Boris Johnson succeeded in putting the Tories out of power for a generation it looks like.
I think in years to come people will re-assess 2019 as the election that Jeremy Corbyn lost and Johnson got lucky.
People will see Starmer as the heir to Johnson, continuing his Red, White and Blue Brexit policies.
It's a constant source of wonder to me how so many people on here feel able to write the history of Keir Starmer's premiership before a single day of it has yet transpired. PBers are truly an impressive bunch.
Exactly. Thatcher, Blair, Cameron - we didn't really know in advance how any of them would turn out, and certainly couldn't foresee at the beginning how it would end for each of them. Johnson and Truss are the exceptions, where the nature of the s***show we were in for was obvious, to those who were looking, all along.
As Haley suspends her campaign, Biden calls her 'courageous' while Trump says he 'trounced' her.
Where her voters go now likely decides the general election and Biden has just gone one up in getting them in his camp
Biden should replace Harris with Haley in the VP slot.
I suggested this a few weeks back. Would be a brilliant move.
Completely crackers.
The fact Nikki Haley is a rational person who doesn't like what happened on 6th January 2021 does not mean she has anything in common with the Democrats in policy terms.
She is, as she said in her speech today, a conservative - and a staunch one at that. As Trump's UN ambassador, she managed the US's withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement, not just because Trump wanted it but because it's her view - and she says she'd withdraw again. She supported a move to put a federal 15 week limit on abortion, and has side-stepped whether she'd personally want to go for a full ban if she could. She's said Florida's controversial "don't say gay" law for schools fails to go far enough. She's advocated for steep cuts in Medicare and social security. She was staunchly anti-unionisation of Boeing's South Carolina plant as Governor.
The idea she would, as VP (and potentially President as Biden is famously not a young man) pursue policies that in any way suited even the bluest blue dog Democrat is absolutely and obviously for the birds.
Putting her on the VP ticket would be, at best, confusing - and in reality would alienate anyone even vaguely liberal. And she'd not have the slightest interest in participating in any way in such a farce.
Yet without winning Haley voters, especially Independents, Biden will almost certainly lose in November. Indeed some Haley voters even voted Biden in 2020
Biden making Haley VP would not attract the Haley voters. @SirNorfolkPassmore and @Malmesbury are right, it would alienate them and Biden's own voters. It would be the most imposing act of electoral suicide since Heath called an election on 'Who Governs Britain?'
Trump making her his VP candidate might work but that requires (a) him to be sane and (b) Haley to be willing to accept. Neither seems terribly likely.
The biggest risk of all for Trump is that her voters sit on their hands at the election and hand it to Biden by default. That's also the way I read her concession speech.
(I am assuming she won't do a third party run - all the reasons Trump wouldn't have still apply to her, plus she might still be in the running for 2028 when Trump will definitely not be one way or another.)
A lot of anti-Trump Republicans have been pretty mild in their criticism of him, or they have confusingly been quite damning but still committed to supporting him nonetheless. It's understandable when it's people who still want to be relevant in the party since you cannot be outright opposed to Trump and do that, though people who bend the knee still get mocked and attacked for their sin of standing against him so it's questionable if it is worth it. But it's surprising there are not more who are essentially out of the game being willing to be more unequivocal.
With Haley if she is indeed wanting to see him lose, it is presumably a fine line - she has ramped up criticism, but waverers may turn back to Trump if she says vote Biden or stay at home. But if she can play it as Trump has to earn your vote, wink wink he hasn't, then possibly that is more effective?
As it is once they drop out have any candidates been relevant? I don't see anything much from Christie anymore.
Who was the last defeated primary candidate to be invited on to the ticket in the same election? I keep coming up with GH Bush in 1980, but surely there must have been one more recent than that?
As Haley suspends her campaign, Biden calls her 'courageous' while Trump says he 'trounced' her.
Where her voters go now likely decides the general election and Biden has just gone one up in getting them in his camp
Biden should replace Harris with Haley in the VP slot.
I suggested this a few weeks back. Would be a brilliant move.
Completely crackers.
