If he does it has to be called in just over three weeks from now. (I don't think he will).
Sunak is announcing it in 9 days time, Monday week, sometime between 1035 and 1150
What is the hypothesis here?
Yesterday, HY posted this to explain why the election is the other end of the summer: “Sunak would rather be PM for as long as possible than go a bit early even if it saves a few Tory MPs seats. Unless he gets a Major 1992 shock victory he will be off to corporate boards in Silicon Valley or some IMF or WTO job as soon as possible after losing a general election anyway and his main priority is ensuring he has a reasonable period as PM on that CV he will be taking to those jobs”
A sentiment a lot of PBers keep posting. The absolute mistake HY has made is presumption the summer and autumn passes off as serenely as Spring is doing for the Conservatives, that they don’t sail into difficult waters leading to a peculiarly bad moment to go to the country leading to a peculiar result in number of seats.
The Home Office modelling predicts a surge in channel crossing from July, at which point all hell breaks loose in Conservative Party discipline and in their battle with Reform for voters. Add to that an interim report from Covid Enquiry. A million switchers to higher mortgage payments. Inflation moving back upwards before end of the year, as well as virtually no economic growth this year (except what will be bequeathed to us by Taylor Swift).
“main priority is ensuring he has a reasonable period as PM on that CV he will be taking to those jobs”
Sunak is the Manager of the Conservative Party and the Manager of the Government - those months from July onwards can leave both those institutions resembling The Raft of the Medusa. Now that really would standout on Sunak’s CV, letting future employers know exactly what he is capable of.
Liz Truss seems to have decided her future lies in promoting crackpot conspiracy theories. She's giving the Conservative Party cause to expel her, and in more disciplined times I suspect they would have done. Or more probably she wouldn't have gone down this route anyway
No one cares anymore . The US is a failed state. The sooner the rest of the world realizes this the better .
Yet somehow has higher median income than virtually all of Europe.
Large chunks of urban America are a crime ridden drug addled toilet, tho
In a way we don’t really comprehend in Europe
Now, most of America doesn’t live there. They live in generally nice suburbs. But enough of them encounter it, or pay for it with their taxes, for it to make an electoral difference
And Biden’s abject inability to control the border is not helping
It is true that the US has urban ghettos that are significantly worse than Europe. But this isn't even a majority of urban areas.
Over the last year I have been to the city centres of New York City, Atlanta, Chicago, Charlotte, Miami, Virginia Beach and San Francisco. All seemed nice places, sometimes a bit dirty but no worse than the grimmer areas of central London. Of course, worse areas exist, but most Americans don't encounter them because most people don't travel to ghettos.
What they do have is a constant inundation of images of the ghettos on social media and cable news, due to a highly effective right wing media network. That is why people think it is worse now than during the 1980s of sunny Reaganism, despite crime and poverty at the time being substantially worse.
You found the city centre of San Francisco quite nice? My experience is that the streets are covered in human excrement , drug casualties, middle class people desperately trying to ignore what is going on around them by staring into their phones and coffee shops full of unemployed tech people desperately interviewing for jobs over zoom.
It used to be one of my favourite places in America.
I've been to San Francisco on and off since the late 1990s, and it's always been an absolute shithole, with hollow eyed homeless drug addicts with schizophrenia wandering from SoMa up into Union Square and beyond.
Of course, there are some very nice parts. But the center and SoMa are - and have always been - utterly horrendous.
Central Seattle, which I haven't visited for twenty years was the same: an urban hell hole filled with ragged clothed people with few teeth begging for money for whatever the drug de jour for the mentally ill is.
Los Angeles is a little different, because there's a lot more "temporary" homelessness of people living in RVs, having jobs, but not being able to afford the local housing market.
But we also - of course - have the crystal meth-heads wandering around.
They seem to have bussed a lot of the Seattle homeless out of the centre, last time I was there (just before lockdown 1).
I lived in a (niceish) suburb of Baltimore and the route out up old main street made The Wire look like a glow up.
No one cares anymore . The US is a failed state. The sooner the rest of the world realizes this the better .
Yet somehow has higher median income than virtually all of Europe.
Large chunks of urban America are a crime ridden drug addled toilet, tho
In a way we don’t really comprehend in Europe
Now, most of America doesn’t live there. They live in generally nice suburbs. But enough of them encounter it, or pay for it with their taxes, for it to make an electoral difference
And Biden’s abject inability to control the border is not helping
It is true that the US has urban ghettos that are significantly worse than Europe. But this isn't even a majority of urban areas.
Over the last year I have been to the city centres of New York City, Atlanta, Chicago, Charlotte, Miami, Virginia Beach and San Francisco. All seemed nice places, sometimes a bit dirty but no worse than the grimmer areas of central London. Of course, worse areas exist, but most Americans don't encounter them because most people don't travel to ghettos.
What they do have is a constant inundation of images of the ghettos on social media and cable news, due to a highly effective right wing media network. That is why people think it is worse now than during the 1980s of sunny Reaganism, despite crime and poverty at the time being substantially worse.
You found the city centre of San Francisco quite nice? My experience is that the streets are covered in human excrement , drug casualties, middle class people desperately trying to ignore what is going on around them by staring into their phones and coffee shops full of unemployed tech people desperately interviewing for jobs over zoom.
It used to be one of my favourite places in America.
I've been to San Francisco on and off since the late 1990s, and it's always been an absolute shithole, with hollow eyed homeless drug addicts with schizophrenia wandering from SoMa up into Union Square and beyond.
Of course, there are some very nice parts. But the center and SoMa are - and have always been - utterly horrendous.
Central Seattle, which I haven't visited for twenty years was the same: an urban hell hole filled with ragged clothed people with few teeth begging for money for whatever the drug de jour for the mentally ill is.
Los Angeles is a little different, because there's a lot more "temporary" homelessness of people living in RVs, having jobs, but not being able to afford the local housing market.
But we also - of course - have the crystal meth-heads wandering around.
I visited San Francisco in 2007 and it seemed quite nice. I don't think I've been to any US city that didn't have a substantial population of street homeless, addicts and the mentally ill, but at that time it didn't seem any worse than the others. From what I've heard it's now a lot worse, but I've not seen it first hand. The US is an incredible country but not a good one to be unlucky in.
I think San Francisco suffers from having its home grown problems compounded by itinerant homelessness, in other words people heading West from broken homes or other problems and pitching up there at the end of the line.
Our own West seems to get the same phenomenon. Bristol has more visible homelessness and rough sleeping, along with very evident drug and alcohol problems, than any other British city I’ve visited. There’s a fair amount in Devon towns too. A big contrast with the industrial cities of the North.
I remember a fascinating chat with a social worker formerly from Brockley now living in Totnes, who contrasted her work with the homeless in both places. “In London people are homeless because they can’t get a home. In Devon they’re homeless because of some other underlying problem”.
How depressing that the editorial line of this site is now to constantly attack the PM.
By someone who's a self-professed Tory.
TSE is a “good Muslim boy” of Indian heritage.
Sunak is Hindu.
Sadly there is a deep engrained prejudice that TSE may not even be aware of himself but it’s been evident since day 1.
Don't know him personally but @TheScreamingEagles comes across as one of least prejudiced people in that respect you possibly meet (virtually in my case)
No one cares anymore . The US is a failed state. The sooner the rest of the world realizes this the better .
Yet somehow has higher median income than virtually all of Europe.
It’s not just about median income . At least in Europe you don’t get your head blown off going to buy a carton of milk . ! I really don’t care anymore . I used to but if half of America thinks it’s okay voting for Trump there really is nothing more to say .
No one cares anymore . The US is a failed state. The sooner the rest of the world realizes this the better .
Yet somehow has higher median income than virtually all of Europe.
Large chunks of urban America are a crime ridden drug addled toilet, tho
In a way we don’t really comprehend in Europe
Now, most of America doesn’t live there. They live in generally nice suburbs. But enough of them encounter it, or pay for it with their taxes, for it to make an electoral difference
And Biden’s abject inability to control the border is not helping
It is true that the US has urban ghettos that are significantly worse than Europe. But this isn't even a majority of urban areas.
Over the last year I have been to the city centres of New York City, Atlanta, Chicago, Charlotte, Miami, Virginia Beach and San Francisco. All seemed nice places, sometimes a bit dirty but no worse than the grimmer areas of central London. Of course, worse areas exist, but most Americans don't encounter them because most people don't travel to ghettos.
What they do have is a constant inundation of images of the ghettos on social media and cable news, due to a highly effective right wing media network. That is why people think it is worse now than during the 1980s of sunny Reaganism, despite crime and poverty at the time being substantially worse.
You found the city centre of San Francisco quite nice? My experience is that the streets are covered in human excrement , drug casualties, middle class people desperately trying to ignore what is going on around them by staring into their phones and coffee shops full of unemployed tech people desperately interviewing for jobs over zoom.
It used to be one of my favourite places in America.
I've been to San Francisco on and off since the late 1990s, and it's always been an absolute shithole, with hollow eyed homeless drug addicts with schizophrenia wandering from SoMa up into Union Square and beyond.
Of course, there are some very nice parts. But the center and SoMa are - and have always been - utterly horrendous.
Central Seattle, which I haven't visited for twenty years was the same: an urban hell hole filled with ragged clothed people with few teeth begging for money for whatever the drug de jour for the mentally ill is.
Los Angeles is a little different, because there's a lot more "temporary" homelessness of people living in RVs, having jobs, but not being able to afford the local housing market.
But we also - of course - have the crystal meth-heads wandering around.
My first time in San Francisco waaay back in 1972 was same re: downtown & rest of skid row. Rest of where I went had its ups and downs sociologically AND topographically.
Was actually visiting a friend who lived with his family just beyond the Berkeley Hills in Contra Costa County, which was affluent suburban. Also semi-desert in stark contrast to the other side of the Hills which is quasi-rain forest.
Didn't go to downtown Oakland, which did NOT enjoy a good reputation to put it mildly. Downtown Berkeley was pretty crummy, but for me the bookstores more than made up for it.
As for downtown Seattle, was down their just this week. Not much different from what you describe, which was what I saw thirty years ago. Ravages of COVID, fentanyl and ever-higher rents have added a new layer.
My own impression, is that things are getting somewhat better, at least IF you don't own commercial property downtown. Even found a new hat store, a quasi-popup sponsored by downtown chamber of commerce program to revitalize the central business district.
The hatter makes custom hats - should I ask for a Galloway?
Naw, to much risk of having to eat my 'at some damn day!
If he does it has to be called in just over three weeks from now. (I don't think he will).
Sunak is announcing it in 9 days time, Monday week, sometime between 1035 and 1150
What is the hypothesis here?
Yesterday, HY posted this to explain why the election is the other end of the summer: “Sunak would rather be PM for as long as possible than go a bit early even if it saves a few Tory MPs seats. Unless he gets a Major 1992 shock victory he will be off to corporate boards in Silicon Valley or some IMF or WTO job as soon as possible after losing a general election anyway and his main priority is ensuring he has a reasonable period as PM on that CV he will be taking to those jobs”
A sentiment a lot of PBers keep posting. The absolute mistake HY has made is presumption the summer and autumn passes off as serenely as Spring is doing for the Conservatives, that they don’t sail into difficult waters leading to a peculiarly bad moment to go to the country leading to a peculiar result in number of seats.
The Home Office modelling predicts a surge in channel crossing from July, at which point all hell breaks loose in Conservative Party discipline and in their battle with Reform for voters. Add to that an interim report from Covid Enquiry. A million switchers to higher mortgage payments. Inflation moving back upwards before end of the year, as well as virtually no economic growth this year (except what will be bequeathed to us by Taylor Swift).
