Chaos coming in the Defined Contribution Pension market - If funds have a bad year will not be able to accept new contributions and have to invest in UK business -what a UK business is not defined.. They are doing well currently because they invest in Apple and Meta -non UK companies.
What the fuck is this?
I initially thought he was talking about DB funds, which would make a little more sense, but this is specific to DC funds.
The misconceptions are breathtaking.
1) DC funds already disclose how much is invested where, geographically.
2) When a fund (or individual) invests in the shares in a company it is buying shares from existing shareholders. The stockmarket is an aftermarket. The money isn’t going to the company. TWT.
3) If he’s suggesting that funds invest more in unquoted companies and start- ups – imagine how risky this is. This is what brought Neil Woodford down. This document says specifically ‘encouraged pension funds to invest at least 5% of their assets in unlisted equity’. ‘At least’ – this is terrifying.
4) It says he wants to focus minds on how to improve funds – does he think that minds are not already focused in this competitive market already awash with comparison statistics?
5) Instructing funds to invest more in the ‘home market’ restricts, by definition, geographical diversification and therefore increases risk. This is a bad thing for savers.
6) 2012 = 90 vs 2022 = 116 represents ‘huge growth’ does it? What dunderheads.
7) He wants funds to publicly disclose ‘the returns they offer’. What? They offer no returns – these are risk investments. What it means (I assume) is disclosing what the funds’ past performances were. This is already easily available - and past performance has already happened, it is no guide to the future. (Regulation insists that this very fact is disclosed to the investor upfront.)
8) The document assumes a level of control over future returns which the fund managers simply don’t have. It would be better to focus on cost comparisons between the funds.
I shifted my pot to a more global focus recently, sadly UK investment has underperformed for years. Requirement for growth and British investment seems sadly to be almost mutually exclusive
So we’ve gone from the “UK pension funds must invest in UK plc” to “UK pension funds must say how much they invest in UK plc”. Big whoop. This is going to rebound on the government - people are going to look at their pension fund, ask ”why exactly am I investing 25% of my money in the UK?” and move their savings into other markets.*
Personally, I will weight the UK more heavily in my pension when the UK government starts showing equivalent faith by investing in the necessary UK infrastructure to allow the growth in UK plc that would make such a weighting worthwhile. Until such time, the UK is not going to be getting my cash sadly - I can’t afford to put my pension into a country with such poor prospects for economic growth that it’s own government won’t invest in it.
* Eg Vanguard’s target retirement date funds have a significant UK home bias - they’re about 20% invested in UK equities instead of the 4% you’d expect on an economic value basis.
Genuine idle question: what do we objectively think the stock market will do if Labour wins a comfortable majority? Dive because we're not Tories? Soar because we're more sensible? Drift until the effects become clearer? I have no idea, but some of you work in the sector. Perhaps it's already largely priced in?
Given current polling, it’ll be priced in by now. Possibly a bit of market unpredictability around the actual election itself when it’s called, but nothing dramatic. All so long as there’s nothing surprising in Labour’s manifesto that would affect large listed companies in a material way.
Yet the only major tax cuts Hunt has pushed through this parliament have been to national insurance which workers pay but pensioners don't, so the main benefit went to workers. However still no poll reward. Yes more homes could be built to get more under 40s on the housing ladder but the Conservatives lost them even in 2019 when they won a landslide nationally.
The Tories also need pensioners still as they are their core vote, without them they risk extinction. Whether they can win back 40 to 65 year old swing voters in opposition largely depends on the state of the economy under Labour
"...tax cuts Hunt..." has to be typed with care. Incoming taxes on huts anyone?
You haven't lived until you've tried to write a PowerPoint on the Danish empire of 1020-42 for Year 9 with autocorrect on.
King Cnut was renamed in ways that were not altogether appropriate for that age group.
I am just dealing with that in Year 5. Thanks to Detectorists the 10yo already knew about misspelling Cnut.
See we've segued very nicely from "the country is fucked because of wealth inequality" to the best returns on my tens of thousands of cash lying around with barely a pause for breath.
The average PB-er is older richer and more propertied than regular folk. It’s just a fact
Even when we aren’t rich we are canny. Eg @Heathener - probably our poorest commenter - has saved so much money from boiling water in the morning and keeping it in a large thermos flask she can afford to fly business class to foreign parts and take one of the world’s great railway journeys
Chaos coming in the Defined Contribution Pension market - If funds have a bad year will not be able to accept new contributions and have to invest in UK business -what a UK business is not defined.. They are doing well currently because they invest in Apple and Meta -non UK companies.
What the fuck is this?
I initially thought he was talking about DB funds, which would make a little more sense, but this is specific to DC funds.
The misconceptions are breathtaking.
1) DC funds already disclose how much is invested where, geographically.
2) When a fund (or individual) invests in the shares in a company it is buying shares from existing shareholders. The stockmarket is an aftermarket. The money isn’t going to the company. TWT.
3) If he’s suggesting that funds invest more in unquoted companies and start- ups – imagine how risky this is. This is what brought Neil Woodford down. This document says specifically ‘encouraged pension funds to invest at least 5% of their assets in unlisted equity’. ‘At least’ – this is terrifying.
4) It says he wants to focus minds on how to improve funds – does he think that minds are not already focused in this competitive market already awash with comparison statistics?
5) Instructing funds to invest more in the ‘home market’ restricts, by definition, geographical diversification and therefore increases risk. This is a bad thing for savers.
6) 2012 = 90 vs 2022 = 116 represents ‘huge growth’ does it? What dunderheads.
7) He wants funds to publicly disclose ‘the returns they offer’. What? They offer no returns – these are risk investments. What it means (I assume) is disclosing what the funds’ past performances were. This is already easily available - and past performance has already happened, it is no guide to the future. (Regulation insists that this very fact is disclosed to the investor upfront.)
8) The document assumes a level of control over future returns which the fund managers simply don’t have. It would be better to focus on cost comparisons between the funds.
I shifted my pot to a more global focus recently, sadly UK investment has underperformed for years. Requirement for growth and British investment seems sadly to be almost mutually exclusive
So we’ve gone from the “UK pension funds must invest in UK plc” to “UK pension funds must say how much they invest in UK plc”. Big whoop. This is going to rebound on the government - people are going to look at their pension fund, ask ”why exactly am I investing 25% of my money in the UK?” and move their savings into other markets.*
Personally, I will weight the UK more heavily in my pension when the UK government starts showing equivalent faith by investing in the necessary UK infrastructure to allow the growth in UK plc that would make such a weighting worthwhile. Until such time, the UK is not going to be getting my cash sadly - I can’t afford to put my pension into a country with such poor prospects for economic growth that it’s own government won’t invest in it.
* Eg Vanguard’s target retirement date funds have a significant UK home bias - they’re about 20% invested in UK equities instead of the 4% you’d expect on an economic value basis.
Genuine idle question: what do we objectively think the stock market will do if Labour wins a comfortable majority? Dive because we're not Tories? Soar because we're more sensible? Drift until the effects become clearer? I have no idea, but some of you work in the sector. Perhaps it's already largely priced in?
Given current polling, it’ll be predicted in by now. Possibly a bit of market unpredictability around the actual election itself when it’s called, but nothing dramatic. All so long as there’s nothing surprising in Labour’s manifesto that would affect large listed companies in a material way.
If there are any surprises in Labour's manifesto beyond the odd typo I would be...surprised.
According to the Telegraph, Rishi yesterday - apparently in response to tge Rochdale by-election - urged Britain to come together against the poisons of right wing extremism and Islamic extremism.
How has he managed to get right wing extremism into this? One of the features of British politics over the past decade has been the notable absence of the far right compared to elsewhere in the west, especially given the conditions which might be expected to give rise to it. It seems to be some sort of shibboleth "but don't forget the far right are just as bad/dangerous/big a threat". They just aren't. Tommy Robinson and 400 drunken idiots are nothing like the same scale of threat as radical Islam. The number of murders carried out by radical Islam over the past two decades must be about 200 times greater than that carried out by the far right. Conflating the two just isn't credible.
When it comes to the actual threats, attacks etc, the Far Right is a real problem.
They do a lot of low level stuff - fortunately lethal attacks have remained rare.
The difference you are perceiving is that Islamic Fundamentalism gets associated with *any* Islamic activism.
Which is a bit like associating everyone on the anti-gulf war marches with Black Blok and the other MasterCard Marxist Revolutionaries.
People have been saying the Tories are the party of pensioners and have been in danger of dying out as a political force ever since I've taken an interest in politics. Since then, the Tories have won most of the elections.
This is fairly irrelevant to the point I was making. Whether what you say is true or not going forward, the reality is that the Tories actively don’t want my vote despite being somebody that should be prime Tory.
I inherited money, I’m pretty well off from a privileged background, I earn a very good salary yet I’m as far away from the Tories as I have ever been.
In the 2019 general election the Conservatives did better with those earning £20k to £40k than those earning over £50k.
Unless you voted for Brexit you are unlikely to be a prime Conservative voter now even if a well off professional. You might have been pre Brexit but you aren't now. Indeed the Conservatives are more likely to win white working class Leave voters now than upper middle class Remain voters
If you met an average person on the street, the chance of them being a Conservative voter has never really got beyond 3/10 to 4/10 once you factor in turnout. Obviously this applies to all political parties.
I think our politicians forget that, none of them have ever been genuinely popular.
Talking about "surprises in the Labour manifesto" - surely we are more likely to see a whopping humdinger in the Tory one - something outrageous that inexplicably tested well with a focus group in Wolverhampton West.
See we've segued very nicely from "the country is fucked because of wealth inequality" to the best returns on my tens of thousands of cash lying around with barely a pause for breath.
Investing in equities rather than property for retirement is a good thing. If well chosen such investments make money by investing in productivity improvements, for the benefit of all.
It's interesting, but I have worked in a school that had a similar policy and approach and it wasn't a panacea. For a start, it's expensive, so people won't put the money in. For another thing, it's really addressing the symptoms as much as the problems. Unless you have significant support from outside agencies, is it going to stick? A further point would be that if you have a more sensible disciplinary policy to start with it helps avoid getting to that stage. Too much time in education is playing whack-a-mole with things that should have been dealt with much earlier.
One thing I would also point out though is that even with that progress, a big, big problem is that OFSTED is still going to label the school as inadequate on its next inspection due to the exam results and their stupid curriculum framework, at which point the whole thing will unravel anyway.
Yet the only major tax cuts Hunt has pushed through this parliament have been to national insurance which workers pay but pensioners don't, so the main benefit went to workers. However still no poll reward. Yes more homes could be built to get more under 40s on the housing ladder but the Conservatives lost them even in 2019 when they won a landslide nationally.
The Tories also need pensioners still as they are their core vote, without them they risk extinction. Whether they can win back 40 to 65 year old swing voters in opposition largely depends on the state of the economy under Labour
"...tax cuts Hunt..." has to be typed with care. Incoming taxes on huts anyone?
You haven't lived until you've tried to write a PowerPoint on the Danish empire of 1020-42 for Year 9 with autocorrect on.
King Cnut was renamed in ways that were not altogether appropriate for that age group.
I am just dealing with that in Year 5. Thanks to Detectorists the 10yo already knew about misspelling Cnut.
Has anyone written a paper on how much Cnut known, popularly, because of the childish humour inherent in misspelling his name?
According to the Telegraph, Rishi yesterday - apparently in response to tge Rochdale by-election - urged Britain to come together against the poisons of right wing extremism and Islamic extremism.
