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Even Reform don’t want toxic Lee Anderson – politicalbetting.com
Even Reform don’t want toxic Lee Anderson – politicalbetting.com
Ben Habib suggests Lee Anderson, made a Tory deputy chair by Rishi Sunak, isn’t of sufficient calibre to be a Reform candidate pic.twitter.com/RBGGBERiXI
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https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/feb/26/david-cameron-impresses-after-100-days-as-foreign-secretary
Alas, it’s not the case. There are plenty on the vocal right for whom Lager Lee is totemic:
'Grassroots Conservative supporters have called Rishi Sunak a “snake” over Lee Anderson’s suspension as MPs on the Tory right said he should be given a route back in.
In leaked WhatsApp messages obtained by the Guardian, members of the Conservative Democratic Organisation (CDO), which was founded by disgruntled Tories after Boris Johnson and then Liz Truss were ousted, attacked the prime minister for kicking Anderson out of the parliamentary party.
Several of the activists endorsed Anderson’s comments and some went further in decrying “the threat of Islam”.’
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/feb/26/tory-supporters-lash-out-at-snake-sunak-over-lee-anderson-suspension
I was chatting with a tory friend yesterday about all of this. She thinks the whole lot of them (Badenoch, Braverman, Anderson etc. etc.) should be booted out of the party so they can join Reform. But we then got talking about when it all started and who is responsible.
A lot of this goes back to Boris who deliberately stoked the right wing rabble with its ‘anti-woke’ hatred, but I suggested that Boris is too dilettantish to devise such a thing.
At which point we both settled on Dominic Cummings.
Except the car park ticket machine would not accept my ticket. Another was out of order. A third accepted my ticket, but was cash only. Ditto the fourth and fifth. We only had twenties, and it would not accept those as it did not give change. Eventually we risked it and drove to the exit, where fortunately chip-and-pin worked. But we'd gone over the half-hour mark, so it cost us an extra eight quid.
For the extortionate amount they charge, you'd think they could actually ensure the machines worked properly...
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13128971/Manhunt-acid-attackers-corrosive-substance-victim-London-Elm-Park-Tube-station.html
Hence you were right the first time.
"Speculative Private Development: the report found another significant reason behind under delivery of homes are the limitations of private speculative development. The evidence shows that private developers produce houses at a rate at which they can be sold without needing to reduce their prices, rather than diversifying the types and numbers of homes they build to meet the needs of different communities (for example providing more affordable housing)."
This is why I think increasing supply through the planning system in the hope of reducing prices won't result in more homes being built, unless you create more capacity to build housing in the public/non-profit sector.
#GreatestForeignSecretarySincePalmerston
https://youtube.com/watch?v=K2zbN3AuHG8
I had just finished my Silver Swans class and was sharing a pot of green tea with my friend Howell. Howell is a 26 stone ex miner and Labour to his core but for some reason he was really looking down.
I reached out, "what,s up ?" I asked him. " It's Labour we're fked" he replied. "How come" I said " youre miles ahead in the polls."
"That's just it" Howelll cried " Miles ahead but with that prat Starmer. Completely spineless and no idea what to do next. The whole place is being run by Blair and Mandelson and if they get in they'll sell the country to american banks and to private equity. They'll take a big cut and the rest of us will be on the breadline."
What a chilling thought.
Labour I mused, it's not quite what it says on the tin.
(Having said that, the drop-off the previous Sunday went swimmingly. But you only remember the bad experiences...)
When will the right stop bleating about free speech, when what they want is consequence-free speech?
The problem is the consolidation of the housing market in the hands of a few large developers, mostly due to planning costs and complexity that overwhelms the average owner/builder except at the very top end of the market.
“Britain is back,” he triumphantly told a glitzy Foreign Office reception at Lancaster House just before Christmas. In a sign that not everyone thinks the world of Cameron, however, one senior government official present said they had found his address a little jarring. “You may be back,” they remarked. “We’ve been here all along.”
It might be that there's even more profit to be made by selling more houses at a lower cost. But the potential gains don't seem to be worth the risk of finding out.
As with evolution, the free market can create some brilliant things, but it can create some stupid harmful things, like the human throat, as well.
"Anderson, for his part, seems pretty relaxed about his suspension from the Conservative party; Braverman and Truss both appear to be having a much better time outside government than they ever did when they had to mind their language. The incentives operating on all three – presenting gig, leadership bid, pseudo-rehabilitation/book sales – are all more obviously appealing than a quiet life on the backbenches."
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/26/sunak-media-lee-anderson-sadiq-kahn-no-islamist?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
Supply and demand - and a local monopoly.
https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1762348151359382012
Yesterday, the Netherlands announced that it would be contributing more than €100 million to the Czech-led shell procurement effort for Ukraine, helping enable the delivery of hundreds of thousands of artillery shells.
