There's a great part in Pratchett's Going Postal where a character describes the con the men who own the Grand Trunk are playing - I don't have the book in front of me, but it's along the lines of: you see an asset that could turn a profit that is currently owned by people who care about the asset as a system and not an asset and therefore do not have a head for business. As someone who wants to turn a profit, you approach these men with no heads for business and say you want to invest in that asset. They agree, always wanting money to spend tinkering in their sheds to improve the systems they care about, and sign your documents. Eventually, you run out of that first bit of money, so when they say they're happy to invest again you sign again without question. But this time you've sold more than a 50% share in the asset, so you no longer own it, and now people with heads for business are in charge and they don't care if the system works - they care that it makes money. So maintenance stops, because that's a cost that doesn't return short term profit, and the system is always pushed to breaking point to make the most money off of it. They bought it dirt cheap, they suck it dry whilst running it into the ground, and they'll also likely make a profit selling it off afterwards to another rube or to the state who need the system to exist for the functioning of society.
Anyway, I give this extremely long preface (apologies as always @TOPPING) to share this unrelated news:
It is not obvious to me that it's a good deal for the UK to force Thames customers effectively to bail out a commercial entity which has previously extracted massive dividends from the business, and which, without the deal which the owners are lobbying for, is effectively bankrupt.
We should put in into administration, and government should take control of the business. The shareholders and bondholders would take massive losses, but that would serve as a useful warning to the commercial owners of UK public service utilities (often overseas) who have been taking the piss for decades.
Government can probably borrow more cheaply anyway, and the necessary price rises for the needed infrastructure improvement would be significantly less. And any future profits would remain in the UK.
An alternative fair plan could be to treat the bill a bit like a share issue.
So let them increase it by the 40% they need but half the company goes to the customers who pay the bills and existing shareholders get diluted.
There's a great part in Pratchett's Going Postal where a character describes the con the men who own the Grand Trunk are playing - I don't have the book in front of me, but it's along the lines of: you see an asset that could turn a profit that is currently owned by people who care about the asset as a system and not an asset and therefore do not have a head for business. As someone who wants to turn a profit, you approach these men with no heads for business and say you want to invest in that asset. They agree, always wanting money to spend tinkering in their sheds to improve the systems they care about, and sign your documents. Eventually, you run out of that first bit of money, so when they say they're happy to invest again you sign again without question. But this time you've sold more than a 50% share in the asset, so you no longer own it, and now people with heads for business are in charge and they don't care if the system works - they care that it makes money. So maintenance stops, because that's a cost that doesn't return short term profit, and the system is always pushed to breaking point to make the most money off of it. They bought it dirt cheap, they suck it dry whilst running it into the ground, and they'll also likely make a profit selling it off afterwards to another rube or to the state who need the system to exist for the functioning of society.
Anyway, I give this extremely long preface (apologies as always @TOPPING) to share this unrelated news:
It is not obvious to me that it's a good deal for the UK to force Thames customers effectively to bail out a commercial entity which has previously extracted massive dividends from the business, and which, without the deal which the owners are lobbying for, is effectively bankrupt.
We should put in into administration, and government should take control of the business. The shareholders and bondholders would take massive losses, but that would serve as a useful warning to the commercial owners of UK public service utilities (often overseas) who have been taking the piss for decades.
Government can probably borrow more cheaply anyway, and the necessary price rises for the needed infrastructure improvement would be significantly less. And any future profits would remain in the UK.
An alternative fair plan could be to treat the bill a bit like a share issue.
So let them increase it by the 40% they need but half the company goes to the customers who pay the bills and existing shareholders get diluted.
The problem with that idea is that many of the customers will immediately sell their shares to the existing shareholders, to make a quick buck.
There's a great part in Pratchett's Going Postal where a character describes the con the men who own the Grand Trunk are playing - I don't have the book in front of me, but it's along the lines of: you see an asset that could turn a profit that is currently owned by people who care about the asset as a system and not an asset and therefore do not have a head for business. As someone who wants to turn a profit, you approach these men with no heads for business and say you want to invest in that asset. They agree, always wanting money to spend tinkering in their sheds to improve the systems they care about, and sign your documents. Eventually, you run out of that first bit of money, so when they say they're happy to invest again you sign again without question. But this time you've sold more than a 50% share in the asset, so you no longer own it, and now people with heads for business are in charge and they don't care if the system works - they care that it makes money. So maintenance stops, because that's a cost that doesn't return short term profit, and the system is always pushed to breaking point to make the most money off of it. They bought it dirt cheap, they suck it dry whilst running it into the ground, and they'll also likely make a profit selling it off afterwards to another rube or to the state who need the system to exist for the functioning of society.
Anyway, I give this extremely long preface (apologies as always @TOPPING) to share this unrelated news:
It is not obvious to me that it's a good deal for the UK to force Thames customers effectively to bail out a commercial entity which has previously extracted massive dividends from the business, and which, without the deal which the owners are lobbying for, is effectively bankrupt.
We should put in into administration, and government should take control of the business. The shareholders and bondholders would take massive losses, but that would serve as a useful warning to the commercial owners of UK public service utilities (often overseas) who have been taking the piss for decades.
Government can probably borrow more cheaply anyway, and the necessary price rises for the needed infrastructure improvement would be significantly less. And any future profits would remain in the UK.
An alternative fair plan could be to treat the bill a bit like a share issue.
So let them increase it by the 40% they need but half the company goes to the customers who pay the bills and existing shareholders get diluted.
The problem with that idea is that many of the customers will immediately sell their shares to the existing shareholders, to make a quick buck.
As you can do with any shareholding that pays an ongoing dividend.
There's a great part in Pratchett's Going Postal where a character describes the con the men who own the Grand Trunk are playing - I don't have the book in front of me, but it's along the lines of: you see an asset that could turn a profit that is currently owned by people who care about the asset as a system and not an asset and therefore do not have a head for business. As someone who wants to turn a profit, you approach these men with no heads for business and say you want to invest in that asset. They agree, always wanting money to spend tinkering in their sheds to improve the systems they care about, and sign your documents. Eventually, you run out of that first bit of money, so when they say they're happy to invest again you sign again without question. But this time you've sold more than a 50% share in the asset, so you no longer own it, and now people with heads for business are in charge and they don't care if the system works - they care that it makes money. So maintenance stops, because that's a cost that doesn't return short term profit, and the system is always pushed to breaking point to make the most money off of it. They bought it dirt cheap, they suck it dry whilst running it into the ground, and they'll also likely make a profit selling it off afterwards to another rube or to the state who need the system to exist for the functioning of society.
Anyway, I give this extremely long preface (apologies as always @TOPPING) to share this unrelated news:
Unfortunately, Thatcher read Going Postal and decided to turn it into party policy. Which explains the state of our infrastructure.
Well as Going Postal was written in 2004 that seems a bit unlikely.
What it does illustrate, once again, is just how sharp a commentator Pratchett was. Just as with the Vimes's Boot theory. That literary snobs dismissed one of Britain's greatest writers says more about them than anything else. I heard a great story from his later years, of paying a bill of multiple 10's of thousands, with some loose money from a pocket, such was his wealth at that point.
"Then there are people who follow Daesh (Islamic State) and al-Qaeda who think you can't be a Muslim and a westerner, I get it from both sides in relation to the death threats."
In my view the most important finding from that More in Common polling is this:
"Party leaders aren’t wowing voters
The party leaders are not a top draw for any of the key voter groups. People are more likely to be voting against a leader of another party than for their leader. This election will be about parties not personalities."
The election will be about parties not personalities. This is something I think Labour have probably understood but the Conservatives (and many commentators) appear not to. This is a big change from the last election when it really seemed to be Johnson vs Corbyn, as well as Brexit vs Remain.
Also probably true in the trends in Scotland. No longer is it dominated by the huge personalities of Salmond or Sturgeon, so it's now about party positioning.
That Lib Dem voter data point too - that they are voting to get the Tories out. Although they say "people are more likely to be voting against the leader of another party than for their leader" the other data points including this one suggest they're not voting to get Sunak out, nor would they be voting hypothetically to get Badenoch, or Mordaunt, or even a returning Boris out. It's the party. Therefore the idea that changing the leader will transform their fortunes is I think wishful thinking.
People aren't voting specifically for Keir, in the way that perhaps they were doing for Blair. So the strength and cohesion of the Labour front bench becomes more important in convincing the voters. This is where the reasonably solid performances by Streeting, Reeves, Lammy, Reynolds and so on (and even the marginalised but very much on top of his brief Ed Miliband) have helped to project a degree of competence.
Apparently Israel is going to supply early warning systems for detecting drone and missile attacks to Ukraine. A consequence for Russia siding with Hamas.
This tends to suggest that the only main potential movement back to the Conservatives are their don't knows. Both Conservative to Labour and Conservative to Reform switchers appear to have gone.
Are the Conservatives focusing on retaining those don't knows, or are their current policies and approach focused on another section of the electorate?
My feeling is the more in common report doesn't capture the scale of the Conservative voter strike, and the depth of their feeling. Many activists I know think Sunak is hopeless and aren't prepared to help what many see as too 'big-government' a government get reelected.
This will only be worse after May, when the councillor base will likely be much smaller too.
The losses if it's council only elections in May will be bad, but my suspicion is they'd be worse if there was a GE as the "extra" turnout will be more favourable to Labour.
Yep, they’re about to become a massive problem. We’re starting to see them in my region at the moment, and they’re probably as close in quality to the Koreans as the Koreans are now to the Japanese, but at a price 30-40% off the Koreans.
For 90% of people it’s going to be all the car they need, and seriously threatens local car manufacturing pretty much everywhere else in the world.
There's a great part in Pratchett's Going Postal where a character describes the con the men who own the Grand Trunk are playing - I don't have the book in front of me, but it's along the lines of: you see an asset that could turn a profit that is currently owned by people who care about the asset as a system and not an asset and therefore do not have a head for business. As someone who wants to turn a profit, you approach these men with no heads for business and say you want to invest in that asset. They agree, always wanting money to spend tinkering in their sheds to improve the systems they care about, and sign your documents. Eventually, you run out of that first bit of money, so when they say they're happy to invest again you sign again without question. But this time you've sold more than a 50% share in the asset, so you no longer own it, and now people with heads for business are in charge and they don't care if the system works - they care that it makes money. So maintenance stops, because that's a cost that doesn't return short term profit, and the system is always pushed to breaking point to make the most money off of it. They bought it dirt cheap, they suck it dry whilst running it into the ground, and they'll also likely make a profit selling it off afterwards to another rube or to the state who need the system to exist for the functioning of society.