How has he managed to get right wing extremism into this? One of the features of British politics over the past decade has been the notable absence of the far right compared to elsewhere in the west, especially given the conditions which might be expected to give rise to it. It seems to be some sort of shibboleth "but don't forget the far right are just as bad/dangerous/big a threat". They just aren't. Tommy Robinson and 400 drunken idiots are nothing like the same scale of threat as radical Islam. The number of murders carried out by radical Islam over the past two decades must be about 200 times greater than that carried out by the far right. Conflating the two just isn't credible.
When it comes to the actual threats, attacks etc, the Far Right is a real problem.
They do a lot of low level stuff - fortunately lethal attacks have remained rare.
The difference you are perceiving is that Islamic Fundamentalism gets associated with *any* Islamic activism.
Which is a bit like associating everyone on the anti-gulf war marches with Black Blok and the other MasterCard Marxist Revolutionaries.
And the Far Right have their own tv channel in GBNews.
Yet the only major tax cuts Hunt has pushed through this parliament have been to national insurance which workers pay but pensioners don't, so the main benefit went to workers. However still no poll reward. Yes more homes could be built to get more under 40s on the housing ladder but the Conservatives lost them even in 2019 when they won a landslide nationally.
The Tories also need pensioners still as they are their core vote, without them they risk extinction. Whether they can win back 40 to 65 year old swing voters in opposition largely depends on the state of the economy under Labour
"...tax cuts Hunt..." has to be typed with care. Incoming taxes on huts anyone?
You haven't lived until you've tried to write a PowerPoint on the Danish empire of 1020-42 for Year 9 with autocorrect on.
King Cnut was renamed in ways that were not altogether appropriate for that age group.
I am just dealing with that in Year 5. Thanks to Detectorists the 10yo already knew about misspelling Cnut.
Has anyone written a paper on how much Cnut known, popularly, because of the childish humour inherent in misspelling his name?
Chaos coming in the Defined Contribution Pension market - If funds have a bad year will not be able to accept new contributions and have to invest in UK business -what a UK business is not defined.. They are doing well currently because they invest in Apple and Meta -non UK companies.
What the fuck is this?
I initially thought he was talking about DB funds, which would make a little more sense, but this is specific to DC funds.
The misconceptions are breathtaking.
1) DC funds already disclose how much is invested where, geographically.
2) When a fund (or individual) invests in the shares in a company it is buying shares from existing shareholders. The stockmarket is an aftermarket. The money isn’t going to the company. TWT.
3) If he’s suggesting that funds invest more in unquoted companies and start- ups – imagine how risky this is. This is what brought Neil Woodford down. This document says specifically ‘encouraged pension funds to invest at least 5% of their assets in unlisted equity’. ‘At least’ – this is terrifying.
4) It says he wants to focus minds on how to improve funds – does he think that minds are not already focused in this competitive market already awash with comparison statistics?
5) Instructing funds to invest more in the ‘home market’ restricts, by definition, geographical diversification and therefore increases risk. This is a bad thing for savers.
6) 2012 = 90 vs 2022 = 116 represents ‘huge growth’ does it? What dunderheads.
7) He wants funds to publicly disclose ‘the returns they offer’. What? They offer no returns – these are risk investments. What it means (I assume) is disclosing what the funds’ past performances were. This is already easily available - and past performance has already happened, it is no guide to the future. (Regulation insists that this very fact is disclosed to the investor upfront.)
8) The document assumes a level of control over future returns which the fund managers simply don’t have. It would be better to focus on cost comparisons between the funds.
I shifted my pot to a more global focus recently, sadly UK investment has underperformed for years. Requirement for growth and British investment seems sadly to be almost mutually exclusive
So we’ve gone from the “UK pension funds must invest in UK plc” to “UK pension funds must say how much they invest in UK plc”. Big whoop. This is going to rebound on the government - people are going to look at their pension fund, ask ”why exactly am I investing 25% of my money in the UK?” and move their savings into other markets.*
Personally, I will weight the UK more heavily in my pension when the UK government starts showing equivalent faith by investing in the necessary UK infrastructure to allow the growth in UK plc that would make such a weighting worthwhile. Until such time, the UK is not going to be getting my cash sadly - I can’t afford to put my pension into a country with such poor prospects for economic growth that it’s own government won’t invest in it.
* Eg Vanguard’s target retirement date funds have a significant UK home bias - they’re about 20% invested in UK equities instead of the 4% you’d expect on an economic value basis.
Genuine idle question: what do we objectively think the stock market will do if Labour wins a comfortable majority? Dive because we're not Tories? Soar because we're more sensible? Drift until the effects become clearer? I have no idea, but some of you work in the sector. Perhaps it's already largely priced in?
I'll stick my neck out, and say that I think the rest of the decade will be quite good economically (barring black swans, obviously).
Growth is the natural state of the economy, and business investment has been growing rapidly over the past three years, which will pay off eventually. Simply reverting to the mean (growth of c.2% a year) would mean quite rapid growth over the next six years.
To what extent a Labour government will get the credit is hard to say. Biden's government is getting no credit for what is, objectively, quite a good economic situation. Also, whether we like it or not, governments can't do everything. People are bound to have their expectations disappointed. And, there will be Labour ministers and MPs, who like their Conservative counterparts, will be found with their fingers in places where they should not be.
The other thing about stock-markets, often missed, is the role of the XR.
The pound is down the toilet and if it deteriorates further overseas holding will increase in value by XR alone. So if you think the pound will weaken from here overseas funds make more sense and vice versa.
But the Euro has been "on the point of collapse" since 2012, so we were told.
This analysis is spot on. Post GE the tories will have to pivot to centre right millenials, which will be pro eu. There is no way around it. And the eu hating pensioners will seep to the toxic nostalgia of reform. Splitting that off is going to hurt for 2-3 terms for the tories. But it has to happen. I think this shows that brexit is done for. Brexit was also largely a boomer project. But it isn't sustainable as a political platform.
Can you post photos of your great railway journey?
This is absolutely NOT a snide remark (really). I adore travel and love hearing other people’s travel experiences, humble or exalted, exotic or domestic, they all fascinate me. And photos are incredibly revealing
I may tease @IanB2 about his dog photos, but i always enjoy looking at them, working out where he is. And the photos liven up PB threads which - especially these recent years - can be quite gloomy
Yet the only major tax cuts Hunt has pushed through this parliament have been to national insurance which workers pay but pensioners don't, so the main benefit went to workers. However still no poll reward. Yes more homes could be built to get more under 40s on the housing ladder but the Conservatives lost them even in 2019 when they won a landslide nationally.
The Tories also need pensioners still as they are their core vote, without them they risk extinction. Whether they can win back 40 to 65 year old swing voters in opposition largely depends on the state of the economy under Labour
"...tax cuts Hunt..." has to be typed with care. Incoming taxes on huts anyone?
You haven't lived until you've tried to write a PowerPoint on the Danish empire of 1020-42 for Year 9 with autocorrect on.
King Cnut was renamed in ways that were not altogether appropriate for that age group.
I am just dealing with that in Year 5. Thanks to Detectorists the 10yo already knew about misspelling Cnut.
The Danish spelling is: "Knud"... and largely unpronouncible to brits due to the d-sound 🤣🤣🤣
Mr. 43, taking something at face value is unwise. The Ministry of Truth was not concerned with propagating the truth. The 'diversity' (unless it's Wakanda in which case an ethno-state is super awesome) agenda has been used as one of the many failings of Rings of Power, as it bastardises an Anglo-Saxon/English mythology (the specific reason Tolkien wrote LotR* as the English didn't have tales to compare to Norse or Greek myth), and revises and falsifies history (most infamously with Cleopatra in the Netflix 'documentary').
*The special irony here is that if the muppets in charge knew Middle-Earth better they could've just had the story focused in Harad or Rhun, perhaps telling the tale of the fall of a powerful leader to become a Nazgul. They could even, with Black Numenoreans, have had canonically accurate white bad guys.
Possibly. History is littered with good intentions corruptly applied. Nevertheless, @darkage was talking about premises people start from and that was the point I addressed.
Also "woke" really isn't a useful thing, except as an insult that usually says more about the person making it than the target.
The point I was making is the premise of much 'woke' thinking is that western society is inherently and uniquely evil, of which there is a long tradition on the left. The recent evolution is that it now tries to perpetrate this by avoiding debate and relying instead on emotive claims relating to identity.
This comment from a Labour MP in 2020 was a particularly revealing moment:
"We must not fetishise “debate” as though debate is itself an innocuous, neutral act. The very act of debate in these cases is an effective rollback of assumed equality and a foot in the door for doubt and hatred."
In reality, the left make a lot of good criticisms about Western Society which were previously shut down and went unaired. But the hatred of the west that has been around for the last four years goes too far. The contradictions are too many for me to take seriously. IE: zero acknowledgement of the fact that the British abolished slavery and colonialism as well as partaking in it. No interest in modern day slavery in the middle east. No interest in Xinjiang but obsessed with Palestine. Obsession with racial violence in the US but no interest in ongoing Windrush deportations. All this is held together by a simplified light v dark, good v evil narrative of which any questioning is 'a foot in the door for doubt and hatred'.
I don't see this as evidence of a healthy discourse that is moving western society forward (as other posters on here appear to), it seems instead to discredit legitimate and necessary criticism leading to (as we are now seeing) a similar reaction from the right.
Regarding 'woke'; you have to use language to describe phenomena, it is nothing more than that. I put it in quotation marks because it is a contested term.
This analysis is spot on. Post GE the tories will have to pivot to centre right millenials, which will be pro eu. There is no way around it. And the eu hating pensioners will seep to the toxic nostalgia of reform. Splitting that off is going to hurt for 2-3 terms for the tories. But it has to happen. I think this shows that brexit is done for. Brexit was also largely a boomer project. But it isn't sustainable as a political platform.
Brgreggsit's destiny was written when the tories had to turn on the immigration taps to ameliorate the worst effects of act of economic self-trepanning. They gave the leavers the exact opposite of that which they voted for.
Yet the only major tax cuts Hunt has pushed through this parliament have been to national insurance which workers pay but pensioners don't, so the main benefit went to workers. However still no poll reward. Yes more homes could be built to get more under 40s on the housing ladder but the Conservatives lost them even in 2019 when they won a landslide nationally.
The Tories also need pensioners still as they are their core vote, without them they risk extinction. Whether they can win back 40 to 65 year old swing voters in opposition largely depends on the state of the economy under Labour
"...tax cuts Hunt..." has to be typed with care. Incoming taxes on huts anyone?
You haven't lived until you've tried to write a PowerPoint on the Danish empire of 1020-42 for Year 9 with autocorrect on.
King Cnut was renamed in ways that were not altogether appropriate for that age group.
I am just dealing with that in Year 5. Thanks to Detectorists the 10yo already knew about misspelling Cnut.
Has anyone written a paper on how much Cnut known, popularly, because of the childish humour inherent in misspelling his name?
Yet the only major tax cuts Hunt has pushed through this parliament have been to national insurance which workers pay but pensioners don't, so the main benefit went to workers. However still no poll reward. Yes more homes could be built to get more under 40s on the housing ladder but the Conservatives lost them even in 2019 when they won a landslide nationally.
The Tories also need pensioners still as they are their core vote, without them they risk extinction. Whether they can win back 40 to 65 year old swing voters in opposition largely depends on the state of the economy under Labour
"...tax cuts Hunt..." has to be typed with care. Incoming taxes on huts anyone?
You haven't lived until you've tried to write a PowerPoint on the Danish empire of 1020-42 for Year 9 with autocorrect on.
King Cnut was renamed in ways that were not altogether appropriate for that age group.
I am just dealing with that in Year 5. Thanks to Detectorists the 10yo already knew about misspelling Cnut.
Has anyone written a paper on how much Cnut known, popularly, because of the childish humour inherent in misspelling his name?