A postmaster forced to hand back his compensation due to bankruptcy will use a £200,000 payment won following a three-year battle to support his ex-wife.
Francis Duff, 81, was driven from his business, suffered a divorce and lost his home after he was persecuted for “thieving” from his own till, when computer glitches were actually to blame.
He was offered more than £330,000 from a flagship scheme to compensate postmasters, but was told he would lose all but £8,000 because of his ongoing bankruptcy.
Duff, who won a certificate of valour from the Post Office for fighting off an armed robbery, said he had been “shafted twice” as he revealed he wore a coat indoors and wrapped a duvet around his legs to save on heating bills.
This week his lawyers announced that he would receive more than £200,000 of the compensation initially offered to him in a fight that has lasted three and a half years. Duff told The Times that he would use the money to support Louisa, 79, who left during their ordeal and now requires care for dementia.
His lawyer, Neil Hudgell, said the payment took “two years too long” and the settlement offered was “still too little” given the suffering he had endured.
Duff, from Bootle, Merseyside, had been a postmaster since 1981 and for two decades ran his post office without a problem until the Horizon computer system was installed in 2000.
He said the Horizon system showed “missing” cash of up to £200 every week. “Overall, I would conservatively estimate the shortfalls to have been in the region of £16,500,” he said. “I continued using my own salary to repay the Horizon shortfalls in cash.
“My relationship with my wife started to suffer. We had been happily married for 34 years, but we started to have arguments about the losses. She encouraged me to sack staff. I refused and she told me that I was ‘not man enough’. We separated while I was still working for Post Office and eventually divorced.”
He resigned from the Post Office, which was then sold. He declared bankruptcy in 2001 and the post office was sold for £25,000 — a fifth of the asking price. “The proceeds went directly to the bankruptcy estate, as did my share in the value of the marital home,” he said.
Twenty years later he was offered £330,893 compensation, but was told in a 30-page letter that all but £8,000, awarded for “distress”, would be taken away. Now, thanks to several creditors failing to come forward, Duff will receive an additional payout of more than £200,000, which he says will enable him to support his ex-wife.
“She was a good wife and a good mum, and I’ve not lost sight of the fact that this impacted hugely on her life too,” he said. “It was the Post Office that drove a wedge between us.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-post-office-drove-us-apart-now-i-can-help-care-for-her-fqv6k26dv
Patients waited on average more than two weeks longer for both chemotherapy and radiotherapy north of the border than people living in England.
The studies, carried out by the International Cancer Benchmarking Partnership (ICBP), co-funded by Cancer Research UK and published in The Lancet Oncology, showed lags compared with the rest of Britain, Norway and Australia.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/snp-to-blame-for-cancer-timebomb-as-scots-wait-longer-for-care-63jk52cmd
NHS failing in Labour Wales.
NHS failing in SNP Scotland.
Perhaps, jut perhaps, the problem is not just the party in power, but the NHS model itself?
But people insist on making their travel decision purely on airline ticket price, often without properly considering the whole cost of their journey. If we all agreed to add a fiver to the ticket price, the airports themselves would be much nicer places.
They just rinse people for cash every way they can.
Their errors only added up to £950.
Now it seems to be the case and these stories are becoming more and more mainstream and accepted.
Troubled waters ahead.
UK trails other countries on waiting times for cancer treatment, study finds
Research compared access to radiotherapy and chemotherapy in Australia, Canada, Norway and UK
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/feb/27/uk-bottom-list-waiting-times-radiotherapy-chemotherapy-study
Criticise it and the counter argument is always about the USA and its health system. This ignores many other nations who have perfectly functioning health systems that is not our sainted NHS.
Wes Streeting does seem to get that.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/jeremy-hunt-s-dubious-financial-planning-lacks-credibility-says-ifs/ar-BB1iWCE2?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=U531&cvid=0e386a0b3ab645d5a1702fd41bce1083&ei=12
Quite apart from the saga of British Gas, I had a company try to persuade me my father had the wrong share certificates and I would need to pay £340 to replace them.
I asked for evidence that these certificates had been despatched, and they said they hadn't got it.
I then informed them I believed them to be lying, and new share certificates mysteriously turned up for free.
https://www.pulsetoday.co.uk/news/workload/continuity-of-care-more-productive-than-access-driven-gp-models-study-suggests/?s=09
I've no problem with reports of setbacks.
I haven't seen the same doctor twice more than three times since I turned 18.
It is not that parties cannot succeed with a quite nationalist agenda, but such parties have to work hard to build a reputation for being serious people. For instance, FdI rule in Italy is the end result of decades of being the grown ups in the room next to Berlusconi and Salvini, which gave them space to take on their more nativist current iteration. Marine Le Pen has been attempting such a project in France for many years now.