Anyway, I give this extremely long preface (apologies as always @TOPPING) to share this unrelated news:
It is not obvious to me that it's a good deal for the UK to force Thames customers effectively to bail out a commercial entity which has previously extracted massive dividends from the business, and which, without the deal which the owners are lobbying for, is effectively bankrupt.
We should put in into administration, and government should take control of the business. The shareholders and bondholders would take massive losses, but that would serve as a useful warning to the commercial owners of UK public service utilities (often overseas) who have been taking the piss for decades.
Government can probably borrow more cheaply anyway, and the necessary price rises for the needed infrastructure improvement would be significantly less. And any future profits would remain in the UK.
An alternative fair plan could be to treat the bill a bit like a share issue.
So let them increase it by the 40% they need but half the company goes to the customers who pay the bills and existing shareholders get diluted.
The problem with that idea is that many of the customers will immediately sell their shares to the existing shareholders, to make a quick buck.
As you can do with any shareholding that pays an ongoing dividend.
Apparently Israel is going to supply early warning systems for detecting drone and missile attacks to Ukraine. A consequence for Russia siding with Hamas.
Israel should feel shame for their positions earlier in the war, when they were rather warmer towards Russia.
(They should also feel shame for many other positions as well...)
This tends to suggest that the only main potential movement back to the Conservatives are their don't knows. Both Conservative to Labour and Conservative to Reform switchers appear to have gone.
Are the Conservatives focusing on retaining those don't knows, or are their current policies and approach focused on another section of the electorate?
My feeling is the more in common report doesn't capture the scale of the Conservative voter strike, and the depth of their feeling. Many activists I know think Sunak is hopeless and aren't prepared to help what many see as too 'big-government' a government get reelected.
This will only be worse after May, when the councillor base will likely be much smaller too.
The losses if it's council only elections in May will be bad, but my suspicion is they'd be worse if there was a GE as the "extra" turnout will be more favourable to Labour.
True, but less favourable for the Lib Dems.
I'm not sure it's true actually. The lower the turnout the worse the results for the Tories would be my bet, as they are disproportionately hit by their own voters striking.
Apparently Israel is going to supply early warning systems for detecting drone and missile attacks to Ukraine. A consequence for Russia siding with Hamas.
Israel should feel shame for their positions earlier in the war, when they were rather warmer towards Russia.
(They should also feel shame for many other positions as well...)
Unfortunately there is geopolitical danger for Ukraine in this, if the world is dividing into pro and anti-Israeli camps. Ukraine then finds itself on one side of a divided UN, while Russia redeems itself in the eyes anti-Israeli countries.
There's a great part in Pratchett's Going Postal where a character describes the con the men who own the Grand Trunk are playing - I don't have the book in front of me, but it's along the lines of: you see an asset that could turn a profit that is currently owned by people who care about the asset as a system and not an asset and therefore do not have a head for business. As someone who wants to turn a profit, you approach these men with no heads for business and say you want to invest in that asset. They agree, always wanting money to spend tinkering in their sheds to improve the systems they care about, and sign your documents. Eventually, you run out of that first bit of money, so when they say they're happy to invest again you sign again without question. But this time you've sold more than a 50% share in the asset, so you no longer own it, and now people with heads for business are in charge and they don't care if the system works - they care that it makes money. So maintenance stops, because that's a cost that doesn't return short term profit, and the system is always pushed to breaking point to make the most money off of it. They bought it dirt cheap, they suck it dry whilst running it into the ground, and they'll also likely make a profit selling it off afterwards to another rube or to the state who need the system to exist for the functioning of society.
Anyway, I give this extremely long preface (apologies as always @TOPPING) to share this unrelated news:
It is not obvious to me that it's a good deal for the UK to force Thames customers effectively to bail out a commercial entity which has previously extracted massive dividends from the business, and which, without the deal which the owners are lobbying for, is effectively bankrupt.
We should put in into administration, and government should take control of the business. The shareholders and bondholders would take massive losses, but that would serve as a useful warning to the commercial owners of UK public service utilities (often overseas) who have been taking the piss for decades.
Government can probably borrow more cheaply anyway, and the necessary price rises for the needed infrastructure improvement would be significantly less. And any future profits would remain in the UK.
An alternative fair plan could be to treat the bill a bit like a share issue.
So let them increase it by the 40% they need but half the company goes to the customers who pay the bills and existing shareholders get diluted.
The problem with that idea is that many of the customers will immediately sell their shares to the existing shareholders, to make a quick buck.
As you can do with any shareholding that pays an ongoing dividend.
Not to me. It still involves either the billpayers - or the taxpayer - bailing out £14bn or so of majority foreign owned bad debt
In exchange for shares. It depends on the numbers I suppose, what would their shares be worth vs extra they pay, as long as that can be reasonably matched it seems fair.
This tends to suggest that the only main potential movement back to the Conservatives are their don't knows. Both Conservative to Labour and Conservative to Reform switchers appear to have gone.
Are the Conservatives focusing on retaining those don't knows, or are their current policies and approach focused on another section of the electorate?
My feeling is the more in common report doesn't capture the scale of the Conservative voter strike, and the depth of their feeling. Many activists I know think Sunak is hopeless and aren't prepared to help what many see as too 'big-government' a government get reelected.
This will only be worse after May, when the councillor base will likely be much smaller too.
The losses if it's council only elections in May will be bad, but my suspicion is they'd be worse if there was a GE as the "extra" turnout will be more favourable to Labour.
True, but less favourable for the Lib Dems.
I'm not sure it's true actually. The lower the turnout the worse the results for the Tories would be my bet, as they are disproportionately hit by their own voters striking.
Err, that's what I'm saying, a GE turnout would negate LD local campaigning.
"Then there are people who follow Daesh (Islamic State) and al-Qaeda who think you can't be a Muslim and a westerner, I get it from both sides in relation to the death threats."
Apparently Israel is going to supply early warning systems for detecting drone and missile attacks to Ukraine. A consequence for Russia siding with Hamas.
Israel should feel shame for their positions earlier in the war, when they were rather warmer towards Russia.
(They should also feel shame for many other positions as well...)
There are times when it is right to hold people/countries accountable for the decisions they have made in the past, but right now, with Russia's war on Ukraine, I'm much more interested in what people/countries are doing now and in the future.
So I'm going to praise Israel for this action, and hope for more, and leave a reckoning on who did or didn't do what for later.
In general, the point at which someone has repented, and begun to make amends, is not the time to attempt to make them feel maximum shame about their past actions. It's really not making friends and influencing people.
Apparently Israel is going to supply early warning systems for detecting drone and missile attacks to Ukraine. A consequence for Russia siding with Hamas.
It's probably more to do with Russia and Iran's increasingly close cooperation. Out of necessity Russia is becoming a major Iranian trading partner, and Russian weapons can substantially increase the Iranian threat.
Apparently Israel is going to supply early warning systems for detecting drone and missile attacks to Ukraine. A consequence for Russia siding with Hamas.
That will be a total head fuck, taking sides-wise, for just about everyone on PB.
Apparently Israel is going to supply early warning systems for detecting drone and missile attacks to Ukraine. A consequence for Russia siding with Hamas.
Israel should feel shame for their positions earlier in the war, when they were rather warmer towards Russia.
(They should also feel shame for many other positions as well...)
There are times when it is right to hold people/countries accountable for the decisions they have made in the past, but right now, with Russia's war on Ukraine, I'm much more interested in what people/countries are doing now and in the future.
So I'm going to praise Israel for this action, and hope for more, and leave a reckoning on who did or didn't do what for later.
In general, the point at which someone has repented, and begun to make amends, is not the time to attempt to make them feel maximum shame about their past actions. It's really not making friends and influencing people.
I know what you mean, but I'm unsure this is actually 'repentance' and a decision that Ukraine is now in the right.
This tends to suggest that the only main potential movement back to the Conservatives are their don't knows. Both Conservative to Labour and Conservative to Reform switchers appear to have gone.
Are the Conservatives focusing on retaining those don't knows, or are their current policies and approach focused on another section of the electorate?
My feeling is the more in common report doesn't capture the scale of the Conservative voter strike, and the depth of their feeling. Many activists I know think Sunak is hopeless and aren't prepared to help what many see as too 'big-government' a government get reelected.
This will only be worse after May, when the councillor base will likely be much smaller too.
The losses if it's council only elections in May will be bad, but my suspicion is they'd be worse if there was a GE as the "extra" turnout will be more favourable to Labour.
Although in May 2017 Labours LE results weren't great.
The GE less than a month later showed the biggest swing to Labour since WW2
Apparently Israel is going to supply early warning systems for detecting drone and missile attacks to Ukraine. A consequence for Russia siding with Hamas.
Israel should feel shame for their positions earlier in the war, when they were rather warmer towards Russia.
(They should also feel shame for many other positions as well...)
There are times when it is right to hold people/countries accountable for the decisions they have made in the past, but right now, with Russia's war on Ukraine, I'm much more interested in what people/countries are doing now and in the future.
So I'm going to praise Israel for this action, and hope for more, and leave a reckoning on who did or didn't do what for later.
In general, the point at which someone has repented, and begun to make amends, is not the time to attempt to make them feel maximum shame about their past actions. It's really not making friends and influencing people.
Yes, well done Israel. Most of the Middle East region has avoided taking sides in this conflict, so any that now choose to help Ukraine is to be welcomed.
The Iron Dome system is joint US/Israel technology, probably the best of its kind anywhere at the moment, and they’ve now both given permission for it to go to Ukraine.
Apparently Israel is going to supply early warning systems for detecting drone and missile attacks to Ukraine. A consequence for Russia siding with Hamas.
That will be a total head fuck, taking sides-wise, for just about everyone on PB.
Russia bad. Hamas bad. That's simple enough, isn't it?
I know Israel are now supporting Ukraine, but hey, we've dealt with such mindfucks as the French supporting Ukraine. We can handle this.
There's a great part in Pratchett's Going Postal where a character describes the con the men who own the Grand Trunk are playing - I don't have the book in front of me, but it's along the lines of: you see an asset that could turn a profit that is currently owned by people who care about the asset as a system and not an asset and therefore do not have a head for business. As someone who wants to turn a profit, you approach these men with no heads for business and say you want to invest in that asset. They agree, always wanting money to spend tinkering in their sheds to improve the systems they care about, and sign your documents. Eventually, you run out of that first bit of money, so when they say they're happy to invest again you sign again without question. But this time you've sold more than a 50% share in the asset, so you no longer own it, and now people with heads for business are in charge and they don't care if the system works - they care that it makes money. So maintenance stops, because that's a cost that doesn't return short term profit, and the system is always pushed to breaking point to make the most money off of it. They bought it dirt cheap, they suck it dry whilst running it into the ground, and they'll also likely make a profit selling it off afterwards to another rube or to the state who need the system to exist for the functioning of society.
