you to get away with that for a long time. Increased time and hatred of him has shone a light on it, but it's still there, and things like the documents case is just his personal weirdness at play - even some of his lawyers had said to just cooperate already, but he acted like a toddler and there he is. Lucky for him who the judge is there, it'll never go to trial before the election.
As with many cases judicial comments, there are humorous descriptions though. Memory is a tricky thing On direct examination by plaintiff, Ivanka Trump had no recollection of any of the events that gave rise to this action; no number of emails or documents with her signature served to refresh her recollection. Notably, on cross-examination by defendants’ counsel, Ms. Trump suddenly and vividly recalled details of the projects and her interactions with Vrablic. For example, after testifying on direct examination that she could not recall any of the details of her father’s personal guarantee of the Old Post Office loan, on cross-examination, she suddenly recalled: “There was a step down of the guarant[ee], if I recall, once the property was operational.”
You say the "hush money case [...] will be the first one to actually go to trial". I am confused. We just had a trial, which came shortly after another trial. Hush money is third, and that only works if you ignore all the older stuff (e.g. Trump Foundation case in 2018).
I meant I believe it's the first criminal trial (hush money, mar a lago documents, georgia election interfence, federal election interference)
Last quote from me from the judgement, but its good to know where the famous pornography definition quote comes from.
Materiality has been one of the great red herrings of this case all along. Faced with clear evidence of a misstatement, a person can always shout that “it’s immaterial.” Absolute perfection, including with numbers, exists only in heaven. If fraud is insignificant, then, like most things in life, it just does not matter. As an ancient maxim has it, de minimis non curat lex, the law is not concerned with trifles. Neither is this Court.
But that is not what we have here. Whether viewed in relative (percentage) or absolute (numerical) terms, objectively (the governing standard) or subjectively (how the lenders viewed them), defendants’ misstatements were material. United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously, or infamously, declared that he could not define pornography, but that he knew it when he saw it. Jacobellis v State of Ohio, 378 US 184, 197 (1964). The frauds found here leap off the page and shock the conscience
Gotcha. OK.
I don't understand why the recently ruled fraud case was civil, but hush money is criminal. They seem of a similar ilk. But that is what they are: one civil, one criminal.
They could bring criminal fraud charges later aiui, but that would require the specific authorisation of the State Governor. Again aiui there are pretty much parallel criminal offences to the ones charged.
I am surmising they went civil first for what they thought would be an easier case.
I've seem some analysis on this, but some time ago.
Aiui Hush Money it is claimed to involve payments made to cover up other (ie) electoral related) crimes. And there's a lot of other stuff besides just Stormy Daniels. But I don't know that one in detail.
What sane person would vote for another five years of this?
Everyone who's done well out of this Government and anyone who's afraid of Labour. That, especially in the former category, encompasses a lot of people. And then there are the reflexive habit voters who turn up to put an X by the Tory on polling day and otherwise pay no attention at all to politics. That's also a lot of people.
I have no enthusiasm for this government. Yet there is only one alternative government: Labour. And in almost every respect in which I think the government are wrong, Labour are or have been just as wrong or are wronger. Labour aren't going to invest in infrastructure in the north or grow the economy or control immigration or fight back against the lunatic fringes of woke or make our lives more pleasant in any way. The worst and most inept and most disastrous thing this government has done - lockdown - Labour were urging them to do more and harder.
So while I've no motivation for more of the current shit, voting Conservative might be the only way to stop what looks to me like an even worse option. That's the only reason I can see the Cons might still get votes.
Labour might, I suppose, possibly build more houses. That's one respect in which they might be an improvement.
(For the record, I'm still undecided on who to vote for.)
There is no reason at all to believe Labour pledges on housing development. Firstly because there's no reason to believe politicians on almost any subject; secondly because an election performance strong enough to get Starmer into Downing Street will create a fresh cohort of suburbanite Labour MPs who will be every inch as Nimbyish as the Tories they replace; and thirdly because it would infuriate the wealthy grey vote, who are the only people (save for the extremely rich) who MPs actually care about, and who have a vested interest both in frustrating development anywhere near their own homes, and in choking off the supply of property full stop to ensure that their house prices continue to go up.
There is every indication, stretching back well before the immolation of the green spending pledges to the refusal of Reeves to countenance any measures either to reform the state pension or to shift the burden of taxation from earned incomes to assets, that Labour are just another Conservative Party, almost entirely in hock to Tory voters, Tory interests and Tory ideas. Their offer for the next election will be a commitment to change as little as possible so as not to upset the winners from the existing settlement. A Labour Government is about changing the name plates on office doors and the bums on the seats of ministerial limos and little else.
Something is going to change by the end of the decade. The only question is what.
The housing situation is already unsustainable - but, by 2030, the majority of millennials will be less than 20 years from retirement. The time for hoping to buy a home of their own will have passed for many. They'll have pension pots that won't come close to paying for the level of rent they can expect to pay in retirement.
Meanwhile, the boomer generation will be starting to pass away, and the shape of our population pyramid will ensure that their inherited wealth will be concentrated into ever-fewer hands.
Society will have bifurcated into those who've been able to get onto the property ladder, and the vast majority of working age who have no hope of ever doing so. Their experiences of life will be wholly different. The divide between the two is growing already and will be unbridgeable by then.
There'll be no hope, and no reward for ambition. The drag on our country's economy will be humongous.
What are our options - a massive house-building program? some form of catastrophic crash? mass emigration? riots? lynch mobs?
In the next few years, the government is going to have to - whether explicitly or implicitly - pick one.
The problem is supply sided. Screw the NIMBYs. Build build build.
NIMBYs are generally not wholly anti-development.
The real problem is or are the developers who have effectively rationed the amount of land available for development and build houses not to solve the housing crisis but to make profits for themselves and their shareholders.
Local Borough plans make it explicit the densities in any area yet developers constantly submit over-dense applications in the hope objections will be overturned, they will be allowed to build the developments they want and coin in the profits leaving the local infrastructure and population to deal with the consequences of 1200 homes when 800 would have been acceptable.
I realise this will be anathema to many but far from removing local planning (though I do accept some aspects of the application and consultation process need to be reformed), I would strengthen local powers to force developers to adhere to local density and other local provisions.
The other aspect of this is the capacity within the construction industry to support multiple projects, It seems there are a finite number of contractors, subbies and suppliers so in effect that rations and restricts any housebuilding programme as do the supply chains for building materials and distribution.
The local authorities should build their own houses, some for rent, some for sale. The housebuilders’ oligopoly needs to be challenged and only central or local government have the power to do so. Not enough construction workers, you say? Most of them are subbies who could work for Anytown Council as easily as they could work for Wimpey or Persimmon.
Yes, and doing so would provide a counter-cyclical support for the building trades, which would prevent the loss of productive capacity during lean times.
Thatcher all but banned councils from building new housing stock in the mid 80s. I understand the explanation for why she did it the time - trying to wrest control of local govt finance away from what she saw as the loony left.
But by the late 80s, Militant had been defeated, and the GLC was long gone. The entire basis of local government finance was changed in 1989. And again under Heseltine in 1992. And again by Prescott in 1999. But council house building wasn't freed up (partially) until 2007 (Ruth Kelly, I think?) or (more fully) by Eric Pickles in 2012-ish.
But by then, after more than a quarter of a century of being suppressed, local authority capacity to plan and build new housing stock had been destroyed. Rebuilding from nothing has taken a long time, and more than a decade later has still failed to regain the level seen in the early 80s.
