Grim news from Birmingham today. City Council has announced cuts to deal with effective insolvency notice. Includes:
-sale of £750m of assets -cuts of to public services by £300m over two years -21% rise in Council Tax -dimming street lights -fortnightly bin collections
Their liabilities for equal pay claims that look quite tenuous ought to make people question the premise of the legislation.
This situation is the effect of creating laws with massive implications, but are poorly drafted and open to widely differing interpretation by the courts. Little has changed since 2010, if anything after 2016 the laws coming out of government have got more problematic.
The swing from Tories to Labour during the 2017 general election campaign was 8%, in the opinion polls, and then an extra 2% due to opinion poll error.
If we applied that election campaign swing to the current opinion polls, but in the Tories favour, the Tories would have a slender 2% lead, perhaps around 310 seats, and you'd think that Labour, Lib Dems and assorted Celtic Nationalists, would have enough votes to win a vote of no confidence in a Tory minority government, but it would be close.
Could Labour have an election campaign as bad as Theresa May in 2017? Does Sunak have the potential to convince the electorate he's not half as bad as people have said he is?
When I was a child my Dad took me skiing and, frankly, it was something that often scared me. I could be a timid skier, and that's no way to ski. If you hang back the weight comes off the front of your skis, and they can easily be knocked one way or the other - sending you sprawling onto your face. And that's how, at the age of nine, I managed to break the femur in my left leg.
I wonder about Starmer. He's a timid politician. Sometimes playing safety first isn't safe. It betrays a lack of confidence in yourself and your convictions. If you don't have confidence in yourself, why should the electorate? I think there's a chance that Starmer's timidity will see him take a tumble during an election campaign and land flat on his face.
Maybe the 7/1 available from William Hill on Conservative Most Seats is value?
An interesting thesis, and worth some meditation. My initial reaction, though is that Starmer doesn't have to not stumble. He just has to stumble less than Sunak. So far he is clearing that bar.
I’m not convinced Starmer is timid. He’s established something akin to an iron grip of the Labour Party. He’s expelled dozens of the far left including the former party leader secured the NEC, taken stances on issues like Gaza and taxation that are calculated to infuriate half of his party, and he patiently picked apart the apparently untouchable Johnson from the height of his powers to his post-partygate nadir.
The timidity, such as it is, relates to not steering a radical course ahead of the election, but even that is a kind of calculated timidity.
"Workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your calculated timidity!"
I'm not entirely sure it's doing it for me.
“We won’t spend any more money or solve any of your problems, either, but we’ll try and be a bit more sorry about it”…..
You could solve a lot of problems without spending much money.
This country actually is in a pretty reasonable position overall, yes we have not much money to spend, but nor do we have masses and masses of millions of people unemployed.
The biggest problem in this country is that people working full time can't afford a decent standard of living because they can't afford the roof over their head. That there's a major divide between those who have to pay for their home, and those who don't. An even bigger divide between those who have to pay for their home, and those who make their income that way.
If Starmer wins a big majority and takes on the NIMBYs in the same way that Thatcher took on the miners, then that would be brave but also the right thing to do and could cement him as one of the greatest Prime Ministers this country has seen at actually fixing our problems as they are today.
And it wouldn't cost a penny of taxpayers money.
[Not holding my breath though].
Problems:
1. He won't do that. Consider: it would piss off the grey vote, who love seeing their housing wealth inflated and hate having their peace and their countryside views ruined by construction. Rich old people are so numerous and electorally powerful that none of the parties dare oppose them. 2. The moment Labour flips a load of Tory suburban seats, you create a voting bloc of Labour Nimbies in Parliament. Because they will be every bit as determined to save the enraged homeowner bloc amongst their constituents from the march of the Barratt boxes as would their predecessors. 3. Even if the volume housebuilders can find enough skilled labour to massively ramp up production, would it be in their interest to do so? Building rabbit hutch homes as densely as possible in small numbers maximises profit (by maintaining a choked off supply of shoddy rubbish that they can palm off on desperate buyers in a massively overheated market.) Why would they change? 4. Private sector construction does nothing to address the enormous need for social rented homes for the millions and millions of penniless renters who are too old or badly paid to be able to take on a mortgage.
The fundamental problem is that there is precious little that can be achieved to dig this decaying country out of the mire without a lot of very expensive investment. That means yet more taxes, and the population splits into two blocs on that subject: renters and people with gigantic mortgages, who are bled white and have little or nothing left to give; and rich older homeowners, who are flush but also believe they pay more than enough already, and ideally shouldn't be asked to pay for anything at all. They are awash with money, but also have so many votes that the politicians are terrified of them and are slaves to their interests.
So we get the parties insisting there is no more money (yet simultaneously refusing to tap the nation's immense store of asset wealth AND somehow always finding enough cash to fund the Triple Lock down the back of the Treasury sofa,) and being reduced to spouting vacuous shite about vaguely defined "reforms" that will miraculously solve everything by generating rampant economic growth.
They won't. It's bollocks. And so we carry on circling the plughole.
The swing from Tories to Labour during the 2017 general election campaign was 8%, in the opinion polls, and then an extra 2% due to opinion poll error.
If we applied that election campaign swing to the current opinion polls, but in the Tories favour, the Tories would have a slender 2% lead, perhaps around 310 seats, and you'd think that Labour, Lib Dems and assorted Celtic Nationalists, would have enough votes to win a vote of no confidence in a Tory minority government, but it would be close.
Could Labour have an election campaign as bad as Theresa May in 2017? Does Sunak have the potential to convince the electorate he's not half as bad as people have said he is?
When I was a child my Dad took me skiing and, frankly, it was something that often scared me. I could be a timid skier, and that's no way to ski. If you hang back the weight comes off the front of your skis, and they can easily be knocked one way or the other - sending you sprawling onto your face. And that's how, at the age of nine, I managed to break the femur in my left leg.
I wonder about Starmer. He's a timid politician. Sometimes playing safety first isn't safe. It betrays a lack of confidence in yourself and your convictions. If you don't have confidence in yourself, why should the electorate? I think there's a chance that Starmer's timidity will see him take a tumble during an election campaign and land flat on his face.
Maybe the 7/1 available from William Hill on Conservative Most Seats is value?
An interesting thesis, and worth some meditation. My initial reaction, though is that Starmer doesn't have to not stumble. He just has to stumble less than Sunak. So far he is clearing that bar.
I’m not convinced Starmer is timid. He’s established something akin to an iron grip of the Labour Party. He’s expelled dozens of the far left including the former party leader secured the NEC, taken stances on issues like Gaza and taxation that are calculated to infuriate half of his party, and he patiently picked apart the apparently untouchable Johnson from the height of his powers to his post-partygate nadir.
The timidity, such as it is, relates to not steering a radical course ahead of the election, but even that is a kind of calculated timidity.
"Workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your calculated timidity!"
I'm not entirely sure it's doing it for me.
“We won’t spend any more money or solve any of your problems, either, but we’ll try and be a bit more sorry about it”…..
You could solve a lot of problems without spending much money.
This country actually is in a pretty reasonable position overall, yes we have not much money to spend, but nor do we have masses and masses of millions of people unemployed.
The biggest problem in this country is that people working full time can't afford a decent standard of living because they can't afford the roof over their head. That there's a major divide between those who have to pay for their home, and those who don't. An even bigger divide between those who have to pay for their home, and those who make their income that way.
If Starmer wins a big majority and takes on the NIMBYs in the same way that Thatcher took on the miners, then that would be brave but also the right thing to do and could cement him as one of the greatest Prime Ministers this country has seen at actually fixing our problems as they are today.
And it wouldn't cost a penny of taxpayers money.
[Not holding my breath though].
Problems:
1. He won't do that. Consider: it would piss off the grey vote, who love seeing their housing wealth inflated and hate having their peace and their countryside views ruined by construction. Rich old people are so numerous and electorally powerful that none of the parties dare oppose them. 2. The moment Labour flips a load of Tory suburban seats, you create a voting bloc of Labour Nimbies in Parliament. Because they will be every bit as determined to save their constituents from the march of the Barratt boxes as would their predecessors. 3. Even if the volume housebuilders can find enough skilled labour to massively ramp up production, would it be in their interest to do so? Building rabbit hutch homes as densely as possible in small numbers maximises profit (by maintaining a choked off supply of shoddy rubbish that they can palm off on desperate buyers in a massively overheated market.) Why would they change? 4. Private sector construction does nothing to address the enormous need for social rented homes for the millions and millions of penniless renters who are too old or badly paid to be able to take on a mortgage.
The fundamental problem is that there is precious little that can be achieved to dig this decaying country out of the mire without a lot of very expensive investment. That means yet more taxes, and the population splits into two blocs on that subject: renters and people with gigantic mortgages, who are bled white and have little or nothing left to give; and rich older homeowners, who are flush but also believe they pay more than enough already, and ideally shouldn't be asked to pay for anything at all. They are awash with money, but also have so many votes that the politicians are terrified of them and are slaves to their interests.
So we get the parties insisting there is no more money (yet simultaneously refusing to tap the nation's immense store of asset wealth AND somehow always finding enough cash to fund the Triple Lock down the back of the Treasury sofa,) and being reduced to spouting vacuous shite about vaguely defined "reforms" that will miraculously solve everything by generating rampant economic growth.
They won't. It's bollocks. And so we carry on circling the plughole.
The way you get round developers throttling building to hold prices up, is to avoid local monopolies on property construction.
In Edwardian/Victorian times, suburbs were built by selling one road (or part of a road) to a developer. Plots laid out. So the developer who decided not to build ended up last to market…
Build enough of any kind of properties, private or public, and prices will come down.
F1: testing starts today, ends on the 23rd. And the first race is a week later, so not much time to turn things around although upgrades will likely be forthcoming for many. Bad reliability, however, may be trickier.
How can you prosecute people fighting voluntarily for the Israeli army, the IDF is not listed as a terrorist organisation in the UK?
Of course you can't, its clear nonsense. An attention whore and money making scam by someone.
British law is entirely clear that British citizens (both dual national and exclusively British nationals) are perfectly entitled to fight for other countries legal armies.