Anyway, I give this extremely long preface (apologies as always @TOPPING) to share this unrelated news:
It is not obvious to me that it's a good deal for the UK to force Thames customers effectively to bail out a commercial entity which has previously extracted massive dividends from the business, and which, without the deal which the owners are lobbying for, is effectively bankrupt.
We should put in into administration, and government should take control of the business. The shareholders and bondholders would take massive losses, but that would serve as a useful warning to the commercial owners of UK public service utilities (often overseas) who have been taking the piss for decades.
Government can probably borrow more cheaply anyway, and the necessary price rises for the needed infrastructure improvement would be significantly less. And any future profits would remain in the UK.
An alternative fair plan could be to treat the bill a bit like a share issue.
So let them increase it by the 40% they need but half the company goes to the customers who pay the bills and existing shareholders get diluted.
The problem with that idea is that many of the customers will immediately sell their shares to the existing shareholders, to make a quick buck.
As you can do with any shareholding that pays an ongoing dividend.
Not to me. It still involves either the billpayers - or the taxpayer - bailing out £14bn or so of majority foreign owned bad debt
In exchange for shares. It depends on the numbers I suppose, what would their shares be worth vs extra they pay, as long as that can be reasonably matched it seems fair.
Sounds like a complicated way of diluting down the existing shareholders.
Why not just let them own the fuckup and lose their shirts?
This tends to suggest that the only main potential movement back to the Conservatives are their don't knows. Both Conservative to Labour and Conservative to Reform switchers appear to have gone.
Are the Conservatives focusing on retaining those don't knows, or are their current policies and approach focused on another section of the electorate?
My feeling is the more in common report doesn't capture the scale of the Conservative voter strike, and the depth of their feeling. Many activists I know think Sunak is hopeless and aren't prepared to help what many see as too 'big-government' a government get reelected.
This will only be worse after May, when the councillor base will likely be much smaller too.
The losses if it's council only elections in May will be bad, but my suspicion is they'd be worse if there was a GE as the "extra" turnout will be more favourable to Labour.
True, but less favourable for the Lib Dems.
I'm not sure it's true actually. The lower the turnout the worse the results for the Tories would be my bet, as they are disproportionately hit by their own voters striking.
Err, that's what I'm saying, a GE turnout would negate LD local campaigning.
I was responding to the original post to which you'd replied "true, but", rather than the LD point. I don't think the extra GE turnout would benefit Labour in the locals.
Yep, they’re about to become a massive problem. We’re starting to see them in my region at the moment, and they’re probably as close in quality to the Koreans as the Koreans are now to the Japanese, but at a price 30-40% off the Koreans.
For 90% of people it’s going to be all the car they need, and seriously threatens local car manufacturing pretty much everywhere else in the world.
The German car companies are picking a very stupid time to back pedal on EVs.
When price parity is first reached, then exceeded, that’s going to look like Boeing levels of genius.
Apparently Israel is going to supply early warning systems for detecting drone and missile attacks to Ukraine. A consequence for Russia siding with Hamas.
That will be a total head fuck, taking sides-wise, for just about everyone on PB.
Russia bad. Hamas bad. That's simple enough, isn't it?
I know Israel are now supporting Ukraine, but hey, we've dealt with such mindfucks as the French supporting Ukraine. We can handle this.
Russia bad. Hamas noble, oppressed, democratically-elected freedom fighters seems to be the norm for many if not most PB posters.
There's a great part in Pratchett's Going Postal where a character describes the con the men who own the Grand Trunk are playing - I don't have the book in front of me, but it's along the lines of: you see an asset that could turn a profit that is currently owned by people who care about the asset as a system and not an asset and therefore do not have a head for business. As someone who wants to turn a profit, you approach these men with no heads for business and say you want to invest in that asset. They agree, always wanting money to spend tinkering in their sheds to improve the systems they care about, and sign your documents. Eventually, you run out of that first bit of money, so when they say they're happy to invest again you sign again without question. But this time you've sold more than a 50% share in the asset, so you no longer own it, and now people with heads for business are in charge and they don't care if the system works - they care that it makes money. So maintenance stops, because that's a cost that doesn't return short term profit, and the system is always pushed to breaking point to make the most money off of it. They bought it dirt cheap, they suck it dry whilst running it into the ground, and they'll also likely make a profit selling it off afterwards to another rube or to the state who need the system to exist for the functioning of society.
Anyway, I give this extremely long preface (apologies as always @TOPPING) to share this unrelated news:
Unfortunately, Thatcher read Going Postal and decided to turn it into party policy. Which explains the state of our infrastructure.
Well as Going Postal was written in 2004 that seems a bit unlikely.
What it does illustrate, once again, is just how sharp a commentator Pratchett was. Just as with the Vimes's Boot theory. That literary snobs dismissed one of Britain's greatest writers says more about them than anything else. I heard a great story from his later years, of paying a bill of multiple 10's of thousands, with some loose money from a pocket, such was his wealth at that point.
I did my undergraduate and post graduate dissertations on Pratchett - if you or any PBers want to fund my PhD (in this world of telling art students that they have low value degrees), I'd happily take your grant monies (although you may dislike my verbose writing style and my views of Pratchett as a good leftist satirist). I would argue that (alongside the theory people) Pratchett is the most influential writer on my political thought.
There's a great part in Pratchett's Going Postal where a character describes the con the men who own the Grand Trunk are playing - I don't have the book in front of me, but it's along the lines of: you see an asset that could turn a profit that is currently owned by people who care about the asset as a system and not an asset and therefore do not have a head for business. As someone who wants to turn a profit, you approach these men with no heads for business and say you want to invest in that asset. They agree, always wanting money to spend tinkering in their sheds to improve the systems they care about, and sign your documents. Eventually, you run out of that first bit of money, so when they say they're happy to invest again you sign again without question. But this time you've sold more than a 50% share in the asset, so you no longer own it, and now people with heads for business are in charge and they don't care if the system works - they care that it makes money. So maintenance stops, because that's a cost that doesn't return short term profit, and the system is always pushed to breaking point to make the most money off of it. They bought it dirt cheap, they suck it dry whilst running it into the ground, and they'll also likely make a profit selling it off afterwards to another rube or to the state who need the system to exist for the functioning of society.
Anyway, I give this extremely long preface (apologies as always @TOPPING) to share this unrelated news:
Unfortunately, Thatcher read Going Postal and decided to turn it into party policy. Which explains the state of our infrastructure.
Well as Going Postal was written in 2004 that seems a bit unlikely.
What it does illustrate, once again, is just how sharp a commentator Pratchett was. Just as with the Vimes's Boot theory. That literary snobs dismissed one of Britain's greatest writers says more about them than anything else. I heard a great story from his later years, of paying a bill of multiple 10's of thousands, with some loose money from a pocket, such was his wealth at that point.
I think pre JKR he was the most internationally translated British author - even more so than JRRT (although that may be apocryphal)
Green remains low compared with much of the last 2 years. What's driving this? I would hazard a guess at:
- Upcoming general election focusing minds on the actual constituency choices (though you'd expect that to effect RefUK vote too) - It's winter so people aren't out in nature listening to the birds or swimming in polluted water currently - Climate change has lost a bit of salience in recent months (I think that could be a big part of it - the topic tends to wax and wane in the news. Plus, it's winter albeit close to the warmest UK February on record) - It's a while since local elections, where the Greens tend to do well
Against this, one would have expected a significant swing to Green from the pro-Palestinian Labour support. If a lot of this is amongst Muslim voters then possibly the Greens don't have the branding to capture this.
Yep, they’re about to become a massive problem. We’re starting to see them in my region at the moment, and they’re probably as close in quality to the Koreans as the Koreans are now to the Japanese, but at a price 30-40% off the Koreans.
For 90% of people it’s going to be all the car they need, and seriously threatens local car manufacturing pretty much everywhere else in the world.
Given our position as net importers, it might be less a worry for us than others. But that's a mark of the poor state of UK manufacturing.
There's a great part in Pratchett's Going Postal where a character describes the con the men who own the Grand Trunk are playing - I don't have the book in front of me, but it's along the lines of: you see an asset that could turn a profit that is currently owned by people who care about the asset as a system and not an asset and therefore do not have a head for business. As someone who wants to turn a profit, you approach these men with no heads for business and say you want to invest in that asset. They agree, always wanting money to spend tinkering in their sheds to improve the systems they care about, and sign your documents. Eventually, you run out of that first bit of money, so when they say they're happy to invest again you sign again without question. But this time you've sold more than a 50% share in the asset, so you no longer own it, and now people with heads for business are in charge and they don't care if the system works - they care that it makes money. So maintenance stops, because that's a cost that doesn't return short term profit, and the system is always pushed to breaking point to make the most money off of it. They bought it dirt cheap, they suck it dry whilst running it into the ground, and they'll also likely make a profit selling it off afterwards to another rube or to the state who need the system to exist for the functioning of society.
Anyway, I give this extremely long preface (apologies as always @TOPPING) to share this unrelated news:
Unfortunately, Thatcher read Going Postal and decided to turn it into party policy. Which explains the state of our infrastructure.
Well as Going Postal was written in 2004 that seems a bit unlikely.
What it does illustrate, once again, is just how sharp a commentator Pratchett was. Just as with the Vimes's Boot theory. That literary snobs dismissed one of Britain's greatest writers says more about them than anything else. I heard a great story from his later years, of paying a bill of multiple 10's of thousands, with some loose money from a pocket, such was his wealth at that point.
I did my undergraduate and post graduate dissertations on Pratchett - if you or any PBers want to fund my PhD (in this world of telling art students that they have low value degrees), I'd happily take your grant monies (although you may dislike my verbose writing style and my views of Pratchett as a good leftist satirist). I would argue that (alongside the theory people) Pratchett is the most influential writer on my political thought.
If I win the lottery then I'd gladly fund a PhD on Pratchett and Politics.
Apparently Israel is going to supply early warning systems for detecting drone and missile attacks to Ukraine. A consequence for Russia siding with Hamas.
That will be a total head fuck, taking sides-wise, for just about everyone on PB.
Russia bad. Hamas bad. That's simple enough, isn't it?
I know Israel are now supporting Ukraine, but hey, we've dealt with such mindfucks as the French supporting Ukraine. We can handle this.
Russia bad. Hamas noble, oppressed, democratically-elected freedom fighters seems to be the norm for many if not most PB posters.
You tend to hear the strongest views on this from the shoutiest most opinionated posters. I would assume the majority view is Russia bad, Hamas bad, Israel (Netanyahu) bad, Ukraine good.