This was a sector that was formerly responsible for about 0.5% (estimates seem to vary between 0.2% to 1.5%) of annual GDP growth. Destroyed. First as a deliberate political choice, and then by... carelessness? thoughtlessness? I guess the Major and Blair governments saw the private housebuilding sector chugging along merrily and didn't stop to consider the public sector?
It seems very weird to me - a clear unforced error. Perhaps even, in retrospect, the worst of Thatcher's mistakes.
And it doesn't take so many errors like that to accumulate before 4% average annual growth in the 80s becomes 3% in the 90s and 2000s, or 2% in the 2010s...
Still no sensible details from Starmer about how his house building policy would work.
In the first place, building houses costs money. In practical terms that means redeploying labour from some other productive activity. We currently enjoy full employment. There isn't a readily-available land army of recently demobbed navvies, brickies, chippies and sparkies as there was in 1945. We could import them, of course, but each would bring a housing requirement of his own.
Commercial developers are reluctant to flood the market and drive house prices down below the cost of construction. It's all very well decrying this as profit-seeking venality, but if you were dependent for your wage or pension on a solvent developer you'd see the point.
Local authorities do not in general have the infrastructure to build or manage social housing. In most cases their residual impossible-to-sell properties have been transferred to housing associations that are even less efficient than municipal housing departments of sacred memory - partly because they're spread over half a dozen counties managing a smorgasbord of flats and tenures ranging from leaseholders to shared-ownership to solvent renters to insolvent renters (who are therefore dependent on the state to pay their rent).
No doubt these issues could be addressed with a plan.
Where is it?
Replicate the Peabody trust structure.
Small local charities owning a manageable number of properties for social housing.
Make things human scale. It may cost a little more in overhead but you get much better outcomes
OT Emerson did a load of head-to-head polls on different Dems. Biden has a 1 percent deficit against Trump, and everyone else does worse. The "generic white male Dem with good hair" golden boy Newsom is down 10 points. Some of that may be people not knowing who he is but also gives Trump 1 point more.
This is right after an entire news cycle all about Biden's age. I think the upshot is that the voters think Biden's too old, but that's not stopping anybody voting for him.
They really need to find a way to impose an age limit of 75, and then the two parties can both go pick someone else. Not happening of course, and baring death we’re getting Biden v Trump again.
On the various cases against Trump, the Jan 6 indictment paints a pretty terrible picture. However the other cases against him appear more vexatious, even based on how they are reported in the mainstream media, it looks from the latter like the 'liberal establishment' has thrown everything in trying to bring him down via the courts, which is perhaps how prospective voters view the situation - an establishment conspiring against Trump.
What is frustrating is that the more serious problem, the Jan 6 indictment is disappearing in the noise, perceived as something for political/constitutional enthusiasts to pore over and agonise about, but not pivotal or determinative for other voters, and the future of democracy.
What I would also comment, is that people will probably see the Jan 6 thing and the various claims as a reckless stunt. Trump is being dragged through the courts for this, but there are lots of things that go on in politics and government that never get to any court, for instance claims about 'intelligence' being a compelling reason to go to war, leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths, when no such intelligence existed.
Trump could have avoided every single case against him by, you know, obeying the law, not sexually assaulting someone, not then repeatedly libelling her, not lying about property valuations, and not trying to overthrow an election result. Most politicians do not find this difficult. Most people do not find this difficult. Stop making pathetic excuses for the guy.
From reporting the hush money case (which unfortunately will be the first one to actually go to trial) is going to be trickier to prove than some of the others, but as for some of the rest it looks like the man has operated his finances and businesses as a chaotic mess, and it's just that being rich and powerful allows you to get away with that for a long time. Increased time and hatred of him has shone a light on it, but it's still there, and things like the documents case is just his personal weirdness at play - even some of his lawyers had said to just cooperate already, but he acted like a toddler and there he is. Lucky for him who the judge is there, it'll never go to trial before the election.
As with many cases judicial comments, there are humorous descriptions though. Memory is a tricky thing On direct examination by plaintiff, Ivanka Trump had no recollection of any of the events that gave rise to this action; no number of emails or documents with her signature served to refresh her recollection. Notably, on cross-examination by defendants’ counsel, Ms. Trump suddenly and vividly recalled details of the projects and her interactions with Vrablic. For example, after testifying on direct examination that she could not recall any of the details of her father’s personal guarantee of the Old Post Office loan, on cross-examination, she suddenly recalled: “There was a step down of the guarant[ee], if I recall, once the property was operational.”
You say the "hush money case [...] will be the first one to actually go to trial". I am confused. We just had a trial, which came shortly after another trial. Hush money is third, and that only works if you ignore all the older stuff (e.g. Trump Foundation case in 2018).
I meant I believe it's the first criminal trial (hush money, mar a lago documents, georgia election interfence, federal election interference)
Last quote from me from the judgement, but its good to know where the famous pornography definition quote comes from.
Materiality has been one of the great red herrings of this case all along. Faced with clear evidence of a misstatement, a person can always shout that “it’s immaterial.” Absolute perfection, including with numbers, exists only in heaven. If fraud is insignificant, then, like most things in life, it just does not matter. As an ancient maxim has it, de minimis non curat lex, the law is not concerned with trifles. Neither is this Court.
But that is not what we have here. Whether viewed in relative (percentage) or absolute (numerical) terms, objectively (the governing standard) or subjectively (how the lenders viewed them), defendants’ misstatements were material. United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously, or infamously, declared that he could not define pornography, but that he knew it when he saw it. Jacobellis v State of Ohio, 378 US 184, 197 (1964). The frauds found here leap off the page and shock the conscience
Gotcha. OK.
I don't understand why the recently ruled fraud case was civil, but hush money is criminal. They seem of a similar ilk. But that is what they are: one civil, one criminal.
They could bring criminal fraud charges later aiui, but that would require the specific authorisation of the State Governor. Again aiui there are pretty much parallel criminal offences to the ones charged.
I am surmising they went civil first for what they thought would be an easier case.
I've seem some analysis on this, but some time ago.
Aiui Hush Money it is claimed to involve payments made to cover up other (ie) electoral related) crimes. And there's a lot of other stuff besides just Stormy Daniels. But I don't know that one in detail.
The point about the hush money case is not that he paid it, but that he is accused of using business funds for it and then put them down as something else in the accounts to hide what they were.
Which is illegal.
If I did that (not that my accountant would let me!) I would certainly end up with at the very least a heavy fine.
OT Emerson did a load of head-to-head polls on different Dems. Biden has a 1 percent deficit against Trump, and everyone else does worse. The "generic white male Dem with good hair" golden boy Newsom is down 10 points. Some of that may be people not knowing who he is but also gives Trump 1 point more.
This is right after an entire news cycle all about Biden's age. I think the upshot is that the voters think Biden's too old, but that's not stopping anybody voting for him.
Maybe... but hypothetical polling is often pretty unreliable. Not that I think a different Dem candidate would poll much higher than Biden. I suspect if you could swap Biden out for, say, Newsom, then Newsom would be polling pretty much the same as Biden is now.
I disagree. Biden has a knack for attracting elderly working class white people that no other Dem can match. In the Trump era these people are a key swing demographic. I don't see any other part of the electorate that another Dem reaches that would compensate.
All those people Biden is losing because people think he is senile?