And if those British nationals are dual-nationals, they might be in their own (other) nation's army in which case what on earth do you think you're going to do about it?
IANAL but note the word genocidal in the tweet.
Foreign Enlistment Act 1870 has been repealed? Who knew?
first of all, that act hasn't actually been enforced since 1896.
Second, it wouldn't apply in this case for two very good reasons. One is that Gaza is not a state, and if it were, as Hamas is a proscribed terrorist organisation we are not 'at peace' with them.
The other is it does not apply to dual nationals fighting for their other country. Indeed, taking out British nationality comes with a specific warning that that does not on its own excuse you from military service for any other country you hold citizenship of. Since Israel has a very broad definition of what constitutes a citizen, it's difficult to imagine these 13 won't be covered by that,
Grim news from Birmingham today. City Council has announced cuts to deal with effective insolvency notice. Includes:
-sale of £750m of assets -cuts of to public services by £300m over two years -21% rise in Council Tax -dimming street lights -fortnightly bin collections
Their liabilities for equal pay claims that look quite tenuous ought to make people question the premise of the legislation.
This situation is the effect of creating laws with massive implications, but are poorly drafted and open to widely differing interpretation by the courts. Little has changed since 2010, if anything after 2016 the laws coming out of government have got more problematic.
And what's great is that Labour have promised to introduce even MORE laws like this
Britain is so fucked, who on earth wants to stay there, in literally darkened streets, hammered by freezing rain for 6 months a year
We are creating the first Failed Neo-Socialist Wokeland, with 2 trillion annual migrants
Grim news from Birmingham today. City Council has announced cuts to deal with effective insolvency notice. Includes:
-sale of £750m of assets -cuts of to public services by £300m over two years -21% rise in Council Tax -dimming street lights -fortnightly bin collections
Their liabilities for equal pay claims that look quite tenuous ought to make people question the premise of the legislation.
This situation is the effect of creating laws with massive implications, but are poorly drafted and open to widely differing interpretation by the courts. Little has changed since 2010, if anything after 2016 the laws coming out of government have got more problematic.
And what's great is that Labour have promised to introduce even MORE laws
Britain is so fucked, who on earth wants to stay there, in literally darkened streets, hammered by freezing drizzle
We are creating the first Failed Neo-Socialist Wokeland, with 2 trillion migrants a year
What do they drink in Phnomh Penh? Looks like good stuff and I imagine it's pretty cheap.
Grim news from Birmingham today. City Council has announced cuts to deal with effective insolvency notice. Includes:
-sale of £750m of assets -cuts of to public services by £300m over two years -21% rise in Council Tax -dimming street lights -fortnightly bin collections
Their liabilities for equal pay claims that look quite tenuous ought to make people question the premise of the legislation.
This situation is the effect of creating laws with massive implications, but are poorly drafted and open to widely differing interpretation by the courts. Little has changed since 2010, if anything after 2016 the laws coming out of government have got more problematic.
And what's great is that Labour have promised to introduce even MORE laws
Britain is so fucked, who on earth wants to stay there, in literally darkened streets, hammered by freezing drizzle
We are creating the first Failed Neo-Socialist Wokeland, with 2 trillion migrants a year
What do they drink in Phnomh Penh? Looks like good stuff and I imagine it's pretty cheap.
So far today I have had one iced cappuccino and it was excellent. They do the best iced coffee here
NAVY FLOP British nuclear sub missile launch FAILS as Trident misfires and ‘plops’ into sea just yards away – with Shapps on board Details of the misfire are not being made public on the grounds of 'national security' ... The second failed launch in a row – after a misfire in 2016 – happened while Defence Secretary Grant Shapps was on board HMS Vanguard to witness the test. https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/26070479/trident-nuke-sub-missile-launch-fails/
Funny how this follows Russia threatening to nuke London but it looks like we need not have worried about Jeremy Corbyn writing "the letters".
This is worrying. We have cheesepared the ICBM force for years. This has to be fixed.
NAVY FLOP British nuclear sub missile launch FAILS as Trident misfires and ‘plops’ into sea just yards away – with Shapps on board Details of the misfire are not being made public on the grounds of 'national security' ... The second failed launch in a row – after a misfire in 2016 – happened while Defence Secretary Grant Shapps was on board HMS Vanguard to witness the test. https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/26070479/trident-nuke-sub-missile-launch-fails/
Funny how this follows Russia threatening to nuke London but it looks like we need not have worried about Jeremy Corbyn writing "the letters".
We have until 20th January 2025 to fix the problem.
NAVY FLOP British nuclear sub missile launch FAILS as Trident misfires and ‘plops’ into sea just yards away – with Shapps on board Details of the misfire are not being made public on the grounds of 'national security' ... The second failed launch in a row – after a misfire in 2016 – happened while Defence Secretary Grant Shapps was on board HMS Vanguard to witness the test. https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/26070479/trident-nuke-sub-missile-launch-fails/
Funny how this follows Russia threatening to nuke London but it looks like we need not have worried about Jeremy Corbyn writing "the letters".
This is worrying. We have cheesepared the ICBM force for years. This has to be fixed.
Is it a surprise? That is Britain. Nothing works. Cambodia is actually more efficient
Tucker Carlson vs Boris Johnson. It's all kicking off between Leon's favourites.
Tucker interviewed Putin (or at least was in the same room while Putin spoke for hours)
Boris called Tucker a tool of the Kremlin
Tucker asked Boris for an interview
Boris asked Tucker for $1 million
Tucker accused Boris of stopping a peace deal between Russia & Ukraine at the behest of the US Government, and therefore causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people
Is Tucker a Russian agent of influence, or just an idiot ?
There is a bit of 'rabbit in the headlights' with Carlson and his Russian excursion. Can you imagine him doing a 2 hour interview with Boris though. How would Boris and his take on Ukraine fare? If Boris is confident enough about his position, he should go and do it, and try to persuade people - instead we are just getting tiktok propoganda snippets and daily mail columns from Boris, it makes him look like a lightweight.
A top civil servant told the former chairman of the Post Office to “hobble” into the election and not to “rip off the band aid” in terms of its finances, according to a memo unearthed on Tuesday.
Sarah Munby, who was then permanent secretary at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, warned Henry Staunton that “politicians do not necessarily like to confront reality” and that “now was not the time for dealing with long-term issues”, according to a contemporaneous note of their first meeting on January 5 last year.
The discovery of the January 5 memo now raises serious questions over the accuracy of Badenoch’s denial and her decision to brand Staunton a liar.
A top civil servant told the former chairman of the Post Office to “hobble” into the election and not to “rip off the band aid” in terms of its finances, according to a memo unearthed on Tuesday.
Sarah Munby, who was then permanent secretary at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, warned Henry Staunton that “politicians do not necessarily like to confront reality” and that “now was not the time for dealing with long-term issues”, according to a contemporaneous note of their first meeting on January 5 last year.
The discovery of the January 5 memo now raises serious questions over the accuracy of Badenoch’s denial and her decision to brand Staunton a liar.
A top civil servant told the former chairman of the Post Office to “hobble” into the election and not to “rip off the band aid” in terms of its finances, according to a memo unearthed on Tuesday.
Sarah Munby, who was then permanent secretary at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, warned Henry Staunton that “politicians do not necessarily like to confront reality” and that “now was not the time for dealing with long-term issues”, according to a contemporaneous note of their first meeting on January 5 last year.
The discovery of the January 5 memo now raises serious questions over the accuracy of Badenoch’s denial and her decision to brand Staunton a liar.
Grim news from Birmingham today. City Council has announced cuts to deal with effective insolvency notice. Includes:
-sale of £750m of assets -cuts of to public services by £300m over two years -21% rise in Council Tax -dimming street lights -fortnightly bin collections
Their liabilities for equal pay claims that look quite tenuous ought to make people question the premise of the legislation.
This situation is the effect of creating laws with massive implications, but are poorly drafted and open to widely differing interpretation by the courts. Little has changed since 2010, if anything after 2016 the laws coming out of government have got more problematic.
And what's great is that Labour have promised to introduce even MORE laws like this
Britain is so fucked, who on earth wants to stay there, in literally darkened streets, hammered by freezing rain for 6 months a year
We are creating the first Failed Neo-Socialist Wokeland, with 2 trillion annual migrants
The brilliant irony about 'darkened streets' is that a decision to proceed with this could potentially be challenged under the same legislation that led to the equal pay claims - IE it adversely impacts on certain groups with protected characteristics.
Little can ultimately be addressed until politics starts to triumph over law (a feature of many conflicts in Western democracies - ie Brexit, Trump, small boats etc) - a point made persuasively by Lord Sumption.
Grim news from Birmingham today. City Council has announced cuts to deal with effective insolvency notice. Includes:
-sale of £750m of assets -cuts of to public services by £300m over two years -21% rise in Council Tax -dimming street lights -fortnightly bin collections
Their liabilities for equal pay claims that look quite tenuous ought to make people question the premise of the legislation.
This situation is the effect of creating laws with massive implications, but are poorly drafted and open to widely differing interpretation by the courts. Little has changed since 2010, if anything after 2016 the laws coming out of government have got more problematic.
And what's great is that Labour have promised to introduce even MORE laws like this
Britain is so fucked, who on earth wants to stay there, in literally darkened streets, hammered by freezing rain for 6 months a year
We are creating the first Failed Neo-Socialist Wokeland, with 2 trillion annual migrants
Yes. Perhaps talented people can take advantage of the EU freedom of movement rules you tirelessly championed? Certainly looks like an option!
NAVY FLOP British nuclear sub missile launch FAILS as Trident misfires and ‘plops’ into sea just yards away – with Shapps on board Details of the misfire are not being made public on the grounds of 'national security' ... The second failed launch in a row – after a misfire in 2016 – happened while Defence Secretary Grant Shapps was on board HMS Vanguard to witness the test. https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/26070479/trident-nuke-sub-missile-launch-fails/
Funny how this follows Russia threatening to nuke London but it looks like we need not have worried about Jeremy Corbyn writing "the letters".
We have until 20th January 2025 to fix the problem.
A top civil servant told the former chairman of the Post Office to “hobble” into the election and not to “rip off the band aid” in terms of its finances, according to a memo unearthed on Tuesday.