“main priority is ensuring he has a reasonable period as PM on that CV he will be taking to those jobs”
Sunak is the Manager of the Conservative Party and the Manager of the Government - those months from July onwards can leave both those institutions resembling The Raft of the Medusa. Now that really would standout on Sunak’s CV, letting future employers know exactly what he is capable of.
I would like to write a header on why I think 10 years of Labour is possible and becoming more likely, who would I send it to or do I just write it here.
If he does it has to be called in just over three weeks from now. (I don't think he will).
Sunak is announcing it in 9 days time, Monday week, sometime between 1035 and 1150
If only it were true. Unfortunately, it’s the Commonwealth Service at Westminster Abbey at 3pm and I can’t see Sunak being allowed to announce the election against that backdrop.
More likely the next day and go to the Palace after PMQs.
That fits with the constitutional convention that the lectern is used in the afternoon.
How depressing that the editorial line of this site is now to constantly attack the PM.
By someone who's a self-professed Tory.
I agree with you up to a point. Having had a Tory PM who was completely dishonest followed by another who was totally bonkers, Rishi Sunak is merely incompetent in comparison, and not delinquent like the other two.
Liz Truss seems to have decided her future lies in promoting crackpot conspiracy theories. She's giving the Conservative Party cause to expel her, and in more disciplined times I suspect they would have done. Or more probably she wouldn't have gone down this route anyway
Is Truss promoting crackpot conspiracy theories, at least other than the ones she has always believed? It was her sidelining of the OBR (and Treasury and Bank of England), the Establishment, the unelected quangos, the blob, the deep state, that doomed her premiership, of course, and through her ministerial career she had established a reputation for replacing top civil servants. Truss is a genuine Flat Earther, not a cynical one.
No one cares anymore . The US is a failed state. The sooner the rest of the world realizes this the better .
Yet somehow has higher median income than virtually all of Europe.
Large chunks of urban America are a crime ridden drug addled toilet, tho
In a way we don’t really comprehend in Europe
Now, most of America doesn’t live there. They live in generally nice suburbs. But enough of them encounter it, or pay for it with their taxes, for it to make an electoral difference
And Biden’s abject inability to control the border is not helping
It is true that the US has urban ghettos that are significantly worse than Europe. But this isn't even a majority of urban areas.
Over the last year I have been to the city centres of New York City, Atlanta, Chicago, Charlotte, Miami, Virginia Beach and San Francisco. All seemed nice places, sometimes a bit dirty but no worse than the grimmer areas of central London. Of course, worse areas exist, but most Americans don't encounter them because most people don't travel to ghettos.
What they do have is a constant inundation of images of the ghettos on social media and cable news, due to a highly effective right wing media network. That is why people think it is worse now than during the 1980s of sunny Reaganism, despite crime and poverty at the time being substantially worse.
You found the city centre of San Francisco quite nice? My experience is that the streets are covered in human excrement , drug casualties, middle class people desperately trying to ignore what is going on around them by staring into their phones and coffee shops full of unemployed tech people desperately interviewing for jobs over zoom.
It used to be one of my favourite places in America.
I've been to San Francisco on and off since the late 1990s, and it's always been an absolute shithole, with hollow eyed homeless drug addicts with schizophrenia wandering from SoMa up into Union Square and beyond.
Of course, there are some very nice parts. But the center and SoMa are - and have always been - utterly horrendous.
Central Seattle, which I haven't visited for twenty years was the same: an urban hell hole filled with ragged clothed people with few teeth begging for money for whatever the drug de jour for the mentally ill is.
Los Angeles is a little different, because there's a lot more "temporary" homelessness of people living in RVs, having jobs, but not being able to afford the local housing market.
But we also - of course - have the crystal meth-heads wandering around.
The degree of on-street deprivation in American cities depends entirely on the effort each one puts into displacing the problem elsewhere. The ones that don't end up as the dumping ground for those that do. No-one is tackling the root cause.
Please provide a warning if you’re going to link something that clicks straight through to the Daily Mail website! I’ve just inadvertently added to Viscount Rothermere’s click based ad revenue.
Starmer doesn't have ReformUK breating down his neck like Sunak so he can't afford Anderson to defect to Reform.
Albeit if Galloway's party picks up traction after his by election win last week he might regret removing the whip from Corbyn given Galloway is a friend of Jezza. Indeed 'George Galloway tells me that he expects to be introduced to the Commons on Monday by Jeremy Corbyn and David Davis ' https://x.com/SamCoatesSky/status/1763431244677668967?s=20
No one cares anymore . The US is a failed state. The sooner the rest of the world realizes this the better .
Yet somehow has higher median income than virtually all of Europe.
Large chunks of urban America are a crime ridden drug addled toilet, tho
In a way we don’t really comprehend in Europe
Now, most of America doesn’t live there. They live in generally nice suburbs. But enough of them encounter it, or pay for it with their taxes, for it to make an electoral difference
And Biden’s abject inability to control the border is not helping
It is true that the US has urban ghettos that are significantly worse than Europe. But this isn't even a majority of urban areas.
Over the last year I have been to the city centres of New York City, Atlanta, Chicago, Charlotte, Miami, Virginia Beach and San Francisco. All seemed nice places, sometimes a bit dirty but no worse than the grimmer areas of central London. Of course, worse areas exist, but most Americans don't encounter them because most people don't travel to ghettos.
What they do have is a constant inundation of images of the ghettos on social media and cable news, due to a highly effective right wing media network. That is why people think it is worse now than during the 1980s of sunny Reaganism, despite crime and poverty at the time being substantially worse.
You found the city centre of San Francisco quite nice? My experience is that the streets are covered in human excrement , drug casualties, middle class people desperately trying to ignore what is going on around them by staring into their phones and coffee shops full of unemployed tech people desperately interviewing for jobs over zoom.
It used to be one of my favourite places in America.
I've been to San Francisco on and off since the late 1990s, and it's always been an absolute shithole, with hollow eyed homeless drug addicts with schizophrenia wandering from SoMa up into Union Square and beyond.
Of course, there are some very nice parts. But the center and SoMa are - and have always been - utterly horrendous.
Central Seattle, which I haven't visited for twenty years was the same: an urban hell hole filled with ragged clothed people with few teeth begging for money for whatever the drug de jour for the mentally ill is.
Los Angeles is a little different, because there's a lot more "temporary" homelessness of people living in RVs, having jobs, but not being able to afford the local housing market.
But we also - of course - have the crystal meth-heads wandering around.
I visited San Francisco in 2007 and it seemed quite nice. I don't think I've been to any US city that didn't have a substantial population of street homeless, addicts and the mentally ill, but at that time it didn't seem any worse than the others. From what I've heard it's now a lot worse, but I've not seen it first hand. The US is an incredible country but not a good one to be unlucky in.
Those weighing in probably spend rather more time reading about it on social media than on the streets of San Francisco.
If he does it has to be called in just over three weeks from now. (I don't think he will).
Sunak is announcing it in 9 days time, Monday week, sometime between 1035 and 1150
What is the hypothesis here?
Yesterday, HY posted this to explain why the election is the other end of the summer: “Sunak would rather be PM for as long as possible than go a bit early even if it saves a few Tory MPs seats. Unless he gets a Major 1992 shock victory he will be off to corporate boards in Silicon Valley or some IMF or WTO job as soon as possible after losing a general election anyway and his main priority is ensuring he has a reasonable period as PM on that CV he will be taking to those jobs”
A sentiment a lot of PBers keep posting. The absolute mistake HY has made is presumption the summer and autumn passes off as serenely as Spring is doing for the Conservatives, that they don’t sail into difficult waters leading to a peculiarly bad moment to go to the country leading to a peculiar result in number of seats.
The Home Office modelling predicts a surge in channel crossing from July, at which point all hell breaks loose in Conservative Party discipline and in their battle with Reform for voters. Add to that an interim report from Covid Enquiry. A million switchers to higher mortgage payments. Inflation moving back upwards before end of the year, as well as virtually no economic growth this year (except what will be bequeathed to us by Taylor Swift).
“main priority is ensuring he has a reasonable period as PM on that CV he will be taking to those jobs”
Sunak is the Manager of the Conservative Party and the Manager of the Government - those months from July onwards can leave both those institutions resembling The Raft of the Medusa. Now that really would standout on Sunak’s CV, letting future employers know exactly what he is capable of.
By late autumn tighter immigration rules will have kicked in and inflation may be down further. Sunak also would rather stay PM for an extra 6 months than call an early election he still likely loses heavily to save a handful of Tory MPs
No one cares anymore . The US is a failed state. The sooner the rest of the world realizes this the better .
Yet somehow has higher median income than virtually all of Europe.
Large chunks of urban America are a crime ridden drug addled toilet, tho
In a way we don’t really comprehend in Europe
Now, most of America doesn’t live there. They live in generally nice suburbs. But enough of them encounter it, or pay for it with their taxes, for it to make an electoral difference
And Biden’s abject inability to control the border is not helping
It is true that the US has urban ghettos that are significantly worse than Europe. But this isn't even a majority of urban areas.
Over the last year I have been to the city centres of New York City, Atlanta, Chicago, Charlotte, Miami, Virginia Beach and San Francisco. All seemed nice places, sometimes a bit dirty but no worse than the grimmer areas of central London. Of course, worse areas exist, but most Americans don't encounter them because most people don't travel to ghettos.
What they do have is a constant inundation of images of the ghettos on social media and cable news, due to a highly effective right wing media network. That is why people think it is worse now than during the 1980s of sunny Reaganism, despite crime and poverty at the time being substantially worse.
You found the city centre of San Francisco quite nice? My experience is that the streets are covered in human excrement , drug casualties, middle class people desperately trying to ignore what is going on around them by staring into their phones and coffee shops full of unemployed tech people desperately interviewing for jobs over zoom.
It used to be one of my favourite places in America.
I've been to San Francisco on and off since the late 1990s, and it's always been an absolute shithole, with hollow eyed homeless drug addicts with schizophrenia wandering from SoMa up into Union Square and beyond.
Of course, there are some very nice parts. But the center and SoMa are - and have always been - utterly horrendous.
Central Seattle, which I haven't visited for twenty years was the same: an urban hell hole filled with ragged clothed people with few teeth begging for money for whatever the drug de jour for the mentally ill is.
Los Angeles is a little different, because there's a lot more "temporary" homelessness of people living in RVs, having jobs, but not being able to afford the local housing market.
But we also - of course - have the crystal meth-heads wandering around.
The degree of on-street deprivation in American cities depends entirely on the effort each one puts into displacing the problem elsewhere. The ones that don't end up as the dumping ground for those that do. No-one is tackling the root cause.
"seventy-one percent of those surveyed reported living in San Francisco, 24% in other California counties and 4% outside California."
It's a pity Starmer can't make that contrast with Sunak but after endorsing everything Sunak has said it would make him look rather opportunistic
I don't know:
"I agreed with the Prime Minister's words on Friday and have acted accordingly. Unfortunately the Prime Minister seems unable or unwilling to walk his own talk."
48% for Trump is little different to the 47% he got in 2020, it is Biden who has collapsed from 51% to 43%. Where the 10% DK go will be key and much will depend on the results of Trump's criminal trials starting from next month, if he is acquitted he likely wins, if he is convicted and even more if he is jailed independents will swing back to Biden again
If he does it has to be called in just over three weeks from now. (I don't think he will).
Sunak is announcing it in 9 days time, Monday week, sometime between 1035 and 1150
If only it were true. Unfortunately, it’s the Commonwealth Service at Westminster Abbey at 3pm and I can’t see Sunak being allowed to announce the election against that backdrop.
More likely the next day and go to the Palace after PMQs.