The polling doesn't show that happening. If you've got a highly unpopular opponent, and people don't want to vote for the incumbent because they think he's senile, you should see even candidates who aren't very well-known outpolling the incumbent. In particular you should at least see some move from the opponent to "don't know". That's not what's happening. The closest guy in the race to a generic Dem makes Trump's numbers go *up*.
So the voters either don't really believe that Biden is senile even in the week when the media is running stories about his age constantly, or they believe it but they don't really care.
Yes this is fair
The polls AFTER senile-gate were always gonna be crucial
Turns out it hasn’t dented Biden at all. I wonder if voters have accepted Biden is demented but they just trust his team to run the country - and run it better than Trump - or indeed Biden
Biden’s vaguely animated corpse, sorry, the president of the USA will be occasionally wheeled out for formal moments and 2 second interviews, behind the scenes aides will do everything
It was probably a bit like that in QE2’s final year or two
A problem remains, however. What if Biden dies? Then the VEEP will be POTUS and they might want to actually do stuff rather than be a token figurehead
$354.9 million and banned from running businesses in New York.
I think I have just experienced a near sexual thrill at that news.
It might make his supporters love him even more. Never assume that bad news is bad news for Trump.
He’ll keep saying that everyone is out to get him, the court cases are politically motivated, and will appeal again.
Unless he’s actually in prison, his vote numbers will hold up.
Meanwhile, every businessman in New York now knows that courts will wreck your business if they decide they don’t like you.
Yes, I despise Trump and I want him to lose, but this court case reeks. Driven by a lawyer who got elected on a promise to "get Trump"
I know the American system is somewhat different to the UK's but it is still based in English Common Law. Imagine a London lawyer rising to judicial/prosecutorial power on a promise to "bring down Nigel Farage"
$354.9 million and banned from running businesses in New York.
I think I have just experienced a near sexual thrill at that news.
It might make his supporters love him even more. Never assume that bad news is bad news for Trump.
He’ll keep saying that everyone is out to get him, the court cases are politically motivated, and will appeal again.
Unless he’s actually in prison, his vote numbers will hold up.
Meanwhile, every businessman in New York now knows that courts will wreck your business if they decide they don’t like you.
Yes, I despise Trump and I want him to lose, but this court case reeks. Driven by a lawyer who got elected on a promise to "get Trump"
I know the American system is somewhat different to the UK's but it is still based in English Common Law. Imagine a London lawyer rising to judicial/prosecutorial power on a promise to "bring down Nigel Farage"
WTF
I can imagine one doing so on a promise to get Fred the Shred. Or Nicholas van Hoogstraten (indeed, one did).
Farage so far as I know has never been a significant player in business. He had a brief and inglorious career as a stockbroker and since then has spent his time losing elections.
$354.9 million and banned from running businesses in New York.
I think I have just experienced a near sexual thrill at that news.
It might make his supporters love him even more. Never assume that bad news is bad news for Trump.
He’ll keep saying that everyone is out to get him, the court cases are politically motivated, and will appeal again.
Unless he’s actually in prison, his vote numbers will hold up.
Meanwhile, every businessman in New York now knows that courts will wreck your business if they decide they don’t like you.
Yes, I despise Trump and I want him to lose, but this court case reeks. Driven by a lawyer who got elected on a promise to "get Trump"
I know the American system is somewhat different to the UK's but it is still based in English Common Law. Imagine a London lawyer rising to judicial/prosecutorial power on a promise to "bring down Nigel Farage"
WTF
Comparing trump and Farage is incorrect. Farage may be many things, but he is nowhere near as venal as Trump.
Thankfully we don't really have much of a comparison to Trump in this country.
And the court case does not 'reek'; unless you think Trump is innocent of the charges?
$354.9 million and banned from running businesses in New York.
I think I have just experienced a near sexual thrill at that news.
It might make his supporters love him even more. Never assume that bad news is bad news for Trump.
He’ll keep saying that everyone is out to get him, the court cases are politically motivated, and will appeal again.
Unless he’s actually in prison, his vote numbers will hold up.
Meanwhile, every businessman in New York now knows that courts will wreck your business if they decide they don’t like you.
Yes, I despise Trump and I want him to lose, but this court case reeks. Driven by a lawyer who got elected on a promise to "get Trump"
I know the American system is somewhat different to the UK's but it is still based in English Common Law. Imagine a London lawyer rising to judicial/prosecutorial power on a promise to "bring down Nigel Farage"
WTF
Comparing trump and Farage is incorrect. Farage may be many things, but he is nowhere near as venal as Trump.
Thankfully we don't really have much of a comparison to Trump in this country.
And the court case does not 'reek'; unless you think Trump is innocent of the charges?
The evidence against him is not especially persuasive - but I confess I have not immersed myself in the intricacies, life is too short
What I do see is a co-ordinated attempt to bring down Trump, in multiple different ways, using courts all over the country. And they are doing this in an election year, to prevent him standing - and judges, lawyers, counsels, AGs, are all colluding in this and "bending" the law as they see fit. Because they deem it acceptable, because Trump is such a dire threat to democracy
It doesn't look good. Maybe it is justified, as Trump is such a menace? But it doesn't look good
I’m sure he has suggested he’d vote Labour were it not for SKS?
These unthinking numbskulls need an Emmanuel Goldstein to spew at, and I think Leon is asleep
It was quite special earlier reading about @Anabobazina describing the new Labour MP like she was the Virgin Mary, and anyone who questioned this in the slightest were akin to the mobs who urged Pontius Pilate to crucify Jesus.
The tribalism is off the scale here now.
I think the tribalism is very much with you. I thought @Anabobazina posts were quite sweet and very much caught the mood from the interview with the candidate. It was a nice moment that will almost certainly not last bearing in mind what politics is like. Yours were just sour and bitter. Would have been nice to have been a little gracious.
And that is coming from me who in 69 years has never voted Labour in any election and still won't be.
You often make comments (you did also earlier today) about people's bias here and never see it in yourself.
"Quite sweet."
Lol. You're the biggest blind partisan idiot here.
By a country mile.
How the hell am I partisan if I have never voted Labour? I mean really the logic fail here is breathtaking.
You don't get it do you? You are spectacularly partisan and don't realise it so in your eyes everyone else is even if they clearly aren't.
I simply don't believe you. You ooze leftwingery with your every word.
And, no, I'm not partisan; I'm one of the most objective people on here.
The fact you can't see that is a sign of your own partisanship, not mine.
I just burst out laughing.
You think I am left wing? Try reading my 10,000 odd posts. I am very socially liberal and financially pretty libertarian. Try asking @hyufd with whom I have had a few discussions/arguments along these lines. He knows my political stance very well. Or @BartholomewRoberts with whom I share a lot in common (although we disagree on a couple of things also strongly and I am not as cut and dry as him on issues). Or just about anyone here. I could best be described as a not particularly politically correct Orange Booker.
And that makes me a left winger does it? Only if you are right of Attila the Hun.
The fact that you think you are objective and not partisan yet you think I am a Labour supporter really does show how deluded and partisan you really are.
You are probably one of the most partisan people here and yet you don't have a clue that you are. It really is quite sad. Why don't you ask people if they think you are biased? You just might get a shock.
I might not support Labour, but I am gracious enough to accept they won the by elections and the candidate at Wellingborough came over, for a change for a politician, as quite normal when interviewed by Sky. Yet you are so partisan you couldn't see that.