Sarah Munby, who was then permanent secretary at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, warned Henry Staunton that “politicians do not necessarily like to confront reality” and that “now was not the time for dealing with long-term issues”, according to a contemporaneous note of their first meeting on January 5 last year.
The discovery of the January 5 memo now raises serious questions over the accuracy of Badenoch’s denial and her decision to brand Staunton a liar.
Grim news from Birmingham today. City Council has announced cuts to deal with effective insolvency notice. Includes:
-sale of £750m of assets -cuts of to public services by £300m over two years -21% rise in Council Tax -dimming street lights -fortnightly bin collections
Their liabilities for equal pay claims that look quite tenuous ought to make people question the premise of the legislation.
This situation is the effect of creating laws with massive implications, but are poorly drafted and open to widely differing interpretation by the courts. Little has changed since 2010, if anything after 2016 the laws coming out of government have got more problematic.
And what's great is that Labour have promised to introduce even MORE laws like this
Britain is so fucked, who on earth wants to stay there, in literally darkened streets, hammered by freezing rain for 6 months a year
We are creating the first Failed Neo-Socialist Wokeland, with 2 trillion annual migrants
Yes. Perhaps talented people can take advantage of the EU freedom of movement rules you tirelessly championed? Certainly looks like an option!
Grim news from Birmingham today. City Council has announced cuts to deal with effective insolvency notice. Includes:
-sale of £750m of assets -cuts of to public services by £300m over two years -21% rise in Council Tax -dimming street lights -fortnightly bin collections
Their liabilities for equal pay claims that look quite tenuous ought to make people question the premise of the legislation.
This situation is the effect of creating laws with massive implications, but are poorly drafted and open to widely differing interpretation by the courts. Little has changed since 2010, if anything after 2016 the laws coming out of government have got more problematic.
And what's great is that Labour have promised to introduce even MORE laws like this
Britain is so fucked, who on earth wants to stay there, in literally darkened streets, hammered by freezing rain for 6 months a year
We are creating the first Failed Neo-Socialist Wokeland, with 2 trillion annual migrants
The brilliant irony about 'darkened streets' is that a decision to proceed with this could potentially be challenged under the same legislation that led to the equal pay claims - IE it adversely impacts on certain groups with protected characteristics.
Little can ultimately be addressed until politics starts to triumph over law (a feature of many conflicts in Western democracies - ie Brexit, Trump, small boats etc) - a point made persuasively by Lord Sumption.
How bad does it have to get in Britain before the people revolt?
We've now experienced the longest fall in living standards since records began, at the SAME TIME as we imported 1.4 million migrants in two years
Will Brits simply lie back and accept this, forever and ever?
Perhaps. We are a stoical people, and that stoicism can be bad - apathetic, complacent, "oh look we don't have street lights any more, thanks to mad equality laws", hey ho, "mustn't grumble"
Grim news from Birmingham today. City Council has announced cuts to deal with effective insolvency notice. Includes:
-sale of £750m of assets -cuts of to public services by £300m over two years -21% rise in Council Tax -dimming street lights -fortnightly bin collections
Their liabilities for equal pay claims that look quite tenuous ought to make people question the premise of the legislation.
This situation is the effect of creating laws with massive implications, but are poorly drafted and open to widely differing interpretation by the courts. Little has changed since 2010, if anything after 2016 the laws coming out of government have got more problematic.
And what's great is that Labour have promised to introduce even MORE laws like this
Britain is so fucked, who on earth wants to stay there, in literally darkened streets, hammered by freezing rain for 6 months a year
We are creating the first Failed Neo-Socialist Wokeland, with 2 trillion annual migrants
The brilliant irony about 'darkened streets' is that a decision to proceed with this could potentially be challenged under the same legislation that led to the equal pay claims - IE it adversely impacts on certain groups with protected characteristics.
Little can ultimately be addressed until politics starts to triumph over law (a feature of many conflicts in Western democracies - ie Brexit, Trump, small boats etc) - a point made persuasively by Lord Sumption.
Can they not, as long as they have demonstrated they have taken it into consideration, do it anyway.
Otherwise, effectively, any law or any policy can be open to be stopped by spurious claims from special interest groups.
Birmingham is fucked, it has been fucked by various councils over the years. So be it. People will live with the consequences of who they elected.
How bad does it have to get in Britain before the people revolt?
We've now experienced the longest fall in living standards since records began, at the SAME TIME as we imported 1.4 million migrants in two years
Will Brits simply lie back and accept this, forever and ever?
Perhaps. We are a stoical people, and that stoicism can be bad - apathetic, complacent, "oh look we don't have street lights any more, thanks to mad equality laws", hey ho, "mustn't grumble"
Grim news from Birmingham today. City Council has announced cuts to deal with effective insolvency notice. Includes:
-sale of £750m of assets -cuts of to public services by £300m over two years -21% rise in Council Tax -dimming street lights -fortnightly bin collections
Their liabilities for equal pay claims that look quite tenuous ought to make people question the premise of the legislation.
This situation is the effect of creating laws with massive implications, but are poorly drafted and open to widely differing interpretation by the courts. Little has changed since 2010, if anything after 2016 the laws coming out of government have got more problematic.
And what's great is that Labour have promised to introduce even MORE laws like this
Britain is so fucked, who on earth wants to stay there, in literally darkened streets, hammered by freezing rain for 6 months a year
We are creating the first Failed Neo-Socialist Wokeland, with 2 trillion annual migrants
The brilliant irony about 'darkened streets' is that a decision to proceed with this could potentially be challenged under the same legislation that led to the equal pay claims - IE it adversely impacts on certain groups with protected characteristics.
Little can ultimately be addressed until politics triumphs over law (a feature of many conflicts in Western democracies - ie Brexit, Trump, small boats etc) - a point made persuasively by Lord Sumption.
Law is the outcome of politics. The Equal Pay Act 1970 was part of the Labour manifesto of 1964. It was literally a political decision to introduce it. No one is saying the courts are implementing it wrongly. They’re just doing what Parliament intended. Similarly if you read the Labour manifesto in 1997 it’s hard to miss proposals that ended up as the Human Rights Act. Similarly enacted by politicians.
How does “politics over law” work in practice then? Politicians introduce laws. It’s what they do. When they don’t like the outcome they blame the people charged with implementing them.
A top civil servant told the former chairman of the Post Office to “hobble” into the election and not to “rip off the band aid” in terms of its finances, according to a memo unearthed on Tuesday.
Sarah Munby, who was then permanent secretary at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, warned Henry Staunton that “politicians do not necessarily like to confront reality” and that “now was not the time for dealing with long-term issues”, according to a contemporaneous note of their first meeting on January 5 last year.
The discovery of the January 5 memo now raises serious questions over the accuracy of Badenoch’s denial and her decision to brand Staunton a liar.
Grim news from Birmingham today. City Council has announced cuts to deal with effective insolvency notice. Includes:
-sale of £750m of assets -cuts of to public services by £300m over two years -21% rise in Council Tax -dimming street lights -fortnightly bin collections
Their liabilities for equal pay claims that look quite tenuous ought to make people question the premise of the legislation.
This situation is the effect of creating laws with massive implications, but are poorly drafted and open to widely differing interpretation by the courts. Little has changed since 2010, if anything after 2016 the laws coming out of government have got more problematic.
And what's great is that Labour have promised to introduce even MORE laws like this
Britain is so fucked, who on earth wants to stay there, in literally darkened streets, hammered by freezing rain for 6 months a year
We are creating the first Failed Neo-Socialist Wokeland, with 2 trillion annual migrants
Yes. Perhaps talented people can take advantage of the EU freedom of movement rules you tirelessly championed? Certainly looks like an option!
I'm in Cambodia
Good for you! Let’s all take advantage of the generous treaties we have with Cambodia regarding residence and hop on an EasyJet to get there then!
Grim news from Birmingham today. City Council has announced cuts to deal with effective insolvency notice. Includes:
-sale of £750m of assets -cuts of to public services by £300m over two years -21% rise in Council Tax -dimming street lights -fortnightly bin collections
Their liabilities for equal pay claims that look quite tenuous ought to make people question the premise of the legislation.
This situation is the effect of creating laws with massive implications, but are poorly drafted and open to widely differing interpretation by the courts. Little has changed since 2010, if anything after 2016 the laws coming out of government have got more problematic.
And what's great is that Labour have promised to introduce even MORE laws like this
Britain is so fucked, who on earth wants to stay there, in literally darkened streets, hammered by freezing rain for 6 months a year
We are creating the first Failed Neo-Socialist Wokeland, with 2 trillion annual migrants
Yes. Perhaps talented people can take advantage of the EU freedom of movement rules you tirelessly championed? Certainly looks like an option!
A top civil servant told the former chairman of the Post Office to “hobble” into the election and not to “rip off the band aid” in terms of its finances, according to a memo unearthed on Tuesday.
Sarah Munby, who was then permanent secretary at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, warned Henry Staunton that “politicians do not necessarily like to confront reality” and that “now was not the time for dealing with long-term issues”, according to a contemporaneous note of their first meeting on January 5 last year.
The discovery of the January 5 memo now raises serious questions over the accuracy of Badenoch’s denial and her decision to brand Staunton a liar.
Hardly, given the claim he was instructed by Badenoch to stymie it. He wasn't.
what we do not know is under what authority the civil servant acted, or was it of her own volition.
Was that the claim? In Sunday's Sunday Times;
He was instructed by a senior civil servant to stall on compensation payments to Horizon victims so the government could “limp into the election” with the lowest possible financial liability.
NAVY FLOP British nuclear sub missile launch FAILS as Trident misfires and ‘plops’ into sea just yards away – with Shapps on board Details of the misfire are not being made public on the grounds of 'national security' ... The second failed launch in a row – after a misfire in 2016 – happened while Defence Secretary Grant Shapps was on board HMS Vanguard to witness the test. https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/26070479/trident-nuke-sub-missile-launch-fails/
Funny how this follows Russia threatening to nuke London but it looks like we need not have worried about Jeremy Corbyn writing "the letters".