That fits with the constitutional convention that the lectern is used in the afternoon.
Chris Curtis @chriscurtis94 I am as cynical as everyone else, but the Tories current spending on online ads only makes sense if we are heading for a May election.
How depressing that the editorial line of this site is now to constantly attack the PM.
By someone who's a self-professed Tory.
Still a lot of bitterness over what happened to the Lib-Dems in 2015, not to mention Brexit and political demise of Cameron and Osborne! 😂
Lot of ad homs regarding the header tonight.
I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.
How depressing that the editorial line of this site is now to constantly attack the PM.
By someone who's a self-professed Tory.
Still a lot of bitterness over what happened to the Lib-Dems in 2015, not to mention Brexit and political demise of Cameron and Osborne! 😂
Lot of ad homs regarding the header tonight.
I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.
How depressing that the editorial line of this site is now to constantly attack the PM.
By someone who's a self-professed Tory.
Still a lot of bitterness over what happened to the Lib-Dems in 2015, not to mention Brexit and political demise of Cameron and Osborne! 😂
Lot of ad homs regarding the header tonight.
I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.
If he does it has to be called in just over three weeks from now. (I don't think he will).
Sunak is announcing it in 9 days time, Monday week, sometime between 1035 and 1150
What is the hypothesis here?
Yesterday, HY posted this to explain why the election is the other end of the summer: “Sunak would rather be PM for as long as possible than go a bit early even if it saves a few Tory MPs seats. Unless he gets a Major 1992 shock victory he will be off to corporate boards in Silicon Valley or some IMF or WTO job as soon as possible after losing a general election anyway and his main priority is ensuring he has a reasonable period as PM on that CV he will be taking to those jobs”
A sentiment a lot of PBers keep posting. The absolute mistake HY has made is presumption the summer and autumn passes off as serenely as Spring is doing for the Conservatives, that they don’t sail into difficult waters leading to a peculiarly bad moment to go to the country leading to a peculiar result in number of seats.
The Home Office modelling predicts a surge in channel crossing from July, at which point all hell breaks loose in Conservative Party discipline and in their battle with Reform for voters. Add to that an interim report from Covid Enquiry. A million switchers to higher mortgage payments. Inflation moving back upwards before end of the year, as well as virtually no economic growth this year (except what will be bequeathed to us by Taylor Swift).
“main priority is ensuring he has a reasonable period as PM on that CV he will be taking to those jobs”
Sunak is the Manager of the Conservative Party and the Manager of the Government - those months from July onwards can leave both those institutions resembling The Raft of the Medusa. Now that really would standout on Sunak’s CV, letting future employers know exactly what he is capable of.
By late autumn tighter immigration rules will have kicked in and inflation may be down further. Sunak also would rather stay PM for an extra 6 months than call an early election he still likely loses heavily to save a handful of Tory MPs
Inflation will be at the bottom in Spring and then will go up later in the year
This is why interest rates are not coming down anytime soon
70 Tory MPs asking for more spending on Special Needs Education:
70 Tory MPs from across the party asking the Chancellor for more funding for special needs support. Won't happen, obviously, but shows how bad things are getting.
Edit: Seeing the list of signatories I wonder if half of them think Hunt can cut taxes and use that money for more spending on special needs education.
How depressing that the editorial line of this site is now to constantly attack the PM.
By someone who's a self-professed Tory.
Still a lot of bitterness over what happened to the Lib-Dems in 2015, not to mention Brexit and political demise of Cameron and Osborne! 😂
Lot of ad homs regarding the header tonight.
I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.
No one cares anymore . The US is a failed state. The sooner the rest of the world realizes this the better .
Yet somehow has higher median income than virtually all of Europe.
Large chunks of urban America are a crime ridden drug addled toilet, tho
In a way we don’t really comprehend in Europe
Now, most of America doesn’t live there. They live in generally nice suburbs. But enough of them encounter it, or pay for it with their taxes, for it to make an electoral difference
And Biden’s abject inability to control the border is not helping
It is true that the US has urban ghettos that are significantly worse than Europe. But this isn't even a majority of urban areas.
Over the last year I have been to the city centres of New York City, Atlanta, Chicago, Charlotte, Miami, Virginia Beach and San Francisco. All seemed nice places, sometimes a bit dirty but no worse than the grimmer areas of central London. Of course, worse areas exist, but most Americans don't encounter them because most people don't travel to ghettos.
What they do have is a constant inundation of images of the ghettos on social media and cable news, due to a highly effective right wing media network. That is why people think it is worse now than during the 1980s of sunny Reaganism, despite crime and poverty at the time being substantially worse.
You found the city centre of San Francisco quite nice? My experience is that the streets are covered in human excrement , drug casualties, middle class people desperately trying to ignore what is going on around them by staring into their phones and coffee shops full of unemployed tech people desperately interviewing for jobs over zoom.
It used to be one of my favourite places in America.
I've been to San Francisco on and off since the late 1990s, and it's always been an absolute shithole, with hollow eyed homeless drug addicts with schizophrenia wandering from SoMa up into Union Square and beyond.
Of course, there are some very nice parts. But the center and SoMa are - and have always been - utterly horrendous.
Central Seattle, which I haven't visited for twenty years was the same: an urban hell hole filled with ragged clothed people with few teeth begging for money for whatever the drug de jour for the mentally ill is.
Los Angeles is a little different, because there's a lot more "temporary" homelessness of people living in RVs, having jobs, but not being able to afford the local housing market.
But we also - of course - have the crystal meth-heads wandering around.
The degree of on-street deprivation in American cities depends entirely on the effort each one puts into displacing the problem elsewhere. The ones that don't end up as the dumping ground for those that do. No-one is tackling the root cause.
Although we're starting to go down that road too - see Braverman's plan to ban tents, which was simply a confused version of things that cities like SF and Austin have been trying.
The blind spot re root causes extends across the political spectrum, btw. I have thoroughly left-wing activist-type friends in the Bay Area who've been getting excited about a project that provides buckets and adult diapers for street homeless people. The idea of providing sanitation facilities beyond that is simply too difficult to contemplate...
How depressing that the editorial line of this site is now to constantly attack the PM.
By someone who's a self-professed Tory.
Still a lot of bitterness over what happened to the Lib-Dems in 2015, not to mention Brexit and political demise of Cameron and Osborne! 😂
Lot of ad homs regarding the header tonight.
I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.
- Mrs Thatcher
Our greatest Prime Minister.
"People are really rather afraid that this country might be rather swamped by people with a different culture."
If he does it has to be called in just over three weeks from now. (I don't think he will).
Sunak is announcing it in 9 days time, Monday week, sometime between 1035 and 1150
If only it were true. Unfortunately, it’s the Commonwealth Service at Westminster Abbey at 3pm and I can’t see Sunak being allowed to announce the election against that backdrop.
More likely the next day and go to the Palace after PMQs.
That fits with the constitutional convention that the lectern is used in the afternoon.
Chris Curtis @chriscurtis94 I am as cynical as everyone else, but the Tories current spending on online ads only makes sense if we are heading for a May election.
If he does it has to be called in just over three weeks from now. (I don't think he will).
Sunak is announcing it in 9 days time, Monday week, sometime between 1035 and 1150
What is the hypothesis here?
Yesterday, HY posted this to explain why the election is the other end of the summer: “Sunak would rather be PM for as long as possible than go a bit early even if it saves a few Tory MPs seats. Unless he gets a Major 1992 shock victory he will be off to corporate boards in Silicon Valley or some IMF or WTO job as soon as possible after losing a general election anyway and his main priority is ensuring he has a reasonable period as PM on that CV he will be taking to those jobs”
A sentiment a lot of PBers keep posting. The absolute mistake HY has made is presumption the summer and autumn passes off as serenely as Spring is doing for the Conservatives, that they don’t sail into difficult waters leading to a peculiarly bad moment to go to the country leading to a peculiar result in number of seats.
The Home Office modelling predicts a surge in channel crossing from July, at which point all hell breaks loose in Conservative Party discipline and in their battle with Reform for voters. Add to that an interim report from Covid Enquiry. A million switchers to higher mortgage payments. Inflation moving back upwards before end of the year, as well as virtually no economic growth this year (except what will be bequeathed to us by Taylor Swift).
“main priority is ensuring he has a reasonable period as PM on that CV he will be taking to those jobs”
Sunak is the Manager of the Conservative Party and the Manager of the Government - those months from July onwards can leave both those institutions resembling The Raft of the Medusa. Now that really would standout on Sunak’s CV, letting future employers know exactly what he is capable of.
By late autumn tighter immigration rules will have kicked in and inflation may be down further. Sunak also would rather stay PM for an extra 6 months than call an early election he still likely loses heavily to save a handful of Tory MPs
Inflation will be at the bottom in Spring and then will go up later in the year
This is why interest rates are not coming down anytime soon
It's plausible that interest rates may start rising again - mortgage rates are slowly ramping up...
How depressing that the editorial line of this site is now to constantly attack the PM.
By someone who's a self-professed Tory.
Still a lot of bitterness over what happened to the Lib-Dems in 2015, not to mention Brexit and political demise of Cameron and Osborne! 😂
Lot of ad homs regarding the header tonight.
I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.
If he does it has to be called in just over three weeks from now. (I don't think he will).
Sunak is announcing it in 9 days time, Monday week, sometime between 1035 and 1150
What is the hypothesis here?
Yesterday, HY posted this to explain why the election is the other end of the summer: “Sunak would rather be PM for as long as possible than go a bit early even if it saves a few Tory MPs seats. Unless he gets a Major 1992 shock victory he will be off to corporate boards in Silicon Valley or some IMF or WTO job as soon as possible after losing a general election anyway and his main priority is ensuring he has a reasonable period as PM on that CV he will be taking to those jobs”
A sentiment a lot of PBers keep posting. The absolute mistake HY has made is presumption the summer and autumn passes off as serenely as Spring is doing for the Conservatives, that they don’t sail into difficult waters leading to a peculiarly bad moment to go to the country leading to a peculiar result in number of seats.
The Home Office modelling predicts a surge in channel crossing from July, at which point all hell breaks loose in Conservative Party discipline and in their battle with Reform for voters. Add to that an interim report from Covid Enquiry. A million switchers to higher mortgage payments. Inflation moving back upwards before end of the year, as well as virtually no economic growth this year (except what will be bequeathed to us by Taylor Swift).
“main priority is ensuring he has a reasonable period as PM on that CV he will be taking to those jobs”
Sunak is the Manager of the Conservative Party and the Manager of the Government - those months from July onwards can leave both those institutions resembling The Raft of the Medusa. Now that really would standout on Sunak’s CV, letting future employers know exactly what he is capable of.
By late autumn tighter immigration rules will have kicked in and inflation may be down further. Sunak also would rather stay PM for an extra 6 months than call an early election he still likely loses heavily to save a handful of Tory MPs
Inflation will be at the bottom in Spring and then will go up later in the year
This is why interest rates are not coming down anytime soon
It's plausible that interest rates may start rising again - mortgage rates are slowly ramping up...
No one cares anymore . The US is a failed state. The sooner the rest of the world realizes this the better .
Yet somehow has higher median income than virtually all of Europe.
Large chunks of urban America are a crime ridden drug addled toilet, tho
In a way we don’t really comprehend in Europe
Now, most of America doesn’t live there. They live in generally nice suburbs. But enough of them encounter it, or pay for it with their taxes, for it to make an electoral difference
And Biden’s abject inability to control the border is not helping
It is true that the US has urban ghettos that are significantly worse than Europe. But this isn't even a majority of urban areas.