This tends to suggest that the only main potential movement back to the Conservatives are their don't knows. Both Conservative to Labour and Conservative to Reform switchers appear to have gone.
Are the Conservatives focusing on retaining those don't knows, or are their current policies and approach focused on another section of the electorate?
My feeling is the more in common report doesn't capture the scale of the Conservative voter strike, and the depth of their feeling. Many activists I know think Sunak is hopeless and aren't prepared to help what many see as too 'big-government' a government get reelected.
This will only be worse after May, when the councillor base will likely be much smaller too.
The losses if it's council only elections in May will be bad, but my suspicion is they'd be worse if there was a GE as the "extra" turnout will be more favourable to Labour.
Although in May 2017 Labours LE results weren't great.
The GE less than a month later showed the biggest swing to Labour since WW2
There's a great part in Pratchett's Going Postal where a character describes the con the men who own the Grand Trunk are playing - I don't have the book in front of me, but it's along the lines of: you see an asset that could turn a profit that is currently owned by people who care about the asset as a system and not an asset and therefore do not have a head for business. As someone who wants to turn a profit, you approach these men with no heads for business and say you want to invest in that asset. They agree, always wanting money to spend tinkering in their sheds to improve the systems they care about, and sign your documents. Eventually, you run out of that first bit of money, so when they say they're happy to invest again you sign again without question. But this time you've sold more than a 50% share in the asset, so you no longer own it, and now people with heads for business are in charge and they don't care if the system works - they care that it makes money. So maintenance stops, because that's a cost that doesn't return short term profit, and the system is always pushed to breaking point to make the most money off of it. They bought it dirt cheap, they suck it dry whilst running it into the ground, and they'll also likely make a profit selling it off afterwards to another rube or to the state who need the system to exist for the functioning of society.
Anyway, I give this extremely long preface (apologies as always @TOPPING) to share this unrelated news:
It is not obvious to me that it's a good deal for the UK to force Thames customers effectively to bail out a commercial entity which has previously extracted massive dividends from the business, and which, without the deal which the owners are lobbying for, is effectively bankrupt.
We should put in into administration, and government should take control of the business. The shareholders and bondholders would take massive losses, but that would serve as a useful warning to the commercial owners of UK public service utilities (often overseas) who have been taking the piss for decades.
Government can probably borrow more cheaply anyway, and the necessary price rises for the needed infrastructure improvement would be significantly less. And any future profits would remain in the UK.
An alternative fair plan could be to treat the bill a bit like a share issue.
So let them increase it by the 40% they need but half the company goes to the customers who pay the bills and existing shareholders get diluted.
The problem with that idea is that many of the customers will immediately sell their shares to the existing shareholders, to make a quick buck.
As you can do with any shareholding that pays an ongoing dividend.
Not to me. It still involves either the billpayers - or the taxpayer - bailing out £14bn or so of majority foreign owned bad debt
In exchange for shares. It depends on the numbers I suppose, what would their shares be worth vs extra they pay, as long as that can be reasonably matched it seems fair.
Thames Water is effectively bust without a bailout, so 'shares' are currently worth nothing.
The numbers are that there is around £14bn of debt, much of which was incurred to pay past dividends on both shares and bonds. You're asking billpayers to pay for the debt.
Wiping out the bondholders by way of administration would be a salutary warning to others not to take the piss in the future.
Apparently Israel is going to supply early warning systems for detecting drone and missile attacks to Ukraine. A consequence for Russia siding with Hamas.
That will be a total head fuck, taking sides-wise, for just about everyone on PB.
Russia bad. Hamas bad. That's simple enough, isn't it?
I know Israel are now supporting Ukraine, but hey, we've dealt with such mindfucks as the French supporting Ukraine. We can handle this.
Russia bad. Hamas noble, oppressed, democratically-elected freedom fighters seems to be the norm for many if not most PB posters.
You tend to hear the strongest views on this from the shoutiest most opinionated posters. I would assume the majority view is Russia bad, Hamas bad, Israel (Netanyahu) bad, Ukraine good.
I work on the 'everyone bad' mindset. Brings a simply clarity to geopolitics. In any conflict, the bad fight the bad (as fighting is bad) and it's no surprise that the bad support the bad or - being bad - are bad friends and fail to support the bad or, indeed, turn round and support the other bad side
There's a great part in Pratchett's Going Postal where a character describes the con the men who own the Grand Trunk are playing - I don't have the book in front of me, but it's along the lines of: you see an asset that could turn a profit that is currently owned by people who care about the asset as a system and not an asset and therefore do not have a head for business. As someone who wants to turn a profit, you approach these men with no heads for business and say you want to invest in that asset. They agree, always wanting money to spend tinkering in their sheds to improve the systems they care about, and sign your documents. Eventually, you run out of that first bit of money, so when they say they're happy to invest again you sign again without question. But this time you've sold more than a 50% share in the asset, so you no longer own it, and now people with heads for business are in charge and they don't care if the system works - they care that it makes money. So maintenance stops, because that's a cost that doesn't return short term profit, and the system is always pushed to breaking point to make the most money off of it. They bought it dirt cheap, they suck it dry whilst running it into the ground, and they'll also likely make a profit selling it off afterwards to another rube or to the state who need the system to exist for the functioning of society.
Anyway, I give this extremely long preface (apologies as always @TOPPING) to share this unrelated news:
It is not obvious to me that it's a good deal for the UK to force Thames customers effectively to bail out a commercial entity which has previously extracted massive dividends from the business, and which, without the deal which the owners are lobbying for, is effectively bankrupt.
We should put in into administration, and government should take control of the business. The shareholders and bondholders would take massive losses, but that would serve as a useful warning to the commercial owners of UK public service utilities (often overseas) who have been taking the piss for decades.
Government can probably borrow more cheaply anyway, and the necessary price rises for the needed infrastructure improvement would be significantly less. And any future profits would remain in the UK.
An alternative fair plan could be to treat the bill a bit like a share issue.
So let them increase it by the 40% they need but half the company goes to the customers who pay the bills and existing shareholders get diluted.
The problem with that idea is that many of the customers will immediately sell their shares to the existing shareholders, to make a quick buck.
As you can do with any shareholding that pays an ongoing dividend.
Not to me. It still involves either the billpayers - or the taxpayer - bailing out £14bn or so of majority foreign owned bad debt
In exchange for shares. It depends on the numbers I suppose, what would their shares be worth vs extra they pay, as long as that can be reasonably matched it seems fair.
Thames Water is effectively bust without a bailout, so 'shares' are currently worth nothing.
The numbers are that there is around £14bn of debt, much of which was incurred to pay past dividends on both shares and bonds. You're asking billpayers to pay for the debt.
Wiping out the bondholders by way of administration would be a salutary warning to others not to take the piss in the future.
There's a great part in Pratchett's Going Postal where a character describes the con the men who own the Grand Trunk are playing - I don't have the book in front of me, but it's along the lines of: you see an asset that could turn a profit that is currently owned by people who care about the asset as a system and not an asset and therefore do not have a head for business. As someone who wants to turn a profit, you approach these men with no heads for business and say you want to invest in that asset. They agree, always wanting money to spend tinkering in their sheds to improve the systems they care about, and sign your documents. Eventually, you run out of that first bit of money, so when they say they're happy to invest again you sign again without question. But this time you've sold more than a 50% share in the asset, so you no longer own it, and now people with heads for business are in charge and they don't care if the system works - they care that it makes money. So maintenance stops, because that's a cost that doesn't return short term profit, and the system is always pushed to breaking point to make the most money off of it. They bought it dirt cheap, they suck it dry whilst running it into the ground, and they'll also likely make a profit selling it off afterwards to another rube or to the state who need the system to exist for the functioning of society.
Anyway, I give this extremely long preface (apologies as always @TOPPING) to share this unrelated news:
It is not obvious to me that it's a good deal for the UK to force Thames customers effectively to bail out a commercial entity which has previously extracted massive dividends from the business, and which, without the deal which the owners are lobbying for, is effectively bankrupt.
We should put in into administration, and government should take control of the business. The shareholders and bondholders would take massive losses, but that would serve as a useful warning to the commercial owners of UK public service utilities (often overseas) who have been taking the piss for decades.
Government can probably borrow more cheaply anyway, and the necessary price rises for the needed infrastructure improvement would be significantly less. And any future profits would remain in the UK.
There's a great part in Pratchett's Going Postal where a character describes the con the men who own the Grand Trunk are playing - I don't have the book in front of me, but it's along the lines of: you see an asset that could turn a profit that is currently owned by people who care about the asset as a system and not an asset and therefore do not have a head for business. As someone who wants to turn a profit, you approach these men with no heads for business and say you want to invest in that asset. They agree, always wanting money to spend tinkering in their sheds to improve the systems they care about, and sign your documents. Eventually, you run out of that first bit of money, so when they say they're happy to invest again you sign again without question. But this time you've sold more than a 50% share in the asset, so you no longer own it, and now people with heads for business are in charge and they don't care if the system works - they care that it makes money. So maintenance stops, because that's a cost that doesn't return short term profit, and the system is always pushed to breaking point to make the most money off of it. They bought it dirt cheap, they suck it dry whilst running it into the ground, and they'll also likely make a profit selling it off afterwards to another rube or to the state who need the system to exist for the functioning of society.
Anyway, I give this extremely long preface (apologies as always @TOPPING) to share this unrelated news:
It is not obvious to me that it's a good deal for the UK to force Thames customers effectively to bail out a commercial entity which has previously extracted massive dividends from the business, and which, without the deal which the owners are lobbying for, is effectively bankrupt.
We should put in into administration, and government should take control of the business. The shareholders and bondholders would take massive losses, but that would serve as a useful warning to the commercial owners of UK public service utilities (often overseas) who have been taking the piss for decades.
Government can probably borrow more cheaply anyway, and the necessary price rises for the needed infrastructure improvement would be significantly less. And any future profits would remain in the UK.
An alternative fair plan could be to treat the bill a bit like a share issue.
So let them increase it by the 40% they need but half the company goes to the customers who pay the bills and existing shareholders get diluted.
The problem with that idea is that many of the customers will immediately sell their shares to the existing shareholders, to make a quick buck.
As you can do with any shareholding that pays an ongoing dividend.
Not to me. It still involves either the billpayers - or the taxpayer - bailing out £14bn or so of majority foreign owned bad debt
In exchange for shares. It depends on the numbers I suppose, what would their shares be worth vs extra they pay, as long as that can be reasonably matched it seems fair.
Thames Water is effectively bust without a bailout, so 'shares' are currently worth nothing.
The numbers are that there is around £14bn of debt, much of which was incurred to pay past dividends on both shares and bonds. You're asking billpayers to pay for the debt.