It seems a strange and unnecessary distraction to have 1SL and Shappsie and his furry friend actually on the boat for the firing. All of the action is at NOTU HQ at Canaveral and on the range ship. There is nothing to see on the sub because a) they are at launch depth and b) there's no telemetry back from the missile. Maybe the US wouldn't entertain the Shapps party at NOTU.
Grim news from Birmingham today. City Council has announced cuts to deal with effective insolvency notice. Includes:
-sale of £750m of assets -cuts of to public services by £300m over two years -21% rise in Council Tax -dimming street lights -fortnightly bin collections
Their liabilities for equal pay claims that look quite tenuous ought to make people question the premise of the legislation.
This situation is the effect of creating laws with massive implications, but are poorly drafted and open to widely differing interpretation by the courts. Little has changed since 2010, if anything after 2016 the laws coming out of government have got more problematic.
And what's great is that Labour have promised to introduce even MORE laws like this
Britain is so fucked, who on earth wants to stay there, in literally darkened streets, hammered by freezing rain for 6 months a year
We are creating the first Failed Neo-Socialist Wokeland, with 2 trillion annual migrants
Yes. Perhaps talented people can take advantage of the EU freedom of movement rules you tirelessly championed? Certainly looks like an option!
I'm in Cambodia
Good for you! Let’s all take advantage of the generous treaties we have with Cambodia regarding residence and hop on an EasyJet to get there then!
Here's what you do, you fly here, then get somewhere to sleep
A top civil servant told the former chairman of the Post Office to “hobble” into the election and not to “rip off the band aid” in terms of its finances, according to a memo unearthed on Tuesday.
Sarah Munby, who was then permanent secretary at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, warned Henry Staunton that “politicians do not necessarily like to confront reality” and that “now was not the time for dealing with long-term issues”, according to a contemporaneous note of their first meeting on January 5 last year.
The discovery of the January 5 memo now raises serious questions over the accuracy of Badenoch’s denial and her decision to brand Staunton a liar.
Hardly, given the claim he was instructed by Badenoch to stymie it. He wasn't.
what we do not know is under what authority the civil servant acted, or was it of her own volition.
Was that the claim? In Sunday's Sunday Times;
He was instructed by a senior civil servant to stall on compensation payments to Horizon victims so the government could “limp into the election” with the lowest possible financial liability.
Not seen the article as it was paywalled, only second hand reporting of it, including by anti Tory posters here, which was probably not entirely accurate as they claim Badenoch had told him to go easy on the compo.
Interesting about dimming streetlights. It’s been done in France since the invasion started in 2022 and has its upsides. After 11pm the streetlights on the lanes and villages all go off completely and the sodium glow disappears from the sky: on cloudy nights it becomes properly black; on clear nights thousands of stars appear.
Probably not the effect you’ll get in Birmingham but it’s rather nice in the countryside.
Grim news from Birmingham today. City Council has announced cuts to deal with effective insolvency notice. Includes:
-sale of £750m of assets -cuts of to public services by £300m over two years -21% rise in Council Tax -dimming street lights -fortnightly bin collections
Their liabilities for equal pay claims that look quite tenuous ought to make people question the premise of the legislation.
This situation is the effect of creating laws with massive implications, but are poorly drafted and open to widely differing interpretation by the courts. Little has changed since 2010, if anything after 2016 the laws coming out of government have got more problematic.
And what's great is that Labour have promised to introduce even MORE laws like this
Britain is so fucked, who on earth wants to stay there, in literally darkened streets, hammered by freezing rain for 6 months a year
We are creating the first Failed Neo-Socialist Wokeland, with 2 trillion annual migrants
Yes. Perhaps talented people can take advantage of the EU freedom of movement rules you tirelessly championed? Certainly looks like an option!
I'm in Cambodia
Eaten anything exotic ?
Tarantula ?
I had one dish with soil and ants at a really posh restaurant in the jungle and it was disgusting
Otherwise the food has been universally brilliant. Astonishingly good. Best I’ve probably eaten anywhere in the world - no exaggeration
And it doesn’t seem to matter what cuisine you eat. Indian, Thai, Japanese, Spanish, pizza, it’s all fantastic - as is the Khmer food (a great mix of Chinese and Vietnamese with some French)
The swing from Tories to Labour during the 2017 general election campaign was 8%, in the opinion polls, and then an extra 2% due to opinion poll error.
If we applied that election campaign swing to the current opinion polls, but in the Tories favour, the Tories would have a slender 2% lead, perhaps around 310 seats, and you'd think that Labour, Lib Dems and assorted Celtic Nationalists, would have enough votes to win a vote of no confidence in a Tory minority government, but it would be close.
Could Labour have an election campaign as bad as Theresa May in 2017? Does Sunak have the potential to convince the electorate he's not half as bad as people have said he is?
When I was a child my Dad took me skiing and, frankly, it was something that often scared me. I could be a timid skier, and that's no way to ski. If you hang back the weight comes off the front of your skis, and they can easily be knocked one way or the other - sending you sprawling onto your face. And that's how, at the age of nine, I managed to break the femur in my left leg.
I wonder about Starmer. He's a timid politician. Sometimes playing safety first isn't safe. It betrays a lack of confidence in yourself and your convictions. If you don't have confidence in yourself, why should the electorate? I think there's a chance that Starmer's timidity will see him take a tumble during an election campaign and land flat on his face.
Maybe the 7/1 available from William Hill on Conservative Most Seats is value?
An interesting thesis, and worth some meditation. My initial reaction, though is that Starmer doesn't have to not stumble. He just has to stumble less than Sunak. So far he is clearing that bar.
I’m not convinced Starmer is timid. He’s established something akin to an iron grip of the Labour Party. He’s expelled dozens of the far left including the former party leader secured the NEC, taken stances on issues like Gaza and taxation that are calculated to infuriate half of his party, and he patiently picked apart the apparently untouchable Johnson from the height of his powers to his post-partygate nadir.
The timidity, such as it is, relates to not steering a radical course ahead of the election, but even that is a kind of calculated timidity.
"Workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your calculated timidity!"
I'm not entirely sure it's doing it for me.
The big question is what happens after the election.
The most important thing is the economy. All else (well apart from having Trident missiles that actually work) is secondary to that. Labour will need a bit of luck.
That was extremely embarrassing, and terrible timing. It might even threaten our geopolitical position with Putin.
What on earth is the point of us having a nuclear deterrent and spending all that money on it if it doesn't bloody work?
Grim news from Birmingham today. City Council has announced cuts to deal with effective insolvency notice. Includes:
-sale of £750m of assets -cuts of to public services by £300m over two years -21% rise in Council Tax -dimming street lights -fortnightly bin collections
Their liabilities for equal pay claims that look quite tenuous ought to make people question the premise of the legislation.
This situation is the effect of creating laws with massive implications, but are poorly drafted and open to widely differing interpretation by the courts. Little has changed since 2010, if anything after 2016 the laws coming out of government have got more problematic.
And what's great is that Labour have promised to introduce even MORE laws like this
Britain is so fucked, who on earth wants to stay there, in literally darkened streets, hammered by freezing rain for 6 months a year
We are creating the first Failed Neo-Socialist Wokeland, with 2 trillion annual migrants
The brilliant irony about 'darkened streets' is that a decision to proceed with this could potentially be challenged under the same legislation that led to the equal pay claims - IE it adversely impacts on certain groups with protected characteristics.
Little can ultimately be addressed until politics triumphs over law (a feature of many conflicts in Western democracies - ie Brexit, Trump, small boats etc) - a point made persuasively by Lord Sumption.
Law is the outcome of politics. The Equal Pay Act 1970 was part of the Labour manifesto of 1964. It was literally a political decision to introduce it. No one is saying the courts are implementing it wrongly. They’re just doing what Parliament intended. Similarly if you read the Labour manifesto in 1997 it’s hard to miss proposals that ended up as the Human Rights Act. Similarly enacted by politicians.
How does “politics over law” work in practice then? Politicians introduce laws. It’s what they do. When they don’t like the outcome they blame the people charged with implementing them.
The basic criticism is that the state that has emerged from the vast proliferation of law (which is a late 20th Century phenomena) has become unmanageable. There is so much law that it hinders the natural operation of politics and political decision making.
It is hard to disagree with this as a premise. Even though my whole livelihood and career has been defined by working through the implications of law, I can see that there is something fundamentally wrong with the broader structure. It is also becoming increasingly clear to me that the way 'things get done' is often, in reality, where rules and laws get ignored or broken, as was the case with the Covid response.
Grim news from Birmingham today. City Council has announced cuts to deal with effective insolvency notice. Includes:
-sale of £750m of assets -cuts of to public services by £300m over two years -21% rise in Council Tax -dimming street lights -fortnightly bin collections
Their liabilities for equal pay claims that look quite tenuous ought to make people question the premise of the legislation.
This situation is the effect of creating laws with massive implications, but are poorly drafted and open to widely differing interpretation by the courts. Little has changed since 2010, if anything after 2016 the laws coming out of government have got more problematic.
And what's great is that Labour have promised to introduce even MORE laws like this
Britain is so fucked, who on earth wants to stay there, in literally darkened streets, hammered by freezing rain for 6 months a year
We are creating the first Failed Neo-Socialist Wokeland, with 2 trillion annual migrants
The brilliant irony about 'darkened streets' is that a decision to proceed with this could potentially be challenged under the same legislation that led to the equal pay claims - IE it adversely impacts on certain groups with protected characteristics.
Little can ultimately be addressed until politics triumphs over law (a feature of many conflicts in Western democracies - ie Brexit, Trump, small boats etc) - a point made persuasively by Lord Sumption.
Law is the outcome of politics. The Equal Pay Act 1970 was part of the Labour manifesto of 1964. It was literally a political decision to introduce it. No one is saying the courts are implementing it wrongly. They’re just doing what Parliament intended. Similarly if you read the Labour manifesto in 1997 it’s hard to miss proposals that ended up as the Human Rights Act. Similarly enacted by politicians.
How does “politics over law” work in practice then? Politicians introduce laws. It’s what they do. When they don’t like the outcome they blame the people charged with implementing them.