Over the last year I have been to the city centres of New York City, Atlanta, Chicago, Charlotte, Miami, Virginia Beach and San Francisco. All seemed nice places, sometimes a bit dirty but no worse than the grimmer areas of central London. Of course, worse areas exist, but most Americans don't encounter them because most people don't travel to ghettos.
What they do have is a constant inundation of images of the ghettos on social media and cable news, due to a highly effective right wing media network. That is why people think it is worse now than during the 1980s of sunny Reaganism, despite crime and poverty at the time being substantially worse.
You found the city centre of San Francisco quite nice? My experience is that the streets are covered in human excrement , drug casualties, middle class people desperately trying to ignore what is going on around them by staring into their phones and coffee shops full of unemployed tech people desperately interviewing for jobs over zoom.
It used to be one of my favourite places in America.
I've been to San Francisco on and off since the late 1990s, and it's always been an absolute shithole, with hollow eyed homeless drug addicts with schizophrenia wandering from SoMa up into Union Square and beyond.
Of course, there are some very nice parts. But the center and SoMa are - and have always been - utterly horrendous.
Central Seattle, which I haven't visited for twenty years was the same: an urban hell hole filled with ragged clothed people with few teeth begging for money for whatever the drug de jour for the mentally ill is.
Los Angeles is a little different, because there's a lot more "temporary" homelessness of people living in RVs, having jobs, but not being able to afford the local housing market.
But we also - of course - have the crystal meth-heads wandering around.
The degree of on-street deprivation in American cities depends entirely on the effort each one puts into displacing the problem elsewhere. The ones that don't end up as the dumping ground for those that do. No-one is tackling the root cause.
Although we're starting to go down that road too - see Braverman's plan to ban tents, which was simply a confused version of things that cities like SF and Austin have been trying.
The blind spot re root causes extends across the political spectrum, btw. I have thoroughly left-wing activist-type friends in the Bay Area who've been getting excited about a project that provides buckets and adult diapers for street homeless people. The idea of providing sanitation facilities beyond that is simply too difficult to contemplate...
I had lunch last weekend with an American friend who lives in SF. A firmly anti Trump Liberal, but her stories of SF were full of despair. It is now a sithole full of drug addled homeless as described. She blames the opioid epidemic and the effective decriminalisation of shoplifting under $1000. Its only her elderly parents that keep her there at all, but mostly she works as a digital nomad in Europe.
I have lived in America for 5 years in the Seventies, and many cities were appalling then, but it seems at least as bad now.
I have no desire to visit America again any time soon.
If Lord Farquaad doesn't call the election in May he is going to get the Gordon Brown treatment...
If he goes for May he is going to get the Gordon Brown treatment, any longer and a fate similar to the Canadian Progressive Conservative party is very possible...
How depressing that the editorial line of this site is now to constantly attack the PM.
By someone who's a self-professed Tory.
Still a lot of bitterness over what happened to the Lib-Dems in 2015, not to mention Brexit and political demise of Cameron and Osborne! 😂
Lot of ad homs regarding the header tonight.
I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.
- Mrs Thatcher
Our greatest Prime Minister.
"People are really rather afraid that this country might be rather swamped by people with a different culture."
A reminder of one of the reasons we have no money - government getting rinsed by extractive private equity groups. Neoliberalism sucks.
The Tories are content for private equity hyaenas to feed off the moribund welfare state. They see it as private sector efficiency, and I think Starmers Labour is in their thrall too.
If Lord Farquaad doesn't call the election in May he is going to get the Gordon Brown treatment...
If he goes for May he is going to get the Gordon Brown treatment, any longer and a fate similar to the Canadian Progressive Conservative party is very possible...
Agreed. If the ge is postponed till autumn the tories are at risk of ceasing to exist as a parliamentary party. They are being curtailed at both ends by labour and reform.Tell you what: April-June is trending up in smarkets. Let's see what happens.
Really don't think a 2nd May election is happening. It's July or the Autumn. Why (beyond Labour's 20% lead)? Because @RishiSunak's whole campaign is based on the economy turning the corner. The biggest proof point of that (data showing inflation down to 2%) comes... in mid-May
No one cares anymore . The US is a failed state. The sooner the rest of the world realizes this the better .
Yet somehow has higher median income than virtually all of Europe.
Large chunks of urban America are a crime ridden drug addled toilet, tho
In a way we don’t really comprehend in Europe
Now, most of America doesn’t live there. They live in generally nice suburbs. But enough of them encounter it, or pay for it with their taxes, for it to make an electoral difference
And Biden’s abject inability to control the border is not helping
It is true that the US has urban ghettos that are significantly worse than Europe. But this isn't even a majority of urban areas.
Over the last year I have been to the city centres of New York City, Atlanta, Chicago, Charlotte, Miami, Virginia Beach and San Francisco. All seemed nice places, sometimes a bit dirty but no worse than the grimmer areas of central London. Of course, worse areas exist, but most Americans don't encounter them because most people don't travel to ghettos.
What they do have is a constant inundation of images of the ghettos on social media and cable news, due to a highly effective right wing media network. That is why people think it is worse now than during the 1980s of sunny Reaganism, despite crime and poverty at the time being substantially worse.
You found the city centre of San Francisco quite nice? My experience is that the streets are covered in human excrement , drug casualties, middle class people desperately trying to ignore what is going on around them by staring into their phones and coffee shops full of unemployed tech people desperately interviewing for jobs over zoom.
It used to be one of my favourite places in America.
I've been to San Francisco on and off since the late 1990s, and it's always been an absolute shithole, with hollow eyed homeless drug addicts with schizophrenia wandering from SoMa up into Union Square and beyond.
Of course, there are some very nice parts. But the center and SoMa are - and have always been - utterly horrendous.
Central Seattle, which I haven't visited for twenty years was the same: an urban hell hole filled with ragged clothed people with few teeth begging for money for whatever the drug de jour for the mentally ill is.
Los Angeles is a little different, because there's a lot more "temporary" homelessness of people living in RVs, having jobs, but not being able to afford the local housing market.
But we also - of course - have the crystal meth-heads wandering around.
The degree of on-street deprivation in American cities depends entirely on the effort each one puts into displacing the problem elsewhere. The ones that don't end up as the dumping ground for those that do. No-one is tackling the root cause.
Although we're starting to go down that road too - see Braverman's plan to ban tents, which was simply a confused version of things that cities like SF and Austin have been trying.
The blind spot re root causes extends across the political spectrum, btw. I have thoroughly left-wing activist-type friends in the Bay Area who've been getting excited about a project that provides buckets and adult diapers for street homeless people. The idea of providing sanitation facilities beyond that is simply too difficult to contemplate...
I had lunch last weekend with an American friend who lives in SF. A firmly anti Trump Liberal, but her stories of SF were full of despair. It is now a sithole full of drug addled homeless as described. She blames the opioid epidemic and the effective decriminalisation of shoplifting under $1000. Its only her elderly parents that keep her there at all, but mostly she works as a digital nomad in Europe.
I have lived in America for 5 years in the Seventies, and many cities were appalling then, but it seems at least as bad now.
I have no desire to visit America again any time soon.
The us is all about region and location. My inlaws live in huntsville, North Alabama. That is all red necks and cotton farms, right? Nope. It is the second biggest tech incubator in the US. You can barely throw a rock with out hitting somebody with an engineering PhD. Everything R&R aviation in the US is there. Lockheed, Boeing, Apache Helecopters, NASA, The Redstone arsenal. This is where they kept Werner von Braun and his team after WW2. Over the last 25 years everything has consolidated there: everything is new, sleek and shiny and growing very fast. They have an Apollo rocket stood there (right by space camp). It is just a crazy experience being there.
No one cares anymore . The US is a failed state. The sooner the rest of the world realizes this the better .
Yet somehow has higher median income than virtually all of Europe.
Large chunks of urban America are a crime ridden drug addled toilet, tho
In a way we don’t really comprehend in Europe
Now, most of America doesn’t live there. They live in generally nice suburbs. But enough of them encounter it, or pay for it with their taxes, for it to make an electoral difference
And Biden’s abject inability to control the border is not helping
It is true that the US has urban ghettos that are significantly worse than Europe. But this isn't even a majority of urban areas.
Over the last year I have been to the city centres of New York City, Atlanta, Chicago, Charlotte, Miami, Virginia Beach and San Francisco. All seemed nice places, sometimes a bit dirty but no worse than the grimmer areas of central London. Of course, worse areas exist, but most Americans don't encounter them because most people don't travel to ghettos.
What they do have is a constant inundation of images of the ghettos on social media and cable news, due to a highly effective right wing media network. That is why people think it is worse now than during the 1980s of sunny Reaganism, despite crime and poverty at the time being substantially worse.
You found the city centre of San Francisco quite nice? My experience is that the streets are covered in human excrement , drug casualties, middle class people desperately trying to ignore what is going on around them by staring into their phones and coffee shops full of unemployed tech people desperately interviewing for jobs over zoom.
It used to be one of my favourite places in America.
I've been to San Francisco on and off since the late 1990s, and it's always been an absolute shithole, with hollow eyed homeless drug addicts with schizophrenia wandering from SoMa up into Union Square and beyond.
Of course, there are some very nice parts. But the center and SoMa are - and have always been - utterly horrendous.
Central Seattle, which I haven't visited for twenty years was the same: an urban hell hole filled with ragged clothed people with few teeth begging for money for whatever the drug de jour for the mentally ill is.
Los Angeles is a little different, because there's a lot more "temporary" homelessness of people living in RVs, having jobs, but not being able to afford the local housing market.
But we also - of course - have the crystal meth-heads wandering around.
The degree of on-street deprivation in American cities depends entirely on the effort each one puts into displacing the problem elsewhere. The ones that don't end up as the dumping ground for those that do. No-one is tackling the root cause.
Although we're starting to go down that road too - see Braverman's plan to ban tents, which was simply a confused version of things that cities like SF and Austin have been trying.
The blind spot re root causes extends across the political spectrum, btw. I have thoroughly left-wing activist-type friends in the Bay Area who've been getting excited about a project that provides buckets and adult diapers for street homeless people. The idea of providing sanitation facilities beyond that is simply too difficult to contemplate...
I had lunch last weekend with an American friend who lives in SF. A firmly anti Trump Liberal, but her stories of SF were full of despair. It is now a sithole full of drug addled homeless as described. She blames the opioid epidemic and the effective decriminalisation of shoplifting under $1000. Its only her elderly parents that keep her there at all, but mostly she works as a digital nomad in Europe.
I have lived in America for 5 years in the Seventies, and many cities were appalling then, but it seems at least as bad now.
I have no desire to visit America again any time soon.
The shoplifting thing is interesting - an unindented consequence of the "three strikes and you're out"-type policies from the late 90s / early 2000s. The political system is so gridlocked that it's almost impossible to unwind even clear failures like those.
My experiences of SF and Oakland since the pandemic haven't actually been quite as grim as American colleagues had led me to expect - but what really surprised me is how bad things have become in Silicon Valley. It's barely visible on the main streets, but if you try to follow just about any creek, off-road trail, or cycle path you'll suddenly find yourself in a tent city that didn't exist even five years ago.
Went to see Standing at the Sky's Edge last night, a really brilliant musical set in Sheffield over the course of three generations, highly recommend it. Although @TheScreamingEagles might test your ability to reconcile your love of South Yorkshire and Margaret Thatcher.
70 Tory MPs asking for more spending on Special Needs Education:
70 Tory MPs from across the party asking the Chancellor for more funding for special needs support. Won't happen, obviously, but shows how bad things are getting.
Edit: Seeing the list of signatories I wonder if half of them think Hunt can cut taxes and use that money for more spending on special needs education.