According to the Telegraph, Rishi yesterday - apparently in response to tge Rochdale by-election - urged Britain to come together against the poisons of right wing extremism and Islamic extremism.
How has he managed to get right wing extremism into this? One of the features of British politics over the past decade has been the notable absence of the far right compared to elsewhere in the west, especially given the conditions which might be expected to give rise to it. It seems to be some sort of shibboleth "but don't forget the far right are just as bad/dangerous/big a threat". They just aren't. Tommy Robinson and 400 drunken idiots are nothing like the same scale of threat as radical Islam. The number of murders carried out by radical Islam over the past two decades must be about 200 times greater than that carried out by the far right. Conflating the two just isn't credible.
There is a steady stream of White, far right wannabe bombers. I think MI5 must be running the website they download instructions from since they are generally charged with preparing rather than doing. This from Tuesday:-
Good piece @RochdalePioneers, was sad inded to see Galloway and his divisive brand of politics elected in your home town.
Andrew Neil having a right go at both Sunak and Starmer in his DM piece this morning. He remembers being a young journalist through the troubles of the 1970s, and fears that things are going down the route of disfunction again - and the whole political class doesn’t appear to know or care about solutions, fiddling with Rome burns.
‘The UK is drifting, unhappy, losing faith in previously respected institutions (like the police), buffeted by extremists (often allowed to run amok), dismayed by decline, angry at the inability of the political class to do anything about it, despairing that the Westminster politico/media bubble pursues an agenda, issues and priorities (look at the obsession with Lee Anderson) which are not most people’s — and had enough of being lectured to by a disconnected, de haut en bas chattering class.
‘Yet we have a Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition incapable of speaking up for the moderate majority, who still have pride in their country and are desperate for strong leadership and guidance through the current morass — plus some hope/sign things will get better — all within the bounds of traditional British tolerance and fair play. This vacuum is dangerous.’
The Conservative party has spent the last few years whipping up Culture War against "the enemy within" and it is the core of their electoral strategy. They have deliberately and consciously whipped up hate against minority Britons.
Complaining about division and sectarianism is like a fish complaining that the water is wet.
So Sunak against Asians ? Cleverly against blacks ? Shapps against jews ? Badenoch against women ?
I suspect not.
In 'civilisation' Kenneth Clarke concludes to the effect that, the basis of success for western civilisation is having confidence in itself. The enduring point is that there are many cultural forces that seek to destroy our confidence in ourselves which is an existential problem that remains 50 years on. The objection to much 'woke' thinking is that it is not constructive as it starts from the premise that western civilisation is evil and beyond redemption. If you have this mindset as a starting point then the situation is pretty hopeless.
The point about Trump and the 'far right' is that they do exude a form of self confidence, they promise to eradicate these threats; Islamists will be deported, the negative cultural forces will be shut down through reform of institutions and universities. If your assessment of the situation is that we are in a crisis / emergency, then it has a certain appeal.
I do not recognise your characterisation of "Woke". Any confident and secure culture can take criticism, and learn from it to be a better place.
@darkage ’s critique is certainly true of some left/‘woke’ thinking - but it is, I think, also true of quite a lot of thinking on the right.
It’s a fair point, though, about the appeal of self confidence - however vile the politics itself might be. As demonstrated by everyone from the Bolsheviks to the Nazis.
I think there are at least as many on the right who find fault the country and people as on the left.
Being aware of what is wrong with the place is the first step in improving it, whatever your politics.
The idea that we should reject all cultural and historical criticism is not self confidence, it is insecure arrogance. It makes for an eggshell society that collapses quickly.
Firstly, rejecting 'woke' is not the same as 'rejecting all cultural and historical criticism'. It is about trying to look objectively at things like slavery, colonialism etc, noting that they are constants throughout history and exist in much of the world now, and not simply through the prism of disgust over events that took place many decades and centuries before. It is the same thing as rejecting appeals to blind patriotism or baseless allegations of Islamists taking over cities by the 'woke right'.
Secondly, it seems to me that the 'eggshell society that collapses quickly' is the one we have at the moment and was being described by the prime minister yesterday; one that is heavily disrupted by extremists, but with the government is largely powerless to do anything.
Regarding the 'woke right', I just don't see it as any different to the 'woke left'. It was obvious that we would get something like this and it feels like a necessary antithesis, it is actually quite productive for the state of discourse as a whole, despite the obvious dangers.
Signing off now for the day - my flat desperately needs cleaning.
Both "national Conservatives" and the kind of leftists who go on about "decolonising the curriculum", "whiteness", etc. hate their own countries, and hate the West generally, albeit, for different reasons.
Yet the only major tax cuts Hunt has pushed through this parliament have been to national insurance which workers pay but pensioners don't, so the main benefit went to workers. However still no poll reward. Yes more homes could be built to get more under 40s on the housing ladder but the Conservatives lost them even in 2019 when they won a landslide nationally.
The Tories also need pensioners still as they are their core vote, without them they risk extinction. Whether they can win back 40 to 65 year old swing voters in opposition largely depends on the state of the economy under Labour
"...tax cuts Hunt..." has to be typed with care. Incoming taxes on huts anyone?
You haven't lived until you've tried to write a PowerPoint on the Danish empire of 1020-42 for Year 9 with autocorrect on.
King Cnut was renamed in ways that were not altogether appropriate for that age group.
I am just dealing with that in Year 5. Thanks to Detectorists the 10yo already knew about misspelling Cnut.
Has anyone written a paper on how much Cnut known, popularly, because of the childish humour inherent in misspelling his name?
It goes against the grain of my recent posts to suggest that things were better ‘once upon a time’, but when I were a lad the feller’s name was spelled Canute!
Can you post photos of your great railway journey?
This is absolutely NOT a snide remark (really). I adore travel and love hearing other people’s travel experiences, humble or exalted, exotic or domestic, they all fascinate me. And photos are incredibly revealing
I may tease @IanB2 about his dog photos, but i always enjoy looking at them, working out where he is. And the photos liven up PB threads which - especially these recent years - can be quite gloomy
Yet the only major tax cuts Hunt has pushed through this parliament have been to national insurance which workers pay but pensioners don't, so the main benefit went to workers. However still no poll reward. Yes more homes could be built to get more under 40s on the housing ladder but the Conservatives lost them even in 2019 when they won a landslide nationally.
The Tories also need pensioners still as they are their core vote, without them they risk extinction. Whether they can win back 40 to 65 year old swing voters in opposition largely depends on the state of the economy under Labour
"...tax cuts Hunt..." has to be typed with care. Incoming taxes on huts anyone?
You haven't lived until you've tried to write a PowerPoint on the Danish empire of 1020-42 for Year 9 with autocorrect on.
King Cnut was renamed in ways that were not altogether appropriate for that age group.
I am just dealing with that in Year 5. Thanks to Detectorists the 10yo already knew about misspelling Cnut.
Has anyone written a paper on how much Cnut known, popularly, because of the childish humour inherent in misspelling his name?
He was called (or at least taught as Canute in my schooldays. Innocent times.
This analysis is spot on. Post GE the tories will have to pivot to centre right millenials, which will be pro eu. There is no way around it. And the eu hating pensioners will seep to the toxic nostalgia of reform. Splitting that off is going to hurt for 2-3 terms for the tories. But it has to happen. I think this shows that brexit is done for. Brexit was also largely a boomer project. But it isn't sustainable as a political platform.
Yes, I think the road to electability for the Tories is a return to the pro EU internationalist policy that they had for the half century until 2016.
It's interesting, but I have worked in a school that had a similar policy and approach and it wasn't a panacea. For a start, it's expensive, so people won't put the money in. For another thing, it's really addressing the symptoms as much as the problems. Unless you have significant support from outside agencies, is it going to stick? A further point would be that if you have a more sensible disciplinary policy to start with it helps avoid getting to that stage. Too much time in education is playing whack-a-mole with things that should have been dealt with much earlier.
One thing I would also point out though is that even with that progress, a big, big problem is that OFSTED is still going to label the school as inadequate on its next inspection due to the exam results and their stupid curriculum framework, at which point the whole thing will unravel anyway.
Except that Ofsted rated the school Good in November 2022, presumably in recognition of the progress made - it was RI previously. Both reports make interesting reading. https://reports.ofsted.gov.uk/provider/23/100453
Can you post photos of your great railway journey?
This is absolutely NOT a snide remark (really). I adore travel and love hearing other people’s travel experiences, humble or exalted, exotic or domestic, they all fascinate me. And photos are incredibly revealing
I may tease @IanB2 about his dog photos, but i always enjoy looking at them, working out where he is. And the photos liven up PB threads which - especially these recent years - can be quite gloomy
Cheers from a rather rubbish lounge at LHRT4
Prosecco for scale
My travels this morning. Dog for scale.
Bless. He looks happy. Snuffling about
Yes, dogs inhabit a world of smells so alien to us that it is beyond our comprehension.
Still reflecting on Sunak after last night. He remains a complete puzzle, even compared to previous Tory leaders. He seems to embody and blend their key traits..
The reassuring gravitas of Truss The integrity of Johnson The electric charisma of May And the down to Earth, working class grit of Cameron
Whilst adding never before seen highly tuned political antennae. How is he still PM? I don’t get it.
Still reflecting on Sunak after last night. He remains a complete puzzle, even compared to previous Tory leaders. He seems to embody and blend their key traits..
The reassuring gravitas of Truss The integrity of Johnson The electric charisma of May And the down to Earth, working class grit of Cameron
Whilst adding never before seen highly tuned political antennae. How is he still PM? I don’t get it.
It's interesting, but I have worked in a school that had a similar policy and approach and it wasn't a panacea. For a start, it's expensive, so people won't put the money in. For another thing, it's really addressing the symptoms as much as the problems. Unless you have significant support from outside agencies, is it going to stick? A further point would be that if you have a more sensible disciplinary policy to start with it helps avoid getting to that stage. Too much time in education is playing whack-a-mole with things that should have been dealt with much earlier.
One thing I would also point out though is that even with that progress, a big, big problem is that OFSTED is still going to label the school as inadequate on its next inspection due to the exam results and their stupid curriculum framework, at which point the whole thing will unravel anyway.
Except that Ofsted rated the school Good in November 2022, presumably in recognition of the progress made - it was RI previously. Both reports make interesting reading. https://reports.ofsted.gov.uk/provider/23/100453
Not a full report though, and even there they were criticising the teaching.
Can you post photos of your great railway journey?
This is absolutely NOT a snide remark (really). I adore travel and love hearing other people’s travel experiences, humble or exalted, exotic or domestic, they all fascinate me. And photos are incredibly revealing
I may tease @IanB2 about his dog photos, but i always enjoy looking at them, working out where he is. And the photos liven up PB threads which - especially these recent years - can be quite gloomy
Cheers from a rather rubbish lounge at LHRT4
Prosecco for scale
Travelling with a dog pretty much rules out winter trips, as I won't put him on a plane, so it'll be a month or so before we're next on the road. But he is lined up for Colorado in the fall. Meanwhile here's an amusing notice from a previous trip.....
Still reflecting on Sunak after last night. He remains a complete puzzle, even compared to previous Tory leaders. He seems to embody and blend their key traits..
The reassuring gravitas of Truss The integrity of Johnson The electric charisma of May And the down to Earth, working class grit of Cameron
Whilst adding never before seen highly tuned political antennae. How is he still PM? I don’t get it.
Promoted way above his competency. What is most staggering is how the intelligent folks of PB thought he’d be good.