I went to bed, so I've only just seen this, but this pathetic post cannot go unanswered.
I honestly couldn't tell you about anything of your 10,000 odd posts because I can't remember a single thing you've ever said of any value or interest. You mainly seem to pop up from time to time to have a dig at other posters or, like this, to say someone else is partisan - never you, of course.
You add no value to the site. You are neither witty, funny or insightful. Your posts are either forgettable or personal. It's particularly desperate that you've tagged all your mates in this post as you hope to hoover up a few likes and a bit of support to deal with your insecurity.
As I said, I am not partisan in the slightest - it's very sad you can't see this. I regularly criticise the government, its policy lines and suggest alternatives. I don't tub-thump when I think a cause is lost, and nor do I echo tedious party lines on here. And I've even applauded some Labour initiatives at time. If you can't see or remember this then you haven't been paying attention.
My only comment on the Wellingborough candidate was in response to @Anabobazina saying it was great that she cut short her honeymoon to campaign. I said that was a bit sad and I'd have prioritised my time as a newly-wed, as your marriage partner is more important, and there were plenty more opportunities in the General. For that, I was called curmudgeonly and bitter - and it was anything but - and there were a couple of other posters who agreed with me. The criticism was because people here wanted to cheer the election of a Labour MP and felt I was getting in the way of that.
You are partisan. You are tribal. You are a little bit immature. It is sad. What you want to criticise and rail against is the caricature and not the reality. But until you change your posting style and your content the only "likes" you'll get will be from the herd on here who are just like you.
$354.9 million and banned from running businesses in New York.
I think I have just experienced a near sexual thrill at that news.
It might make his supporters love him even more. Never assume that bad news is bad news for Trump.
He’ll keep saying that everyone is out to get him, the court cases are politically motivated, and will appeal again.
Unless he’s actually in prison, his vote numbers will hold up.
Meanwhile, every businessman in New York now knows that courts will wreck your business if they decide they don’t like you.
Yes, I despise Trump and I want him to lose, but this court case reeks. Driven by a lawyer who got elected on a promise to "get Trump"
I know the American system is somewhat different to the UK's but it is still based in English Common Law. Imagine a London lawyer rising to judicial/prosecutorial power on a promise to "bring down Nigel Farage"
WTF
Comparing trump and Farage is incorrect. Farage may be many things, but he is nowhere near as venal as Trump.
Thankfully we don't really have much of a comparison to Trump in this country.
And the court case does not 'reek'; unless you think Trump is innocent of the charges?
The evidence against him is not especially persuasive - but I confess I have not immersed myself in the intricacies, life is too short
What I do see is a co-ordinated attempt to bring down Trump, in multiple different ways, using courts all over the country. And they are doing this in an election year, to prevent him standing - and judges, lawyers, counsels, AGs, are all colluding in this and "bending" the law as they see fit. Because they deem it acceptable, because Trump is such a dire threat to democracy
It doesn't look good. Maybe it is justified, as Trump is such a menace? But it doesn't look good
The evidence for the fake electors is not persuasive?
$354.9 million and banned from running businesses in New York.
I think I have just experienced a near sexual thrill at that news.
It might make his supporters love him even more. Never assume that bad news is bad news for Trump.
He’ll keep saying that everyone is out to get him, the court cases are politically motivated, and will appeal again.
Unless he’s actually in prison, his vote numbers will hold up.
Meanwhile, every businessman in New York now knows that courts will wreck your business if they decide they don’t like you.
Yes, I despise Trump and I want him to lose, but this court case reeks. Driven by a lawyer who got elected on a promise to "get Trump"
I know the American system is somewhat different to the UK's but it is still based in English Common Law. Imagine a London lawyer rising to judicial/prosecutorial power on a promise to "bring down Nigel Farage"
WTF
Comparing trump and Farage is incorrect. Farage may be many things, but he is nowhere near as venal as Trump.
Thankfully we don't really have much of a comparison to Trump in this country.
And the court case does not 'reek'; unless you think Trump is innocent of the charges?
The evidence against him is not especially persuasive - but I confess I have not immersed myself in the intricacies, life is too short
What I do see is a co-ordinated attempt to bring down Trump, in multiple different ways, using courts all over the country. And they are doing this in an election year, to prevent him standing - and judges, lawyers, counsels, AGs, are all colluding in this and "bending" the law as they see fit. Because they deem it acceptable, because Trump is such a dire threat to democracy
It doesn't look good. Maybe it is justified, as Trump is such a menace? But it doesn't look good
Sigh.
If they were trying to stop him running, he'd be dead by now, using his own arguments that a president is immune from anything as cover.*
What's happening here is a number of chickens are coming home to roost. As so often, the revelation of one form of criminality led to probes elsewhere, which revealed still more. So the finding that he was falsifying election returns led to wider scrutiny of his tax returns. And the revelation he boasted about sexually assaulting women led to some of his victims coming forward.
The problem is because Trump is a coward as well as a crook, he can't bear to admit how much wrong he's done or that he's getting very much his just desserts. So he's coming up with the conspiracy narrative that those with - shall we say - a pre-existing wish to exonerate him find persuasive.
*Incidentally if he wins power again I do wonder exactly what he might do to put his fantasies of killing his opponents into practice. He's obviously one sandwich short of a picnic, admires Putin and thinks he can do whatever the hell he likes. Trouble is, the amount of stuff he gets away with tends to support that view.
$354.9 million and banned from running businesses in New York.
I think I have just experienced a near sexual thrill at that news.
It might make his supporters love him even more. Never assume that bad news is bad news for Trump.
He’ll keep saying that everyone is out to get him, the court cases are politically motivated, and will appeal again.
Unless he’s actually in prison, his vote numbers will hold up.
Meanwhile, every businessman in New York now knows that courts will wreck your business if they decide they don’t like you.
Yes, I despise Trump and I want him to lose, but this court case reeks. Driven by a lawyer who got elected on a promise to "get Trump"
I know the American system is somewhat different to the UK's but it is still based in English Common Law. Imagine a London lawyer rising to judicial/prosecutorial power on a promise to "bring down Nigel Farage"
WTF
Comparing trump and Farage is incorrect. Farage may be many things, but he is nowhere near as venal as Trump.
Thankfully we don't really have much of a comparison to Trump in this country.
And the court case does not 'reek'; unless you think Trump is innocent of the charges?
The evidence against him is not especially persuasive - but I confess I have not immersed myself in the intricacies, life is too short
What I do see is a co-ordinated attempt to bring down Trump, in multiple different ways, using courts all over the country. And they are doing this in an election year, to prevent him standing - and judges, lawyers, counsels, AGs, are all colluding in this and "bending" the law as they see fit. Because they deem it acceptable, because Trump is such a dire threat to democracy
It doesn't look good. Maybe it is justified, as Trump is such a menace? But it doesn't look good
The evidence for the fake electors is not persuasive?
$354.9 million and banned from running businesses in New York.
I think I have just experienced a near sexual thrill at that news.
It might make his supporters love him even more. Never assume that bad news is bad news for Trump.
He’ll keep saying that everyone is out to get him, the court cases are politically motivated, and will appeal again.
Unless he’s actually in prison, his vote numbers will hold up.
Meanwhile, every businessman in New York now knows that courts will wreck your business if they decide they don’t like you.