One of the best things about the sector is it is truly comprehensive. Some extremely well clued up, educated and influential parents to do the badgering.
No one cares anymore . The US is a failed state. The sooner the rest of the world realizes this the better .
Yet somehow has higher median income than virtually all of Europe.
Large chunks of urban America are a crime ridden drug addled toilet, tho
In a way we don’t really comprehend in Europe
Now, most of America doesn’t live there. They live in generally nice suburbs. But enough of them encounter it, or pay for it with their taxes, for it to make an electoral difference
And Biden’s abject inability to control the border is not helping
It is true that the US has urban ghettos that are significantly worse than Europe. But this isn't even a majority of urban areas.
Over the last year I have been to the city centres of New York City, Atlanta, Chicago, Charlotte, Miami, Virginia Beach and San Francisco. All seemed nice places, sometimes a bit dirty but no worse than the grimmer areas of central London. Of course, worse areas exist, but most Americans don't encounter them because most people don't travel to ghettos.
What they do have is a constant inundation of images of the ghettos on social media and cable news, due to a highly effective right wing media network. That is why people think it is worse now than during the 1980s of sunny Reaganism, despite crime and poverty at the time being substantially worse.
You found the city centre of San Francisco quite nice? My experience is that the streets are covered in human excrement , drug casualties, middle class people desperately trying to ignore what is going on around them by staring into their phones and coffee shops full of unemployed tech people desperately interviewing for jobs over zoom.
It used to be one of my favourite places in America.
I've been to San Francisco on and off since the late 1990s, and it's always been an absolute shithole, with hollow eyed homeless drug addicts with schizophrenia wandering from SoMa up into Union Square and beyond.
Of course, there are some very nice parts. But the center and SoMa are - and have always been - utterly horrendous.
Central Seattle, which I haven't visited for twenty years was the same: an urban hell hole filled with ragged clothed people with few teeth begging for money for whatever the drug de jour for the mentally ill is.
Los Angeles is a little different, because there's a lot more "temporary" homelessness of people living in RVs, having jobs, but not being able to afford the local housing market.
But we also - of course - have the crystal meth-heads wandering around.
The degree of on-street deprivation in American cities depends entirely on the effort each one puts into displacing the problem elsewhere. The ones that don't end up as the dumping ground for those that do. No-one is tackling the root cause.
Although we're starting to go down that road too - see Braverman's plan to ban tents, which was simply a confused version of things that cities like SF and Austin have been trying.
The blind spot re root causes extends across the political spectrum, btw. I have thoroughly left-wing activist-type friends in the Bay Area who've been getting excited about a project that provides buckets and adult diapers for street homeless people. The idea of providing sanitation facilities beyond that is simply too difficult to contemplate...
I had lunch last weekend with an American friend who lives in SF. A firmly anti Trump Liberal, but her stories of SF were full of despair. It is now a sithole full of drug addled homeless as described. She blames the opioid epidemic and the effective decriminalisation of shoplifting under $1000. Its only her elderly parents that keep her there at all, but mostly she works as a digital nomad in Europe.
I have lived in America for 5 years in the Seventies, and many cities were appalling then, but it seems at least as bad now.
I have no desire to visit America again any time soon.
The us is all about region and location. My inlaws live in huntsville, North Alabama. That is all red necks and cotton farms, right? Nope. It is the second biggest tech incubator in the US. You can barely throw a rock with out hitting somebody with an engineering PhD. Everything R&R aviation in the US is there. Lockheed, Boeing, Apache Helecopters, NASA, The Redstone arsenal. This is where they kept Werner von Braun and his team after WW2. Over the last 25 years everything has consolidated there: everything is new, sleek and shiny and growing very fast. They have an Apollo rocket stood there (right by space camp). It is just a crazy experience being there.
Coo! *checks* actually two - Apollo-Saturn I and Apollo-Saturn V.
If Lord Farquaad doesn't call the election in May he is going to get the Gordon Brown treatment...
If he goes for May he is going to get the Gordon Brown treatment, any longer and a fate similar to the Canadian Progressive Conservative party is very possible...
If he goes for May he ceases to be PM in May. If he goes for December he ceases to be PM in December.
He'll choose December. What should he care what happens to the Conservative Party?
Couldn't make it up. The Budget Responsibility Committee of the OBR is appointed by none other than the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
They have executive responsibility for carrying out the core functions of the OBR, including responsibility for the judgements reached in its forecasts.
Galloway, Corbyn and Burgon are not on it.
This is a Trussite complaint, the OBR being part of the deep state. The irony is the Conservatives set up the OBR to screw Labour.
Actually it was set up to ensure that UK budgets prepared us for the Euro. Which is why its mandate is now so irrelevant. As with much of Osborne and Cameron's legacy, it was EU stuff masquerading as Tory politicking. They were the Jeremy Clarkson of politics.
Couldn't make it up. The Budget Responsibility Committee of the OBR is appointed by none other than the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
They have executive responsibility for carrying out the core functions of the OBR, including responsibility for the judgements reached in its forecasts.
Galloway, Corbyn and Burgon are not on it.
This is a Trussite complaint, the OBR being part of the deep state. The irony is the Conservatives set up the OBR to screw Labour.
Actually it was set up to ensure that UK budgets prepared us for the Euro. Which is why its mandate is now so irrelevant. As with much of Osborne and Cameron's legacy, it was EU stuff masquerading as Tory politicking. They were the Jeremy Clarkson of politics.
Never heard that one before. Where did you find it?
Liz Truss seems to have decided her future lies in promoting crackpot conspiracy theories. She's giving the Conservative Party cause to expel her, and in more disciplined times I suspect they would have done. Or more probably she wouldn't have gone down this route anyway
How is inviting Lee Anderson to speak at an event a conspiracy theory?
A reminder of one of the reasons we have no money - government getting rinsed by extractive private equity groups. Neoliberalism sucks.
The Tories are content for private equity hyaenas to feed off the moribund welfare state. They see it as private sector efficiency, and I think Starmers Labour is in their thrall too.
The problem is when the private sector operator or contractor realises the service they have taken on cannot make the money they were expecting operating at the profit margins to which said private company operates.
The public sector doesn't have to make a profit so can operate to wafer thin margins - thus the cash cow becomes at best a loss leader. Attempts to generate income by making the public sector staff more "efficient" fail when the private sector operates how much "goodwill" is keeping the service going.
In the end, when the private operator has to charge £120 to fix a light bulb at a residential care home to make any money itself, it's either forced to seek a bailout from the council or walk away from the contract.
By the way. I've no problem with profit per se - I just don't think the care of vulnerable adults and children should have that as a primary motivation for service provision. The quality of care counts for far more than any company's balance sheet.
If Lord Farquaad doesn't call the election in May he is going to get the Gordon Brown treatment...
If he goes for May he is going to get the Gordon Brown treatment, any longer and a fate similar to the Canadian Progressive Conservative party is very possible...
Why should Reform be anymore likely to overtake the Tories in the autumn than the spring?
@Leon - on some previous thread or other about Rochdale - "How do we rescue these towns? I'm not sure you can
They were built for the industrial revolution, now that has gone and is never returning. AI will destroy the few jobs left
Probably the best thing that could happen is that they are all levelled, and returned to grass, and farms and woods. Depopulate the north, it's not worth saving"
According to him, AI will destroy the jobs of lawyers, accountants, bankers and the creative industries. Well, that's pretty much 90% of London's population.
I wonder what a depopulated London returned to grass, farm and woods will be like - a sort of gigantic Hampstead Heath but with sheep, I assume.
Couldn't make it up. The Budget Responsibility Committee of the OBR is appointed by none other than the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
They have executive responsibility for carrying out the core functions of the OBR, including responsibility for the judgements reached in its forecasts.
Galloway, Corbyn and Burgon are not on it.
This is a Trussite complaint, the OBR being part of the deep state. The irony is the Conservatives set up the OBR to screw Labour.
Actually it was set up to ensure that UK budgets prepared us for the Euro. Which is why its mandate is now so irrelevant. As with much of Osborne and Cameron's legacy, it was EU stuff masquerading as Tory politicking. They were the Jeremy Clarkson of politics.
So, in 2010 - when the Euro was already a disaster-zone, and the UK support for joining it had collapsed to near zero - the OBR was created to prepare the UK for joining the Euro?
So far as I can find 43.2% of votes in the Rochdale by election were cast by post. How does this compare to previous by elections? Or any general election for that matter. It would be good to see a breakdown of postal votes by candidate. One thing that will have increased postal voting is the demand for ID at polling stations. If there are concerns about electoral fraud it would have made far more sense to start with postal voting availability. Finally isn't it about time we got rid of this absurd anachronism where people from Commonwealth countries get automatic voting rights in the UK not afforded to those from anywhere else.
Couldn't make it up. The Budget Responsibility Committee of the OBR is appointed by none other than the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
They have executive responsibility for carrying out the core functions of the OBR, including responsibility for the judgements reached in its forecasts.
Galloway, Corbyn and Burgon are not on it.
This is a Trussite complaint, the OBR being part of the deep state. The irony is the Conservatives set up the OBR to screw Labour.
Actually it was set up to ensure that UK budgets prepared us for the Euro. Which is why its mandate is now so irrelevant. As with much of Osborne and Cameron's legacy, it was EU stuff masquerading as Tory politicking. They were the Jeremy Clarkson of politics.
Er, do you have evidence for that?
The Stability and Growth Pact, as part of the Maastricht Treaty meant that, as an EU member state, we had an obligation to annually report on our economic situation so that our path to convergence with the euro could be assessed.
Yes, the responsibility for creating that report was passed to the OBR when it was created. But as far as I can see, that was merely a matter of convenience - if the OBR hadn't existed, then the Treasury would have continued to produce the annual S&GP convergence report itself.
@Leon - on some previous thread or other about Rochdale - "How do we rescue these towns? I'm not sure you can
They were built for the industrial revolution, now that has gone and is never returning. AI will destroy the few jobs left
Probably the best thing that could happen is that they are all levelled, and returned to grass, and farms and woods. Depopulate the north, it's not worth saving"
According to him, AI will destroy the jobs of lawyers, accountants, bankers and the creative industries. Well, that's pretty much 90% of London's population.
I wonder what a depopulated London returned to grass, farm and woods will be like - a sort of gigantic Hampstead Heath but with sheep, I assume.
There are many Youtube videos exploring dying towns. For instance, this 5-minute look at Weston Super Mare went up today. Superficially neat housing and well-kept lawns, but with litter and fly-tipped furniture everywhere and boarded-up shops. It is unemployment, poverty, and drug-fuelled crime we need to tackle, not AI. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eID4OQBeXrI
@Leon - on some previous thread or other about Rochdale - "How do we rescue these towns? I'm not sure you can
They were built for the industrial revolution, now that has gone and is never returning. AI will destroy the few jobs left
Probably the best thing that could happen is that they are all levelled, and returned to grass, and farms and woods. Depopulate the north, it's not worth saving"
According to him, AI will destroy the jobs of lawyers, accountants, bankers and the creative industries. Well, that's pretty much 90% of London's population.
I wonder what a depopulated London returned to grass, farm and woods will be like - a sort of gigantic Hampstead Heath but with sheep, I assume.
Well, Westminster's halfway there. Ample numbers of sheep. And now Galloway's back there's a wolf there too.
If Lord Farquaad doesn't call the election in May he is going to get the Gordon Brown treatment...
If he goes for May he is going to get the Gordon Brown treatment, any longer and a fate similar to the Canadian Progressive Conservative party is very possible...
Why should Reform be anymore likely to overtake the Tories in the autumn than the spring?