You're not suggesting that people should be held legally responsible for the actions they are legally responsible for? That's Literally Worse Than Hitler.
NAVY FLOP British nuclear sub missile launch FAILS as Trident misfires and ‘plops’ into sea just yards away – with Shapps on board Details of the misfire are not being made public on the grounds of 'national security' ... The second failed launch in a row – after a misfire in 2016 – happened while Defence Secretary Grant Shapps was on board HMS Vanguard to witness the test. https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/26070479/trident-nuke-sub-missile-launch-fails/
Funny how this follows Russia threatening to nuke London but it looks like we need not have worried about Jeremy Corbyn writing "the letters".
Heads need to roll for this. And another test is needed ASAP - preferably more than one - where it is seen publicly to work.
The swing from Tories to Labour during the 2017 general election campaign was 8%, in the opinion polls, and then an extra 2% due to opinion poll error.
If we applied that election campaign swing to the current opinion polls, but in the Tories favour, the Tories would have a slender 2% lead, perhaps around 310 seats, and you'd think that Labour, Lib Dems and assorted Celtic Nationalists, would have enough votes to win a vote of no confidence in a Tory minority government, but it would be close.
Could Labour have an election campaign as bad as Theresa May in 2017? Does Sunak have the potential to convince the electorate he's not half as bad as people have said he is?
When I was a child my Dad took me skiing and, frankly, it was something that often scared me. I could be a timid skier, and that's no way to ski. If you hang back the weight comes off the front of your skis, and they can easily be knocked one way or the other - sending you sprawling onto your face. And that's how, at the age of nine, I managed to break the femur in my left leg.
I wonder about Starmer. He's a timid politician. Sometimes playing safety first isn't safe. It betrays a lack of confidence in yourself and your convictions. If you don't have confidence in yourself, why should the electorate? I think there's a chance that Starmer's timidity will see him take a tumble during an election campaign and land flat on his face.
Maybe the 7/1 available from William Hill on Conservative Most Seats is value?
An interesting thesis, and worth some meditation. My initial reaction, though is that Starmer doesn't have to not stumble. He just has to stumble less than Sunak. So far he is clearing that bar.
I’m not convinced Starmer is timid. He’s established something akin to an iron grip of the Labour Party. He’s expelled dozens of the far left including the former party leader secured the NEC, taken stances on issues like Gaza and taxation that are calculated to infuriate half of his party, and he patiently picked apart the apparently untouchable Johnson from the height of his powers to his post-partygate nadir.
The timidity, such as it is, relates to not steering a radical course ahead of the election, but even that is a kind of calculated timidity.
"Workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your calculated timidity!"
I'm not entirely sure it's doing it for me.
The big question is what happens after the election.
The most important thing is the economy. All else (well apart from having Trident missiles that actually work) is secondary to that. Labour will need a bit of luck.
That was extremely embarrassing, and terrible timing. It might even threaten our geopolitical position with Putin.
What on earth is the point of us having a nuclear deterrent and spending all that money on it if it doesn't bloody work?
A missile that goes three yards then flops in the sea does seem horribly emblematic of the UK right now
The swing from Tories to Labour during the 2017 general election campaign was 8%, in the opinion polls, and then an extra 2% due to opinion poll error.
If we applied that election campaign swing to the current opinion polls, but in the Tories favour, the Tories would have a slender 2% lead, perhaps around 310 seats, and you'd think that Labour, Lib Dems and assorted Celtic Nationalists, would have enough votes to win a vote of no confidence in a Tory minority government, but it would be close.
Could Labour have an election campaign as bad as Theresa May in 2017? Does Sunak have the potential to convince the electorate he's not half as bad as people have said he is?
When I was a child my Dad took me skiing and, frankly, it was something that often scared me. I could be a timid skier, and that's no way to ski. If you hang back the weight comes off the front of your skis, and they can easily be knocked one way or the other - sending you sprawling onto your face. And that's how, at the age of nine, I managed to break the femur in my left leg.
I wonder about Starmer. He's a timid politician. Sometimes playing safety first isn't safe. It betrays a lack of confidence in yourself and your convictions. If you don't have confidence in yourself, why should the electorate? I think there's a chance that Starmer's timidity will see him take a tumble during an election campaign and land flat on his face.
Maybe the 7/1 available from William Hill on Conservative Most Seats is value?
An interesting thesis, and worth some meditation. My initial reaction, though is that Starmer doesn't have to not stumble. He just has to stumble less than Sunak. So far he is clearing that bar.
I’m not convinced Starmer is timid. He’s established something akin to an iron grip of the Labour Party. He’s expelled dozens of the far left including the former party leader secured the NEC, taken stances on issues like Gaza and taxation that are calculated to infuriate half of his party, and he patiently picked apart the apparently untouchable Johnson from the height of his powers to his post-partygate nadir.
The timidity, such as it is, relates to not steering a radical course ahead of the election, but even that is a kind of calculated timidity.
I suppose the one thing that stands out for me was his response to cancelling HS2. If he'd been a bit bolder then I think he could have built a strong argument about Labour still believing in the future of Britain, where the Tories had given up.
I understand that he didn't do that because the Tories wanted him to step into the trap of promising to spend lots of money on HS2 - but I think that the Tory game-playing with HS2 was so desperate that it's the sort of trap that could have been made to blow up in their faces with a bit of confidence and optimism.
I'm pretty confident Labour will romp home at the general election, but this was an idea I wanted to try out, see what it looked like under examination. I think the weakest link in the scenario is Sunak and the Tories - but then as a leftie I would think that.
Starmer won't take the lead on anything.
His form of "leadership" is entirely negative and based entirely on shadowing the moves of others.
NAVY FLOP British nuclear sub missile launch FAILS as Trident misfires and ‘plops’ into sea just yards away – with Shapps on board Details of the misfire are not being made public on the grounds of 'national security' ... The second failed launch in a row – after a misfire in 2016 – happened while Defence Secretary Grant Shapps was on board HMS Vanguard to witness the test. https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/26070479/trident-nuke-sub-missile-launch-fails/
Funny how this follows Russia threatening to nuke London but it looks like we need not have worried about Jeremy Corbyn writing "the letters".
Heads need to roll for this. And another test is needed ASAP - preferably more than one - where it is seen publicly to work.
Embarrassment is off the scale.
Risk is that there's a bit of a cockup on the decapitation axe front.
The swing from Tories to Labour during the 2017 general election campaign was 8%, in the opinion polls, and then an extra 2% due to opinion poll error.
If we applied that election campaign swing to the current opinion polls, but in the Tories favour, the Tories would have a slender 2% lead, perhaps around 310 seats, and you'd think that Labour, Lib Dems and assorted Celtic Nationalists, would have enough votes to win a vote of no confidence in a Tory minority government, but it would be close.
Could Labour have an election campaign as bad as Theresa May in 2017? Does Sunak have the potential to convince the electorate he's not half as bad as people have said he is?
When I was a child my Dad took me skiing and, frankly, it was something that often scared me. I could be a timid skier, and that's no way to ski. If you hang back the weight comes off the front of your skis, and they can easily be knocked one way or the other - sending you sprawling onto your face. And that's how, at the age of nine, I managed to break the femur in my left leg.
I wonder about Starmer. He's a timid politician. Sometimes playing safety first isn't safe. It betrays a lack of confidence in yourself and your convictions. If you don't have confidence in yourself, why should the electorate? I think there's a chance that Starmer's timidity will see him take a tumble during an election campaign and land flat on his face.
Maybe the 7/1 available from William Hill on Conservative Most Seats is value?
An interesting thesis, and worth some meditation. My initial reaction, though is that Starmer doesn't have to not stumble. He just has to stumble less than Sunak. So far he is clearing that bar.
I’m not convinced Starmer is timid. He’s established something akin to an iron grip of the Labour Party. He’s expelled dozens of the far left including the former party leader secured the NEC, taken stances on issues like Gaza and taxation that are calculated to infuriate half of his party, and he patiently picked apart the apparently untouchable Johnson from the height of his powers to his post-partygate nadir.
The timidity, such as it is, relates to not steering a radical course ahead of the election, but even that is a kind of calculated timidity.
"Workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your calculated timidity!"
I'm not entirely sure it's doing it for me.
The big question is what happens after the election.
The most important thing is the economy. All else (well apart from having Trident missiles that actually work) is secondary to that. Labour will need a bit of luck.
That was extremely embarrassing, and terrible timing. It might even threaten our geopolitical position with Putin.
What on earth is the point of us having a nuclear deterrent and spending all that money on it if it doesn't bloody work?
A missile that goes three yards then flops in the sea does seem horribly emblematic of the UK right now
I see the most-read article in the Spectator is an insane document where the author actually admits to taking “Tippex typewriter correction fluid” to get high
Grim news from Birmingham today. City Council has announced cuts to deal with effective insolvency notice. Includes:
-sale of £750m of assets -cuts of to public services by £300m over two years -21% rise in Council Tax -dimming street lights -fortnightly bin collections
Their liabilities for equal pay claims that look quite tenuous ought to make people question the premise of the legislation.
This situation is the effect of creating laws with massive implications, but are poorly drafted and open to widely differing interpretation by the courts. Little has changed since 2010, if anything after 2016 the laws coming out of government have got more problematic.
And what's great is that Labour have promised to introduce even MORE laws like this
Britain is so fucked, who on earth wants to stay there, in literally darkened streets, hammered by freezing rain for 6 months a year
We are creating the first Failed Neo-Socialist Wokeland, with 2 trillion annual migrants
The brilliant irony about 'darkened streets' is that a decision to proceed with this could potentially be challenged under the same legislation that led to the equal pay claims - IE it adversely impacts on certain groups with protected characteristics.
Little can ultimately be addressed until politics triumphs over law (a feature of many conflicts in Western democracies - ie Brexit, Trump, small boats etc) - a point made persuasively by Lord Sumption.
Law is the outcome of politics. The Equal Pay Act 1970 was part of the Labour manifesto of 1964. It was literally a political decision to introduce it. No one is saying the courts are implementing it wrongly. They’re just doing what Parliament intended. Similarly if you read the Labour manifesto in 1997 it’s hard to miss proposals that ended up as the Human Rights Act. Similarly enacted by politicians.