Yes, I despise Trump and I want him to lose, but this court case reeks. Driven by a lawyer who got elected on a promise to "get Trump"
I know the American system is somewhat different to the UK's but it is still based in English Common Law. Imagine a London lawyer rising to judicial/prosecutorial power on a promise to "bring down Nigel Farage"
WTF
Comparing trump and Farage is incorrect. Farage may be many things, but he is nowhere near as venal as Trump.
Thankfully we don't really have much of a comparison to Trump in this country.
And the court case does not 'reek'; unless you think Trump is innocent of the charges?
The evidence against him is not especially persuasive - but I confess I have not immersed myself in the intricacies, life is too short
What I do see is a co-ordinated attempt to bring down Trump, in multiple different ways, using courts all over the country. And they are doing this in an election year, to prevent him standing - and judges, lawyers, counsels, AGs, are all colluding in this and "bending" the law as they see fit. Because they deem it acceptable, because Trump is such a dire threat to democracy
It doesn't look good. Maybe it is justified, as Trump is such a menace? But it doesn't look good
Sigh.
If they were trying to stop him running, he'd be dead by now, using his own arguments that a president is immune from anything as cover.*
What's happening here is a number of chickens are coming home to roost. As so often, the revelation of one form of criminality led to probes elsewhere, which revealed still more. So the finding that he was falsifying election returns led to wider scrutiny of his tax returns. And the revelation he boasted about sexually assaulting women led to some of his victims coming forward.
The problem is because Trump is a coward as well as a crook, he can't bear to admit how much wrong he's done or that he's getting very much his just desserts. So he's coming up with the conspiracy narrative that those with - shall we say - a pre-existing wish to exonerate him find persuasive.
*Incidentally if he wins power again I do wonder exactly what he might do to put his fantasies of killing his opponents into practice. He's obviously one sandwich short of a picnic, admires Putin and thinks he can do whatever the hell he likes. Trouble is, the amount of stuff he gets away with tends to support that view.
You could well be right
It is the NYC case in particular that I fund troubling. Driven by a politically motivated lawyer specifically elected to "get Trump"?
Maybe it is just the American way, and it is alien to British eyes
i find the constitutional cases agaiost him much more persuasive. If he didn't actively encourage insurrection on J6 then he came close to criminal negligence in "hinting that it was OK"
$354.9 million and banned from running businesses in New York.
I think I have just experienced a near sexual thrill at that news.
It might make his supporters love him even more. Never assume that bad news is bad news for Trump.
He’ll keep saying that everyone is out to get him, the court cases are politically motivated, and will appeal again.
Unless he’s actually in prison, his vote numbers will hold up.
Meanwhile, every businessman in New York now knows that courts will wreck your business if they decide they don’t like you.
Yes, I despise Trump and I want him to lose, but this court case reeks. Driven by a lawyer who got elected on a promise to "get Trump"
I know the American system is somewhat different to the UK's but it is still based in English Common Law. Imagine a London lawyer rising to judicial/prosecutorial power on a promise to "bring down Nigel Farage"
WTF
Comparing trump and Farage is incorrect. Farage may be many things, but he is nowhere near as venal as Trump.
Thankfully we don't really have much of a comparison to Trump in this country.
And the court case does not 'reek'; unless you think Trump is innocent of the charges?
The evidence against him is not especially persuasive - but I confess I have not immersed myself in the intricacies, life is too short
What I do see is a co-ordinated attempt to bring down Trump, in multiple different ways, using courts all over the country. And they are doing this in an election year, to prevent him standing - and judges, lawyers, counsels, AGs, are all colluding in this and "bending" the law as they see fit. Because they deem it acceptable, because Trump is such a dire threat to democracy
It doesn't look good. Maybe it is justified, as Trump is such a menace? But it doesn't look good
The evidence for the fake electors is not persuasive?
I was talking about the NY case
Which one of the three cases do you find unpersuasive?
In the criminal one we haven't seen the evidence yet, but the star witness is the man who allegedly actioned the fraud for him.
In the defamation case, a jury disagreed with you, probably not helped by Trump's own behaviour and boasting that he was a sexual predator.
In the civil fraud case, the evidence is overwhelming. Let's just take the obvious one, Mar-a-Lago:
1) For tax reasons, this was registered as a social club, and valued at $18million. The first was clearly a lie. The second may have been about right.
2) To get a loan, Trump then valued it at $700 million and described it as a private residence. The second was true, but didn't match the covenants on the property. The first was clearly not. It would have made it the most expensive property in the history of the world by about 400%. Which it wasn't.
3) He also declared a New York Property was three times its actual size, and valued it according to the value per square foot, for a loan, but then put it down as its actual size when declaring it for taxes.
Now, if you can look at that and tell me it isn't fraud, you would benefit from a trip to Specsavers.
Trump argued there were no victims. But that's irrelevant. You don't get away with fraud by saying 'well, it all worked out in the end.' He profited considerably in terms of lower interest rates and /or lower taxes from this. So he benefited. End of.
whats the sense of the outcome of the Rochdale byelection - surely wide open and a chance for all manner of weird and whacky candidates (or is Labour quietly hoping their (now sacked) man comes through?
$354.9 million and banned from running businesses in New York.
I think I have just experienced a near sexual thrill at that news.
It might make his supporters love him even more. Never assume that bad news is bad news for Trump.
He’ll keep saying that everyone is out to get him, the court cases are politically motivated, and will appeal again.
Unless he’s actually in prison, his vote numbers will hold up.
Meanwhile, every businessman in New York now knows that courts will wreck your business if they decide they don’t like you.
Yes, I despise Trump and I want him to lose, but this court case reeks. Driven by a lawyer who got elected on a promise to "get Trump"
I know the American system is somewhat different to the UK's but it is still based in English Common Law. Imagine a London lawyer rising to judicial/prosecutorial power on a promise to "bring down Nigel Farage"
WTF
Comparing trump and Farage is incorrect. Farage may be many things, but he is nowhere near as venal as Trump.
Thankfully we don't really have much of a comparison to Trump in this country.
And the court case does not 'reek'; unless you think Trump is innocent of the charges?
The premise behind the case is that Trump is a serial liar (true) who (and this is the tricky bit) continually mislead some poor innocent bankers into believing that he was much richer than he claimed, that his properties were worth much more than they were and thus got highly favourable lending opportunities which allowed him to make money , whilst further misleading the State of New York about the value of these same properties, thus reducing his taxes.
We are talking about a guy whose businesses have utilised Chapter 11 no less than 6 times. The merest trace of due diligence would have disclosed many other dodgy schemes, such as his University. Any banker who dealt with him who thought that they could rely on Trump’s word as to compliance with his covenants was foolish in the extreme.
Did these self serving certifications amount in a course of fraudulent conduct? Probably. Were banks and other institutions actually misled? Surely not. Even Deutsch Bank are not that stupid. It’s possible that NY State were conned out of some taxes in which case they should sue. The current proceedings do seem to me to be partisan, politically motivated and ill judged. I can’t see this nonsense surviving appeal.
$354.9 million and banned from running businesses in New York.
I think I have just experienced a near sexual thrill at that news.
It might make his supporters love him even more. Never assume that bad news is bad news for Trump.
He’ll keep saying that everyone is out to get him, the court cases are politically motivated, and will appeal again.
Unless he’s actually in prison, his vote numbers will hold up.
Meanwhile, every businessman in New York now knows that courts will wreck your business if they decide they don’t like you.