The fact Nikki Haley is a rational person who doesn't like what happened on 6th January 2021 does not mean she has anything in common with the Democrats in policy terms.
She is, as she said in her speech today, a conservative - and a staunch one at that. As Trump's UN ambassador, she managed the US's withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement, not just because Trump wanted it but because it's her view - and she says she'd withdraw again. She supported a move to put a federal 15 week limit on abortion, and has side-stepped whether she'd personally want to go for a full ban if she could. She's said Florida's controversial "don't say gay" law for schools fails to go far enough. She's advocated for steep cuts in Medicare and social security. She was staunchly anti-unionisation of Boeing's South Carolina plant as Governor.
The idea she would, as VP (and potentially President as Biden is famously not a young man) pursue policies that in any way suited even the bluest blue dog Democrat is absolutely and obviously for the birds.
Putting her on the VP ticket would be, at best, confusing - and in reality would alienate anyone even vaguely liberal. And she'd not have the slightest interest in participating in any way in such a farce.
Yet without winning Haley voters, especially Independents, Biden will almost certainly lose in November. Indeed some Haley voters even voted Biden in 2020
Biden making Haley VP would not attract the Haley voters. @SirNorfolkPassmore and @Malmesbury are right, it would alienate them and Biden's own voters. It would be the most imposing act of electoral suicide since Heath called an election on 'Who Governs Britain?'
Trump making her his VP candidate might work but that requires (a) him to be sane and (b) Haley to be willing to accept. Neither seems terribly likely.
The biggest risk of all for Trump is that her voters sit on their hands at the election and hand it to Biden by default. That's also the way I read her concession speech.
(I am assuming she won't do a third party run - all the reasons Trump wouldn't have still apply to her, plus she might still be in the running for 2028 when Trump will definitely not be one way or another.)
A lot of anti-Trump Republicans have been pretty mild in their criticism of him, or they have confusingly been quite damning but still committed to supporting him nonetheless. It's understandable when it's people who still want to be relevant in the party since you cannot be outright opposed to Trump and do that, though people who bend the knee still get mocked and attacked for their sin of standing against him so it's questionable if it is worth it. But it's surprising there are not more who are essentially out of the game being willing to be more unequivocal.
With Haley if she is indeed wanting to see him lose, it is presumably a fine line - she has ramped up criticism, but waverers may turn back to Trump if she says vote Biden or stay at home. But if she can play it as Trump has to earn your vote, wink wink he hasn't, then possibly that is more effective?
As it is once they drop out have any candidates been relevant? I don't see anything much from Christie anymore.
Who was the last defeated primary candidate to be invited on to the ticket in the same election? I keep coming up with GH Bush in 1980, but surely there must have been one more recent than that?
Joe Biden, surely? Or did he pull out so early it doesn't count?
As Haley suspends her campaign, Biden calls her 'courageous' while Trump says he 'trounced' her.
Where her voters go now likely decides the general election and Biden has just gone one up in getting them in his camp
Biden should replace Harris with Haley in the VP slot.
I suggested this a few weeks back. Would be a brilliant move.
Completely crackers.
The fact Nikki Haley is a rational person who doesn't like what happened on 6th January 2021 does not mean she has anything in common with the Democrats in policy terms.
She is, as she said in her speech today, a conservative - and a staunch one at that. As Trump's UN ambassador, she managed the US's withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement, not just because Trump wanted it but because it's her view - and she says she'd withdraw again. She supported a move to put a federal 15 week limit on abortion, and has side-stepped whether she'd personally want to go for a full ban if she could. She's said Florida's controversial "don't say gay" law for schools fails to go far enough. She's advocated for steep cuts in Medicare and social security. She was staunchly anti-unionisation of Boeing's South Carolina plant as Governor.
The idea she would, as VP (and potentially President as Biden is famously not a young man) pursue policies that in any way suited even the bluest blue dog Democrat is absolutely and obviously for the birds.
Putting her on the VP ticket would be, at best, confusing - and in reality would alienate anyone even vaguely liberal. And she'd not have the slightest interest in participating in any way in such a farce.