It's interesting, but I have worked in a school that had a similar policy and approach and it wasn't a panacea. For a start, it's expensive, so people won't put the money in. For another thing, it's really addressing the symptoms as much as the problems. Unless you have significant support from outside agencies, is it going to stick? A further point would be that if you have a more sensible disciplinary policy to start with it helps avoid getting to that stage. Too much time in education is playing whack-a-mole with things that should have been dealt with much earlier.
One thing I would also point out though is that even with that progress, a big, big problem is that OFSTED is still going to label the school as inadequate on its next inspection due to the exam results and their stupid curriculum framework, at which point the whole thing will unravel anyway.
Except that Ofsted rated the school Good in November 2022, presumably in recognition of the progress made - it was RI previously. Both reports make interesting reading. https://reports.ofsted.gov.uk/provider/23/100453
Not a full report though, and even there they were criticising the teaching.
Eh? The November 2022 one is a full inspection. I get your antipathy towards Ofsted, but sometimes they get it right. For example, in this case. You said Ofsted would judge the school inadequate. They didn't - they judged it good.
People have been saying the Tories are the party of pensioners and have been in danger of dying out as a political force ever since I've taken an interest in politics. Since then, the Tories have won most of the elections.
It was a common enough trope in the early 2000s when I first started properly taking an interest in politics. I remember the BBC doing a feature on 'under 40s at the Tory conference' - they found only a gaggle of young fogey students who were clearly drunk, and a slightly rumpled 38 year old who was sporting a moustache of the sort that might be very fashionable today but was anything but at the time.
But then came Cameron and Osborne, who made peace with the modern world.
Maybe they'll be able to follow the same path this time round and find themselves an electable leader after only a couple of GE thrashings - but they'll be starting in a much worse position with the the GBNews faction in ascendency. Imagine how things would have turned out if Teresa Gorman had been the favourite in the 1997 leadership race!
Can you post photos of your great railway journey?
This is absolutely NOT a snide remark (really). I adore travel and love hearing other people’s travel experiences, humble or exalted, exotic or domestic, they all fascinate me. And photos are incredibly revealing
I may tease @IanB2 about his dog photos, but i always enjoy looking at them, working out where he is. And the photos liven up PB threads which - especially these recent years - can be quite gloomy
Cheers from a rather rubbish lounge at LHRT4
Prosecco for scale
Travelling with a dog pretty much rules out winter trips, as I won't put him on a plane, so it'll be a month or so before we're next on the road. But he is lined up for Colorado in the fall. Meanwhile here's an amusing notice from a previous trip.....
According to the Telegraph, Rishi yesterday - apparently in response to tge Rochdale by-election - urged Britain to come together against the poisons of right wing extremism and Islamic extremism.
How has he managed to get right wing extremism into this? One of the features of British politics over the past decade has been the notable absence of the far right compared to elsewhere in the west, especially given the conditions which might be expected to give rise to it. It seems to be some sort of shibboleth "but don't forget the far right are just as bad/dangerous/big a threat". They just aren't. Tommy Robinson and 400 drunken idiots are nothing like the same scale of threat as radical Islam. The number of murders carried out by radical Islam over the past two decades must be about 200 times greater than that carried out by the far right. Conflating the two just isn't credible.
There is a steady stream of White, far right wannabe bombers. I think MI5 must be running the website they download instructions from since they are generally charged with preparing rather than doing. This from Tuesday:-
Far-right extremism occupies about a quarter of MI5/police time, despite the lack of bombs and rampages.
I come to the unhappy conclusion that white-British people are just useless at terrorism, and like other parts of the economy extremists from overseas have filled the gap.
Yet another symptom of poor educational standards (particularly Chemistry) in UK schools.
Still reflecting on Sunak after last night. He remains a complete puzzle, even compared to previous Tory leaders. He seems to embody and blend their key traits..
The reassuring gravitas of Truss The integrity of Johnson The electric charisma of May And the down to Earth, working class grit of Cameron
Whilst adding never before seen highly tuned political antennae. How is he still PM? I don’t get it.
Promoted way above his competency. What is most staggering is how the intelligent folks of PB thought he’d be good.
We didn't, but we did enjoy the huge sigh of relief.
Can you post photos of your great railway journey?
This is absolutely NOT a snide remark (really). I adore travel and love hearing other people’s travel experiences, humble or exalted, exotic or domestic, they all fascinate me. And photos are incredibly revealing
I may tease @IanB2 about his dog photos, but i always enjoy looking at them, working out where he is. And the photos liven up PB threads which - especially these recent years - can be quite gloomy
Cheers from a rather rubbish lounge at LHRT4
Prosecco for scale
Travelling with a dog pretty much rules out winter trips, as I won't put him on a plane, so it'll be a month or so before we're next on the road. But he is lined up for Colorado in the fall. Meanwhile here's an amusing notice from a previous trip.....
Can you post photos of your great railway journey?
This is absolutely NOT a snide remark (really). I adore travel and love hearing other people’s travel experiences, humble or exalted, exotic or domestic, they all fascinate me. And photos are incredibly revealing
I may tease @IanB2 about his dog photos, but i always enjoy looking at them, working out where he is. And the photos liven up PB threads which - especially these recent years - can be quite gloomy
Cheers from a rather rubbish lounge at LHRT4
Prosecco for scale
Travelling with a dog pretty much rules out winter trips, as I won't put him on a plane, so it'll be a month or so before we're next on the road. But he is lined up for Colorado in the fall. Meanwhile here's an amusing notice from a previous trip.....
Is it Colorado by sea then?
Yes indeed. And road, taking the dog up to, I think, 28 US states visited. It'll be a good chance to sense the mood in the runup to their election.
The very best people get more left wing as they get older. A minority, but they’re the ones paying attention not distracted by comfort and baubles. You have to love an 80 year old who still wants to change the world.
What an offensive post.
People who aren't left wing aren't "bad" people and plenty of 80 years olds still want to make things better but simply don't agree that left-wing policies are the right way to go about it.
Have a think about the way you see and say things.
Can you post photos of your great railway journey?
This is absolutely NOT a snide remark (really). I adore travel and love hearing other people’s travel experiences, humble or exalted, exotic or domestic, they all fascinate me. And photos are incredibly revealing
I may tease @IanB2 about his dog photos, but i always enjoy looking at them, working out where he is. And the photos liven up PB threads which - especially these recent years - can be quite gloomy
Cheers from a rather rubbish lounge at LHRT4
Prosecco for scale
Travelling with a dog pretty much rules out winter trips, as I won't put him on a plane, so it'll be a month or so before we're next on the road. But he is lined up for Colorado in the fall. Meanwhile here's an amusing notice from a previous trip.....
Is it Colorado by sea then?
Yes indeed. And road, taking the dog up to, I think, 28 US states visited. It'll be a good chance to sense the mood in the runup to their election.
You're making me a bit jealous now.
I didn't know it was possible to travel the Atlantic with a dog, presumably a lot of paperwork involved, and is accomodation dog friendly?
According to the Telegraph, Rishi yesterday - apparently in response to tge Rochdale by-election - urged Britain to come together against the poisons of right wing extremism and Islamic extremism.
How has he managed to get right wing extremism into this? One of the features of British politics over the past decade has been the notable absence of the far right compared to elsewhere in the west, especially given the conditions which might be expected to give rise to it. It seems to be some sort of shibboleth "but don't forget the far right are just as bad/dangerous/big a threat". They just aren't. Tommy Robinson and 400 drunken idiots are nothing like the same scale of threat as radical Islam. The number of murders carried out by radical Islam over the past two decades must be about 200 times greater than that carried out by the far right. Conflating the two just isn't credible.
There is a steady stream of White, far right wannabe bombers. I think MI5 must be running the website they download instructions from since they are generally charged with preparing rather than doing. This from Tuesday:-
Far-right extremism occupies about a quarter of MI5/police time, despite the lack of bombs and rampages.
I come to the unhappy conclusion that white-British people are just useless at terrorism, and like other parts of the economy extremists from overseas have filled the gap.
Yet another symptom of poor educational standards (particularly Chemistry) in UK schools.
A lot of extremism isn't terror related, either Islamist or right wing, though obviously that is the most serious end.
Can you post photos of your great railway journey?
This is absolutely NOT a snide remark (really). I adore travel and love hearing other people’s travel experiences, humble or exalted, exotic or domestic, they all fascinate me. And photos are incredibly revealing
I may tease @IanB2 about his dog photos, but i always enjoy looking at them, working out where he is. And the photos liven up PB threads which - especially these recent years - can be quite gloomy
Cheers from a rather rubbish lounge at LHRT4
Prosecco for scale
My travels this morning. Dog for scale.
Bless. He looks happy. Snuffling about
Yes, dogs inhabit a world of smells so alien to us that it is beyond our comprehension.
I think my attitude to dogs - previously a little skeptical - has really warmed since I ate one. And it was quite tasty
Now they don’t seem quite so pointless. Yes dogs are a tad annoying at times - but also a precious food source if things go bad
Ps. Never understood why the Tories have ditched their green agenda. Would have thought there was a long term strategic fit between conservatism and conservation. Doing a 180 on Cameron’s positioning and going all in on oil certainly has no long term future. Bizarre
We favour sustainability but not in the same way as the Left.
One issue is how political and dogmatic a lot of the activists are: I'm on a sustainability planning committee for a conference at the moment and two of them loudly proclaim that they're 'not of the right' and I'm constantly having to work out, politely, how to rebut their views that everyone should eat vegetarian/vegan food, not drive cars, live in regenerative communes and ditch GDP as a measure.
It's difficult to argue against without them instantly becoming suspicious of and ignoring you.
What a load of hot air and hysteria from the so called main stream politicians yesterday and the Mail this morning. Grief they should have been around at the time of Suez and the Vietnam War, the demos in Trafalgar and Grosvenor Squares. Our current bunch really are a bunch of wimps.
I remember when the polis were killing people just for being at a demo. And again more recently, it must be admitted.
Switch off gb news Forget the conspiracy theories Sack the nutters Go hard on corruption and favours for mates. Jail people who milk the system End the war against doctors and institutions Ditch ideological positions and dog whistle politics
Find a simple message around making hard work and enterprise pay. Reward work, tax the idle rich.
I have not watched GB news nor do I intend to
You're the sort of "Conservative" who only feels comfortable if everyone else feels comfortable with them in turn, which is why you sway and point in whatever direction the wind is blowing at any one time and have absolutely no views or opinions of your own.
Yet the only major tax cuts Hunt has pushed through this parliament have been to national insurance which workers pay but pensioners don't, so the main benefit went to workers. However still no poll reward. Yes more homes could be built to get more under 40s on the housing ladder but the Conservatives lost them even in 2019 when they won a landslide nationally.
The Tories also need pensioners still as they are their core vote, without them they risk extinction. Whether they can win back 40 to 65 year old swing voters in opposition largely depends on the state of the economy under Labour
"...tax cuts Hunt..." has to be typed with care. Incoming taxes on huts anyone?
You haven't lived until you've tried to write a PowerPoint on the Danish empire of 1020-42 for Year 9 with autocorrect on.
King Cnut was renamed in ways that were not altogether appropriate for that age group.
I am just dealing with that in Year 5. Thanks to Detectorists the 10yo already knew about misspelling Cnut.
Has anyone written a paper on how much Cnut known, popularly, because of the childish humour inherent in misspelling his name?
It tides over the boring bits of his reign.
Oh, did he do it in the Severn estuary? Or am I seeing a pun too many? Occurs to me I have no idea where he sat (ie which bit of the shore).
On topic, it heavily damaged the Liberal Democrats at the time but it was also a slow puncture to Conservative support as well: the decision to protect the triple-lock in 2010 but balance the books on the back of making young people pay near market rates for student loans, with extra commercial interest rate on top, was not a wise one.