Yes, I despise Trump and I want him to lose, but this court case reeks. Driven by a lawyer who got elected on a promise to "get Trump"
I know the American system is somewhat different to the UK's but it is still based in English Common Law. Imagine a London lawyer rising to judicial/prosecutorial power on a promise to "bring down Nigel Farage"
WTF
The NY civil cases in particular look politically motivated, and timed to mess up his campaign. The events in question happened some years ago, and in the Carrol case required the state legislature to amend the law on statute of limitations to allow it to proceed.
The behaviour of his lawyers doesn’t help him though, with a bombastic and aloof attitude to the court that no judge likes.
Elected judges and prosecutors is a weird one, as it brings them into politics, that enables people to stand on a platform of ‘getting’ an individual, or someone like George Soros putting funding behind prosecutors who won’t prosecute certain crimes. The British system appears far superior, with courts still mostly seen as being above politics, although it does creep in from time to time, especially when the UK was in the EU.
On the various cases against Trump, the Jan 6 indictment paints a pretty terrible picture. However the other cases against him appear more vexatious, even based on how they are reported in the mainstream media, it looks from the latter like the 'liberal establishment' has thrown everything in trying to bring him down via the courts, which is perhaps how prospective voters view the situation - an establishment conspiring against Trump.
What is frustrating is that the more serious problem, the Jan 6 indictment is disappearing in the noise, perceived as something for political/constitutional enthusiasts to pore over and agonise about, but not pivotal or determinative for other voters, and the future of democracy.
What I would also comment, is that people will probably see the Jan 6 thing and the various claims as a reckless stunt. Trump is being dragged through the courts for this, but there are lots of things that go on in politics and government that never get to any court, for instance claims about 'intelligence' being a compelling reason to go to war, leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths, when no such intelligence existed.
I agree, with the exception that I see two cases not one.
There are two serious cases against Trump:
(1) The fake electors plan, which is an attack on democracy.
(2) The New York case regarding property valuations: people go to jail for falsifying property valuations to the IRS. I posted a link a month or so ago about a property developer who systematically understated the value of his apartment complexes, saving himself about $3m, and who went to prison for 15 months. (And Trump's case is perhaps 50x more serious.) Similarly, there have been plenty of (poor) people who've gone to jail for fraud for deliberately overstating valuations to get loans.
The documents case and the business records case are junk, and should never have been brought.
It's very interesting how different people see different cases as being really bad. For me, the classified documents one is far bigger than the fraud one. Yes, people go to jail for falsifying valuations, but playing fast and loose with classified information can go way further than that. Go far enough and it's treason.
Trump deliberately smuggled out hundreds of classified documents, up to and including multiple TS/SCI files. He kept them insecurely at home in a room where hundreds of people of all nationalities could get access and even deliberately showed some of the highest classified ones to foreign nationals to show off. He then lied about it and deliberately obstructed the authorities when they found out about it.
That's fifteen years to life for anyone else. And given the level of control placed on some of those, I would be stunned if US or 5E assets hadn't been caught and imprisoned and/or killed in some countries directly due to that.
A bit of property fraud compared to that seems like small fry to me, but I accept that it's worth prosecuting and punishing, as fraud is very wrong and anyone else would also be punished for it. But "the documents case... are junk and should never have been brought" is something with which I'd disagree vehemently. On the basis of the documents case, that man should be in jail. Anyone else I've known would be.
Comments
I consistently make a lot of money betting on politics regardless of the political cycle, so my objectivity is both beyond question and evidenced with profits measured in real cash.
So, away with you.
“Thirteen! Thirteen!”
She's a spinster whose last sibling, a younger sister, died last year. She has some friends who she exchanges postcards with, but I think very little other contact except with her neighbours
I noticed that she hadn't posted any postcards in the local box for a couple of weeks, so I rang her bell the other day to make sure she was ok
She was so touched that I'd thought to check on her. She asked me to give her a hug, and she cried a bit when I did
I then gave her her mail, including a card. She said that was a card she'd been expecting for her birthday later in the week
I bought her a card that evening and posted it to her the next day. I haven't seen her since, but I bet I'm getting another hug
You don't get it do you? You are spectacularly partisan and don't realise it so in your eyes everyone else is even if they clearly aren't.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-66332074
an incinerator which is wedged between residential and industrial which no-one wanted except the council. god knows the initial cost to build but it cost two councils £100M to cancel the contract for it. after it had never been used.
over the whole saga the council has been run by labour and Tory/LD. I'd not trust any of them with any additional money.
but I'm sure that there are well run councils out there
And, no, I'm not partisan; I'm one of the most objective people on here.
The fact you can't see that is a sign of your own partisanship, not mine.
Thankfully, they were both told to jog on.
That's what your post implies.
£1,635 in April instead of £1,660
£1,465 in July instead of £1,590
£1,524 in October instead of £1,640
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68316283
IMO the government has done well in the balancing act of helping people generally and helping the vulnerable even more while still encouraging greater energy efficiency.
I don't know who made the choices Sunak, Hunt, Shapps or someone else but they deserve some credit.
If you want to build something like this, give it plenty of space. Because operations never go as planned, space insulates you from any neighbours, and can always be used for expansion later.
This scheme was almost designed to fail. What I don't know is *why* the decision was made to make it. I bet the people who made thar decision aren't going to be paying any of the money...
I can see a whole shoal of new defamation actions coming in - he has defamed and threatened a *lot* of people, not just in this case.
Listening to CNN, they are talking mainly about the HUGE!! UNPRECENTED!! verdict - which seems strange. And how it is victimless - aiui the victims are treated in these cases as being the people of NY who have suffered from loss of dodged taxes etc.
And how it could damage business confidence in Real Estate, and how all the other real estate wallahs are worried. I wonder if they all know something about how they do business.
That said, in future, I expect electric energy to get cheaper and cheaper as we move away from gas and onto renewables, which just keep tumbling.
I have reasons to believe that when the GE campaign starts 'things will come out' and he may not make it to election day.
And then finding that NI does it's water charges partly on the same basis as the Roman Republic in about 100AD - on the diameter of the pipe.
https://www.niwater.com/measured-charges/
In the first place, building houses costs money. In practical terms that means redeploying labour from some other productive activity. We currently enjoy full employment. There isn't a readily-available land army of recently demobbed navvies, brickies, chippies and sparkies as there was in 1945. We could import them, of course, but each would bring a housing requirement of his own.
Commercial developers are reluctant to flood the market and drive house prices down below the cost of construction. It's all very well decrying this as profit-seeking venality, but if you were dependent for your wage or pension on a solvent developer you'd see the point.
Local authorities do not in general have the infrastructure to build or manage social housing. In most cases their residual impossible-to-sell properties have been transferred to housing associations that are even less efficient than municipal housing departments of sacred memory - partly because they're spread over half a dozen counties managing a smorgasbord of flats and tenures ranging from leaseholders to shared-ownership to solvent renters to insolvent renters (who are therefore dependent on the state to pay their rent).
No doubt these issues could be addressed with a plan.
Where is it?
The last two years have been a disruptive factor which, painful it may have been for many, will produce long term benefits.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5sm5b0yoUk
The extra one I noticed is that he and all his organisations are banned from getting loans from banks operating in NY for 3 years. That will not help with finding the bond in order to appeal.
And stronger external controls on the business imposed for at least 3 years.