Wiping out the bondholders by way of administration would be a salutary warning to others not to take the piss in the future.
This tends to suggest that the only main potential movement back to the Conservatives are their don't knows. Both Conservative to Labour and Conservative to Reform switchers appear to have gone.
Are the Conservatives focusing on retaining those don't knows, or are their current policies and approach focused on another section of the electorate?
My feeling is the more in common report doesn't capture the scale of the Conservative voter strike, and the depth of their feeling. Many activists I know think Sunak is hopeless and aren't prepared to help what many see as too 'big-government' a government get reelected.
This will only be worse after May, when the councillor base will likely be much smaller too.
The losses if it's council only elections in May will be bad, but my suspicion is they'd be worse if there was a GE as the "extra" turnout will be more favourable to Labour.
Although in May 2017 Labours LE results weren't great.
The GE less than a month later showed the biggest swingincrease in Labour's vote since WW2
As long as the Cons fail to see the multiple issues ordinary people face in just getting by daily then they will continue to decline, and going "full Trump" is certainly not going to arrest that decline. Susan Hall is an awful, harsh sounding candidate and will fail. In the GE they may hang on in a couple of seats, but it's not going to be good for them at all.
The longer they leave it the worse it will be for them.
The Tories hate everything about London: it's young university educated population, its cosmopolitan neighbourhoods, its liberality, its impoverished poor, its culture. They offer nothing to alleviate the hardship of the housing situation, or to support the people. Why would they get votes here with their neanderthal nativism?
I see those of us in the North, and the Scots, are the most accepting. Listening to some people here you'd think us northerners were a mass of hatred and bigotry and the south were the enlightened ones.
"mostly down to homophobia and transphobia amongst some socially conservative communities overrepresented in London demographics"
Whatever that means.
What it means is the stereotype of Londoners as metropolitan, tolerant and liberal is as false as the notion provincial England is socially conservative if not reactionary.
There are intolerant people in London just as there are intolerant people everywhere. There are strong socially conservative communities in many parts of the capital - among devoutly religious groups including Christian evangelicals, Muslims, Hindus, Jews etc for example. Of course you don't have to be religious or have strong personal faith to be socially conservative not does having faith mean you can't be socially liberal but without wishing to over-generalise..
All this does (rightly) is challenge preconceptions or misconceptions about London. Newham for example has fewer atheists and agnostics than almost anywhere else. Faith is very important - which faith is another matter and I wouldn't want to overstate this but evangelical churches are noticeable here with a new one for the Latin American community having recently opened off the Barking Road.
I would put it down to education first by a long way then probably age and a good first indicator is a vote for 'Leave'. A short Dutch documentary taken in Clacton. They seem to be mostly white English......
I'm seeing a guy today, a bit 'alternative', he earns only £10-£12k pa as a self-employed jobbing craftsman (his choice). Living very simply he asks for and gets no state help.
But he's in hoc to HRMC for a £2k for failing to file two years tax returns on-line properly. It appears he completed the forms (zero tax to pay) but failed to press 'submit', not really being very IT literate.
He's got no way of paying the fines but they're threatening court action.
Interesting challenge.
IIRC it used to be the case that hmrc couldn't fine you more than the tax you owed, to preclude precisely this kind of case, which offends against natural justice. But the current government got rid of that rule, while its wealthy members pay lower effective tax rates than nurses. Get these people out of government.
That's exactly what I had wondered about - so thanks for clearing that up. I'd had a similar problem with my late mother's tax, not done for 5 years, and she hadn't told me, though in her case ill health and the fact that she was owed back tax for 4 of the 5 probably did the trick to get her off the fine in those years before the rulke change.
I did notice this in the Grsaun earlier. Probably not unrelated, the income has to be made up somehow:
Apparently Israel is going to supply early warning systems for detecting drone and missile attacks to Ukraine. A consequence for Russia siding with Hamas.
That will be a total head fuck, taking sides-wise, for just about everyone on PB.
Russia bad. Hamas bad. That's simple enough, isn't it?
I know Israel are now supporting Ukraine, but hey, we've dealt with such mindfucks as the French supporting Ukraine. We can handle this.
Russia bad. Hamas noble, oppressed, democratically-elected freedom fighters seems to be the norm for many if not most PB posters.
You tend to hear the strongest views on this from the shoutiest most opinionated posters. I would assume the majority view is Russia bad, Hamas bad, Israel (Netanyahu) bad, Ukraine good.
I work on the 'everyone bad' mindset. Brings a simply clarity to geopolitics. In any conflict, the bad fight the bad (as fighting is bad) and it's no surprise that the bad support the bad or - being bad - are bad friends and fail to support the bad or, indeed, turn round and support the other bad side
All as bad as each other is rather what Russia would like the world (particularly the West) to believe. It encourages leaders to abandon Ukraine.
There's a great part in Pratchett's Going Postal where a character describes the con the men who own the Grand Trunk are playing - I don't have the book in front of me, but it's along the lines of: you see an asset that could turn a profit that is currently owned by people who care about the asset as a system and not an asset and therefore do not have a head for business. As someone who wants to turn a profit, you approach these men with no heads for business and say you want to invest in that asset. They agree, always wanting money to spend tinkering in their sheds to improve the systems they care about, and sign your documents. Eventually, you run out of that first bit of money, so when they say they're happy to invest again you sign again without question. But this time you've sold more than a 50% share in the asset, so you no longer own it, and now people with heads for business are in charge and they don't care if the system works - they care that it makes money. So maintenance stops, because that's a cost that doesn't return short term profit, and the system is always pushed to breaking point to make the most money off of it. They bought it dirt cheap, they suck it dry whilst running it into the ground, and they'll also likely make a profit selling it off afterwards to another rube or to the state who need the system to exist for the functioning of society.
Anyway, I give this extremely long preface (apologies as always @TOPPING) to share this unrelated news:
It is not obvious to me that it's a good deal for the UK to force Thames customers effectively to bail out a commercial entity which has previously extracted massive dividends from the business, and which, without the deal which the owners are lobbying for, is effectively bankrupt.
We should put in into administration, and government should take control of the business. The shareholders and bondholders would take massive losses, but that would serve as a useful warning to the commercial owners of UK public service utilities (often overseas) who have been taking the piss for decades.
Government can probably borrow more cheaply anyway, and the necessary price rises for the needed infrastructure improvement would be significantly less. And any future profits would remain in the UK.
An alternative fair plan could be to treat the bill a bit like a share issue.
So let them increase it by the 40% they need but half the company goes to the customers who pay the bills and existing shareholders get diluted.
The problem with that idea is that many of the customers will immediately sell their shares to the existing shareholders, to make a quick buck.
As you can do with any shareholding that pays an ongoing dividend.
Not to me. It still involves either the billpayers - or the taxpayer - bailing out £14bn or so of majority foreign owned bad debt
In exchange for shares. It depends on the numbers I suppose, what would their shares be worth vs extra they pay, as long as that can be reasonably matched it seems fair.
Thames Water is effectively bust without a bailout, so 'shares' are currently worth nothing.
The numbers are that there is around £14bn of debt, much of which was incurred to pay past dividends on both shares and bonds. You're asking billpayers to pay for the debt.
Wiping out the bondholders by way of administration would be a salutary warning to others not to take the piss in the future.
Apparently Israel is going to supply early warning systems for detecting drone and missile attacks to Ukraine. A consequence for Russia siding with Hamas.
That will be a total head fuck, taking sides-wise, for just about everyone on PB.
Russia bad. Hamas bad. That's simple enough, isn't it?
I know Israel are now supporting Ukraine, but hey, we've dealt with such mindfucks as the French supporting Ukraine. We can handle this.
Russia bad. Hamas noble, oppressed, democratically-elected freedom fighters seems to be the norm for many if not most PB posters.
You tend to hear the strongest views on this from the shoutiest most opinionated posters. I would assume the majority view is Russia bad, Hamas bad, Israel (Netanyahu) bad, Ukraine good.
I work on the 'everyone bad' mindset. Brings a simply clarity to geopolitics. In any conflict, the bad fight the bad (as fighting is bad) and it's no surprise that the bad support the bad or - being bad - are bad friends and fail to support the bad or, indeed, turn round and support the other bad side
All as bad as each other is rather what Russia would like the world (particularly the West) to believe. It encourages leaders to abandon Ukraine.
Yes. I had in mind more the Israel-Hamas conflict and some others around the world.
I'm seeing a guy today, a bit 'alternative', he earns only £10-£12k pa as a self-employed jobbing craftsman (his choice). Living very simply he asks for and gets no state help.
But he's in hoc to HRMC for a £2k for failing to file two years tax returns on-line properly. It appears he completed the forms (zero tax to pay) but failed to press 'submit', not really being very IT literate.
He's got no way of paying the fines but they're threatening court action.
Interesting challenge.
IIRC it used to be the case that hmrc couldn't fine you more than the tax you owed, to preclude precisely this kind of case, which offends against natural justice. But the current government got rid of that rule, while its wealthy members pay lower effective tax rates than nurses. Get these people out of government.
That's exactly what I had wondered about - so thanks for clearing that up. I'd had a similar problem with my late mother's tax, not done for 5 years, and she hadn't told me, though in her case ill health and the fact that she was owed back tax for 4 of the 5 probably did the trick to get her off the fine in those years before the rulke change.
I did notice this in the Grsaun earlier. Probably not unrelated, the income has to be made up somehow:
@benpointer I heard a similar story albeit from a wealthy professional couple and only one year’s (non)submission . In the end the Taxman relented but took a protracted battle and a long period of correspondence.
I'm seeing a guy today, a bit 'alternative', he earns only £10-£12k pa as a self-employed jobbing craftsman (his choice). Living very simply he asks for and gets no state help.
But he's in hoc to HRMC for a £2k for failing to file two years tax returns on-line properly. It appears he completed the forms (zero tax to pay) but failed to press 'submit', not really being very IT literate.
He's got no way of paying the fines but they're threatening court action.
Interesting challenge.
IIRC it used to be the case that hmrc couldn't fine you more than the tax you owed, to preclude precisely this kind of case, which offends against natural justice. But the current government got rid of that rule, while its wealthy members pay lower effective tax rates than nurses. Get these people out of government.
That's exactly what I had wondered about - so thanks for clearing that up. I'd had a similar problem with my late mother's tax, not done for 5 years, and she hadn't told me, though in her case ill health and the fact that she was owed back tax for 4 of the 5 probably did the trick to get her off the fine in those years before the rulke change.
I did notice this in the Grsaun earlier. Probably not unrelated, the income has to be made up somehow:
As long as the Cons fail to see the multiple issues ordinary people face in just getting by daily then they will continue to decline, and going "full Trump" is certainly not going to arrest that decline. Susan Hall is an awful, harsh sounding candidate and will fail. In the GE they may hang on in a couple of seats, but it's not going to be good for them at all.