Yet without winning Haley voters, especially Independents, Biden will almost certainly lose in November. Indeed some Haley voters even voted Biden in 2020
Biden making Haley VP would not attract the Haley voters. @SirNorfolkPassmore and @Malmesbury are right, it would alienate them and Biden's own voters. It would be the most imposing act of electoral suicide since Heath called an election on 'Who Governs Britain?'
Trump making her his VP candidate might work but that requires (a) him to be sane and (b) Haley to be willing to accept. Neither seems terribly likely.
The biggest risk of all for Trump is that her voters sit on their hands at the election and hand it to Biden by default. That's also the way I read her concession speech.
(I am assuming she won't do a third party run - all the reasons Trump wouldn't have still apply to her, plus she might still be in the running for 2028 when Trump will definitely not be one way or another.)
A lot of anti-Trump Republicans have been pretty mild in their criticism of him, or they have confusingly been quite damning but still committed to supporting him nonetheless. It's understandable when it's people who still want to be relevant in the party since you cannot be outright opposed to Trump and do that, though people who bend the knee still get mocked and attacked for their sin of standing against him so it's questionable if it is worth it. But it's surprising there are not more who are essentially out of the game being willing to be more unequivocal.
With Haley if she is indeed wanting to see him lose, it is presumably a fine line - she has ramped up criticism, but waverers may turn back to Trump if she says vote Biden or stay at home. But if she can play it as Trump has to earn your vote, wink wink he hasn't, then possibly that is more effective?
As it is once they drop out have any candidates been relevant? I don't see anything much from Christie anymore.
Who was the last defeated primary candidate to be invited on to the ticket in the same election? I keep coming up with GH Bush in 1980, but surely there must have been one more recent than that?
Joe Biden, surely? Or did he pull out so early it doesn't count?
Didn't even realise he was a candidate in 2008! Does not contesting any states count as a defeat?
Boris Johnson succeeded in putting the Tories out of power for a generation it looks like.
I think in years to come people will re-assess 2019 as the election that Jeremy Corbyn lost and Johnson got lucky.
People will see Starmer as the heir to Johnson, continuing his Red, White and Blue Brexit policies.
It's a constant source of wonder to me how so many people on here feel able to write the history of Keir Starmer's premiership before a single day of it has yet transpired. PBers are truly an impressive bunch.
Exactly. Thatcher, Blair, Cameron - we didn't really know in advance how any of them would turn out, and certainly couldn't foresee at the beginning how it would end for each of them. Johnson and Truss are the exceptions, where the nature of the s***show we were in for was obvious, to those who were looking, all along.
Yep. Although the way they both imploded surpassed expectations for speed and sheer spectacle.
As Haley suspends her campaign, Biden calls her 'courageous' while Trump says he 'trounced' her.
Where her voters go now likely decides the general election and Biden has just gone one up in getting them in his camp
Biden should replace Harris with Haley in the VP slot.
I suggested this a few weeks back. Would be a brilliant move.
Her views on Israel/Palestine would be toxic for young Democrat activists.
It would be an insane move.
1) Haley would be thrown out of the Republican Party. 2) Trumps MAGA base would be enthused by the revelation that the Republican opposition to Trump is literally a RINO 3) The left of the Democrats would take this as proof that Biden is a DINO. 4) Biden would be handing the presidency (if he won) to the opposite party, if something happened to him.
It’s about as likely as the Ulster Unionists suddenly favouring a United Ireland.
It is a shame, I suppose, that Alan Alda isn’t available to run as the moderate Republican who can win 50 states.
The original planned ending of West Wing was him winning, by the way.
I don't care what the makers said, I was watching it irl and there was no way Alda was going to win.
The original script plan was for him to win.
The fantasy faction of the writers won out over the realists.
I thought it was because John Spencer died, so they thought it would be too much to have to kill of his character *and* have the Dems losing?
Boris Johnson succeeded in putting the Tories out of power for a generation it looks like.
I think in years to come people will re-assess 2019 as the election that Jeremy Corbyn lost and Johnson got lucky.