You think I am left wing? Try reading my 10,000 odd posts. I am very socially liberal and financially pretty libertarian. Try asking @hyufd with whom I have had a few discussions/arguments along these lines. He knows my political stance very well. Or @BartholomewRoberts with whom I share a lot in common (although we disagree on a couple of things also strongly and I am not as cut and dry as him on issues). Or just about anyone here. I could best be described as a not particularly politically correct Orange Booker.
Or ask @DavidL or @Richard_Tyndall with both of whom I have almost identical views. I also share a lot in common with @Sean_F but equally people like @Selebian and @Nigelb.
And that makes me a left winger does it? Only if you are right of Attila the Hun.
The fact that you think you are objective and not partisan yet you think I am a Labour supporter really does show how deluded and partisan you really are.
You are probably one of the most partisan people here and yet you don't have a clue that you are. It really is quite sad. Why don't you ask people if they think you are biased? You just might get a shock.
I might not support Labour, but I am gracious enough to accept they won the by elections and the candidate at Wellingborough came over, for a change for a politician, as quite normal when interviewed by Sky. Yet you are so partisan you couldn't see that.
Huge amounts of support have been provided, and whilst it has been a very difficult time the government did shield a lot of people from the worst of the rises, but despite that I have heard lots of vox pops along the lines of "the govenment's done nothing" (£40 billion was spent) or "they didn't help me" when almost everybody benefitted from capping, and most could get further help.
Most people have not got a clue just how massive their energy bills would have been without the government's interventions. It was certainly a tough situation for many families, but without government support it would have been ruinous for millions of people.
Government's don't get praised for the things they prevent, they get blamed for what does happen, but yes in the big picture the government did a pretty good job.
What’s with the nut job futurism in NI?
This is right after an entire news cycle all about Biden's age. I think the upshot is that the voters think Biden's too old, but that's not stopping anybody voting for him.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/national/
Expecting him to obey the law is Ableist.
The "most partisan" posters have been resolutely against the party in the past which they are accused of shilling for in the present. Myself included.
This is politics. Parties win. They lose. Sometimes they do brilliant things, sometimes terrible things. If your interest is politics, then even when you are positively aligned with any given party you have to respect the craft when another party does something brilliant, when another politician does something decent. And decry the idiocy when your own side do the stupid.
If you can't do that, you lose. If you can't accept reality, you lose. If you think your side is pure as the driven snow - they must be because you think it and must be right, you lose.
This is politics...
https://forwomen.scot/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Interlocutor-16Feb2024.pdf
Indeed, where there are legitimate concerns, which is often, a person is not even a NIMBY at all, the whole point of a NIMBY is that their expressed concerns are a pretext for their real objection.
As with many cases judicial comments, there are humorous descriptions though. Memory is a tricky thing
On direct examination by plaintiff, Ivanka Trump had no recollection of any of the events that
gave rise to this action; no number of emails or documents with her signature served to refresh
her recollection. Notably, on cross-examination by defendants’ counsel, Ms. Trump suddenly
and vividly recalled details of the projects and her interactions with Vrablic. For
example, after testifying on direct examination that she could not recall any of the details of her
father’s personal guarantee of the Old Post Office loan, on cross-examination, she suddenly
recalled: “There was a step down of the guarant[ee], if I recall, once the property was
operational.”
For a nation which is so individual, where states and congress and the executive and the courts have their own agendas and powerbrokers, it's a remarkable transformation.
44 Professor Bartov bills at the rate of $1,350 per hour and has billed approximately 650 hours in this engagement. TT 6443.
45 As the Court previously observed, Dr. Bartov suffered essentially the same fate testifying before the
Hon. Barry Ostrager in People v Exxon Mobil Corp., 65 Misc 3d 1233(A) (Sup Ct, NY County 2019)
(“the Court rejects Dr Bartov’s expert testimony as unpersuasive and, in the case of his testimony about
the Mobile Bay facility, finds Dr. Bartov’s testimony to be flatly contradicted by the weight of the
evidence”).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hu1XBpTUU1c
Par for the current course.
You can say that Wellingborough was the worse result for Con and that local decisions on candidates played a part, but in essence, you had a market town shire by-election vs an outer metropolitan by-election in Avon as was. Selby or Tamworth vs, to a degree, Uxbridge*.
That Labour got less swing in the latter is not surprising given current trends.
I still reckon GE ends in an 8-16 point Labour lead, with even the smaller lead and decent vote efficiency delivering a Labour majority of a couple of dozen. Nothing has changed.
* to note that Uxbridge was genuinely the hardest Con seat Labour took on in the last 12 months in terms of local election pointers, the 17% Con lead was higher and with less third party vote to squeeze than even Mid Beds. The Uxbridge pivot that both parties have done, based on low GE 19 swing is a misreading of that by election result.
Last quote from me from the judgement, but its good to know where the famous pornography definition quote comes from.
Materiality has been one of the great red herrings of this case all along. Faced with clear
evidence of a misstatement, a person can always shout that “it’s immaterial.” Absolute
perfection, including with numbers, exists only in heaven. If fraud is insignificant, then, like
most things in life, it just does not matter. As an ancient maxim has it, de minimis non curat lex,
the law is not concerned with trifles. Neither is this Court.
But that is not what we have here. Whether viewed in relative (percentage) or absolute
(numerical) terms, objectively (the governing standard) or subjectively (how the lenders viewed
them), defendants’ misstatements were material. United States Supreme Court Justice Potter
Stewart famously, or infamously, declared that he could not define pornography, but that he
knew it when he saw it. Jacobellis v State of Ohio, 378 US 184, 197 (1964). The frauds found
here leap off the page and shock the conscience
I don't understand why the recently ruled fraud case was civil, but hush money is criminal. They seem of a similar ilk. But that is what they are: one civil, one criminal.
“anyone who questioned this in the slightest were akin to the mobs who urged Pontius Pilate to crucify Jesus”
I just said she was lovely.
But I also honestly don't think any of this moves the dial at all - people's minds are made up and I don't believe that negative outcomes in cases will hurt Trump anymore (I don't believe the polls that say otherwise), nor that a failure to convict him make people think he's ok after all. It's barmy, but there is.
Add to that few of the criminal cases will conclude before the election, and appeals will drag those on beyond it, and it's just a shame that they weren't able to move a bit more quickly.
People don't realise what's being done - the £2,500 cap being an example
People forgot what's been done - I'd forgotten about the £150 council tax rebate myself
People quickly feel entitled to even more help - so think the £400 should be continued
Guess the song… ‘No boring old farts will be there’
So the voters either don't really believe that Biden is senile even in the week when the media is running stories about his age constantly, or they believe it but they don't really care.
I am surmising they went civil first for what they thought would be an easier case.
I've seem some analysis on this, but some time ago.
Aiui Hush Money it is claimed to involve payments made to cover up other (ie) electoral related) crimes. And there's a lot of other stuff besides just Stormy Daniels. But I don't know that one in detail.
Small local charities owning a manageable number of properties for social housing.
Make things human scale. It may cost a little more in overhead but you get much better outcomes
That seems not to be the case now that the tide has changed.
Which is illegal.
If I did that (not that my accountant would let me!) I would certainly end up with at the very least a heavy fine.
I wonder if Dan Lawrence might come in for the next test.
The polls AFTER senile-gate were always gonna be crucial
Turns out it hasn’t dented Biden at all. I wonder if voters have accepted Biden is demented but they just trust his team to run the country - and run it better than Trump - or indeed Biden
Biden’s vaguely animated corpse, sorry, the president of the USA will be occasionally wheeled out for formal moments and 2 second interviews, behind the scenes aides will do everything
It was probably a bit like that in QE2’s final year or two
A problem remains, however. What if Biden dies? Then the VEEP will be POTUS and they might want to actually do stuff rather than be a token figurehead
And Kamala does not inspire confidence
Unless he’s actually in prison, his vote numbers will hold up.