The longer they leave it the worse it will be for them.
The Tories hate everything about London: it's young university educated population, its cosmopolitan neighbourhoods, its liberality, its impoverished poor, its culture. They offer nothing to alleviate the hardship of the housing situation, or to support the people. Why would they get votes here with their neanderthal nativism?
I see those of us in the North, and the Scots, are the most accepting. Listening to some people here you'd think us northerners were a mass of hatred and bigotry and the south were the enlightened ones.
"mostly down to homophobia and transphobia amongst some socially conservative communities overrepresented in London demographics"
Whatever that means.
What it means is the stereotype of Londoners as metropolitan, tolerant and liberal is as false as the notion provincial England is socially conservative if not reactionary.
There are intolerant people in London just as there are intolerant people everywhere. There are strong socially conservative communities in many parts of the capital - among devoutly religious groups including Christian evangelicals, Muslims, Hindus, Jews etc for example. Of course you don't have to be religious or have strong personal faith to be socially conservative not does having faith mean you can't be socially liberal but without wishing to over-generalise..
All this does (rightly) is challenge preconceptions or misconceptions about London. Newham for example has fewer atheists and agnostics than almost anywhere else. Faith is very important - which faith is another matter and I wouldn't want to overstate this but evangelical churches are noticeable here with a new one for the Latin American community having recently opened off the Barking Road.
I would put it down to education first by a long way then probably age and a good first indicator is a vote for 'Leave'. A short Dutch documentary taken in Clacton. They seem to be mostly white English......
"Then there are people who follow Daesh (Islamic State) and al-Qaeda who think you can't be a Muslim and a westerner, I get it from both sides in relation to the death threats."
This is what is so stupid about the Tory narrative, it gives credence to the view that a Muslim can't be a westerner. They're singing from the Al qaeda hymn book.
How does someone as stupid as @Roger even have a vote?
How can you be so stupid you do not realise that the Islamification of London has made it in, in places, a much more intolerant, homophobic, and anti-Semitic place?
My hope is that Brexit has denied him a vote, so he can only exercise a vote in, lol, Marine le Pen’s France
Apparently Israel is going to supply early warning systems for detecting drone and missile attacks to Ukraine. A consequence for Russia siding with Hamas.
That will be a total head fuck, taking sides-wise, for just about everyone on PB.
Russia bad. Hamas bad. That's simple enough, isn't it?
I know Israel are now supporting Ukraine, but hey, we've dealt with such mindfucks as the French supporting Ukraine. We can handle this.
Russia bad. Hamas noble, oppressed, democratically-elected freedom fighters seems to be the norm for many if not most PB posters.
You tend to hear the strongest views on this from the shoutiest most opinionated posters. I would assume the majority view is Russia bad, Hamas bad, Israel (Netanyahu) bad, Ukraine good.
I work on the 'everyone bad' mindset. Brings a simply clarity to geopolitics. In any conflict, the bad fight the bad (as fighting is bad) and it's no surprise that the bad support the bad or - being bad - are bad friends and fail to support the bad or, indeed, turn round and support the other bad side
Working out which is the LEAST bad occupies many of my waking hours.
How does someone as stupid as @Roger even have a vote?
How can you be so stupid you do not realise that the Islamification of London has made it in, in places, a much more intolerant, homophobic, and anti-Semitic place?
My hope is that Brexit has denied him a vote, so he can only exercise a vote in, lol, Marine le Pen’s France
There's a great part in Pratchett's Going Postal where a character describes the con the men who own the Grand Trunk are playing - I don't have the book in front of me, but it's along the lines of: you see an asset that could turn a profit that is currently owned by people who care about the asset as a system and not an asset and therefore do not have a head for business. As someone who wants to turn a profit, you approach these men with no heads for business and say you want to invest in that asset. They agree, always wanting money to spend tinkering in their sheds to improve the systems they care about, and sign your documents. Eventually, you run out of that first bit of money, so when they say they're happy to invest again you sign again without question. But this time you've sold more than a 50% share in the asset, so you no longer own it, and now people with heads for business are in charge and they don't care if the system works - they care that it makes money. So maintenance stops, because that's a cost that doesn't return short term profit, and the system is always pushed to breaking point to make the most money off of it. They bought it dirt cheap, they suck it dry whilst running it into the ground, and they'll also likely make a profit selling it off afterwards to another rube or to the state who need the system to exist for the functioning of society.
Anyway, I give this extremely long preface (apologies as always @TOPPING) to share this unrelated news:
It is not obvious to me that it's a good deal for the UK to force Thames customers effectively to bail out a commercial entity which has previously extracted massive dividends from the business, and which, without the deal which the owners are lobbying for, is effectively bankrupt.
We should put in into administration, and government should take control of the business. The shareholders and bondholders would take massive losses, but that would serve as a useful warning to the commercial owners of UK public service utilities (often overseas) who have been taking the piss for decades.
Government can probably borrow more cheaply anyway, and the necessary price rises for the needed infrastructure improvement would be significantly less. And any future profits would remain in the UK.
Agree, apart from a "lol" for the "future profits" bit.
It was explained several times in the 1992 election program that was linked to a few threads ago that London had more marginal seats than any other area in the country. How things have changed!
There's a great part in Pratchett's Going Postal where a character describes the con the men who own the Grand Trunk are playing - I don't have the book in front of me, but it's along the lines of: you see an asset that could turn a profit that is currently owned by people who care about the asset as a system and not an asset and therefore do not have a head for business. As someone who wants to turn a profit, you approach these men with no heads for business and say you want to invest in that asset. They agree, always wanting money to spend tinkering in their sheds to improve the systems they care about, and sign your documents. Eventually, you run out of that first bit of money, so when they say they're happy to invest again you sign again without question. But this time you've sold more than a 50% share in the asset, so you no longer own it, and now people with heads for business are in charge and they don't care if the system works - they care that it makes money. So maintenance stops, because that's a cost that doesn't return short term profit, and the system is always pushed to breaking point to make the most money off of it. They bought it dirt cheap, they suck it dry whilst running it into the ground, and they'll also likely make a profit selling it off afterwards to another rube or to the state who need the system to exist for the functioning of society.
Anyway, I give this extremely long preface (apologies as always @TOPPING) to share this unrelated news:
It is not obvious to me that it's a good deal for the UK to force Thames customers effectively to bail out a commercial entity which has previously extracted massive dividends from the business, and which, without the deal which the owners are lobbying for, is effectively bankrupt.
We should put in into administration, and government should take control of the business. The shareholders and bondholders would take massive losses, but that would serve as a useful warning to the commercial owners of UK public service utilities (often overseas) who have been taking the piss for decades.
Government can probably borrow more cheaply anyway, and the necessary price rises for the needed infrastructure improvement would be significantly less. And any future profits would remain in the UK.
Agree, apart from a "lol" for the "future profits" bit.
Has anyone made the connection with the header? (Apols. if they have.)
The yelling and screaming and discourse in parliament from the tories is a national embarrassment. Seriously, this is no way to conduct national debate. And now Hoyle is toothless to intervene because he is fighting to stay in his post 🤷 wow.
How does someone as stupid as @Roger even have a vote?
How can you be so stupid you do not realise that the Islamification of London has made it in, in places, a much more intolerant, homophobic, and anti-Semitic place?
My hope is that Brexit has denied him a vote, so he can only exercise a vote in, lol, Marine le Pen’s France
You might enjoy 'How They broke Britain' by James O'Brien. Very well written very funny and as good a reflection on UK politics as you could find. Much better than his LBC slots which are also good
How does someone as stupid as @Roger even have a vote?
How can you be so stupid you do not realise that the Islamification of London has made it in, in places, a much more intolerant, homophobic, and anti-Semitic place?
My hope is that Brexit has denied him a vote, so he can only exercise a vote in, lol, Marine le Pen’s France
You are Lee Anderson and I claim my £5.
Relying on documentaries for the views of a community is equally stupid.
I recall having a coffee by Hungerford Bridge by Waterloo, one afternoon. A film crew was making a piece on public views on a political topic. I think it was civil partnerships. They would pick someone coming over the bridge, and start filming them. Once the person started saying something reasonable, they would stop filming. Most people were "whatever, fine with me".
Once in a while they got a nutter and filmed a nice long piece.
It was in the very early days of smart phones. I started filming them filming. The lady running the show came over and demanded I stop. Apparently me filming them filming people was harassment.
Back Starmer or back a loser. He won't like doing either. I can see him burying all election coverage on about page 14.
Poor Rupert. Couldn't happen to a nicer chap.
The power balance between government and media has shifted towards government across the western world. Which isn't always a good thing. Starmer doesn't owe Murdoch any favours.
Quite a revealing poll on the depth of anti-muslim opinions and other eyebrow raising views among Tory members. Scary to think that this extremist group put some of the last few prime ministers in office with no input from the wider electorate.
There's a great part in Pratchett's Going Postal where a character describes the con the men who own the Grand Trunk are playing - I don't have the book in front of me, but it's along the lines of: you see an asset that could turn a profit that is currently owned by people who care about the asset as a system and not an asset and therefore do not have a head for business. As someone who wants to turn a profit, you approach these men with no heads for business and say you want to invest in that asset. They agree, always wanting money to spend tinkering in their sheds to improve the systems they care about, and sign your documents. Eventually, you run out of that first bit of money, so when they say they're happy to invest again you sign again without question. But this time you've sold more than a 50% share in the asset, so you no longer own it, and now people with heads for business are in charge and they don't care if the system works - they care that it makes money. So maintenance stops, because that's a cost that doesn't return short term profit, and the system is always pushed to breaking point to make the most money off of it. They bought it dirt cheap, they suck it dry whilst running it into the ground, and they'll also likely make a profit selling it off afterwards to another rube or to the state who need the system to exist for the functioning of society.
Anyway, I give this extremely long preface (apologies as always @TOPPING) to share this unrelated news:
Unfortunately, Thatcher read Going Postal and decided to turn it into party policy. Which explains the state of our infrastructure.
Well as Going Postal was written in 2004 that seems a bit unlikely.
What it does illustrate, once again, is just how sharp a commentator Pratchett was. Just as with the Vimes's Boot theory. That literary snobs dismissed one of Britain's greatest writers says more about them than anything else. I heard a great story from his later years, of paying a bill of multiple 10's of thousands, with some loose money from a pocket, such was his wealth at that point.
I did my undergraduate and post graduate dissertations on Pratchett - if you or any PBers want to fund my PhD (in this world of telling art students that they have low value degrees), I'd happily take your grant monies (although you may dislike my verbose writing style and my views of Pratchett as a good leftist satirist). I would argue that (alongside the theory people) Pratchett is the most influential writer on my political thought.