People will see Starmer as the heir to Johnson, continuing his Red, White and Blue Brexit policies.
It's a constant source of wonder to me how so many people on here feel able to write the history of Keir Starmer's premiership before a single day of it has yet transpired. PBers are truly an impressive bunch.
Exactly. Thatcher, Blair, Cameron - we didn't really know in advance how any of them would turn out, and certainly couldn't foresee at the beginning how it would end for each of them. Johnson and Truss are the exceptions, where the nature of the s***show we were in for was obvious, to those who were looking, all along.
You expected Johnson to be some kind of egregious Putin patsy, and then had to invent a tenuous conspiracy theory to explain why he turned out to be the most resolute Western opponent of the invasion of Ukraine.
Boris Johnson succeeded in putting the Tories out of power for a generation it looks like.
I think in years to come people will re-assess 2019 as the election that Jeremy Corbyn lost and Johnson got lucky.
Boris won the biggest Conservative landslide since Thatcher in 2019, it was under Truss the Tories poll rating really collapsed
Maybe that was, in part, because she said Boris was great and should not have been ousted, but also that the government had been going in the wrong economic direction for a long time and needed to completely change.
That might even have been correct to some degree, but it's a confusing message. I don't buy for one minute that Boris was restrained by a young and inexperienced Chancellor he appointed from a junior position, and he was totally wanting to completely change his economic stance but, gasp, he was ousted before he could do so.
Isn't that rather badly misremembering the circumstances of Sunak's elevation to Chancellor in that heady post-election, pre-COVID window?
Cummings, in his pomp and before his eye test and falling out with the PM, gave Javid an ultimatum to sack advisers and put in Cummings' hand-picked people as his top Treasury team. Javid refused and resigned. Sunak was then in a strong position as to lose one Chancellor could be seen as unfortunate, but to lose two would be deemed carelessness. He did accept some Number 10 people, but also insisted on his own team, and increasingly sidelined those with loyalties to his neighbour as both Johnson's and Cummings' positions weakened for different albeit related reasons. Ultimately, of course, the avalanche of departures which killed Johnson in 2022 was started by Sunak... and by none other than then Health Secretary, Javid.
So the idea Sunak was a stooge, and that Johnson was in a position to transform economic policy is wrong. He was probably in his strongest position immediately on appointing Sunak, but within days COVID took over the agenda completely so whether he'd planned anything or not, the window had closed forever.
Boris Johnson succeeded in putting the Tories out of power for a generation it looks like.
I think in years to come people will re-assess 2019 as the election that Jeremy Corbyn lost and Johnson got lucky.
Your hubris is up to a generation now, then? I assume you mean the Scottish generation, also known as about a decade, rather than a more standard 20-25 years?
ALASKA Republican presidential caucuses with apparently close to 100% reported (source NYT)
Donald J. Trump 9,243 87.6% = 20 delegates (100%) 20 Nikki Haley 1,266 12.0% Vivek Ramaswamy 45 0.4% Total reported 10,554
Note four Alaska state house districts reporting ZERO votes as of Noon Wednesday: 37,38,39 and 40.
> these four districts stretch from the Aleutians past the Bering Strait and Point Barrow all the way to Canada; inhabitants and voters are mostly Alaska Natives and Inuit.
Boris Johnson succeeded in putting the Tories out of power for a generation it looks like.
I think in years to come people will re-assess 2019 as the election that Jeremy Corbyn lost and Johnson got lucky.
There were many reasons for the Tory win in 2019. One of them, in my view the largest, was sheer frustration among the public about how politicians went back on their word. We will honour the vote, they said, then did everything they could to NOT honour the vote. Add in Corbyn who had been exposed for what he really was, plus a vaguely charismatic Johnson and you get an 80 seat majority.
I listened to the budget speech live, and when I heard Hunt working through his NHS section, as someone who has spent a lifetime working with public sector budgeting, I thought I knew what his game was.