Switch off gb news Forget the conspiracy theories Sack the nutters Go hard on corruption and favours for mates. Jail people who milk the system End the war against doctors and institutions Ditch ideological positions and dog whistle politics
Find a simple message around making hard work and enterprise pay. Reward work, tax the idle rich.
I have not watched GB news nor do I intend to
You're the sort of "Conservative" who only feels comfortable if everyone else feels comfortable with them in turn, which is why you sway and point in whatever direction the wind is blowing at any one time and have absolutely no views or opinions of your own.
Switch off gb news Forget the conspiracy theories Sack the nutters Go hard on corruption and favours for mates. Jail people who milk the system End the war against doctors and institutions Ditch ideological positions and dog whistle politics
Find a simple message around making hard work and enterprise pay. Reward work, tax the idle rich.
I have not watched GB news nor do I intend to
You're the sort of "Conservative" who only feels comfortable if everyone else feels comfortable with them in turn, which is why you sway and point in whatever direction the wind is blowing at any one time and have absolutely no views or opinions of your own.
No, he's a reminder of when the Tories weren't all nuts.
Switch off gb news Forget the conspiracy theories Sack the nutters Go hard on corruption and favours for mates. Jail people who milk the system End the war against doctors and institutions Ditch ideological positions and dog whistle politics
Find a simple message around making hard work and enterprise pay. Reward work, tax the idle rich.
I have not watched GB news nor do I intend to
You're the sort of "Conservative" who only feels comfortable if everyone else feels comfortable with them in turn, which is why you sway and point in whatever direction the wind is blowing at any one time and have absolutely no views or opinions of your own.
And long may he do so! We all have our foibles. Only I can be correct all the time.
The very best people get more left wing as they get older. A minority, but they’re the ones paying attention not distracted by comfort and baubles. You have to love an 80 year old who still wants to change the world.
What an offensive post.
People who aren't left wing aren't "bad" people and plenty of 80 years olds still want to make things better but simply don't agree that left-wing policies are the right way to go about it.
Have a think about the way you see and say things.
Thought about it. Nah. It’s fine. Enjoy the rest of your Saturday.
Chaos coming in the Defined Contribution Pension market - If funds have a bad year will not be able to accept new contributions and have to invest in UK business -what a UK business is not defined.. They are doing well currently because they invest in Apple and Meta -non UK companies.
What the fuck is this?
I initially thought he was talking about DB funds, which would make a little more sense, but this is specific to DC funds.
The misconceptions are breathtaking.
1) DC funds already disclose how much is invested where, geographically.
2) When a fund (or individual) invests in the shares in a company it is buying shares from existing shareholders. The stockmarket is an aftermarket. The money isn’t going to the company. TWT.
3) If he’s suggesting that funds invest more in unquoted companies and start- ups – imagine how risky this is. This is what brought Neil Woodford down. This document says specifically ‘encouraged pension funds to invest at least 5% of their assets in unlisted equity’. ‘At least’ – this is terrifying.
4) It says he wants to focus minds on how to improve funds – does he think that minds are not already focused in this competitive market already awash with comparison statistics?
5) Instructing funds to invest more in the ‘home market’ restricts, by definition, geographical diversification and therefore increases risk. This is a bad thing for savers.
6) 2012 = 90 vs 2022 = 116 represents ‘huge growth’ does it? What dunderheads.
7) He wants funds to publicly disclose ‘the returns they offer’. What? They offer no returns – these are risk investments. What it means (I assume) is disclosing what the funds’ past performances were. This is already easily available - and past performance has already happened, it is no guide to the future. (Regulation insists that this very fact is disclosed to the investor upfront.)
8) The document assumes a level of control over future returns which the fund managers simply don’t have. It would be better to focus on cost comparisons between the funds.
I shifted my pot to a more global focus recently, sadly UK investment has underperformed for years. Requirement for growth and British investment seems sadly to be almost mutually exclusive
So we’ve gone from the “UK pension funds must invest in UK plc” to “UK pension funds must say how much they invest in UK plc”. Big whoop. This is going to rebound on the government - people are going to look at their pension fund, ask ”why exactly am I investing 25% of my money in the UK?” and move their savings into other markets.*
Personally, I will weight the UK more heavily in my pension when the UK government starts showing equivalent faith by investing in the necessary UK infrastructure to allow the growth in UK plc that would make such a weighting worthwhile. Until such time, the UK is not going to be getting my cash sadly - I can’t afford to put my pension into a country with such poor prospects for economic growth that it’s own government won’t invest in it.
* Eg Vanguard’s target retirement date funds have a significant UK home bias - they’re about 20% invested in UK equities instead of the 4% you’d expect on an economic value basis.
Genuine idle question: what do we objectively think the stock market will do if Labour wins a comfortable majority? Dive because we're not Tories? Soar because we're more sensible? Drift until the effects become clearer? I have no idea, but some of you work in the sector. Perhaps it's already largely priced in?
I'll stick my neck out, and say that I think the rest of the decade will be quite good economically (barring black swans, obviously).
Growth is the natural state of the economy, and business investment has been growing rapidly over the past three years, which will pay off eventually. Simply reverting to the mean (growth of c.2% a year) would mean quite rapid growth over the next six years.
To what extent a Labour government will get the credit is hard to say. Biden's government is getting no credit for what is, objectively, quite a good economic situation. Also, whether we like it or not, governments can't do everything. People are bound to have their expectations disappointed. And, there will be Labour ministers and MPs, who like their Conservative counterparts, will be found with their fingers in places where they should not be.
I've had horsewits all over my LinkedIn this morning railing and moaning and agreeing with each other over how terrible GDP is.
It's a classic example of how some people rant with conviction but who would truly hate it if what they appear to advocate for actually came to pass.
Switch off gb news Forget the conspiracy theories Sack the nutters Go hard on corruption and favours for mates. Jail people who milk the system End the war against doctors and institutions Ditch ideological positions and dog whistle politics
Find a simple message around making hard work and enterprise pay. Reward work, tax the idle rich.
I have not watched GB news nor do I intend to
You're the sort of "Conservative" who only feels comfortable if everyone else feels comfortable with them in turn, which is why you sway and point in whatever direction the wind is blowing at any one time and have absolutely no views or opinions of your own.
No, he's a reminder of when the Tories weren't all nuts.
BigG tailors his likes and dislikes in accord with popularity. Have you not noticed this? Sunak is great when he was higher in the polls, not so much when he's not. Ditto Johnson.
Yet the only major tax cuts Hunt has pushed through this parliament have been to national insurance which workers pay but pensioners don't, so the main benefit went to workers. However still no poll reward. Yes more homes could be built to get more under 40s on the housing ladder but the Conservatives lost them even in 2019 when they won a landslide nationally.
The Tories also need pensioners still as they are their core vote, without them they risk extinction. Whether they can win back 40 to 65 year old swing voters in opposition largely depends on the state of the economy under Labour
"...tax cuts Hunt..." has to be typed with care. Incoming taxes on huts anyone?
You haven't lived until you've tried to write a PowerPoint on the Danish empire of 1020-42 for Year 9 with autocorrect on.
King Cnut was renamed in ways that were not altogether appropriate for that age group.
I am just dealing with that in Year 5. Thanks to Detectorists the 10yo already knew about misspelling Cnut.
Has anyone written a paper on how much Cnut known, popularly, because of the childish humour inherent in misspelling his name?
It tides over the boring bits of his reign.
Oh, did he do it in the Severn estuary? Or am I seeing a pun too many? Occurs to me I have no idea where he sat (ie which bit of the shore).
Somewhere on the South coast, near Bosham, wasn’t it? Allegedly.
Still reflecting on Sunak after last night. He remains a complete puzzle, even compared to previous Tory leaders. He seems to embody and blend their key traits..
The reassuring gravitas of Truss The integrity of Johnson The electric charisma of May And the down to Earth, working class grit of Cameron
Whilst adding never before seen highly tuned political antennae. How is he still PM? I don’t get it.
I see you're in full-on campaign mode this morning and getting a regular scoop of 4-6 likes for each post from your reliable fanclub of trailing minions.
According to the Telegraph, Rishi yesterday - apparently in response to tge Rochdale by-election - urged Britain to come together against the poisons of right wing extremism and Islamic extremism.
How has he managed to get right wing extremism into this? One of the features of British politics over the past decade has been the notable absence of the far right compared to elsewhere in the west, especially given the conditions which might be expected to give rise to it. It seems to be some sort of shibboleth "but don't forget the far right are just as bad/dangerous/big a threat". They just aren't. Tommy Robinson and 400 drunken idiots are nothing like the same scale of threat as radical Islam. The number of murders carried out by radical Islam over the past two decades must be about 200 times greater than that carried out by the far right. Conflating the two just isn't credible.
There is a steady stream of White, far right wannabe bombers. I think MI5 must be running the website they download instructions from since they are generally charged with preparing rather than doing. This from Tuesday:-
Far-right extremism occupies about a quarter of MI5/police time, despite the lack of bombs and rampages.
I come to the unhappy conclusion that white-British people are just useless at terrorism, and like other parts of the economy extremists from overseas have filled the gap.
Yet another symptom of poor educational standards (particularly Chemistry) in UK schools.
New Labour's fault for banning the Anarchist Cookbook, clearly...
Still reflecting on Sunak after last night. He remains a complete puzzle, even compared to previous Tory leaders. He seems to embody and blend their key traits..
The reassuring gravitas of Truss The integrity of Johnson The electric charisma of May And the down to Earth, working class grit of Cameron
Whilst adding never before seen highly tuned political antennae. How is he still PM? I don’t get it.
Because the available alternatives are all visibly worse. As the half-remembered line in Yes, Prime Minister goes, Hunt would split the party in a month, Braverman would split it in a week.
If there are any surprises in Labour's manifesto beyond the odd typo I would be...surprised.
But that is in the nature of surprises.
A niche point is that a number of animal welfare charities have approached all the main UK parties to ask for commitments to improved welfare. The score so far: LibDems and Labour: invited to detailed discussions, seem positive. Conservatives: we'll get back to you. Reform: nothing.
Given that it's a cross-party issue which does decide some votes and some of the proposals are both free and pretty uncontroversial (e.g. not offering trade concessions for methods of production which would be illegal in Britain and therefore not available to British farmers), it seems a pity that the Conservatives are so far not taking more interest. If any of you have contacts who might change that, please feel free to pass this on.
According to the Telegraph, Rishi yesterday - apparently in response to tge Rochdale by-election - urged Britain to come together against the poisons of right wing extremism and Islamic extremism.
How has he managed to get right wing extremism into this? One of the features of British politics over the past decade has been the notable absence of the far right compared to elsewhere in the west, especially given the conditions which might be expected to give rise to it. It seems to be some sort of shibboleth "but don't forget the far right are just as bad/dangerous/big a threat". They just aren't. Tommy Robinson and 400 drunken idiots are nothing like the same scale of threat as radical Islam. The number of murders carried out by radical Islam over the past two decades must be about 200 times greater than that carried out by the far right. Conflating the two just isn't credible.
There is a steady stream of White, far right wannabe bombers. I think MI5 must be running the website they download instructions from since they are generally charged with preparing rather than doing. This from Tuesday:-
There are concerns definitely but one thing that surprises me is how the far left (his own words) student from Liverpool who wanted to kill 50 people has passed almost without notice.
Yet the only major tax cuts Hunt has pushed through this parliament have been to national insurance which workers pay but pensioners don't, so the main benefit went to workers. However still no poll reward. Yes more homes could be built to get more under 40s on the housing ladder but the Conservatives lost them even in 2019 when they won a landslide nationally.