Really don't think a 2nd May election is happening. It's July or the Autumn. Why (beyond Labour's 20% lead)? Because @RishiSunak's whole campaign is based on the economy turning the corner. The biggest proof point of that (data showing inflation down to 2%) comes... in mid-May
Yes by the Autumn you have: - CPI back down at or below 2% pa - The BoE starting to cut base rates - Growth potentially back in the positives - ... but potentially bad news on small boats.
I'd argue that more votes are won on economic sentiment than data on channel crossings, but we'll see.
I can see you can get 5.2 on Betfair for a May election so there's betting opportunities for those who are convinced as such.
Couldn't make it up. The Budget Responsibility Committee of the OBR is appointed by none other than the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
They have executive responsibility for carrying out the core functions of the OBR, including responsibility for the judgements reached in its forecasts.
Galloway, Corbyn and Burgon are not on it.
This is a Trussite complaint, the OBR being part of the deep state. The irony is the Conservatives set up the OBR to screw Labour.
Actually it was set up to ensure that UK budgets prepared us for the Euro. Which is why its mandate is now so irrelevant. As with much of Osborne and Cameron's legacy, it was EU stuff masquerading as Tory politicking. They were the Jeremy Clarkson of politics.
So, in 2010 - when the Euro was already a disaster-zone, and the UK support for joining it had collapsed to near zero - the OBR was created to prepare the UK for joining the Euro?
Really?
Since when have the EU and its supporters let lack of public enthusiasm get in their way?
@Leon - on some previous thread or other about Rochdale - "How do we rescue these towns? I'm not sure you can
They were built for the industrial revolution, now that has gone and is never returning. AI will destroy the few jobs left
Probably the best thing that could happen is that they are all levelled, and returned to grass, and farms and woods. Depopulate the north, it's not worth saving"
According to him, AI will destroy the jobs of lawyers, accountants, bankers and the creative industries. Well, that's pretty much 90% of London's population.
I wonder what a depopulated London returned to grass, farm and woods will be like - a sort of gigantic Hampstead Heath but with sheep, I assume.
Well, Westminster's halfway there. Ample numbers of sheep. And now Galloway's back there's a wolf there too.
"To protect the sheep you gotta catch the wolf, and it takes a wolf to catch a wolf."
No one cares anymore . The US is a failed state. The sooner the rest of the world realizes this the better .
Yet somehow has higher median income than virtually all of Europe.
Large chunks of urban America are a crime ridden drug addled toilet, tho
In a way we don’t really comprehend in Europe
Now, most of America doesn’t live there. They live in generally nice suburbs. But enough of them encounter it, or pay for it with their taxes, for it to make an electoral difference
And Biden’s abject inability to control the border is not helping
It is true that the US has urban ghettos that are significantly worse than Europe. But this isn't even a majority of urban areas.
Over the last year I have been to the city centres of New York City, Atlanta, Chicago, Charlotte, Miami, Virginia Beach and San Francisco. All seemed nice places, sometimes a bit dirty but no worse than the grimmer areas of central London. Of course, worse areas exist, but most Americans don't encounter them because most people don't travel to ghettos.
What they do have is a constant inundation of images of the ghettos on social media and cable news, due to a highly effective right wing media network. That is why people think it is worse now than during the 1980s of sunny Reaganism, despite crime and poverty at the time being substantially worse.
You found the city centre of San Francisco quite nice? My experience is that the streets are covered in human excrement , drug casualties, middle class people desperately trying to ignore what is going on around them by staring into their phones and coffee shops full of unemployed tech people desperately interviewing for jobs over zoom.
It used to be one of my favourite places in America.
I've been to San Francisco on and off since the late 1990s, and it's always been an absolute shithole, with hollow eyed homeless drug addicts with schizophrenia wandering from SoMa up into Union Square and beyond.
Of course, there are some very nice parts. But the center and SoMa are - and have always been - utterly horrendous.
Central Seattle, which I haven't visited for twenty years was the same: an urban hell hole filled with ragged clothed people with few teeth begging for money for whatever the drug de jour for the mentally ill is.
Los Angeles is a little different, because there's a lot more "temporary" homelessness of people living in RVs, having jobs, but not being able to afford the local housing market.
But we also - of course - have the crystal meth-heads wandering around.
The degree of on-street deprivation in American cities depends entirely on the effort each one puts into displacing the problem elsewhere. The ones that don't end up as the dumping ground for those that do. No-one is tackling the root cause.
Although we're starting to go down that road too - see Braverman's plan to ban tents, which was simply a confused version of things that cities like SF and Austin have been trying.
The blind spot re root causes extends across the political spectrum, btw. I have thoroughly left-wing activist-type friends in the Bay Area who've been getting excited about a project that provides buckets and adult diapers for street homeless people. The idea of providing sanitation facilities beyond that is simply too difficult to contemplate...
I had lunch last weekend with an American friend who lives in SF. A firmly anti Trump Liberal, but her stories of SF were full of despair. It is now a sithole full of drug addled homeless as described. She blames the opioid epidemic and the effective decriminalisation of shoplifting under $1000. Its only her elderly parents that keep her there at all, but mostly she works as a digital nomad in Europe.
I have lived in America for 5 years in the Seventies, and many cities were appalling then, but it seems at least as bad now.
I have no desire to visit America again any time soon.
The shoplifting thing is interesting - an unindented consequence of the "three strikes and you're out"-type policies from the late 90s / early 2000s. The political system is so gridlocked that it's almost impossible to unwind even clear failures like those.
My experiences of SF and Oakland since the pandemic haven't actually been quite as grim as American colleagues had led me to expect - but what really surprised me is how bad things have become in Silicon Valley. It's barely visible on the main streets, but if you try to follow just about any creek, off-road trail, or cycle path you'll suddenly find yourself in a tent city that didn't exist even five years ago.
Back in the 1990s visited a friend who was then a quasi-fellow or some such at the Hoover Institution (conservative think tank NOT reactionary insane asylum) at Stanford Junior University.
Only place they could afford to rent in reasonable proximity was in East Palo Alto, which at least at time was the El Barrio of SV. A patch of unincorporated turf (also visa versa) providing lodging for the Standord elite (at least in their own heads),
@Leon - on some previous thread or other about Rochdale - "How do we rescue these towns? I'm not sure you can
They were built for the industrial revolution, now that has gone and is never returning. AI will destroy the few jobs left
Probably the best thing that could happen is that they are all levelled, and returned to grass, and farms and woods. Depopulate the north, it's not worth saving"
According to him, AI will destroy the jobs of lawyers, accountants, bankers and the creative industries. Well, that's pretty much 90% of London's population.
I wonder what a depopulated London returned to grass, farm and woods will be like - a sort of gigantic Hampstead Heath but with sheep, I assume.
Couldn't make it up. The Budget Responsibility Committee of the OBR is appointed by none other than the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
They have executive responsibility for carrying out the core functions of the OBR, including responsibility for the judgements reached in its forecasts.
Galloway, Corbyn and Burgon are not on it.
This is a Trussite complaint, the OBR being part of the deep state. The irony is the Conservatives set up the OBR to screw Labour.
Actually it was set up to ensure that UK budgets prepared us for the Euro. Which is why its mandate is now so irrelevant. As with much of Osborne and Cameron's legacy, it was EU stuff masquerading as Tory politicking. They were the Jeremy Clarkson of politics.
So, in 2010 - when the Euro was already a disaster-zone, and the UK support for joining it had collapsed to near zero - the OBR was created to prepare the UK for joining the Euro?
Really?
Since when have the EU and its supporters let lack of public enthusiasm get in their way?
@Leon - on some previous thread or other about Rochdale - "How do we rescue these towns? I'm not sure you can
They were built for the industrial revolution, now that has gone and is never returning. AI will destroy the few jobs left
Probably the best thing that could happen is that they are all levelled, and returned to grass, and farms and woods. Depopulate the north, it's not worth saving"
According to him, AI will destroy the jobs of lawyers, accountants, bankers and the creative industries. Well, that's pretty much 90% of London's population.
I wonder what a depopulated London returned to grass, farm and woods will be like - a sort of gigantic Hampstead Heath but with sheep, I assume.
Well, Westminster's halfway there. Ample numbers of sheep. And now Galloway's back there's a wolf there too.
"To protect the sheep you gotta catch the wolf, and it takes a wolf to catch a wolf."
'He followed his luminous footmarks, which he could see a long way before him. His trail curved so much that he made many short cuts across the winding line he had left. His weariness was now so intense that all feeling had departed. His feet, his limbs, his arms, and hands were numbed. The subtle poison of the emanations from the earth had begun to deaden his nerves. It seemed a full hour or more to him till he reached the spot where the skeletons were drawn in white upon the ground.
He passed a few yards to one side of them, and stumbled over a heap of something which he did not observe, as it was black like the level ground. It emitted a metallic sound, and looking he saw that he had kicked his foot against a great heap of money. The coins were black as ink; he picked up a handful and went on. Hitherto Felix had accepted all that he saw as something so strange as to be unaccountable. During his advance into this region in the canoe he had in fact become slowly stupefied by the poisonous vapour he had inhaled. His mind was partly in abeyance; it acted, but only after some time had elapsed. He now at last began to realize his position; the finding of the heap of blackened money touched a chord of memory. These skeletons were the miserable relics of men who had ventured, in search of ancient treasures, into the deadly marshes over the site of the mightiest city of former days. The deserted and utterly extinct city of London was under his feet.
He had penetrated into the midst of that dreadful place, of which he had heard many a tradition: how the earth was poison, the water poison, the air poison, the very light of heaven, falling through such an atmosphere, poison. There were said to be places where the earth was on fire and belched forth sulphurous fumes, supposed to be from the combustion of the enormous stores of strange and unknown chemicals collected by the wonderful people of those times. Upon the surface of the water there was a greenish-yellow oil, to touch which was death to any creature; it was the very essence of corruption. Sometimes it floated before the wind, and fragments became attached to reeds or flags far from the place itself. If a moorhen or duck chanced to rub the reed, and but one drop stuck to its feathers, it forthwith died.'
So if anybody says Liverpool were lucky today/referees are corrupt to allow Liverpool to play until they scored show them this.
8 minutes injury time. I believe the corner was given before the 8 minutes were up and Forest never cleared their lines.
Near then end of normal time young Danns, being rather over enthusiastic, went for a header but was a bit late and caught the Forest keeper in the face who required treatment for 2-3 minutes. What is the fuss about? I presume the bookings in injury time explain why the game restarted for a bit after Liverpool scored.
@Cyclefree, please skip past this post, it is in the best interests of your health.
‘Pay me £1m or I quit’: staff tell of Post Office boss’s wrath
Chief executive Nick Read was fixated with his salary when he should have been focused on help for wronged postmasters, insiders say
Post Office boss Nick Read threatened to resign multiple times and demanded a pay package of more than £1 million
Read told colleagues he was “prepared to make a drama” and submit a formal grievance or claim constructive dismissal
Senior MPs warn the Post Office chief will have to quit if he is shown to have misled parliament after declaring he never tried to resign
Post Office now faces a bullying investigation and an unfair dismissal claim from its former HR director
Even before he started as chairman of the Post Office, Henry Staunton was lobbying to get its chief executive more money.
On November 11, 2022, almost three weeks before he was due to take up the role, he wrote to the then business secretary, Grant Shapps, warning him of “the urgent requirement for Post Office to take action to retain Nick Read”.
Staunton said that Read, who was paid £816,000 in 2021-22 and £573,000 in 2022-23, was “a prime target for other prospective roles not constrained by … public-sector influence”. The chairman designate suggested boosting the chief executive’s maximum pay package to more than £1.1 million – which he said would still put Read close to the “lower quartile” of private-sector peers.