Having set out how the future spending plan (CPI plus 1%) was being retained, he launched into his investment plan to improve NHS productivity with this vast IT programme, then started talking about the recurring savings this would achieve through improved productivity, and mentioned that he'd got NHS agreement to sign up to these.
At this point I presumed his game was to deduct the anticipated savings, which would grow cumulatively year on year, from the red book forecasts of future NHS spending, thereby creating a nice stream of credits to the that he is using to offset the costs of the tax cuts.
This would, of course, mean that the "inflation +1%" is the "before" number, with the "after" - and actual funding delivered - being "inflation +1% - predicted improved productivity".
If this is the case, this will be the 'catch' in his forward forecasts, waiting for some journalist to uncover.
On the other hand, if you take the earlier part of his speech at his word, the NHS would get the inflation +1% and in addition get to re-invest the savings from improved productivity into meeting growing demand and improving services.
All my experience of IT projects is that they don't actually deliver the predicted savings that went into the business case to justify them, but - assuming things work out well - enable you to do more stuff or better work within the same resouces that you had before. If that happens, and he's taken the former approach of nabbing the savings in advance, that's a lot of financial gried coming down the line.
NYT blog - Biden has extended a hand to Haley supporters by highlighting his hopes for common ground on issues including the preservation of democracy, support for NATO and “treating each other with decency and dignity and respect.” It’s not clear how many Haley voters would be open to backing Biden, though. A recent NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist Poll found that 82 percent of Haley voters said they would back Trump against Biden, but some are clearly potential crossover voters.
Why can't I see who liked my posts anymore? Is it because I am too popular?
That must be it, yes.
Quite the change though. It's good but I do miss one thing. Before, if there was a post slagging me off and somebody went in and maliciously 'liked' it, I'd know who that was and I would put their avatar on my dartboard in the attic and throw darts at it for half an hour or so (which helped). I can't do this now.
As Haley suspends her campaign, Biden calls her 'courageous' while Trump says he 'trounced' her.
Where her voters go now likely decides the general election and Biden has just gone one up in getting them in his camp
Biden should replace Harris with Haley in the VP slot.
I suggested this a few weeks back. Would be a brilliant move.
Completely crackers.
The fact Nikki Haley is a rational person who doesn't like what happened on 6th January 2021 does not mean she has anything in common with the Democrats in policy terms.
She is, as she said in her speech today, a conservative - and a staunch one at that. As Trump's UN ambassador, she managed the US's withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement, not just because Trump wanted it but because it's her view - and she says she'd withdraw again. She supported a move to put a federal 15 week limit on abortion, and has side-stepped whether she'd personally want to go for a full ban if she could. She's said Florida's controversial "don't say gay" law for schools fails to go far enough. She's advocated for steep cuts in Medicare and social security. She was staunchly anti-unionisation of Boeing's South Carolina plant as Governor.
The idea she would, as VP (and potentially President as Biden is famously not a young man) pursue policies that in any way suited even the bluest blue dog Democrat is absolutely and obviously for the birds.
Putting her on the VP ticket would be, at best, confusing - and in reality would alienate anyone even vaguely liberal. And she'd not have the slightest interest in participating in any way in such a farce.
Yet without winning Haley voters, especially Independents, Biden will almost certainly lose in November. Indeed some Haley voters even voted Biden in 2020
Biden making Haley VP would not attract the Haley voters. @SirNorfolkPassmore and @Malmesbury are right, it would alienate them and Biden's own voters. It would be the most imposing act of electoral suicide since Heath called an election on 'Who Governs Britain?'
Trump making her his VP candidate might work but that requires (a) him to be sane and (b) Haley to be willing to accept. Neither seems terribly likely.
The biggest risk of all for Trump is that her voters sit on their hands at the election and hand it to Biden by default. That's also the way I read her concession speech.
(I am assuming she won't do a third party run - all the reasons Trump wouldn't have still apply to her, plus she might still be in the running for 2028 when Trump will definitely not be one way or another.)