The Tories also need pensioners still as they are their core vote, without them they risk extinction. Whether they can win back 40 to 65 year old swing voters in opposition largely depends on the state of the economy under Labour
"...tax cuts Hunt..." has to be typed with care. Incoming taxes on huts anyone?
You haven't lived until you've tried to write a PowerPoint on the Danish empire of 1020-42 for Year 9 with autocorrect on.
King Cnut was renamed in ways that were not altogether appropriate for that age group.
I am just dealing with that in Year 5. Thanks to Detectorists the 10yo already knew about misspelling Cnut.
Has anyone written a paper on how much Cnut known, popularly, because of the childish humour inherent in misspelling his name?
It tides over the boring bits of his reign.
Oh, did he do it in the Severn estuary? Or am I seeing a pun too many? Occurs to me I have no idea where he sat (ie which bit of the shore).
Somewhere on the South coast, near Bosham, wasn’t it? Allegedly.
Well, there is that pub where stupid Cnuts will find their chariots doing a Cnut impersonation.
The very best people get more left wing as they get older. A minority, but they’re the ones paying attention not distracted by comfort and baubles. You have to love an 80 year old who still wants to change the world.
What an offensive post.
People who aren't left wing aren't "bad" people and plenty of 80 years olds still want to make things better but simply don't agree that left-wing policies are the right way to go about it.
Have a think about the way you see and say things.
Thought about it. Nah. It’s fine. Enjoy the rest of your Saturday.
Then, you're a blinkered partisan idiot. Tories aren't bad people and passionately want the country to be as good as it can be.
Ps. Never understood why the Tories have ditched their green agenda. Would have thought there was a long term strategic fit between conservatism and conservation. Doing a 180 on Cameron’s positioning and going all in on oil certainly has no long term future. Bizarre
We favour sustainability but not in the same way as the Left.
One issue is how political and dogmatic a lot of the activists are: I'm on a sustainability planning committee for a conference at the moment and two of them loudly proclaim that they're 'not of the right' and I'm constantly having to work out, politely, how to rebut their views that everyone should eat vegetarian/vegan food, not drive cars, live in regenerative communes and ditch GDP as a measure.
It's difficult to argue against without them instantly becoming suspicious of and ignoring you.
Jonathan's view is sounding increasingly dated and anti-zeitgeist. The grisly slow moving train wreck of Net Zero's costs to our economy (whilst doing shit all to reduce emissions; all it means is several factories and a new coal mine being opened in China or India) is beginning to dawn on people. All Sunak's 'going all in on oil' means is not destroying the domestic oil and gas industry, demolishing our energy security and removing a key source of the revenue that Jonathan demands we keep spending on public services. It means importing more LNG which is a worse net outcome for carbon emissions than getting our own oil out. Starmer's policy is perverse, and not worthy of any party that aspires seriously to government.
Still reflecting on Sunak after last night. He remains a complete puzzle, even compared to previous Tory leaders. He seems to embody and blend their key traits..
The reassuring gravitas of Truss The integrity of Johnson The electric charisma of May And the down to Earth, working class grit of Cameron
Whilst adding never before seen highly tuned political antennae. How is he still PM? I don’t get it.
Because the available alternatives are all visibly worse. As the half-remembered line in Yes, Prime Minister goes, Hunt would split the party in a month, Braverman would split it in a week.
The Tory Party needs to revisit core principles, reflect them in the manifesto produced, and grow some balls and vociferously argue for them. Easier said than done.
The very best people get more left wing as they get older. A minority, but they’re the ones paying attention not distracted by comfort and baubles. You have to love an 80 year old who still wants to change the world.
What an offensive post.
People who aren't left wing aren't "bad" people and plenty of 80 years olds still want to make things better but simply don't agree that left-wing policies are the right way to go about it.
Have a think about the way you see and say things.
Give the peoople who are not "distracted by comfort and baubles" a sniff of an inheritance, and see how undistracted they remain.
Political ideology goes out the window, once people see a will.
Switch off gb news Forget the conspiracy theories Sack the nutters Go hard on corruption and favours for mates. Jail people who milk the system End the war against doctors and institutions Ditch ideological positions and dog whistle politics
Find a simple message around making hard work and enterprise pay. Reward work, tax the idle rich.
I have not watched GB news nor do I intend to
You're the sort of "Conservative" who only feels comfortable if everyone else feels comfortable with them in turn, which is why you sway and point in whatever direction the wind is blowing at any one time and have absolutely no views or opinions of your own.
No, he's a reminder of when the Tories weren't all nuts.
He's a "nice guy" but he's also a dribbling old fart who gives the impression of a soldier who got lost in the war in 1942 and never rejoined his unit.
Harmless, really. But no-one should take a word he says seriously, since it changes week on week and he's an entirely unreliable and inconsistent party supporter.
The very best people get more left wing as they get older. A minority, but they’re the ones paying attention not distracted by comfort and baubles. You have to love an 80 year old who still wants to change the world.
What an offensive post.
People who aren't left wing aren't "bad" people and plenty of 80 years olds still want to make things better but simply don't agree that left-wing policies are the right way to go about it.
Have a think about the way you see and say things.
Thought about it. Nah. It’s fine. Enjoy the rest of your Saturday.
Then, you're a blinkered partisan idiot. Tories aren't bad people and passionately want the country to be as good as it can be.
Switch off gb news Forget the conspiracy theories Sack the nutters Go hard on corruption and favours for mates. Jail people who milk the system End the war against doctors and institutions Ditch ideological positions and dog whistle politics
Find a simple message around making hard work and enterprise pay. Reward work, tax the idle rich.
I have not watched GB news nor do I intend to
You're the sort of "Conservative" who only feels comfortable if everyone else feels comfortable with them in turn, which is why you sway and point in whatever direction the wind is blowing at any one time and have absolutely no views or opinions of your own.
No, he's a reminder of when the Tories weren't all nuts.
He's a "nice guy" but he's also a dribbling old fart who gives the impression of a soldier who got lost in the war in 1942 and never rejoined his unit.
Harmless, really. But no-one should take a word he says seriously, since it changes week on week and he's an entirely unreliable and inconsistent party supporter.
I have to say, this is the first time in a long time I've audibly snorted at a post and somebody next to me asked me what I was laughing at. So credit where it is due.
According to the Telegraph, Rishi yesterday - apparently in response to tge Rochdale by-election - urged Britain to come together against the poisons of right wing extremism and Islamic extremism.
How has he managed to get right wing extremism into this? One of the features of British politics over the past decade has been the notable absence of the far right compared to elsewhere in the west, especially given the conditions which might be expected to give rise to it. It seems to be some sort of shibboleth "but don't forget the far right are just as bad/dangerous/big a threat". They just aren't. Tommy Robinson and 400 drunken idiots are nothing like the same scale of threat as radical Islam. The number of murders carried out by radical Islam over the past two decades must be about 200 times greater than that carried out by the far right. Conflating the two just isn't credible.
There is a steady stream of White, far right wannabe bombers. I think MI5 must be running the website they download instructions from since they are generally charged with preparing rather than doing. This from Tuesday:-
There are concerns definitely but one thing that surprises me is how the far left (his own words) student from Liverpool who wanted to kill 50 people has passed almost without notice.
On topic, it heavily damaged the Liberal Democrats at the time but it was also a slow puncture to Conservative support as well: the decision to protect the triple-lock in 2010 but balance the books on the back of making young people pay near market rates for student loans, with extra commercial interest rate on top, was not a wise one.
As was pointed out on PB at the time.
How long ago it seems now.
The Conservative voting coalition is now dependent upon affluent oldies, Home Counties rich and skilled working class in areas with affordable housing.
This analysis is spot on. Post GE the tories will have to pivot to centre right millenials, which will be pro eu. There is no way around it. And the eu hating pensioners will seep to the toxic nostalgia of reform. Splitting that off is going to hurt for 2-3 terms for the tories. But it has to happen. I think this shows that brexit is done for. Brexit was also largely a boomer project. But it isn't sustainable as a political platform.
Pro EU centre right under 50s are less than 10% of the electorate. Target them and reject pensioners and Leave voters and the Tories won't be heading for government again they will be making Farage and Reform the main opposition to Labour
This analysis is spot on. Post GE the tories will have to pivot to centre right millenials, which will be pro eu. There is no way around it. And the eu hating pensioners will seep to the toxic nostalgia of reform. Splitting that off is going to hurt for 2-3 terms for the tories. But it has to happen. I think this shows that brexit is done for. Brexit was also largely a boomer project. But it isn't sustainable as a political platform.
Pro EU centre right under 50s are less than 10% of the electorate. Target them and reject pensioners and Leave voters and the Tories won't be heading for government again they will be making Farage and Reform the main opposition to Labour
Do you think there is ANY argument for trying to appeal to anyone under the age of 95? Do you think it might be sensible to thinking about appealing to people like my friends in the future?
Interesting analysis from TSE, but what you need to keep in mind is that very (VERY) quickly the coalition of voters Labour is putting together to eject the Tories from office will break down once they're in government.
Voting patterns and demographics will look very different in 2029 to 2024. How that plays out and to who's advantage it will be remains to be seen but 2029 will be very different to 2024.
The very best people get more left wing as they get older. A minority, but they’re the ones paying attention not distracted by comfort and baubles. You have to love an 80 year old who still wants to change the world.
What an offensive post.
People who aren't left wing aren't "bad" people and plenty of 80 years olds still want to make things better but simply don't agree that left-wing policies are the right way to go about it.
Have a think about the way you see and say things.
Thought about it. Nah. It’s fine. Enjoy the rest of your Saturday.
Then, you're a blinkered partisan idiot. Tories aren't bad people and passionately want the country to be as good as it can be.
Have a great weekend too.
Why do you keep using the word ”bad”? It’s your word not mine.
Whilst some conservatives are most definitely bad, most are not. I find them misguided and lacking perspective. An approach to life that doesn’t resonate with me at all. I would be so disappointed to be a conservative. A find conservatism a bit sad really. They’re missing out.
The very best people get more left wing as they get older. A minority, but they’re the ones paying attention not distracted by comfort and baubles. You have to love an 80 year old who still wants to change the world.
What an offensive post.
People who aren't left wing aren't "bad" people and plenty of 80 years olds still want to make things better but simply don't agree that left-wing policies are the right way to go about it.
Have a think about the way you see and say things.
Thought about it. Nah. It’s fine. Enjoy the rest of your Saturday.
I strongly disagree with you on this. My parents are traditional Tories and are lovely people who I look up to. You are wrong.
Can you post photos of your great railway journey?
This is absolutely NOT a snide remark (really). I adore travel and love hearing other people’s travel experiences, humble or exalted, exotic or domestic, they all fascinate me. And photos are incredibly revealing
I may tease @IanB2 about his dog photos, but i always enjoy looking at them, working out where he is. And the photos liven up PB threads which - especially these recent years - can be quite gloomy
Cheers from a rather rubbish lounge at LHRT4
Prosecco for scale
Travelling with a dog pretty much rules out winter trips, as I won't put him on a plane, so it'll be a month or so before we're next on the road. But he is lined up for Colorado in the fall. Meanwhile here's an amusing notice from a previous trip.....
Is it Colorado by sea then?
Yes indeed. And road, taking the dog up to, I think, 28 US states visited. It'll be a good chance to sense the mood in the runup to their election.
You're making me a bit jealous now.
I didn't know it was possible to travel the Atlantic with a dog, presumably a lot of paperwork involved, and is accomodation dog friendly?
Only on the QM2, which I see sailing past most months. The paperwork coming back is now horrendous post Brexit, and will cost about $700 just for the certifications and endorsement, so this may well be his last trip.