If I win the lottery then I'd gladly fund a PhD on Pratchett and Politics.
One of my MRes proposals was looking at tyrants in literature, going through the history of tyranny and when it was acceptable and unacceptable and discussing neoliberalism and tyranny in Discworld - with a clear focus on Vetinari and Ankh Morpork. But I swapped that out for discussing the nature of the posthuman person - discussing how Pratchett creates personhood beyond the mere human with posthumanist ethics and stories.
There's a great part in Pratchett's Going Postal where a character describes the con the men who own the Grand Trunk are playing - I don't have the book in front of me, but it's along the lines of: you see an asset that could turn a profit that is currently owned by people who care about the asset as a system and not an asset and therefore do not have a head for business. As someone who wants to turn a profit, you approach these men with no heads for business and say you want to invest in that asset. They agree, always wanting money to spend tinkering in their sheds to improve the systems they care about, and sign your documents. Eventually, you run out of that first bit of money, so when they say they're happy to invest again you sign again without question. But this time you've sold more than a 50% share in the asset, so you no longer own it, and now people with heads for business are in charge and they don't care if the system works - they care that it makes money. So maintenance stops, because that's a cost that doesn't return short term profit, and the system is always pushed to breaking point to make the most money off of it. They bought it dirt cheap, they suck it dry whilst running it into the ground, and they'll also likely make a profit selling it off afterwards to another rube or to the state who need the system to exist for the functioning of society.
Anyway, I give this extremely long preface (apologies as always @TOPPING) to share this unrelated news:
It is not obvious to me that it's a good deal for the UK to force Thames customers effectively to bail out a commercial entity which has previously extracted massive dividends from the business, and which, without the deal which the owners are lobbying for, is effectively bankrupt.
We should put in into administration, and government should take control of the business. The shareholders and bondholders would take massive losses, but that would serve as a useful warning to the commercial owners of UK public service utilities (often overseas) who have been taking the piss for decades.
Government can probably borrow more cheaply anyway, and the necessary price rises for the needed infrastructure improvement would be significantly less. And any future profits would remain in the UK.
An alternative fair plan could be to treat the bill a bit like a share issue.
So let them increase it by the 40% they need but half the company goes to the customers who pay the bills and existing shareholders get diluted.
The problem with that idea is that many of the customers will immediately sell their shares to the existing shareholders, to make a quick buck.
As you can do with any shareholding that pays an ongoing dividend.
Not to me. It still involves either the billpayers - or the taxpayer - bailing out £14bn or so of majority foreign owned bad debt
In exchange for shares. It depends on the numbers I suppose, what would their shares be worth vs extra they pay, as long as that can be reasonably matched it seems fair.
Thames Water is effectively bust without a bailout, so 'shares' are currently worth nothing.
The numbers are that there is around £14bn of debt, much of which was incurred to pay past dividends on both shares and bonds. You're asking billpayers to pay for the debt.
Wiping out the bondholders by way of administration would be a salutary warning to others not to take the piss in the future.
Meh, you are entitled to elect what is your main residence in any tax year. I don't think she has done anything wrong here. Had she rented it out it might have been different but there is no evidence of that.
Meh, you are entitled to elect what is your main residence in any tax year. I don't think she has done anything wrong here. Had she rented it out it might have been different but there is no evidence of that.
That has always been my understanding. Seems like someone's out to get her with poorly researched material.
Meh, you are entitled to elect what is your main residence in any tax year. I don't think she has done anything wrong here. Had she rented it out it might have been different but there is no evidence of that.
But the sense of desperation from the Tories pushing this non-story is palpable.
How does someone as stupid as @Roger even have a vote?
How can you be so stupid you do not realise that the Islamification of London has made it in, in places, a much more intolerant, homophobic, and anti-Semitic place?
My hope is that Brexit has denied him a vote, so he can only exercise a vote in, lol, Marine le Pen’s France
You might enjoy 'How They broke Britain' by James O'Brien. Very well written very funny and as good a reflection on UK politics as you could find. Much better than his LBC slots which are also good
If you are young pretty female and fond of miniskirts, or indeed lesbian or gay and keen on holding hands, there are many places in Britain, sadly, where you will now find a much more hostile atmosphere than would have been the case 20 years ago
And the reason is Islam
it would be a wonderful world if all British Muslims were as liberal, amusing and tolerant as our own @TSE but sadly that is not the case
There's a great part in Pratchett's Going Postal where a character describes the con the men who own the Grand Trunk are playing - I don't have the book in front of me, but it's along the lines of: you see an asset that could turn a profit that is currently owned by people who care about the asset as a system and not an asset and therefore do not have a head for business. As someone who wants to turn a profit, you approach these men with no heads for business and say you want to invest in that asset. They agree, always wanting money to spend tinkering in their sheds to improve the systems they care about, and sign your documents. Eventually, you run out of that first bit of money, so when they say they're happy to invest again you sign again without question. But this time you've sold more than a 50% share in the asset, so you no longer own it, and now people with heads for business are in charge and they don't care if the system works - they care that it makes money. So maintenance stops, because that's a cost that doesn't return short term profit, and the system is always pushed to breaking point to make the most money off of it. They bought it dirt cheap, they suck it dry whilst running it into the ground, and they'll also likely make a profit selling it off afterwards to another rube or to the state who need the system to exist for the functioning of society.
Anyway, I give this extremely long preface (apologies as always @TOPPING) to share this unrelated news:
It is not obvious to me that it's a good deal for the UK to force Thames customers effectively to bail out a commercial entity which has previously extracted massive dividends from the business, and which, without the deal which the owners are lobbying for, is effectively bankrupt.
We should put in into administration, and government should take control of the business. The shareholders and bondholders would take massive losses, but that would serve as a useful warning to the commercial owners of UK public service utilities (often overseas) who have been taking the piss for decades.
Government can probably borrow more cheaply anyway, and the necessary price rises for the needed infrastructure improvement would be significantly less. And any future profits would remain in the UK.
An alternative fair plan could be to treat the bill a bit like a share issue.
So let them increase it by the 40% they need but half the company goes to the customers who pay the bills and existing shareholders get diluted.
The problem with that idea is that many of the customers will immediately sell their shares to the existing shareholders, to make a quick buck.
As you can do with any shareholding that pays an ongoing dividend.
Not to me. It still involves either the billpayers - or the taxpayer - bailing out £14bn or so of majority foreign owned bad debt
In exchange for shares. It depends on the numbers I suppose, what would their shares be worth vs extra they pay, as long as that can be reasonably matched it seems fair.
Thames Water is effectively bust without a bailout, so 'shares' are currently worth nothing.
The numbers are that there is around £14bn of debt, much of which was incurred to pay past dividends on both shares and bonds. You're asking billpayers to pay for the debt.
Wiping out the bondholders by way of administration would be a salutary warning to others not to take the piss in the future.
Who owns Thames Water's debt?
Pension funds, domestic and international. Including a big chunk to the UK Universities pension (comedy) scheme.
Apparently Israel is going to supply early warning systems for detecting drone and missile attacks to Ukraine. A consequence for Russia siding with Hamas.
That will be a total head fuck, taking sides-wise, for just about everyone on PB.
Russia bad. Hamas bad. That's simple enough, isn't it?
I know Israel are now supporting Ukraine, but hey, we've dealt with such mindfucks as the French supporting Ukraine. We can handle this.
Russia bad. Hamas noble, oppressed, democratically-elected freedom fighters seems to be the norm for many if not most PB posters.
You tend to hear the strongest views on this from the shoutiest most opinionated posters. I would assume the majority view is Russia bad, Hamas bad, Israel (Netanyahu) bad, Ukraine good.
I work on the 'everyone bad' mindset. Brings a simply clarity to geopolitics. In any conflict, the bad fight the bad (as fighting is bad) and it's no surprise that the bad support the bad or - being bad - are bad friends and fail to support the bad or, indeed, turn round and support the other bad side
I wonder if Terry Pratchett had a saying for such an occasion
Quite a revealing poll on the depth of anti-muslim opinions and other eyebrow raising views among Tory members. Scary to think that this extremist group put some of the last few prime ministers in office with no input from the wider electorate.
Extraordinary. Next time you meet a Tory Party Member I'd suggest you give them a wide berth
Apparently Israel is going to supply early warning systems for detecting drone and missile attacks to Ukraine. A consequence for Russia siding with Hamas.
That will be a total head fuck, taking sides-wise, for just about everyone on PB.
Russia bad. Hamas bad. That's simple enough, isn't it?
I know Israel are now supporting Ukraine, but hey, we've dealt with such mindfucks as the French supporting Ukraine. We can handle this.
Russia bad. Hamas noble, oppressed, democratically-elected freedom fighters seems to be the norm for many if not most PB posters.
You tend to hear the strongest views on this from the shoutiest most opinionated posters. I would assume the majority view is Russia bad, Hamas bad, Israel (Netanyahu) bad, Ukraine good.
I work on the 'everyone bad' mindset. Brings a simply clarity to geopolitics. In any conflict, the bad fight the bad (as fighting is bad) and it's no surprise that the bad support the bad or - being bad - are bad friends and fail to support the bad or, indeed, turn round and support the other bad side
I wonder if Terry Pratchett had a saying for such an occasion
‘if you want to understan’ an enemy, you gotta walk a mile in his shoes. Den, if he’s still you enemy, at least you’re a mile away and he’s got no shoes.’
Quite a revealing poll on the depth of anti-muslim opinions and other eyebrow raising views among Tory members. Scary to think that this extremist group put some of the last few prime ministers in office with no input from the wider electorate.
Extraordinary. Next time you meet a Tory Party Member I'd suggest you give them a wide berth
Do you have any top tips for identifying them from a distance?
How does someone as stupid as @Roger even have a vote?
How can you be so stupid you do not realise that the Islamification of London has made it in, in places, a much more intolerant, homophobic, and anti-Semitic place?
My hope is that Brexit has denied him a vote, so he can only exercise a vote in, lol, Marine le Pen’s France
You might enjoy 'How They broke Britain' by James O'Brien. Very well written very funny and as good a reflection on UK politics as you could find. Much better than his LBC slots which are also good
If you are young pretty female and fond of miniskirts, or indeed lesbian or gay and keen on holding hands, there are many places in Britain, sadly, where you will now find a much more hostile atmosphere than would have been the case 20 years ago
And the reason is Islam
it would be a wonderful world if all British Muslims were as liberal, amusing and tolerant as our own @TSE but sadly that is not the case
I suggest you come up to The Village in Manchester one night, all the times my friends have suffered homophobic abuse at The Village/and or leaving it is from white people.