A lot of anti-Trump Republicans have been pretty mild in their criticism of him, or they have confusingly been quite damning but still committed to supporting him nonetheless. It's understandable when it's people who still want to be relevant in the party since you cannot be outright opposed to Trump and do that, though people who bend the knee still get mocked and attacked for their sin of standing against him so it's questionable if it is worth it. But it's surprising there are not more who are essentially out of the game being willing to be more unequivocal.
With Haley if she is indeed wanting to see him lose, it is presumably a fine line - she has ramped up criticism, but waverers may turn back to Trump if she says vote Biden or stay at home. But if she can play it as Trump has to earn your vote, wink wink he hasn't, then possibly that is more effective?
As it is once they drop out have any candidates been relevant? I don't see anything much from Christie anymore.
Who was the last defeated primary candidate to be invited on to the ticket in the same election? I keep coming up with GH Bush in 1980, but surely there must have been one more recent than that?
Joe Biden, surely? Or did he pull out so early it doesn't count?
Er, Kamala Harris, surely? She similarly was DNS rather than DNF, but she certainly filed to run and did pretty well in the polls after evicerating one Joseph Robinette Biden Junior in an early debate.
Justin Webb did the same this morning. The plonker.
Someone put it well on the radio. Trump has managed to turn the country into one big reality tv programme, the Trump show, on 24/7 with him as both star and director controlling the narrative. The media are so hooked they play along. Next thing to watch, the idea that he is inevitably steamrolling his way to a huge victory in November. Webb will no doubt be one of the first to succumb.
Perhaps a letter to the American electorate might help.
Oh look, it's a dumb facetious comment from Topping.
Let's face it if a bona fide wannabe yet faux Hampstead intellectual can't convince the US voters to do the right thing, who can.
I’m sure the Americans want the opinion of some posho in the U.K. as to how to vote.
But you're quite right, it's up to them. My Trump short is effectively a bet on America not being so far gone as to reelect him despite all that is known about him.
Forget the current polls and Biden's frailty and all the rest of it - this is what it boils down to. It's about the American people. I say they're neither bad nor mad and they won't do it.
I say enough of them might, given that this time state houses, governors, and other officials, are much readier to assist Trump should he fall short, whereas last time it seemed to come as a shock and enough key people held firm.
I don't discount the possibility he just wins outright, but I do think there will be political interference from some states this time if he does not, and violence if that does not succeed.
Should be interesting in th enext day or so, as he should eventually post a massive bond in the E Jean Carrol civil case as part of his appeal. He's been trying to avoid paying it at all, or most of it at least, but he should be able to come up with the money (or get someone to cover it), but that may make it harder to do so in the much larger one due later in the month.
Yes, logically he's fairly priced at evens. It looks a coin toss. Against that is my faith and intuition that when the chips are down America will not do it. And of course although I set great store by my faith and intuition (it rarely lets me down) I don't expect others to.
What about the ukraine war though. Its going pretty badly for Biden and things may come to a head this summer. For example key architect of the war Victoria Nuland has resigned. Trump would make hay of any failure here.
It is going to be interesting to see what happens if both the Republican Party in the US and the Conservative Party here lose in their respective elections.
@HYUFD seems adamant a defeated Conservative Party will move further from the traditional One Nation platform to a more National Conservative position which I define as socially conservative, nationalist, anti-immigration, sceptical on climate change and broadly in favour of lower taxes and higher spending (especially the maintenance of pensioner benefits).
How long does that continue before someone somewhere cries "enough"? The argument seems to be Starmer and Labour will rapidly become hugely unpopular and that will allow almost any incarantion of the Conservatives the opportunity to regain power in 2029. Perhaps, perhaps not.
In America, does Trumpite populism die with Trump (or rather with another defeat)? Does Donald Junior or Eric become the standard bearer for their father's legacy - does someone else come forward or would there be enough of a vacuum for Haley to return in 2028 as a traditional Republican facing either President or VP Harris as the Democrat candidate? I think it's fair to save both the Republican and Democratic primaries in 2028 will be more interesting than they have been this year.
The opposition party usually gets a boost of numbers as those dissatisfied with the incumbent Government try to register their discontent. This influx of more moderate opinion will likely force the party back to more centrist positions. It could well be by 2034 the Conservative Party will be unrecognisable from the party now in office.