How does “politics over law” work in practice then? Politicians introduce laws. It’s what they do. When they don’t like the outcome they blame the people charged with implementing them.
The basic criticism is that the state that has emerged from the vast proliferation of law (which is a late 20th Century phenomena) has become unmanageable. There is so much law that it hinders the natural operation of politics and political decision making.
It is hard to disagree with this as a premise. Even though my whole livelihood and career has been defined by working through the implications of law, I can see that there is something fundamentally wrong with the broader structure. It is also becoming increasingly clear to me that the way 'things get done' is often, in reality, where rules and laws get ignored or broken, as was the case with the Covid response.
It's a facet of the Process State - the response to anything is to add thousands of pages of laws that aren't capable of being read or comprehended by any one individual.
The attempt is to guarantee an outcome. Since humans and their works are non-linear, this is mathematically proven not to work.
The response to this is to add more laws - because *this time*, if we add just a few more thousand pages, all the Little People will line up nicely and do exactly what they are supposed to.
NAVY FLOP British nuclear sub missile launch FAILS as Trident misfires and ‘plops’ into sea just yards away – with Shapps on board Details of the misfire are not being made public on the grounds of 'national security' ... The second failed launch in a row – after a misfire in 2016 – happened while Defence Secretary Grant Shapps was on board HMS Vanguard to witness the test. https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/26070479/trident-nuke-sub-missile-launch-fails/
Funny how this follows Russia threatening to nuke London but it looks like we need not have worried about Jeremy Corbyn writing "the letters".
Heads need to roll for this. And another test is needed ASAP - preferably more than one - where it is seen publicly to work.
Embarrassment is off the scale.
You would think they would keep silent about it too - if the MOD announced it they are absolute idiots and if someone else did then they need to be shot.
Also, one for Dura, are you allowed to wear wigs on Subs? I’d have thought they were a potential hazard by getting caught in important overhead pipes.
Lying is too strong a word here, IMO. She went out all guns blazing without bothering to find out whether this might leave her exposed. She's thinking too much about her leadership campaign and not enough about being a minister. As for the Canada stuff,. that's just bizarre. She is showing remarkably poor judgement and seems to have a very thin skin. I am not sure she is the solution to the Tories' woes.
The swing from Tories to Labour during the 2017 general election campaign was 8%, in the opinion polls, and then an extra 2% due to opinion poll error.
If we applied that election campaign swing to the current opinion polls, but in the Tories favour, the Tories would have a slender 2% lead, perhaps around 310 seats, and you'd think that Labour, Lib Dems and assorted Celtic Nationalists, would have enough votes to win a vote of no confidence in a Tory minority government, but it would be close.
Could Labour have an election campaign as bad as Theresa May in 2017? Does Sunak have the potential to convince the electorate he's not half as bad as people have said he is?
When I was a child my Dad took me skiing and, frankly, it was something that often scared me. I could be a timid skier, and that's no way to ski. If you hang back the weight comes off the front of your skis, and they can easily be knocked one way or the other - sending you sprawling onto your face. And that's how, at the age of nine, I managed to break the femur in my left leg.
I wonder about Starmer. He's a timid politician. Sometimes playing safety first isn't safe. It betrays a lack of confidence in yourself and your convictions. If you don't have confidence in yourself, why should the electorate? I think there's a chance that Starmer's timidity will see him take a tumble during an election campaign and land flat on his face.
Maybe the 7/1 available from William Hill on Conservative Most Seats is value?
An interesting thesis, and worth some meditation. My initial reaction, though is that Starmer doesn't have to not stumble. He just has to stumble less than Sunak. So far he is clearing that bar.
I’m not convinced Starmer is timid. He’s established something akin to an iron grip of the Labour Party. He’s expelled dozens of the far left including the former party leader secured the NEC, taken stances on issues like Gaza and taxation that are calculated to infuriate half of his party, and he patiently picked apart the apparently untouchable Johnson from the height of his powers to his post-partygate nadir.
The timidity, such as it is, relates to not steering a radical course ahead of the election, but even that is a kind of calculated timidity.
I suppose the one thing that stands out for me was his response to cancelling HS2. If he'd been a bit bolder then I think he could have built a strong argument about Labour still believing in the future of Britain, where the Tories had given up.
I understand that he didn't do that because the Tories wanted him to step into the trap of promising to spend lots of money on HS2 - but I think that the Tory game-playing with HS2 was so desperate that it's the sort of trap that could have been made to blow up in their faces with a bit of confidence and optimism.
I'm pretty confident Labour will romp home at the general election, but this was an idea I wanted to try out, see what it looked like under examination. I think the weakest link in the scenario is Sunak and the Tories - but then as a leftie I would think that.
Starmer won't take the lead on anything.
His form of "leadership" is entirely negative and based entirely on shadowing the moves of others.
I am not sure that explains how he has managed to take control of all the levers of power inside the Labour party.
NAVY FLOP British nuclear sub missile launch FAILS as Trident misfires and ‘plops’ into sea just yards away – with Shapps on board Details of the misfire are not being made public on the grounds of 'national security' ... The second failed launch in a row – after a misfire in 2016 – happened while Defence Secretary Grant Shapps was on board HMS Vanguard to witness the test. https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/26070479/trident-nuke-sub-missile-launch-fails/
Funny how this follows Russia threatening to nuke London but it looks like we need not have worried about Jeremy Corbyn writing "the letters".
It seems a strange and unnecessary distraction to have 1SL and Shappsie and his furry friend actually on the boat for the firing. All of the action is at NOTU HQ at Canaveral and on the range ship. There is nothing to see on the sub because a) they are at launch depth and b) there's no telemetry back from the missile. Maybe the US wouldn't entertain the Shapps party at NOTU.
Shapps was there to bask in the glow of a successful launch and get photos of him looking all Hunt for Red October for his interwebz.
I suppose one small positive is he won't now have that.
NAVY FLOP British nuclear sub missile launch FAILS as Trident misfires and ‘plops’ into sea just yards away – with Shapps on board Details of the misfire are not being made public on the grounds of 'national security' ... The second failed launch in a row – after a misfire in 2016 – happened while Defence Secretary Grant Shapps was on board HMS Vanguard to witness the test. https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/26070479/trident-nuke-sub-missile-launch-fails/
Funny how this follows Russia threatening to nuke London but it looks like we need not have worried about Jeremy Corbyn writing "the letters".
Heads need to roll for this. And another test is needed ASAP - preferably more than one - where it is seen publicly to work.
Embarrassment is off the scale.
You would think they would keep silent about it too - if the MOD announced it they are absolute idiots and if someone else did then they need to be shot.
Also, one for Dura, are you allowed to wear wigs on Subs? I’d have thought they were a potential hazard by getting caught in important overhead pipes.
Presumably it was filmed - hence the presence of Shapps - they were hoping for a morale boosting vid showing HMG's commitment to deterring Putin
And it immediately flopped into the sea
Given that it was filmed they couldn't risk it being leaked, and becoming an even worse embarrassment. Is my guess. So the admission gets ahead of the curve. Sort of
NAVY FLOP British nuclear sub missile launch FAILS as Trident misfires and ‘plops’ into sea just yards away – with Shapps on board Details of the misfire are not being made public on the grounds of 'national security' ... The second failed launch in a row – after a misfire in 2016 – happened while Defence Secretary Grant Shapps was on board HMS Vanguard to witness the test. https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/26070479/trident-nuke-sub-missile-launch-fails/
Funny how this follows Russia threatening to nuke London but it looks like we need not have worried about Jeremy Corbyn writing "the letters".
It seems a strange and unnecessary distraction to have 1SL and Shappsie and his furry friend actually on the boat for the firing. All of the action is at NOTU HQ at Canaveral and on the range ship. There is nothing to see on the sub because a) they are at launch depth and b) there's no telemetry back from the missile. Maybe the US wouldn't entertain the Shapps party at NOTU.
Shapps was there to bask in the glow of a successful launch and get photos of him looking all Hunt for Red October for his interwebz.
I suppose one small positive is he won't now have that.
She would surely have ensured that there was plausible deniability.
If we're talking about Kemi and the Postmasters, that was presumably the point of the letter she released. Everyone knows you say the dodgy stuff face to face and then put a decaffeinated version of it on paper.
What may yet cause KB trouble is overreach in the sheer aggression of her response. Never speak or tweet while you're angry, which is difficult when anger is your default response to criticism.
NAVY FLOP British nuclear sub missile launch FAILS as Trident misfires and ‘plops’ into sea just yards away – with Shapps on board Details of the misfire are not being made public on the grounds of 'national security' ... The second failed launch in a row – after a misfire in 2016 – happened while Defence Secretary Grant Shapps was on board HMS Vanguard to witness the test. https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/26070479/trident-nuke-sub-missile-launch-fails/
Funny how this follows Russia threatening to nuke London but it looks like we need not have worried about Jeremy Corbyn writing "the letters".
Heads need to roll for this. And another test is needed ASAP - preferably more than one - where it is seen publicly to work.
Embarrassment is off the scale.
You would think they would keep silent about it too - if the MOD announced it they are absolute idiots and if someone else did then they need to be shot.
Also, one for Dura, are you allowed to wear wigs on Subs? I’d have thought they were a potential hazard by getting caught in important overhead pipes.
Trying to hide such things is childish. The test launches are announced and the absence of a launch is quite noticeable. The reentries at the other end are quite noticeable and attract photographers
NAVY FLOP British nuclear sub missile launch FAILS as Trident misfires and ‘plops’ into sea just yards away – with Shapps on board Details of the misfire are not being made public on the grounds of 'national security' ... The second failed launch in a row – after a misfire in 2016 – happened while Defence Secretary Grant Shapps was on board HMS Vanguard to witness the test. https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/26070479/trident-nuke-sub-missile-launch-fails/
Funny how this follows Russia threatening to nuke London but it looks like we need not have worried about Jeremy Corbyn writing "the letters".
Heads need to roll for this. And another test is needed ASAP - preferably more than one - where it is seen publicly to work.
Embarrassment is off the scale.