Meanwhile, every businessman in New York now knows that courts will wreck your business if they decide they don’t like you.
I know the American system is somewhat different to the UK's but it is still based in English Common Law. Imagine a London lawyer rising to judicial/prosecutorial power on a promise to "bring down Nigel Farage"
WTF
As they did with say Martha Stewart, to pick another name who foolishly thought because she was famous and minted she could get away with anything.
This may cause them to become more honest. More likely it will encourage them to be *a lot* more careful in hiding the fraud they're committing.
Farage so far as I know has never been a significant player in business. He had a brief and inglorious career as a stockbroker and since then has spent his time losing elections.
Like I say, I'm not partisan. I'm very objective.
It's just lots of people on here at the moment expect them to agree with all their prejudices.
Thankfully we don't really have much of a comparison to Trump in this country.
And the court case does not 'reek'; unless you think Trump is innocent of the charges?
Two set batsmen in two balls is a disaster.
What I do see is a co-ordinated attempt to bring down Trump, in multiple different ways, using courts all over the country. And they are doing this in an election year, to prevent him standing - and judges, lawyers, counsels, AGs, are all colluding in this and "bending" the law as they see fit. Because they deem it acceptable, because Trump is such a dire threat to democracy
It doesn't look good. Maybe it is justified, as Trump is such a menace? But it doesn't look good
I honestly couldn't tell you about anything of your 10,000 odd posts because I can't remember a single thing you've ever said of any value or interest. You mainly seem to pop up from time to time to have a dig at other posters or, like this, to say someone else is partisan - never you, of course.
You add no value to the site. You are neither witty, funny or insightful. Your posts are either forgettable or personal. It's particularly desperate that you've tagged all your mates in this post as you hope to hoover up a few likes and a bit of support to deal with your insecurity.
As I said, I am not partisan in the slightest - it's very sad you can't see this. I regularly criticise the government, its policy lines and suggest alternatives. I don't tub-thump when I think a cause is lost, and nor do I echo tedious party lines on here. And I've even applauded some Labour initiatives at time. If you can't see or remember this then you haven't been paying attention.
My only comment on the Wellingborough candidate was in response to @Anabobazina saying it was great that she cut short her honeymoon to campaign. I said that was a bit sad and I'd have prioritised my time as a newly-wed, as your marriage partner is more important, and there were plenty more opportunities in the General. For that, I was called curmudgeonly and bitter - and it was anything but - and there were a couple of other posters who agreed with me. The criticism was because people here wanted to cheer the election of a Labour MP and felt I was getting in the way of that.
You are partisan. You are tribal. You are a little bit immature. It is sad. What you want to criticise and rail against is the caricature and not the reality. But until you change your posting style and your content the only "likes" you'll get will be from the herd on here who are just like you.
If they were trying to stop him running, he'd be dead by now, using his own arguments that a president is immune from anything as cover.*
What's happening here is a number of chickens are coming home to roost. As so often, the revelation of one form of criminality led to probes elsewhere, which revealed still more. So the finding that he was falsifying election returns led to wider scrutiny of his tax returns. And the revelation he boasted about sexually assaulting women led to some of his victims coming forward.
The problem is because Trump is a coward as well as a crook, he can't bear to admit how much wrong he's done or that he's getting very much his just desserts. So he's coming up with the conspiracy narrative that those with - shall we say - a pre-existing wish to exonerate him find persuasive.
*Incidentally if he wins power again I do wonder exactly what he might do to put his fantasies of killing his opponents into practice. He's obviously one sandwich short of a picnic, admires Putin and thinks he can do whatever the hell he likes. Trouble is, the amount of stuff he gets away with tends to support that view.
It is the NYC case in particular that I fund troubling. Driven by a politically motivated lawyer specifically elected to "get Trump"?
Maybe it is just the American way, and it is alien to British eyes
i find the constitutional cases agaiost him much more persuasive. If he didn't actively encourage insurrection on J6 then he came close to criminal negligence in "hinting that it was OK"
NEW THREAD
In the criminal one we haven't seen the evidence yet, but the star witness is the man who allegedly actioned the fraud for him.
In the defamation case, a jury disagreed with you, probably not helped by Trump's own behaviour and boasting that he was a sexual predator.
In the civil fraud case, the evidence is overwhelming. Let's just take the obvious one, Mar-a-Lago:
1) For tax reasons, this was registered as a social club, and valued at $18million. The first was clearly a lie. The second may have been about right.
2) To get a loan, Trump then valued it at $700 million and described it as a private residence. The second was true, but didn't match the covenants on the property. The first was clearly not. It would have made it the most expensive property in the history of the world by about 400%. Which it wasn't.
3) He also declared a New York Property was three times its actual size, and valued it according to the value per square foot, for a loan, but then put it down as its actual size when declaring it for taxes.
Now, if you can look at that and tell me it isn't fraud, you would benefit from a trip to Specsavers.
Trump argued there were no victims. But that's irrelevant. You don't get away with fraud by saying 'well, it all worked out in the end.' He profited considerably in terms of lower interest rates and /or lower taxes from this. So he benefited. End of.
Now he's been stung, and doesn't like it. Tough.
We are talking about a guy whose businesses have utilised Chapter 11 no less than 6 times. The merest trace of due diligence would have disclosed many other dodgy schemes, such as his University. Any banker who dealt with him who thought that they could rely on Trump’s word as to compliance with his covenants was foolish in the extreme.
Did these self serving certifications amount in a course of fraudulent conduct? Probably. Were banks and other institutions actually misled? Surely not. Even Deutsch Bank are not that stupid.
It’s possible that NY State were conned out of some taxes in which case they should sue. The current proceedings do seem to me to be partisan, politically motivated and ill judged. I can’t see this nonsense surviving appeal.
The behaviour of his lawyers doesn’t help him though, with a bombastic and aloof attitude to the court that no judge likes.
Elected judges and prosecutors is a weird one, as it brings them into politics, that enables people to stand on a platform of ‘getting’ an individual, or someone like George Soros putting funding behind prosecutors who won’t prosecute certain crimes. The British system appears far superior, with courts still mostly seen as being above politics, although it does creep in from time to time, especially when the UK was in the EU.
For me, the classified documents one is far bigger than the fraud one. Yes, people go to jail for falsifying valuations, but playing fast and loose with classified information can go way further than that. Go far enough and it's treason.
Trump deliberately smuggled out hundreds of classified documents, up to and including multiple TS/SCI files. He kept them insecurely at home in a room where hundreds of people of all nationalities could get access and even deliberately showed some of the highest classified ones to foreign nationals to show off. He then lied about it and deliberately obstructed the authorities when they found out about it.
That's fifteen years to life for anyone else. And given the level of control placed on some of those, I would be stunned if US or 5E assets hadn't been caught and imprisoned and/or killed in some countries directly due to that.
A bit of property fraud compared to that seems like small fry to me, but I accept that it's worth prosecuting and punishing, as fraud is very wrong and anyone else would also be punished for it. But "the documents case... are junk and should never have been brought" is something with which I'd disagree vehemently. On the basis of the documents case, that man should be in jail. Anyone else I've known would be.