I listened to the budget speech live, and when I heard Hunt working through his NHS section, as someone who has spent a lifetime working with public sector budgeting, I thought I knew what his game was.
Having set out how the future spending plan (CPI plus 1%) was being retained, he launched into his investment plan to improve NHS productivity with this vast IT programme, then started talking about the recurring savings this would achieve through improved productivity, and mentioned that he'd got NHS agreement to sign up to these.
At this point I presumed his game was to deduct the anticipated savings, which would grow cumulatively year on year, from the red book forecasts of future NHS spending, thereby creating a nice stream of credits to the that he is using to offset the costs of the tax cuts.
This would, of course, mean that the "inflation +1%" is the "before" number, with the "after" - and actual funding delivered - being "inflation +1% - predicted improved productivity".
If this is the case, this will be the 'catch' in his forward forecasts, waiting for some journalist to uncover.
On the other hand, if you take the earlier part of his speech at his word, the NHS would get the inflation +1% and in addition get to re-invest the savings from improved productivity into meeting growing demand and improving services.
All my experience of IT projects is that they don't actually deliver the predicted savings that went into the business case to justify them, but - assuming things work out well - enable you to do more stuff or better work within the same resouces that you had before. If that happens, and he's taken the former approach of nabbing the savings in advance, that's a lot of financial gried coming down the line.
In your final sentence, is "gried" a typo for "grief" OR is it "greed"?
Have been up since 03:45 for a work trip to London, currently relaxing in the exec lounge at Hilton Wembley with a comp beer. Budget sounds like the dampest of wet squibs from what I can read...
Boris Johnson succeeded in putting the Tories out of power for a generation it looks like.
I think in years to come people will re-assess 2019 as the election that Jeremy Corbyn lost and Johnson got lucky.
At times it seems to me that in 2019 the electorate wanted Brexit, but not the Tories other policies.
It may be why the Tories are busy implementing much of the 2019 Labour manifesto, and still stealing Lab policies today.
In addition, amazingly the Tories have had about five different and quite distinct sets of policies since 2019, and yet rejected each of those and finally ended up with Labours ideas. Then get to the Commons and deliver the most smug performances on record as if all is hunky dory and Labour are idiots.
Boris Johnson succeeded in putting the Tories out of power for a generation it looks like.
I think in years to come people will re-assess 2019 as the election that Jeremy Corbyn lost and Johnson got lucky.
Boris won the biggest Conservative landslide since Thatcher in 2019, it was under Truss the Tories poll rating really collapsed
Maybe that was, in part, because she said Boris was great and should not have been ousted, but also that the government had been going in the wrong economic direction for a long time and needed to completely change.
That might even have been correct to some degree, but it's a confusing message. I don't buy for one minute that Boris was restrained by a young and inexperienced Chancellor he appointed from a junior position, and he was totally wanting to completely change his economic stance but, gasp, he was ousted before he could do so.
Isn't that rather badly misremembering the circumstances of Sunak's elevation to Chancellor in that heady post-election, pre-COVID window?
Cummings, in his pomp and before his eye test and falling out with the PM, gave Javid an ultimatum to sack advisers and put in Cummings' hand-picked people as his top Treasury team. Javid refused and resigned. Sunak was then in a strong position as to lose one Chancellor could be seen as unfortunate, but to lose two would be deemed carelessness. He did accept some Number 10 people, but also insisted on his own team, and increasingly sidelined those with loyalties to his neighbour as both Johnson's and Cummings' positions weakened for different albeit related reasons. Ultimately, of course, the avalanche of departures which killed Johnson in 2022 was started by Sunak... and by none other than then Health Secretary, Javid.
So the idea Sunak was a stooge, and that Johnson was in a position to transform economic policy is wrong. He was probably in his strongest position immediately on appointing Sunak, but within days COVID took over the agenda completely so whether he'd planned anything or not, the window had closed forever.