The US is a lot less dog friendly than Europe in the round, but is big enough that with lots of research you can hunt out some very dog friendly places. Eating out in bad weather is the main challenge as no eating place will accept pets indoors; but in the US getting a takeout in the hotel room is seen as normal, and there's always fast food in extremis. And the weather is, on average, better than here
Mr. 43, taking something at face value is unwise. The Ministry of Truth was not concerned with propagating the truth. The 'diversity' (unless it's Wakanda in which case an ethno-state is super awesome) agenda has been used as one of the many failings of Rings of Power, as it bastardises an Anglo-Saxon/English mythology (the specific reason Tolkien wrote LotR* as the English didn't have tales to compare to Norse or Greek myth), and revises and falsifies history (most infamously with Cleopatra in the Netflix 'documentary').
*The special irony here is that if the muppets in charge knew Middle-Earth better they could've just had the story focused in Harad or Rhun, perhaps telling the tale of the fall of a powerful leader to become a Nazgul. They could even, with Black Numenoreans, have had canonically accurate white bad guys.
Possibly. History is littered with good intentions corruptly applied. Nevertheless, @darkage was talking about premises people start from and that was the point I addressed.
Also "woke" really isn't a useful thing, except as an insult that usually says more about the person making it than the target.
The point I was making is the premise of much 'woke' thinking is that western society is inherently and uniquely evil, of which there is a long tradition on the left. The recent evolution is that it now tries to perpetrate this by avoiding debate and relying instead on emotive claims relating to identity.
This comment from a Labour MP in 2020 was a particularly revealing moment:
"We must not fetishise “debate” as though debate is itself an innocuous, neutral act. The very act of debate in these cases is an effective rollback of assumed equality and a foot in the door for doubt and hatred."
In reality, the left make a lot of good criticisms about Western Society which were previously shut down and went unaired. But the hatred of the west that has been around for the last four years goes too far. The contradictions are too many for me to take seriously. IE: zero acknowledgement of the fact that the British abolished slavery and colonialism as well as partaking in it. No interest in modern day slavery in the middle east. No interest in Xinjiang but obsessed with Palestine. Obsession with racial violence in the US but no interest in ongoing Windrush deportations. All this is held together by a simplified light v dark, good v evil narrative of which any questioning is 'a foot in the door for doubt and hatred'.
I don't see this as evidence of a healthy discourse that is moving western society forward (as other posters on here appear to), it seems instead to discredit legitimate and necessary criticism leading to (as we are now seeing) a similar reaction from the right.
Regarding 'woke'; you have to use language to describe phenomena, it is nothing more than that. I put it in quotation marks because it is a contested term.
Back now to the cleaning...
We're moving to a different specific example, and staying off "woke" generalisations, which is good. The specific complaint is people thinking western society to be uniquely bad and in this way dangerously undermining that society. I think there is something in this, but this is as much a right wing populist thinking as left wing. And as right wing populists are either in power or close to it (Trump etc) they are far more dangerous than their left wing counterparts who aren't.
Switch off gb news Forget the conspiracy theories Sack the nutters Go hard on corruption and favours for mates. Jail people who milk the system End the war against doctors and institutions Ditch ideological positions and dog whistle politics
Find a simple message around making hard work and enterprise pay. Reward work, tax the idle rich.
I have not watched GB news nor do I intend to
You're the sort of "Conservative" who only feels comfortable if everyone else feels comfortable with them in turn, which is why you sway and point in whatever direction the wind is blowing at any one time and have absolutely no views or opinions of your own.
No, he's a reminder of when the Tories weren't all nuts.
BigG tailors his likes and dislikes in accord with popularity. Have you not noticed this? Sunak is great when he was higher in the polls, not so much when he's not. Ditto Johnson.
Big G at one point supported Truss!
Remember when he was wavering on Johnson until he recovered after party-gate and went full throat on beergate?
Yet the only major tax cuts Hunt has pushed through this parliament have been to national insurance which workers pay but pensioners don't, so the main benefit went to workers. However still no poll reward. Yes more homes could be built to get more under 40s on the housing ladder but the Conservatives lost them even in 2019 when they won a landslide nationally.
The Tories also need pensioners still as they are their core vote, without them they risk extinction. Whether they can win back 40 to 65 year old swing voters in opposition largely depends on the state of the economy under Labour
"...tax cuts Hunt..." has to be typed with care. Incoming taxes on huts anyone?
You haven't lived until you've tried to write a PowerPoint on the Danish empire of 1020-42 for Year 9 with autocorrect on.
King Cnut was renamed in ways that were not altogether appropriate for that age group.
I am just dealing with that in Year 5. Thanks to Detectorists the 10yo already knew about misspelling Cnut.
Has anyone written a paper on how much Cnut known, popularly, because of the childish humour inherent in misspelling his name?
It tides over the boring bits of his reign.
Oh, did he do it in the Severn estuary? Or am I seeing a pun too many? Occurs to me I have no idea where he sat (ie which bit of the shore).
Somewhere on the South coast, near Bosham, wasn’t it? Allegedly.
Well, there is that pub where stupid Cnuts will find their chariots doing a Cnut impersonation.
I quite like the fact that Canute's daughter died by drowning (she is supposedly buried in Bosham), and later he tries to teach his courtiers a lesson by not being able to hold back the tide. I think it adds another dimension to the story.
Question from our village quiz last night. I was the only person to get it (buffs nails):
'This fictional character appeared in books from 1982 to 2009 and was at different times a writer, a TV chef and a bookshop worker.'
Mr Benn?
No
Ah! I've got it. But I only read the first 2 books in my teens. I won't spoil it!
I've read them all - a massive fan. I love that the author's final book (unfinished due to death) had a working title "Pandora's Box".
I tell I lie - I also had the short story in the Utterly Utterly Merry Comic Relief Christmas Book - another gift I would not have received had my mother opened it before wrapping.
The very best people get more left wing as they get older. A minority, but they’re the ones paying attention not distracted by comfort and baubles. You have to love an 80 year old who still wants to change the world.
What an offensive post.
People who aren't left wing aren't "bad" people and plenty of 80 years olds still want to make things better but simply don't agree that left-wing policies are the right way to go about it.
Have a think about the way you see and say things.
Thought about it. Nah. It’s fine. Enjoy the rest of your Saturday.
Then, you're a blinkered partisan idiot. Tories aren't bad people and passionately want the country to be as good as it can be.
Have a great weekend too.
Why do you keep using the word ”bad”? It’s your word not mine.
Whilst some conservatives are most definitely bad, most are not. I find them misguided and lacking perspective. An approach to life that doesn’t resonate with me at all. I would be so disappointed to be a conservative. A find conservatism a bit sad really. They’re missing out.
You said the best people get more leftwing as they get older.
This analysis is spot on. Post GE the tories will have to pivot to centre right millenials, which will be pro eu. There is no way around it. And the eu hating pensioners will seep to the toxic nostalgia of reform. Splitting that off is going to hurt for 2-3 terms for the tories. But it has to happen. I think this shows that brexit is done for. Brexit was also largely a boomer project. But it isn't sustainable as a political platform.
Pro EU centre right under 50s are less than 10% of the electorate. Target them and reject pensioners and Leave voters and the Tories won't be heading for government again they will be making Farage and Reform the main opposition to Labour
Do you think there is ANY argument for trying to appeal to anyone under the age of 95? Do you think it might be sensible to thinking about appealing to people like my friends in the future?
In addition to Leave voters and pensioners of course in order to form a coalition for a Conservative majority again.
On their own however no as they would just see Reform replace the Tories as the main party of the right
Can you post photos of your great railway journey?
This is absolutely NOT a snide remark (really). I adore travel and love hearing other people’s travel experiences, humble or exalted, exotic or domestic, they all fascinate me. And photos are incredibly revealing
I may tease @IanB2 about his dog photos, but i always enjoy looking at them, working out where he is. And the photos liven up PB threads which - especially these recent years - can be quite gloomy
Cheers from a rather rubbish lounge at LHRT4
Prosecco for scale
My travels this morning. Dog for scale.
Bless. He looks happy. Snuffling about
Yes, dogs inhabit a world of smells so alien to us that it is beyond our comprehension.
I think my attitude to dogs - previously a little skeptical - has really warmed since I ate one. And it was quite tasty
Now they don’t seem quite so pointless. Yes dogs are a tad annoying at times - but also a precious food source if things go bad
The societal benefits to both physical and mental health are profound, such that a lot of people would benefit from being prescribed a dog, and not for eating. Plus there are likely benefits to security.
Switch off gb news Forget the conspiracy theories Sack the nutters Go hard on corruption and favours for mates. Jail people who milk the system End the war against doctors and institutions Ditch ideological positions and dog whistle politics
Find a simple message around making hard work and enterprise pay. Reward work, tax the idle rich.
I have not watched GB news nor do I intend to
You're the sort of "Conservative" who only feels comfortable if everyone else feels comfortable with them in turn, which is why you sway and point in whatever direction the wind is blowing at any one time and have absolutely no views or opinions of your own.
No, he's a reminder of when the Tories weren't all nuts.
BigG tailors his likes and dislikes in accord with popularity. Have you not noticed this? Sunak is great when he was higher in the polls, not so much when he's not. Ditto Johnson.
The very best people get more left wing as they get older. A minority, but they’re the ones paying attention not distracted by comfort and baubles. You have to love an 80 year old who still wants to change the world.
What an offensive post.
People who aren't left wing aren't "bad" people and plenty of 80 years olds still want to make things better but simply don't agree that left-wing policies are the right way to go about it.
Have a think about the way you see and say things.
Thought about it. Nah. It’s fine. Enjoy the rest of your Saturday.
Then, you're a blinkered partisan idiot. Tories aren't bad people and passionately want the country to be as good as it can be.
Have a great weekend too.
Why do you keep using the word ”bad”? It’s your word not mine.
Whilst some conservatives are most definitely bad, most are not. I find them misguided and lacking perspective. An approach to life that doesn’t resonate with me at all. I would be so disappointed to be a conservative. A find conservatism a bit sad really. They’re missing out.
You said the best people get more leftwing as they get older.
That implies those that don't are worse people.
In your mind. Bad was your word. Just because someone is the very best athlete, it doesn’t make others bad athletes.
I am inspired by radical 80 year old , who after a lifetime of experience still have the passion to change the world. Their brilliance doesn’t make me bad, but it makes me want to be better.
Switch off gb news Forget the conspiracy theories Sack the nutters Go hard on corruption and favours for mates. Jail people who milk the system End the war against doctors and institutions Ditch ideological positions and dog whistle politics
Find a simple message around making hard work and enterprise pay. Reward work, tax the idle rich.
I have not watched GB news nor do I intend to
You're the sort of "Conservative" who only feels comfortable if everyone else feels comfortable with them in turn, which is why you sway and point in whatever direction the wind is blowing at any one time and have absolutely no views or opinions of your own.
No, he's a reminder of when the Tories weren't all nuts.
BigG tailors his likes and dislikes in accord with popularity. Have you not noticed this? Sunak is great when he was higher in the polls, not so much when he's not. Ditto Johnson.
Big G at one point supported Truss!
Remember when he was wavering on Johnson until he recovered after party-gate and went full throat on beergate?
Seeing as you have decided to talk about me then yes I do have flexible views, absolutely reject the right of the party, do not and never have watched GBnews and no did not support Truss as I supported Sunak and still see him as the only viable leader
Switch off gb news Forget the conspiracy theories Sack the nutters Go hard on corruption and favours for mates. Jail people who milk the system End the war against doctors and institutions Ditch ideological positions and dog whistle politics
Find a simple message around making hard work and enterprise pay. Reward work, tax the idle rich.
I have not watched GB news nor do I intend to
You're the sort of "Conservative" who only feels comfortable if everyone else feels comfortable with them in turn, which is why you sway and point in whatever direction the wind is blowing at any one time and have absolutely no views or opinions of your own.