Couldn't make it up. The Budget Responsibility Committee of the OBR is appointed by none other than the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
They have executive responsibility for carrying out the core functions of the OBR, including responsibility for the judgements reached in its forecasts.
Galloway, Corbyn and Burgon are not on it.
This is a Trussite complaint, the OBR being part of the deep state. The irony is the Conservatives set up the OBR to screw Labour.
Actually it was set up to ensure that UK budgets prepared us for the Euro. Which is why its mandate is now so irrelevant. As with much of Osborne and Cameron's legacy, it was EU stuff masquerading as Tory politicking. They were the Jeremy Clarkson of politics.
So, in 2010 - when the Euro was already a disaster-zone, and the UK support for joining it had collapsed to near zero - the OBR was created to prepare the UK for joining the Euro?
Really?
Since when have the EU and its supporters let lack of public enthusiasm get in their way?
So, there is no evidence for your assertion.
I'm glad we've cleared that up.
Your comment wasn't evidence based, it was logic based. I pointed out a flaw in your logic.
No one cares anymore . The US is a failed state. The sooner the rest of the world realizes this the better .
Yet somehow has higher median income than virtually all of Europe.
Large chunks of urban America are a crime ridden drug addled toilet, tho
In a way we don’t really comprehend in Europe
Now, most of America doesn’t live there. They live in generally nice suburbs. But enough of them encounter it, or pay for it with their taxes, for it to make an electoral difference
And Biden’s abject inability to control the border is not helping
It is true that the US has urban ghettos that are significantly worse than Europe. But this isn't even a majority of urban areas.
Over the last year I have been to the city centres of New York City, Atlanta, Chicago, Charlotte, Miami, Virginia Beach and San Francisco. All seemed nice places, sometimes a bit dirty but no worse than the grimmer areas of central London. Of course, worse areas exist, but most Americans don't encounter them because most people don't travel to ghettos.
What they do have is a constant inundation of images of the ghettos on social media and cable news, due to a highly effective right wing media network. That is why people think it is worse now than during the 1980s of sunny Reaganism, despite crime and poverty at the time being substantially worse.
You found the city centre of San Francisco quite nice? My experience is that the streets are covered in human excrement , drug casualties, middle class people desperately trying to ignore what is going on around them by staring into their phones and coffee shops full of unemployed tech people desperately interviewing for jobs over zoom.
It used to be one of my favourite places in America.
I've been to San Francisco on and off since the late 1990s, and it's always been an absolute shithole, with hollow eyed homeless drug addicts with schizophrenia wandering from SoMa up into Union Square and beyond.
Of course, there are some very nice parts. But the center and SoMa are - and have always been - utterly horrendous.
Central Seattle, which I haven't visited for twenty years was the same: an urban hell hole filled with ragged clothed people with few teeth begging for money for whatever the drug de jour for the mentally ill is.
Los Angeles is a little different, because there's a lot more "temporary" homelessness of people living in RVs, having jobs, but not being able to afford the local housing market.
But we also - of course - have the crystal meth-heads wandering around.
The degree of on-street deprivation in American cities depends entirely on the effort each one puts into displacing the problem elsewhere. The ones that don't end up as the dumping ground for those that do. No-one is tackling the root cause.
Now that is certainly true:
The more you implement policies to reduce homelessness, the more homeless you attract.
To which you need to add the toxic US policy of bussing homeless people to different States.
@Leon - on some previous thread or other about Rochdale - "How do we rescue these towns? I'm not sure you can
They were built for the industrial revolution, now that has gone and is never returning. AI will destroy the few jobs left
Probably the best thing that could happen is that they are all levelled, and returned to grass, and farms and woods. Depopulate the north, it's not worth saving"
According to him, AI will destroy the jobs of lawyers, accountants, bankers and the creative industries. Well, that's pretty much 90% of London's population.
I wonder what a depopulated London returned to grass, farm and woods will be like - a sort of gigantic Hampstead Heath but with sheep, I assume.
There are many Youtube videos exploring dying towns. For instance, this 5-minute look at Weston Super Mare went up today. Superficially neat housing and well-kept lawns, but with litter and fly-tipped furniture everywhere and boarded-up shops. It is unemployment, poverty, and drug-fuelled crime we need to tackle, not AI. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eID4OQBeXrI
Went to see Standing at the Sky's Edge last night, a really brilliant musical set in Sheffield over the course of three generations, highly recommend it. Although @TheScreamingEagles might test your ability to reconcile your love of South Yorkshire and Margaret Thatcher.
It's fine, for decades I have realised I am the only unabashed Thatcherite in South Yorkshire, I've made my peace with it.
@Cyclefree, please skip past this post, it is in the best interests of your health.
‘Pay me £1m or I quit’: staff tell of Post Office boss’s wrath
Chief executive Nick Read was fixated with his salary when he should have been focused on help for wronged postmasters, insiders say
Post Office boss Nick Read threatened to resign multiple times and demanded a pay package of more than £1 million
Read told colleagues he was “prepared to make a drama” and submit a formal grievance or claim constructive dismissal
Senior MPs warn the Post Office chief will have to quit if he is shown to have misled parliament after declaring he never tried to resign
Post Office now faces a bullying investigation and an unfair dismissal claim from its former HR director
Even before he started as chairman of the Post Office, Henry Staunton was lobbying to get its chief executive more money.
On November 11, 2022, almost three weeks before he was due to take up the role, he wrote to the then business secretary, Grant Shapps, warning him of “the urgent requirement for Post Office to take action to retain Nick Read”.
Staunton said that Read, who was paid £816,000 in 2021-22 and £573,000 in 2022-23, was “a prime target for other prospective roles not constrained by … public-sector influence”. The chairman designate suggested boosting the chief executive’s maximum pay package to more than £1.1 million – which he said would still put Read close to the “lower quartile” of private-sector peers.
@Cyclefree, please skip past this post, it is in the best interests of your health.
‘Pay me £1m or I quit’: staff tell of Post Office boss’s wrath
Chief executive Nick Read was fixated with his salary when he should have been focused on help for wronged postmasters, insiders say
Post Office boss Nick Read threatened to resign multiple times and demanded a pay package of more than £1 million
Read told colleagues he was “prepared to make a drama” and submit a formal grievance or claim constructive dismissal
Senior MPs warn the Post Office chief will have to quit if he is shown to have misled parliament after declaring he never tried to resign
Post Office now faces a bullying investigation and an unfair dismissal claim from its former HR director
Even before he started as chairman of the Post Office, Henry Staunton was lobbying to get its chief executive more money.
On November 11, 2022, almost three weeks before he was due to take up the role, he wrote to the then business secretary, Grant Shapps, warning him of “the urgent requirement for Post Office to take action to retain Nick Read”.
Staunton said that Read, who was paid £816,000 in 2021-22 and £573,000 in 2022-23, was “a prime target for other prospective roles not constrained by … public-sector influence”. The chairman designate suggested boosting the chief executive’s maximum pay package to more than £1.1 million – which he said would still put Read close to the “lower quartile” of private-sector peers.
My Exponential Moving Average of Biden/Trump polls stands at 44.4/45.1 I think this Siena Poll is an outlier.
The election rests entirely on the swing votes in about 6 states. Trump is ahead in them. The other figures matter little as their results are already in the bag.
No one cares anymore . The US is a failed state. The sooner the rest of the world realizes this the better .
Yet somehow has higher median income than virtually all of Europe.
Large chunks of urban America are a crime ridden drug addled toilet, tho
In a way we don’t really comprehend in Europe
Now, most of America doesn’t live there. They live in generally nice suburbs. But enough of them encounter it, or pay for it with their taxes, for it to make an electoral difference
And Biden’s abject inability to control the border is not helping
It is true that the US has urban ghettos that are significantly worse than Europe. But this isn't even a majority of urban areas.
Over the last year I have been to the city centres of New York City, Atlanta, Chicago, Charlotte, Miami, Virginia Beach and San Francisco. All seemed nice places, sometimes a bit dirty but no worse than the grimmer areas of central London. Of course, worse areas exist, but most Americans don't encounter them because most people don't travel to ghettos.
What they do have is a constant inundation of images of the ghettos on social media and cable news, due to a highly effective right wing media network. That is why people think it is worse now than during the 1980s of sunny Reaganism, despite crime and poverty at the time being substantially worse.
You found the city centre of San Francisco quite nice? My experience is that the streets are covered in human excrement , drug casualties, middle class people desperately trying to ignore what is going on around them by staring into their phones and coffee shops full of unemployed tech people desperately interviewing for jobs over zoom.
It used to be one of my favourite places in America.
I've been to San Francisco on and off since the late 1990s, and it's always been an absolute shithole, with hollow eyed homeless drug addicts with schizophrenia wandering from SoMa up into Union Square and beyond.
Of course, there are some very nice parts. But the center and SoMa are - and have always been - utterly horrendous.
Central Seattle, which I haven't visited for twenty years was the same: an urban hell hole filled with ragged clothed people with few teeth begging for money for whatever the drug de jour for the mentally ill is.
Los Angeles is a little different, because there's a lot more "temporary" homelessness of people living in RVs, having jobs, but not being able to afford the local housing market.
But we also - of course - have the crystal meth-heads wandering around.
I visited San Francisco in 2007 and it seemed quite nice. I don't think I've been to any US city that didn't have a substantial population of street homeless, addicts and the mentally ill, but at that time it didn't seem any worse than the others. From what I've heard it's now a lot worse, but I've not seen it first hand. The US is an incredible country but not a good one to be unlucky in.
I think San Francisco suffers from having its home grown problems compounded by itinerant homelessness, in other words people heading West from broken homes or other problems and pitching up there at the end of the line.
Our own West seems to get the same phenomenon. Bristol has more visible homelessness and rough sleeping, along with very evident drug and alcohol problems, than any other British city I’ve visited. There’s a fair amount in Devon towns too. A big contrast with the industrial cities of the North.
I remember a fascinating chat with a social worker formerly from Brockley now living in Totnes, who contrasted her work with the homeless in both places. “In London people are homeless because they can’t get a home. In Devon they’re homeless because of some other underlying problem”.
Homeless people are economically rational too.
They are attracted to places where:
(a) there is plenty of opportunity for pan-handling (b) there is government support and (c) where they won't die of exposure/heat stroke
Really don't think a 2nd May election is happening. It's July or the Autumn. Why (beyond Labour's 20% lead)? Because @RishiSunak's whole campaign is based on the economy turning the corner. The biggest proof point of that (data showing inflation down to 2%) comes... in mid-May
Yes by the Autumn you have: - CPI back down at or below 2% pa - The BoE starting to cut base rates - Growth potentially back in the positives - ... but potentially bad news on small boats.
I'd argue that more votes are won on economic sentiment than data on channel crossings, but we'll see.
I can see you can get 5.2 on Betfair for a May election so there's betting opportunities for those who are convinced as such.
I think Tuesday will be crucial. A May election would need an economic springboard just in case "vote for me to stop extremism and unite the country" doesn't have the traction the Mail thinks it does (imagine their response if Starmer had used the same words).
Tax cuts? More glamorous than NI cuts but I suspect the latter will be on offer. The best Sunak/Hunt can probably offer is no jam now, jam in September then an election. Even with the addition of most of the Reform vote (if you support such a hypothesis), the Conservatives are 32-34% at best and still on the wrong side of a defeat.
Comments
A sentiment a lot of PBers keep posting. The absolute mistake HY has made is presumption the summer and autumn passes off as serenely as Spring is doing for the Conservatives, that they don’t sail into difficult waters leading to a peculiarly bad moment to go to the country leading to a peculiar result in number of seats.