You would think they would keep silent about it too - if the MOD announced it they are absolute idiots and if someone else did then they need to be shot.
Also, one for Dura, are you allowed to wear wigs on Subs? I’d have thought they were a potential hazard by getting caught in important overhead pipes.
Shappsie is a civvie so his rig of the day is at the captain's discretion.
Grim news from Birmingham today. City Council has announced cuts to deal with effective insolvency notice. Includes:
-sale of £750m of assets -cuts of to public services by £300m over two years -21% rise in Council Tax -dimming street lights -fortnightly bin collections
Their liabilities for equal pay claims that look quite tenuous ought to make people question the premise of the legislation.
This situation is the effect of creating laws with massive implications, but are poorly drafted and open to widely differing interpretation by the courts. Little has changed since 2010, if anything after 2016 the laws coming out of government have got more problematic.
And what's great is that Labour have promised to introduce even MORE laws like this
Britain is so fucked, who on earth wants to stay there, in literally darkened streets, hammered by freezing rain for 6 months a year
We are creating the first Failed Neo-Socialist Wokeland, with 2 trillion annual migrants
The brilliant irony about 'darkened streets' is that a decision to proceed with this could potentially be challenged under the same legislation that led to the equal pay claims - IE it adversely impacts on certain groups with protected characteristics.
Little can ultimately be addressed until politics triumphs over law (a feature of many conflicts in Western democracies - ie Brexit, Trump, small boats etc) - a point made persuasively by Lord Sumption.
Law is the outcome of politics. The Equal Pay Act 1970 was part of the Labour manifesto of 1964. It was literally a political decision to introduce it. No one is saying the courts are implementing it wrongly. They’re just doing what Parliament intended. Similarly if you read the Labour manifesto in 1997 it’s hard to miss proposals that ended up as the Human Rights Act. Similarly enacted by politicians.
How does “politics over law” work in practice then? Politicians introduce laws. It’s what they do. When they don’t like the outcome they blame the people charged with implementing them.
The basic criticism is that the state that has emerged from the vast proliferation of law (which is a late 20th Century phenomena) has become unmanageable. There is so much law that it hinders the natural operation of politics and political decision making.
It is hard to disagree with this as a premise. Even though my whole livelihood and career has been defined by working through the implications of law, I can see that there is something fundamentally wrong with the broader structure. It is also becoming increasingly clear to me that the way 'things get done' is often, in reality, where rules and laws get ignored or broken, as was the case with the Covid response.
It's a facet of the Process State - the response to anything is to add thousands of pages of laws that aren't capable of being read or comprehended by any one individual.
The attempt is to guarantee an outcome. Since humans and their works are non-linear, this is mathematically proven not to work.
The response to this is to add more laws - because *this time*, if we add just a few more thousand pages, all the Little People will line up nicely and do exactly what they are supposed to.
The Conservative party understood this when they came to power in 2010. There are quite amusing accounts from people like Steve Hilton about their attempts to review and scrap all this regulation/process, the outcome of discussions with civil servants was always, upon reviewing any one bit of process, they always came away concluding that, rather than scrapping it, more needed to be added. It was widely regarded as a futile exercise.
I honestly don't know what the answer is to this, but what I would comment, is that if you look at the history of the 'rule of law', most of the time laws are just ignored and have no effect whatsoever.
No surprise there. No one likes to see children dying and atm it is more Palestinian children dying than Israeli ones and hence the sympathy.
I get a few "Ceasefire Now" posts from aid agencies on my fb feed (yes, I'm that old) and as an experiment I clicked on the Oxfam one. We must stop the killing, etc. OK, thought I, let's click through and take a look. Here is the timeline on my Oxfam International fb feed:
October 7th: a call for high income countries to honour their pledges on climate support.
October 9th: pointing out 57% of the world's poorest countries are having to cut spending.
October 9th: Call for aid for Morocco following the earthquake there.
October 9th-13th: stuff about rich countries, climate, Moroccan earthquake.
October 13th: call for "all parties" to ceasefire in Gaza.
October 14th - Feb 21st: calls for urgent ceasefires in Gaza.
A top civil servant told the former chairman of the Post Office to “hobble” into the election and not to “rip off the band aid” in terms of its finances, according to a memo unearthed on Tuesday.
Sarah Munby, who was then permanent secretary at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, warned Henry Staunton that “politicians do not necessarily like to confront reality” and that “now was not the time for dealing with long-term issues”, according to a contemporaneous note of their first meeting on January 5 last year.
The discovery of the January 5 memo now raises serious questions over the accuracy of Badenoch’s denial and her decision to brand Staunton a liar.
Hardly, given the claim he was instructed by Badenoch to stymie it. He wasn't.
what we do not know is under what authority the civil servant acted, or was it of her own volition.
His claim about that in his interview wasn't that Badenoch directly instructed him to, rather that a senior official did. He made other separate claims about Badenoch's behaviour when sacking him.
Which is one reason it was so daft to directly call him a liar rather than defuse the story by stating you would personally never do that and blaming it on overreach by departmental officials, a misinterpretation, and sour grapes.
Now she has called him a liar and what he said appears substantively true, it's a far worse story for her than it might've been if had been able to dismiss it as civil service dysfunction.
FWIW, the original accusation: “Early on, I was told by a fairly senior person to stall on spending on compensation and on the replacement of Horizon, and to limp, in quotation marks — I did a file note on it — limp into the election. It was not an anti-postmaster thing, it was just straight financials. I didn’t ask, because I said, ‘I’m having no part of it – I’m not here to limp into the election, it’s not the right thing to do by postmasters.’ The word ‘limp’ gives you a snapshot of where they were.”
Should be regarded as an anti-Semitic act in my view - we can't possibly know what Amy Winehouse would have made of the current situation in Gaza, so to deface her monument in this way can only be about her Jewishness.
There seems to be a pattern of behaviour going on in London at the moment?
I live in the middle of rural central England, so London is as remote to me as Kuala Lumur really, but it seems very concerning what's happening in the capitol and I wonder where this is all going once the Tories are turfed out and Labour hold sway? 🤷♂️
GIN, London is a cesspit , full of no gooders and wrong uns, that is your great multi - cultural malarkey spouted about how great it is in London, we have imported bigoted troublemakers and intolerant rabble rousers.
Tucker Carlson vs Boris Johnson. It's all kicking off between Leon's favourites.
Tucker interviewed Putin (or at least was in the same room while Putin spoke for hours)
Boris called Tucker a tool of the Kremlin
Tucker asked Boris for an interview
Boris asked Tucker for $1 million
Tucker accused Boris of stopping a peace deal between Russia & Ukraine at the behest of the US Government, and therefore causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people
Grim news from Birmingham today. City Council has announced cuts to deal with effective insolvency notice. Includes:
-sale of £750m of assets -cuts of to public services by £300m over two years -21% rise in Council Tax -dimming street lights -fortnightly bin collections
Their liabilities for equal pay claims that look quite tenuous ought to make people question the premise of the legislation.
This situation is the effect of creating laws with massive implications, but are poorly drafted and open to widely differing interpretation by the courts. Little has changed since 2010, if anything after 2016 the laws coming out of government have got more problematic.
And what's great is that Labour have promised to introduce even MORE laws
Britain is so fucked, who on earth wants to stay there, in literally darkened streets, hammered by freezing drizzle
We are creating the first Failed Neo-Socialist Wokeland, with 2 trillion migrants a year
What do they drink in Phnomh Penh? Looks like good stuff and I imagine it's pretty cheap.
There is more than a grain of truth in that post for sure
Lying is too strong a word here, IMO. She went out all guns blazing without bothering to find out whether this might leave her exposed. She's thinking too much about her leadership campaign and not enough about being a minister. As for the Canada stuff,. that's just bizarre. She is showing remarkably poor judgement and seems to have a very thin skin. I am not sure she is the solution to the Tories' woes.
Understatement of the century, Liz Truss clone, totally talentless and promoted well well beyond her capabilities.
Grim news from Birmingham today. City Council has announced cuts to deal with effective insolvency notice. Includes:
-sale of £750m of assets -cuts of to public services by £300m over two years -21% rise in Council Tax -dimming street lights -fortnightly bin collections
Council tax would have gone up by 4.99% a year or 10.23% over 2 years in any case. The net increase due to the s114 notice is 9.6%. Not that this is the biggest part of the revenue balancing.
Cuts will happen to every department. Home to School transport, adult social care. Libraries, roads, planning, Every council department.
The tragedy is that they knew what they were doing. The Labour leader of the council had legal advice that the way he was solving the 2017 bin strike broke the law and put the council at risk of being sued. They got rid of him and put in another Labour leader. This one did the much same for the 2019 bin strike. The auditors estimate the bill for this could be £760m, though the commissioners think it will be settled for less than £300m.
The same cabinet replaced the council's financial system with Oracle. Oracle told them what they were buying shouldn't be altered in any way. The council altered it, and broke it. The £20m system is estimated to cost another £100m to fix. The same cabinet passed a budget with about £80m of savings in it. Savings that they have not delivered. The same budget had 0% in it for inflation. Inflation peaked over 10%, That means the council has underbudgetted by about £90m. Mismanagement by the council leaders has set the council up for a potential £1030m bill just from these 4 mistakes, though one that will probably come in around half that.
The commissioners are driving through £500m sale of assets, In effect £30m increase in council tax and £300m cuts to the council's budget. Labour are still saying it is the fault of the coalition government.
Grim news from Birmingham today. City Council has announced cuts to deal with effective insolvency notice. Includes:
-sale of £750m of assets -cuts of to public services by £300m over two years -21% rise in Council Tax -dimming street lights -fortnightly bin collections
Their liabilities for equal pay claims that look quite tenuous ought to make people question the premise of the legislation.
Refuse collectors have been paid more than all other council jobs of the same grade. Refuse collectors are nearly all men. Other jobs are partly or mostly women. The net effect of the implementation of the law says that a man working a grade 3 job at the council can claim equal pay compensation under what is called sex discrimination. On the surface that seems wrong. Beneath that, a grade 3 worker in one job should be paid the same as a grade 3 worker in another job regardless of sex. The mockery of the law is that if the council outsources workers, the law no-longer applies and they can be paid wildly different amounts. Even though they do the same job and ultimately for the same people.