No, he's a reminder of when the Tories weren't all nuts.
BigG tailors his likes and dislikes in accord with popularity. Have you not noticed this? Sunak is great when he was higher in the polls, not so much when he's not. Ditto Johnson.
Big G at one point supported Truss!
Remember when he was wavering on Johnson until he recovered after party-gate and went full throat on beergate?
Seeing as you have decided to talk about me then yes I do have flexible views, absolutely reject the right of the party, do not and never have watched GBnews and no did not support Truss as I supported Sunak and still see him as the only viable leader
Interesting header, thanks. My question is: when did the Tories decide on this strategy and who was responsible? Indeed, was it a planned thing or did it just come about by accident? A parallel point was made By Matthew Parris in his - at the time notorious, now prescient - article about Clacton: the Tories are simply doomed if they insist on pandering to subsets of the excluded underclass at the expense of everything else.
Switch off gb news Forget the conspiracy theories Sack the nutters Go hard on corruption and favours for mates. Jail people who milk the system End the war against doctors and institutions Ditch ideological positions and dog whistle politics
Find a simple message around making hard work and enterprise pay. Reward work, tax the idle rich.
I have not watched GB news nor do I intend to
You're the sort of "Conservative" who only feels comfortable if everyone else feels comfortable with them in turn, which is why you sway and point in whatever direction the wind is blowing at any one time and have absolutely no views or opinions of your own.
No, he's a reminder of when the Tories weren't all nuts.
BigG tailors his likes and dislikes in accord with popularity. Have you not noticed this? Sunak is great when he was higher in the polls, not so much when he's not. Ditto Johnson.
Big G at one point supported Truss!
Remember when he was wavering on Johnson until he recovered after party-gate and went full throat on beergate?
I never supported Truss
And I certainly did not do everything to get Corbyn elected then seeing the wind of change became a Starmer disciple
This analysis is spot on. Post GE the tories will have to pivot to centre right millenials, which will be pro eu. There is no way around it. And the eu hating pensioners will seep to the toxic nostalgia of reform. Splitting that off is going to hurt for 2-3 terms for the tories. But it has to happen. I think this shows that brexit is done for. Brexit was also largely a boomer project. But it isn't sustainable as a political platform.
Pro EU centre right under 50s are less than 10% of the electorate. Target them and reject pensioners and Leave voters and the Tories won't be heading for government again they will be making Farage and Reform the main opposition to Labour
Do you think there is ANY argument for trying to appeal to anyone under the age of 95? Do you think it might be sensible to thinking about appealing to people like my friends in the future?
In addition to Leave voters and pensioners of course in order to form a coalition for a Conservative majority again.
On their own however no as they would just see Reform replace the Tories as the main party of the right
Are not many Leave voters now regretting their folly?
Switch off gb news Forget the conspiracy theories Sack the nutters Go hard on corruption and favours for mates. Jail people who milk the system End the war against doctors and institutions Ditch ideological positions and dog whistle politics
Find a simple message around making hard work and enterprise pay. Reward work, tax the idle rich.
I have not watched GB news nor do I intend to
You're the sort of "Conservative" who only feels comfortable if everyone else feels comfortable with them in turn, which is why you sway and point in whatever direction the wind is blowing at any one time and have absolutely no views or opinions of your own.
No, he's a reminder of when the Tories weren't all nuts.
BigG tailors his likes and dislikes in accord with popularity. Have you not noticed this? Sunak is great when he was higher in the polls, not so much when he's not. Ditto Johnson.
Big G at one point supported Truss!
Remember when he was wavering on Johnson until he recovered after party-gate and went full throat on beergate?
I never supported Truss
And I certainly did not do everything to get Corbyn elected then seeing the wind of change became a Starmer discipline
You did everything to get Johnson elected though then moved like a weathervane when he became unpopular.
I am not denying anything I have done, I absolutely shifted from Corbyn to Starmer and became a supporter of his. This is not the big "win" you think it is. I am one of the most partisan posters here, I don't try and hide it.
I just responded to what Stocky said which I agree with. And you did support Truss briefly.
Comments
Even when we aren’t rich we are canny. Eg @Heathener - probably our poorest commenter - has saved so much money from boiling water in the morning and keeping it in a large thermos flask she can afford to fly business class to foreign parts and take one of the world’s great railway journeys
But that is in the nature of surprises.
They do a lot of low level stuff - fortunately lethal attacks have remained rare.
The difference you are perceiving is that Islamic Fundamentalism gets associated with *any* Islamic activism.
Which is a bit like associating everyone on the anti-gulf war marches with Black Blok and the other MasterCard Marxist Revolutionaries.
I think our politicians forget that, none of them have ever been genuinely popular.
One thing I would also point out though is that even with that progress, a big, big problem is that OFSTED is still going to label the school as inadequate on its next inspection due to the exam results and their stupid curriculum framework, at which point the whole thing will unravel anyway.
Growth is the natural state of the economy, and business investment has been growing rapidly over the past three years, which will pay off eventually. Simply reverting to the mean (growth of c.2% a year) would mean quite rapid growth over the next six years.
To what extent a Labour government will get the credit is hard to say. Biden's government is getting no credit for what is, objectively, quite a good economic situation. Also, whether we like it or not, governments can't do everything. People are bound to have their expectations disappointed. And, there will be Labour ministers and MPs, who like their Conservative counterparts, will be found with their fingers in places where they should not be.
'One in every two people in prison were excluded as children, according to research by the Institute for Public Policy Research thinktank.'
This comment from a Labour MP in 2020 was a particularly revealing moment:
"We must not fetishise “debate” as though debate is itself an innocuous, neutral act. The very act of debate in these cases is an effective rollback of assumed equality and a foot in the door for doubt and hatred."
https://twitter.com/NadiaWhittomeMP/status/1286357272025796608
In reality, the left make a lot of good criticisms about Western Society which were previously shut down and went unaired. But the hatred of the west that has been around for the last four years goes too far. The contradictions are too many for me to take seriously. IE: zero acknowledgement of the fact that the British abolished slavery and colonialism as well as partaking in it. No interest in modern day slavery in the middle east. No interest in Xinjiang but obsessed with Palestine. Obsession with racial violence in the US but no interest in ongoing Windrush deportations. All this is held together by a simplified light v dark, good v evil narrative of which any questioning is 'a foot in the door for doubt and hatred'.
I don't see this as evidence of a healthy discourse that is moving western society forward (as other posters on here appear to), it seems instead to discredit legitimate and necessary criticism leading to (as we are now seeing) a similar reaction from the right.
Regarding 'woke'; you have to use language to describe phenomena, it is nothing more than that. I put it in quotation marks because it is a contested term.
Back now to the cleaning...
Three men charged with planning attack on Islamic education centre
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-68411163
It isn't going to happen anytime soon.
https://reports.ofsted.gov.uk/provider/23/100453
The reassuring gravitas of Truss
The integrity of Johnson
The electric charisma of May
And the down to Earth, working class grit of Cameron
Whilst adding never before seen highly tuned political antennae. How is he still PM? I don’t get it.
I get your antipathy towards Ofsted, but sometimes they get it right. For example, in this case. You said Ofsted would judge the school inadequate. They didn't - they judged it good.
'This fictional character appeared in books from 1982 to 2009 and was at different times a writer, a TV chef and a bookshop worker.'
But then came Cameron and Osborne, who made peace with the modern world.
Maybe they'll be able to follow the same path this time round and find themselves an electable leader after only a couple of GE thrashings - but they'll be starting in a much worse position with the the GBNews faction in ascendency. Imagine how things would have turned out if Teresa Gorman had been the favourite in the 1997 leadership race!
FREE YOGA COURSE
ITS RAINING HAM
GUARD RIGHTWING DOGS
INCLINE YOUR BUST TO REASSURE YOUR CRUSTY HOUND
GIVE RELAXED VIBES!
I’m pretty sure that’s right
I come to the unhappy conclusion that white-British people are just useless at terrorism, and like other parts of the economy extremists from overseas have filled the gap.
Yet another symptom of poor educational standards (particularly Chemistry) in UK schools.
People who aren't left wing aren't "bad" people and plenty of 80 years olds still want to make things better but simply don't agree that left-wing policies are the right way to go about it.
Have a think about the way you see and say things.
I didn't know it was possible to travel the Atlantic with a dog, presumably a lot of paperwork involved, and is accomodation dog friendly?
Now they don’t seem quite so pointless. Yes dogs are a tad annoying at times - but also a precious food source if things go bad
One issue is how political and dogmatic a lot of the activists are: I'm on a sustainability planning committee for a conference at the moment and two of them loudly proclaim that they're 'not of the right' and I'm constantly having to work out, politely, how to rebut their views that everyone should eat vegetarian/vegan food, not drive cars, live in regenerative communes and ditch GDP as a measure.
It's difficult to argue against without them instantly becoming suspicious of and ignoring you.
It's a classic example of how some people rant with conviction but who would truly hate it if what they appear to advocate for actually came to pass.
Given that it's a cross-party issue which does decide some votes and some of the proposals are both free and pretty uncontroversial (e.g. not offering trade concessions for methods of production which would be illegal in Britain and therefore not available to British farmers), it seems a pity that the Conservatives are so far not taking more interest. If any of you have contacts who might change that, please feel free to pass this on.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-68380376
If he'd called himself far right my guess is it would have been in the headline.
https://www.google.com/maps/@50.8286312,-0.8570883,3a,63.9y,229.94h,93.17t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sRK3AAtTOKejX7WVgmpjYDA!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu
Have a great weekend too.
Political ideology goes out the window, once people see a will.
Harmless, really. But no-one should take a word he says seriously, since it changes week on week and he's an entirely unreliable and inconsistent party supporter.
How long ago it seems now.
The Conservative voting coalition is now dependent upon affluent oldies, Home Counties rich and skilled working class in areas with affordable housing.
Voting patterns and demographics will look very different in 2029 to 2024. How that plays out and to who's advantage it will be remains to be seen but 2029 will be very different to 2024.
Whilst some conservatives are most definitely bad, most are not. I find them misguided and lacking perspective. An approach to life that doesn’t resonate with me at all. I would be so disappointed to be a conservative. A find conservatism a bit sad really. They’re missing out.
The US is a lot less dog friendly than Europe in the round, but is big enough that with lots of research you can hunt out some very dog friendly places. Eating out in bad weather is the main challenge as no eating place will accept pets indoors; but in the US getting a takeout in the hotel room is seen as normal, and there's always fast food in extremis. And the weather is, on average, better than here
Remember when he was wavering on Johnson until he recovered after party-gate and went full throat on beergate?
Also, this building in Southampton suggests it happened there:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/fYozraHVQGfVwEFN9
That implies those that don't are worse people.
On their own however no as they would just see Reform replace the Tories as the main party of the right
I am inspired by radical 80 year old , who after a lifetime of experience still have the passion to change the world. Their brilliance doesn’t make me bad, but it makes me want to be better.
And I certainly did not do everything to get Corbyn elected then seeing the wind of change became a Starmer disciple
“The Moldovan regime is following in the footsteps of the Kiev one,” Lavrov.
“Everything Russian is being cancelled. If we were Moldova, we would take this seriously.”"
https://twitter.com/JayinKyiv/status/1763686558169768028
Yes, I wonder why people in civilised countries are turning away from the cancerous Russian view of the world.
I am not denying anything I have done, I absolutely shifted from Corbyn to Starmer and became a supporter of his. This is not the big "win" you think it is. I am one of the most partisan posters here, I don't try and hide it.
I just responded to what Stocky said which I agree with. And you did support Truss briefly.