The Home Office modelling predicts a surge in channel crossing from July, at which point all hell breaks loose in Conservative Party discipline and in their battle with Reform for voters. Add to that an interim report from Covid Enquiry. A million switchers to higher mortgage payments. Inflation moving back upwards before end of the year, as well as virtually no economic growth this year (except what will be bequeathed to us by Taylor Swift).
“main priority is ensuring he has a reasonable period as PM on that CV he will be taking to those jobs”
Sunak is the Manager of the Conservative Party and the Manager of the Government - those months from July onwards can leave both those institutions resembling The Raft of the Medusa. Now that really would standout on Sunak’s CV, letting future employers know exactly what he is capable of.
I lived in a (niceish) suburb of Baltimore and the route out up old main street made The Wire look like a glow up.
Our own West seems to get the same phenomenon. Bristol has more visible homelessness and rough sleeping, along with very evident drug and alcohol problems, than any other British city I’ve visited. There’s a fair amount in Devon towns too. A big contrast with the industrial cities of the North.
I remember a fascinating chat with a social worker formerly from Brockley now living in Totnes, who contrasted her work with the homeless in both places. “In London people are homeless because they can’t get a home. In Devon they’re homeless because of some other underlying problem”.
Was actually visiting a friend who lived with his family just beyond the Berkeley Hills in Contra Costa County, which was affluent suburban. Also semi-desert in stark contrast to the other side of the Hills which is quasi-rain forest.
Didn't go to downtown Oakland, which did NOT enjoy a good reputation to put it mildly. Downtown Berkeley was pretty crummy, but for me the bookstores more than made up for it.
As for downtown Seattle, was down their just this week. Not much different from what you describe, which was what I saw thirty years ago. Ravages of COVID, fentanyl and ever-higher rents have added a new layer.
My own impression, is that things are getting somewhat better, at least IF you don't own commercial property downtown. Even found a new hat store, a quasi-popup sponsored by downtown chamber of commerce program to revitalize the central business district.
The hatter makes custom hats - should I ask for a Galloway?
Naw, to much risk of having to eat my 'at some damn day!
https://twitter.com/O1Paul/status/1763972661879751148/photo/1
Why it might be time to put money on a May election
https://t.co/nkppQlVUdB
Albeit if Galloway's party picks up traction after his by election win last week he might regret removing the whip from Corbyn given Galloway is a friend of Jezza. Indeed 'George Galloway tells me that he expects to be introduced to the Commons on Monday by Jeremy Corbyn and David Davis '
https://x.com/SamCoatesSky/status/1763431244677668967?s=20
Overall: 43/48
Men: 40/49
Women: 46/46
18-29 yr olds: 53/41
White: 40/53
Black: 66/23
Hispanic: 40/46
Other: 43/45
White w/ college: 55/40
White w/o: 29/62
Midwest: 39/55
Suburb: 46/44
Biden 2020: 83/10
https://x.com/ryangirdusky/status/1763914762880958888
If the Conservatives call an election now, they will lose horribly.
(There's also the neat feedback that the worse things are, the less they have to lose by holding on in case Something Turns Up.)
People are very bad at cutting their losses by walking away, even when it's the rational thing to do.
https://sfstandard.com/2023/05/22/san-francisco-homeless-people-from-the-city/
"I agreed with the Prime Minister's words on Friday and have acted accordingly. Unfortunately the Prime Minister seems unable or unwilling to walk his own talk."
Chris Curtis
@chriscurtis94
I am as cynical as everyone else, but the Tories current spending on online ads only makes sense if we are heading for a May election.
https://twitter.com/chriscurtis94/status/1763640410511925505
This is why interest rates are not coming down anytime soon
70 Tory MPs from across the party asking the Chancellor for more funding for special needs support. Won't happen, obviously, but shows how bad things are getting.
https://x.com/Samfr/status/1763888279781274105?s=20
Edit: Seeing the list of signatories I wonder if half of them think Hunt can cut taxes and use that money for more spending on special needs education.
The blind spot re root causes extends across the political spectrum, btw. I have thoroughly left-wing activist-type friends in the Bay Area who've been getting excited about a project that provides buckets and adult diapers for street homeless people. The idea of providing sanitation facilities beyond that is simply too difficult to contemplate...
https://twitter.com/realmrsthatcher/status/1724687444044640486
I have lived in America for 5 years in the Seventies, and many cities were appalling then, but it seems at least as bad now.
I have no desire to visit America again any time soon.
A reminder of one of the reasons we have no money - government getting rinsed by extractive private equity groups. Neoliberalism sucks.
I think it'll be later but interested to know by what point I'll be proven right or wrong.
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9921/
Torsten Bell
@TorstenBell
Really don't think a 2nd May election is happening. It's July or the Autumn. Why (beyond Labour's 20% lead)? Because
@RishiSunak's whole campaign is based on the economy turning the corner. The biggest proof point of that (data showing inflation down to 2%) comes... in mid-May
https://twitter.com/TorstenBell/status/1763835051488210993
My experiences of SF and Oakland since the pandemic haven't actually been quite as grim as American colleagues had led me to expect - but what really surprised me is how bad things have become in Silicon Valley. It's barely visible on the main streets, but if you try to follow just about any creek, off-road trail, or cycle path you'll suddenly find yourself in a tent city that didn't exist even five years ago.
"According to a banner advert on the home page of the Swanage Railway website they are going cashless from 25th March 2024."
https://www.google.com/maps/@34.711459,-86.6554159,2a,90y,193.01h,120.53t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sC8BJsGmVH1cAAAQ8sU_iKg!2e0!6shttps://streetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com/v1/thumbnail?panoid=C8BJsGmVH1cAAAQ8sU_iKg&cb_client=maps_sv.tactile.gps&w=203&h=100&yaw=343.3809&pitch=0&thumbfov=100!7i13312!8i6656?entry=ttu
He'll choose December. What should he care what happens to the Conservative Party?
The public sector doesn't have to make a profit so can operate to wafer thin margins - thus the cash cow becomes at best a loss leader. Attempts to generate income by making the public sector staff more "efficient" fail when the private sector operates how much "goodwill" is keeping the service going.
In the end, when the private operator has to charge £120 to fix a light bulb at a residential care home to make any money itself, it's either forced to seek a bailout from the council or walk away from the contract.
By the way. I've no problem with profit per se - I just don't think the care of vulnerable adults and children should have that as a primary motivation for service provision. The quality of care counts for far more than any company's balance sheet.
"How do we rescue these towns? I'm not sure you can
They were built for the industrial revolution, now that has gone and is never returning. AI will destroy the few jobs left
Probably the best thing that could happen is that they are all levelled, and returned to grass, and farms and woods. Depopulate the north, it's not worth saving"
According to him, AI will destroy the jobs of lawyers, accountants, bankers and the creative industries. Well, that's pretty much 90% of London's population.
I wonder what a depopulated London returned to grass, farm and woods will be like - a sort of gigantic Hampstead Heath but with sheep, I assume.
Really?
Er, do you have evidence for that?
The Stability and Growth Pact, as part of the Maastricht Treaty meant that, as an EU member state, we had an obligation to annually report on our economic situation so that our path to convergence with the euro could be assessed.
Yes, the responsibility for creating that report was passed to the OBR when it was created. But as far as I can see, that was merely a matter of convenience - if the OBR hadn't existed, then the Treasury would have continued to produce the annual S&GP convergence report itself.
ETA: This is the final convergence report prior to our departure from the EU: https://commission.europa.eu/document/download/b0f1f777-60db-4f00-8be9-a3f3cb4bb29a_en?filename=2020-european-semester-convergence-programme-uk_en.pdf
Doesn't seem too sinister to me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eID4OQBeXrI
- CPI back down at or below 2% pa
- The BoE starting to cut base rates
- Growth potentially back in the positives
- ... but potentially bad news on small boats.
I'd argue that more votes are won on economic sentiment than data on channel crossings, but we'll see.
I can see you can get 5.2 on Betfair for a May election so there's betting opportunities for those who are convinced as such.
Only place they could afford to rent in reasonable proximity was in East Palo Alto, which at least at time was the El Barrio of SV. A patch of unincorporated turf (also visa versa) providing lodging for the Standord elite (at least in their own heads),
Ou est-ce pendant Léon le déluge?
I'm glad we've cleared that up.
He passed a few yards to one side of them, and stumbled over a heap of something which he did not observe, as it was black like the level ground. It emitted a metallic sound, and looking he saw that he had kicked his foot against a great heap of money. The coins were black as ink; he picked up a handful and went on. Hitherto Felix had accepted all that he saw as something so strange as to be unaccountable. During his advance into this region in the canoe he had in fact become slowly stupefied by the poisonous vapour he had inhaled. His mind was partly in abeyance; it acted, but only after some time had elapsed. He now at last began to realize his position; the finding of the heap of blackened money touched a chord of memory. These skeletons were the miserable relics of men who had ventured, in search of ancient treasures, into the deadly marshes over the site of the mightiest city of former days. The deserted and utterly extinct city of London was under his feet.
He had penetrated into the midst of that dreadful place, of which he had heard many a tradition: how the earth was poison, the water poison, the air poison, the very light of heaven, falling through such an atmosphere, poison. There were said to be places where the earth was on fire and belched forth sulphurous fumes, supposed to be from the combustion of the enormous stores of strange and unknown chemicals collected by the wonderful people of those times. Upon the surface of the water there was a greenish-yellow oil, to touch which was death to any creature; it was the very essence of corruption. Sometimes it floated before the wind, and fragments became attached to reeds or flags far from the place itself. If a moorhen or duck chanced to rub the reed, and but one drop stuck to its feathers, it forthwith died.'
Near then end of normal time young Danns, being rather over enthusiastic, went for a header but was a bit late and caught the Forest keeper in the face who required treatment for 2-3 minutes. What is the fuss about? I presume the bookings in injury time explain why the game restarted for a bit after Liverpool scored.
‘Pay me £1m or I quit’: staff tell of Post Office boss’s wrath
Chief executive Nick Read was fixated with his salary when he should have been focused on help for wronged postmasters, insiders say
- Post Office boss Nick Read threatened to resign multiple times and demanded a pay package of more than £1 million
- Read told colleagues he was “prepared to make a drama” and submit a formal grievance or claim constructive dismissal
- Senior MPs warn the Post Office chief will have to quit if he is shown to have misled parliament after declaring he never tried to resign
- Post Office now faces a bullying investigation and an unfair dismissal claim from its former HR director
Even before he started as chairman of the Post Office, Henry Staunton was lobbying to get its chief executive more money.On November 11, 2022, almost three weeks before he was due to take up the role, he wrote to the then business secretary, Grant Shapps, warning him of “the urgent requirement for Post Office to take action to retain Nick Read”.
Staunton said that Read, who was paid £816,000 in 2021-22 and £573,000 in 2022-23, was “a prime target for other prospective roles not constrained by … public-sector influence”. The chairman designate suggested boosting the chief executive’s maximum pay package to more than £1.1 million – which he said would still put Read close to the “lower quartile” of private-sector peers.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/pay-me-1m-or-i-quit-staff-tell-of-post-office-bosss-wrath-09v37fs3c
The more you implement policies to reduce homelessness, the more homeless you attract.
To which you need to add the toxic US policy of bussing homeless people to different States.
They are attracted to places where:
(a) there is plenty of opportunity for pan-handling
(b) there is government support and
(c) where they won't die of exposure/heat stroke
Tax cuts? More glamorous than NI cuts but I suspect the latter will be on offer. The best Sunak/Hunt can probably offer is no jam now, jam in September then an election. Even with the addition of most of the Reform vote (if you support such a hypothesis), the Conservatives are 32-34% at best and still on the wrong side of a defeat.