Comments
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/hunter-bidens-lawyers-say-prosecutors-confused-picture-sawdust-cocaine-rcna139656
Spoiler - they did.
1. He won't do that. Consider: it would piss off the grey vote, who love seeing their housing wealth inflated and hate having their peace and their countryside views ruined by construction. Rich old people are so numerous and electorally powerful that none of the parties dare oppose them.
2. The moment Labour flips a load of Tory suburban seats, you create a voting bloc of Labour Nimbies in Parliament. Because they will be every bit as determined to save the enraged homeowner bloc amongst their constituents from the march of the Barratt boxes as would their predecessors.
3. Even if the volume housebuilders can find enough skilled labour to massively ramp up production, would it be in their interest to do so? Building rabbit hutch homes as densely as possible in small numbers maximises profit (by maintaining a choked off supply of shoddy rubbish that they can palm off on desperate buyers in a massively overheated market.) Why would they change?
4. Private sector construction does nothing to address the enormous need for social rented homes for the millions and millions of penniless renters who are too old or badly paid to be able to take on a mortgage.
The fundamental problem is that there is precious little that can be achieved to dig this decaying country out of the mire without a lot of very expensive investment. That means yet more taxes, and the population splits into two blocs on that subject: renters and people with gigantic mortgages, who are bled white and have little or nothing left to give; and rich older homeowners, who are flush but also believe they pay more than enough already, and ideally shouldn't be asked to pay for anything at all. They are awash with money, but also have so many votes that the politicians are terrified of them and are slaves to their interests.
So we get the parties insisting there is no more money (yet simultaneously refusing to tap the nation's immense store of asset wealth AND somehow always finding enough cash to fund the Triple Lock down the back of the Treasury sofa,) and being reduced to spouting vacuous shite about vaguely defined "reforms" that will miraculously solve everything by generating rampant economic growth.
They won't. It's bollocks. And so we carry on circling the plughole.
In Edwardian/Victorian times, suburbs were built by selling one road (or part of a road) to a developer. Plots laid out. So the developer who decided not to build ended up last to market…
Build enough of any kind of properties, private or public, and prices will come down.
Price is the signal of the shortage.
F1: testing starts today, ends on the 23rd. And the first race is a week later, so not much time to turn things around although upgrades will likely be forthcoming for many. Bad reliability, however, may be trickier.
Second, it wouldn't apply in this case for two very good reasons. One is that Gaza is not a state, and if it were, as Hamas is a proscribed terrorist organisation we are not 'at peace' with them.
The other is it does not apply to dual nationals fighting for their other country. Indeed, taking out British nationality comes with a specific warning that that does not on its own excuse you from military service for any other country you hold citizenship of. Since Israel has a very broad definition of what constitutes a citizen, it's difficult to imagine these 13 won't be covered by that,
Britain is so fucked, who on earth wants to stay there, in literally darkened streets, hammered by freezing rain for 6 months a year
We are creating the first Failed Neo-Socialist Wokeland, with 2 trillion annual migrants
CAMBODIA
Can you imagine him doing a 2 hour interview with Boris though. How would Boris and his take on Ukraine fare? If Boris is confident enough about his position, he should go and do it, and try to persuade people - instead we are just getting tiktok propoganda snippets and daily mail columns from Boris, it makes him look like a lightweight.
Sarah Munby, who was then permanent secretary at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, warned Henry Staunton that “politicians do not necessarily like to confront reality” and that “now was not the time for dealing with long-term issues”, according to a contemporaneous note of their first meeting on January 5 last year.
The discovery of the January 5 memo now raises serious questions over the accuracy of Badenoch’s denial and her decision to brand Staunton a liar.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/post-office-boss-was-told-dont-rip-off-the-band-aid-on-finances-3m0ppm7fl
Little can ultimately be addressed until politics starts to triumph over law (a feature of many conflicts in Western democracies - ie Brexit, Trump, small boats etc) - a point made persuasively by Lord Sumption.
Chose from
1) it’s unfair to ask
2) Civil service confidentiality
3) My bum looks big in this excuse
4) Squirrel!
@Available4Panto
And now Scott Benton.
Rishi Sunak is the first Prime Minister in history to hold a general election in installments.
We've now experienced the longest fall in living standards since records began, at the SAME TIME as we imported 1.4 million migrants in two years
Will Brits simply lie back and accept this, forever and ever?
Perhaps. We are a stoical people, and that stoicism can be bad - apathetic, complacent, "oh look we don't have street lights any more, thanks to mad equality laws", hey ho, "mustn't grumble"
Otherwise, effectively, any law or any policy can be open to be stopped by spurious claims from special interest groups.
Birmingham is fucked, it has been fucked by various councils over the years. So be it. People will live with the consequences of who they elected.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/fears-birmingham-s-21-council-tax-rise-could-lead-to-mass-exodus/ar-BB1iCSZW?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=U531&cvid=6a10f3daf37146ecaa22925e301d3773&ei=27
How does “politics over law” work in practice then? Politicians introduce laws. It’s what they do. When they don’t like the outcome they blame the people charged with implementing them.
what we do not know is under what authority the civil servant acted, or was it of her own volition.
He said he was instructed by a senior civil servant.
Badenoch called him a liar.
Eaten anything exotic ?
Tarantula ?
He was instructed by a senior civil servant to stall on compensation payments to Horizon victims so the government could “limp into the election” with the lowest possible financial liability.
Tricky, I know
Probably not the effect you’ll get in Birmingham but it’s rather nice in the countryside.
Otherwise the food has been universally brilliant. Astonishingly good. Best I’ve probably eaten anywhere in the world - no exaggeration
And it doesn’t seem to matter what cuisine you eat. Indian, Thai, Japanese, Spanish, pizza, it’s all fantastic - as is the Khmer food (a great mix of Chinese and Vietnamese with some French)
What on earth is the point of us having a nuclear deterrent and spending all that money on it if it doesn't bloody work?
It is hard to disagree with this as a premise. Even though my whole livelihood and career has been defined by working through the implications of law, I can see that there is something fundamentally wrong with the broader structure. It is also becoming increasingly clear to me that the way 'things get done' is often, in reality, where rules and laws get ignored or broken, as was the case with the Covid response.
Embarrassment is off the scale.
His form of "leadership" is entirely negative and based entirely on shadowing the moves of others.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/think-drug-legalisation-is-a-good-idea-visit-fentanyl-land/
New depths are plumbed
Reminds me of James and Polly's constant whinges on national media outlets of their views being closed down.
The attempt is to guarantee an outcome. Since humans and their works are non-linear, this is mathematically proven not to work.
The response to this is to add more laws - because *this time*, if we add just a few more thousand pages, all the Little People will line up nicely and do exactly what they are supposed to.
Instead of https://youtu.be/bWXazVhlyxQ?si=ison4hog2NGtzLhm
Also, one for Dura, are you allowed to wear wigs on Subs? I’d have thought they were a potential hazard by getting caught in important overhead pipes.
I suppose one small positive is he won't now have that.
And it immediately flopped into the sea
Given that it was filmed they couldn't risk it being leaked, and becoming an even worse embarrassment. Is my guess. So the admission gets ahead of the curve. Sort of
NEW THREAD
What may yet cause KB trouble is overreach in the sheer aggression of her response. Never speak or tweet while you're angry, which is difficult when anger is your default response to criticism.
I honestly don't know what the answer is to this, but what I would comment, is that if you look at the history of the 'rule of law', most of the time laws are just ignored and have no effect whatsoever.
No surprise there. No one likes to see children dying and atm it is more Palestinian children dying than Israeli ones and hence the sympathy.
I get a few "Ceasefire Now" posts from aid agencies on my fb feed (yes, I'm that old) and as an experiment I clicked on the Oxfam one. We must stop the killing, etc. OK, thought I, let's click through and take a look. Here is the timeline on my Oxfam International fb feed:
October 7th: a call for high income countries to honour their pledges on climate support.
October 9th: pointing out 57% of the world's poorest countries are having to cut spending.
October 9th: Call for aid for Morocco following the earthquake there.
October 9th-13th: stuff about rich countries, climate, Moroccan earthquake.
October 13th: call for "all parties" to ceasefire in Gaza.
October 14th - Feb 21st: calls for urgent ceasefires in Gaza.
Which is one reason it was so daft to directly call him a liar rather than defuse the story by stating you would personally never do that and blaming it on overreach by departmental officials, a misinterpretation, and sour grapes.
Now she has called him a liar and what he said appears substantively true, it's a far worse story for her than it might've been if had been able to dismiss it as civil service dysfunction.
FWIW, the original accusation: “Early on, I was told by a fairly senior person to stall on spending on compensation and on the replacement of Horizon, and to limp, in quotation marks — I did a file note on it — limp into the election. It was not an anti-postmaster thing, it was just straight financials. I didn’t ask, because I said, ‘I’m having no part of it – I’m not here to limp into the election, it’s not the right thing to do by postmasters.’ The word ‘limp’ gives you a snapshot of where they were.”
Cuts will happen to every department. Home to School transport, adult social care. Libraries, roads, planning, Every council department.
The tragedy is that they knew what they were doing. The Labour leader of the council had legal advice that the way he was solving the 2017 bin strike broke the law and put the council at risk of being sued. They got rid of him and put in another Labour leader. This one did the much same for the 2019 bin strike. The auditors estimate the bill for this could be £760m, though the commissioners think it will be settled for less than £300m.
The same cabinet replaced the council's financial system with Oracle. Oracle told them what they were buying shouldn't be altered in any way. The council altered it, and broke it. The £20m system is estimated to cost another £100m to fix. The same cabinet passed a budget with about £80m of savings in it. Savings that they have not delivered. The same budget had 0% in it for inflation. Inflation peaked over 10%, That means the council has underbudgetted by about £90m. Mismanagement by the council leaders has set the council up for a potential £1030m bill just from these 4 mistakes, though one that will probably come in around half that.
The commissioners are driving through £500m sale of assets, In effect £30m increase in council tax and £300m cuts to the council's budget. Labour are still saying it is the fault of the coalition government.