Quite a revealing poll on the depth of anti-muslim opinions and other eyebrow raising views among Tory members. Scary to think that this extremist group put some of the last few prime ministers in office with no input from the wider electorate.
Extraordinary. Next time you meet a Tory Party Member I'd suggest you give them a wide berth
Do you have any top tips for identifying them from a distance?
Quite a revealing poll on the depth of anti-muslim opinions and other eyebrow raising views among Tory members. Scary to think that this extremist group put some of the last few prime ministers in office with no input from the wider electorate.
Extraordinary. Next time you meet a Tory Party Member I'd suggest you give them a wide berth
Do you have any top tips for identifying them from a distance?
If the party conference is anything to go by, silver hair, walking stick, hearing aid and in desperate need of a nap...
After watching PMQs nobody is doing anything to enhance the reputation of the HOC and it is clear that this can only change, though I would not hold my breath, by an early GE
It seems the SNP led vonc on the Speaker, notwithstanding Plaid endorsing it, is fizzing out and time to move on on this
And on Angela Rayner I fail to understand what she is accused of
Quite a revealing poll on the depth of anti-muslim opinions and other eyebrow raising views among Tory members. Scary to think that this extremist group put some of the last few prime ministers in office with no input from the wider electorate.
Extraordinary. Next time you meet a Tory Party Member I'd suggest you give them a wide berth
Islam is absolutely a threat to our liberal, tolerant way of life
I know you are not the brightest penny in the purse (Millfield, advertising, stifled laughter, etc) but the sad fact is the lovely tolerant amusing Muslims you befriended in the Lebanon 30 years ago during your tampon advertising days are no longer representative of Islam as whole. I dearly wish they were. I loved that tolerant easygoing Islam. It was fabulous and I too experienced it
But the Islam being exported right now - from Saudi, Iran, etc - is intolerant, misogynistic, gloomy, oppressive and crude. It is more like Trump’s America than John F Kennedy’s America
The yelling and screaming and discourse in parliament from the tories is a national embarrassment. Seriously, this is no way to conduct national debate. And now Hoyle is toothless to intervene because he is fighting to stay in his post 🤷 wow.
We'd have a balanced, rational and reasonable parliament with no yelling and screaming if it wasn't for those pesky Tories.
Comments
@noneoftheabove plan looks equitable to me.
What it does illustrate, once again, is just how sharp a commentator Pratchett was. Just as with the Vimes's Boot theory. That literary snobs dismissed one of Britain's greatest writers says more about them than anything else. I heard a great story from his later years, of paying a bill of multiple 10's of thousands, with some loose money from a pocket, such was his wealth at that point.
Very interesting, thank you.
For example, https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-65656310 is from May 23
"Then there are people who follow Daesh (Islamic State) and al-Qaeda who think you can't be a Muslim and a westerner, I get it from both sides in relation to the death threats."
Or you can go back a lot further:
https://www.thepinknews.com/2013/02/18/labour-mp-sadiq-khan-receives-death-threats-for-supporting-same-sex-marriage/
"Party leaders aren’t wowing voters
The party leaders are not a top draw for any of the key voter groups. People are more likely to be voting against a leader of another party than for their leader. This election will be about parties not personalities."
The election will be about parties not personalities. This is something I think Labour have probably understood but the Conservatives (and many commentators) appear not to. This is a big change from the last election when it really seemed to be Johnson vs Corbyn, as well as Brexit vs Remain.
Also probably true in the trends in Scotland. No longer is it dominated by the huge personalities of Salmond or Sturgeon, so it's now about party positioning.
That Lib Dem voter data point too - that they are voting to get the Tories out. Although they say "people are more likely to be voting against the leader of another party than for their leader" the other data points including this one suggest they're not voting to get Sunak out, nor would they be voting hypothetically to get Badenoch, or Mordaunt, or even a returning Boris out. It's the party. Therefore the idea that changing the leader will transform their fortunes is I think wishful thinking.
People aren't voting specifically for Keir, in the way that perhaps they were doing for Blair. So the strength and cohesion of the Labour front bench becomes more important in convincing the voters. This is where the reasonably solid performances by Streeting, Reeves, Lammy, Reynolds and so on (and even the marginalised but very much on top of his brief Ed Miliband) have helped to project a degree of competence.
For 90% of people it’s going to be all the car they need, and seriously threatens local car manufacturing pretty much everywhere else in the world.
It still involves either the billpayers - or the taxpayer - bailing out £14bn or so of majority foreign owned bad debt
(They should also feel shame for many other positions as well...)
IKKKKKKAAAARRRRRAAAA!
So I'm going to praise Israel for this action, and hope for more, and leave a reckoning on who did or didn't do what for later.
In general, the point at which someone has repented, and begun to make amends, is not the time to attempt to make them feel maximum shame about their past actions. It's really not making friends and influencing people.
The economy is now smaller than it was when the Prime Minister entered Downing Street.
This is Rishi's Recession - and it's time for change.
https://x.com/RachelReevesMP/status/1762792227854532705
🚨NEW Westminster Voting Intention
📈18pt Labour lead
🌹Lab 44 (+2)
🌳Con 26 (-2)
🔶LD 10 (=)
➡️Reform 10 (+2)
🌍Green 4 (=)
🎗️SNP 3 (=)
⬜️Other 4 (-1)
2,097 UK adults, 23-25 February
(chg 16-18 February)
The GE less than a month later showed the biggest swing to Labour since WW2
That bloody toxic Corbyn eh
The Iron Dome system is joint US/Israel technology, probably the best of its kind anywhere at the moment, and they’ve now both given permission for it to go to Ukraine.
I know Israel are now supporting Ukraine, but hey, we've dealt with such mindfucks as the French supporting Ukraine. We can handle this.
Why not just let them own the fuckup and lose their shirts?
When price parity is first reached, then exceeded, that’s going to look like Boeing levels of genius.
- Upcoming general election focusing minds on the actual constituency choices (though you'd expect that to effect RefUK vote too)
- It's winter so people aren't out in nature listening to the birds or swimming in polluted water currently
- Climate change has lost a bit of salience in recent months (I think that could be a big part of it - the topic tends to wax and wane in the news. Plus, it's winter albeit close to the warmest UK February on record)
- It's a while since local elections, where the Greens tend to do well
Against this, one would have expected a significant swing to Green from the pro-Palestinian Labour support. If a lot of this is amongst Muslim voters then possibly the Greens don't have the branding to capture this.
But that's a mark of the poor state of UK manufacturing.
It doesn't appear so from this
https://twitter.com/kelvmackenzie/status/1762745100826767690?t=sjY17HVcnxX3Ise-PnnnCg&s=19
The numbers are that there is around £14bn of debt, much of which was incurred to pay past dividends on both shares and bonds. You're asking billpayers to pay for the debt.
Wiping out the bondholders by way of administration would be a salutary warning to others not to take the piss in the future.
But quite so.
And also like the hidden zinger:
Thames Water - we take the piss.
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/politics/livid-welsh-labour-members-say-28710471
Back Starmer or back a loser. He won't like doing either. I can see him burying all election coverage on about page 14.
Poor Rupert. Couldn't happen to a nicer chap.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUej2pWLUUc
I did notice this in the Grsaun earlier. Probably not unrelated, the income has to be made up somehow:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/feb/18/hmrc-investigations-of-wealthy-tax-dodgers-halve-in-five-years
China’s 2024 space plans include 100 launches and moon sample return mission
https://spacenews.com/chinas-2024-space-plans-include-100-launches-and-moon-sample-return-mission/
https://www.freeflush.co.uk/blogs/freeflush-rainwater-harvesting-blog/whos-paying-most-for-water-bills-in-britain#:~:text=The cheapest place to get,reasonable £502 per year.
It's not hard to pick a side in Ukraine-Russia.
https://lookaftermybills.com/water/what-is-the-average-water-bill-in-the-uk/
2018 -> 2024
Thames Water: £440 Thames £456
Severn Trent: £502 Severn Trent £419
Northumberland Water: £539 Northumbrian £391
Yorkshire Water: £562 Yorkshire £446
Northern Ireland Water: £596
Scottish Water: £600
Anglian Water: £619 Anglian £492
Dwr Cymru Welsh Water: £636 Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water £499
United Utilities: £652 United Utilities £443
Southern Water: £673 Southern £439
Wessex Water: £728 Wessex £504
South West Water: £943 South West £476
Hafren Dyfrdwy £372
South West reducing from £943 to £476 looks particularly unbelievable. I know we'd expect a general rise but one of these articles is very wrong.
And nothing to do with Tower Hamlets
How fucking blind can you be?
How can you be so stupid you do not realise that the Islamification of London has made it in, in places, a much more intolerant, homophobic, and anti-Semitic place?
My hope is that Brexit has denied him a vote, so he can only exercise a vote in, lol, Marine le Pen’s France
It seems pretty potent to me.
I recall having a coffee by Hungerford Bridge by Waterloo, one afternoon. A film crew was making a piece on public views on a political topic. I think it was civil partnerships. They would pick someone coming over the bridge, and start filming them. Once the person started saying something reasonable, they would stop filming. Most people were "whatever, fine with me".
Once in a while they got a nutter and filmed a nice long piece.
It was in the very early days of smart phones. I started filming them filming. The lady running the show came over and demanded I stop. Apparently me filming them filming people was harassment.
Quite a revealing poll on the depth of anti-muslim opinions and other eyebrow raising views among Tory members. Scary to think that this extremist group put some of the last few prime ministers in office with no input from the wider electorate.
https://twitter.com/MarkVipond/status/1762556464780992909
And the reason is Islam
it would be a wonderful world if all British Muslims were as liberal, amusing and tolerant as our own @TSE but sadly that is not the case
I remember when I was a nipper Northern Ireland and Israel/Palestine were mentioned in the same breath.
How Sad
Never Mind
It seems the SNP led vonc on the Speaker, notwithstanding Plaid endorsing it, is fizzing out and time to move on on this
And on Angela Rayner I fail to understand what she is accused of
"There are more ways of killing a cat than by choking it with cream," he quoted, "but I'm not sure," he added "that it's not the best way."
I know you are not the brightest penny in the purse (Millfield, advertising, stifled laughter, etc) but the sad fact is the lovely tolerant amusing Muslims you befriended in the Lebanon 30 years ago during your tampon advertising days are no longer representative of Islam as whole. I dearly wish they were. I loved that tolerant easygoing Islam. It was fabulous and I too experienced it
But the Islam being exported right now - from Saudi, Iran, etc - is intolerant, misogynistic, gloomy, oppressive and crude. It is more like Trump’s America than John F Kennedy’s America
REVISE YOUR PRIORS