RefUK are really at base camp in this respect, and in an FPTP system the bar is higher. One nation politics isn't necessary for Tory revival, but being grown ups is, and I don't see who the grown ups are on the British nativist right.
There's certainly a small (and very voluble) audience for that but it's not one that would come close to winning an election: non-Tories might be slightly more comfortable with the Tories being in office but it would win over very few of their votes.
After all £181.7bn is clearly not enough and a couple more billion from some gimmicky tax is going to solve...everything.
I thought it quite absurd.
Whenever you speak to patients they greatly prefer continuity of care. It is also a major part of professional job satisfaction as well as being key to improved outcomes and productivity.
Why then is so much UK health policy actively undermining continuity of care, including Streeting's proposals?
If you want a low cost way of improving the system then prioritise continuity.
I wish they would shut up about it, but of course I wouldn't want to make them. That would be wrong. I disagree that they aren't free to say what they think but I'll defend to the death their right to say so.
The trouble was that what he said about Khan was slanderous: if he'd just said he thought Khan was far too tolerant of the Gaza protests and not doing enough, because he had some sympathy with them, then there'd have still been some howls of outrage but he wouldn't have been suspended.
There are good things, and bad things, about all of these settlements.
Never believe the hype over "duty free". The retailers at airports remove all the duty and tax and then replace it with more or less the same price, and then massively increase their profit margin - which the airport operator takes a slice of.
The three main UK parties are all failing on the NHS, and I have no expectation it will change even when the government changes
Macron refuses to rule out putting troops on ground in Ukraine in call to galvanise Europe
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/27/french-president-emmanuel-macron-ukraine-french-ground-troops
Many other countries do have healthcare systems similar to the NHS.
Of course what 25p said was defamatory. So they had to suspend him. But the reported avalanche of "15p is right" messages received by doomed MPs shows that an awful lot of WWC voters think it wasn't defamatory and "someone had to say it".
Free speech? Too many parochial bigots think they should be allowed to openly say the racist stupid defamatory stuff because its true innit? Its the loony left and woke remoaners who should be forced to shut up, not them.
How red tape is fuelling the cost of living crisis
📈 Since 2000, sectors with heavy state intervention have experienced large price rises while competitive markets have experienced price falls.
https://x.com/iealondon/status/1760582275928920174?s=20
Update: Judge Wright was not persuaded to release Alexander Smirnov.
“There is nothing garden variety about this case.”
“The man will be remanded pending trial. Deputies!”
https://twitter.com/meghanncuniff/status/1762172202936635767
It’s a shame @StuartDickson is no longer around. I used to enjoy jousting with him. Also he used to morally gloat about Swedish neutrality and how Indy Scotland would follow the same path
All a long time ago now
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/27/sweden-complete-long-farewell-neutrality-nato-accession
Are you up for that?
Try not to fart out your basest emotions if you want to be taken seriously on here.
Yup
As I keep saying - in Victorian/Edwardian times whole suburbs were built by selling streets or parts of laid out streets to different developers.
Monopolies are always a bad idea. The idea that granting a local monopoly on property construction is somehow efficient is simply wrong.
Part of the problem is that the housing market has been so distorted for so long, that people have forgotten that it acts just like a…. Market.
We have just gone through decades where various goods decreased in price year on year. Yet Samsung never tried to limit the supply of televisions to get the price to go up.
https://news.sky.com/story/three-men-charged-with-preparing-act-of-terrorism-after-suspected-extreme-right-wing-activity-13081942
Secondly, at the moment polling shows under 40% support for the right+centre right, and 60+% support for the centre and centre left and left. This suggests that the next election, like most, will be won from the centre, which is where the next Tory GE win will come from in a few years' time.
That is the simple truth that the country seems unwilling to face up to.
Well, actually a few do. Price elasticity, leading to more profit from more sales, with lower profit per sale….
Back to houses - we need to remove the barriers that prevent a market functioning. At the moment, barriers to entry mean that you can have a sellers strike.
If there is always someone else selling, then that won’t work.
QED
Social insurance deals with risk and choice far more sensibly, and thus delivers a better and more responsive service.
In fact, in one area where I think they largely have - checking identity politics - they get reams of criticism, much of which we've seen on this board this morning.
It is inevitable we are going to pay more for our public services due to demographics.
If we want to actually improve public services we need to do other things too, the highest priority for me being improving staff retention and in medicine increasing the pipeline of trained and qualified staff.
So powerful someone has ALREADY set it to the tune of an epic rock ballad. That’s incredible
https://app.suno.ai/song/91270dcb-ef95-45f7-b6d2-acc5c3bb8a12
'For the third time was it Islamophobic?'
'Nick it was wrong.'
'I'll have to curtail the interview there, enough already.'
@NickFerrariLBC
cuts off the Illegal Immigration Minister after he refuses to confirm whether Lee Anderson's comments were Islamophobic.