I don't see how what I said is misremembering anything - I didn't say he was a stooge. I said he was a junior Minister who was by definition young and inexperienced, which is entirely true, and it is true my implication was that Boris was in a stronger position than Sunak, which I think is also incontestable, as Sunak will have lacked any sort of support base.
But even if we accept that Boris could not immediately transform economic policy upon appointing Sunak as being true - he was facing some unprecedented cirumstances and I think it is true that limited his options in the short term - that was not the point being made. The point was that some Boris fans have attempted to suggest he really wanted to change things but they blame Sunak for not being able to.
I fundamentally don't buy PMs whinging about their Chancellors anyway, especially when one was still powerful enough among MPs that 1/3 wanted him back after he was ousted, but if he had wanted to change things then I think he would have done something earlier, even if he could not at the very instant Sunak was appointed.
Am I to believe he totally intended to but was just unlucky that at the very moment he was finally able to he was ousted?
That's not even me saying Boris was inherently bad, I think he got some calls right as PM on Covid and Ukraine among others, but it's just not plausible to me he wanted to do a Trussite reinvention but apparently never got around to it. Not even a small start in that direction?
More plausible to me is that Truss was going after the Boris loyalist vote, and was happy to endorse a message she believed in but which was logically inconsistent with saying he should still have been PM, when he did not announce such plans. It worked, so was a smart thing to do.
Seattle Times - NTSB: Boeing not cooperating on investigation into Alaska midair blowout by Dominic Gates, Seattle Times aerospace reporter
National Transportation Safety Board chair Jennifer Homendy delivered scathing testimony during a U.S. Senate hearing Wednesday criticizing Boeing for lack of cooperation in the agency’s investigation of the Alaska Airlines midair door plug blowout on Jan. 5.
“Boeing has not provided us with the documents and information that we have requested numerous times over the past few months,” Homendy testified.
She said Boeing has not provided the records required to be kept of the work done to open and then reinstall the door plug.
Homendy added that the NTSB has asked Boeing for the names of the employees on a 25-person team who work on doors and door plugs at the Renton plant, but hasn’t received the names.
“It’s two months later. We know for a fact that there is a team that deals with the doors in Renton. There’s an entire team of 25 people and a manager,” Homendy said. “The manager has been out on medical leave, we’ve not been able to interview that individual. We’ve asked for the names of the other 25 people, have not received the names.”
“We don’t have the records. We don’t have the names of the 25 people,” Homendy added. “It’s absurd that two months later, we don’t have that.” . . . .
The NTSB being so publicly annoyed with Boeing feels no-optimal for Boeing. But what can anyone do without risking handing the commercial airliner market to Airbus?
As Haley suspends her campaign, Biden calls her 'courageous' while Trump says he 'trounced' her.
Where her voters go now likely decides the general election and Biden has just gone one up in getting them in his camp
Biden should replace Harris with Haley in the VP slot.
I suggested this a few weeks back. Would be a brilliant move.
Completely crackers.
The fact Nikki Haley is a rational person who doesn't like what happened on 6th January 2021 does not mean she has anything in common with the Democrats in policy terms.
She is, as she said in her speech today, a conservative - and a staunch one at that. As Trump's UN ambassador, she managed the US's withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement, not just because Trump wanted it but because it's her view - and she says she'd withdraw again. She supported a move to put a federal 15 week limit on abortion, and has side-stepped whether she'd personally want to go for a full ban if she could. She's said Florida's controversial "don't say gay" law for schools fails to go far enough. She's advocated for steep cuts in Medicare and social security. She was staunchly anti-unionisation of Boeing's South Carolina plant as Governor.
The idea she would, as VP (and potentially President as Biden is famously not a young man) pursue policies that in any way suited even the bluest blue dog Democrat is absolutely and obviously for the birds.
Putting her on the VP ticket would be, at best, confusing - and in reality would alienate anyone even vaguely liberal. And she'd not have the slightest interest in participating in any way in such a farce.
Yet without winning Haley voters, especially Independents, Biden will almost certainly lose in November. Indeed some Haley voters even voted Biden in 2020
Biden making Haley VP would not attract the Haley voters. @SirNorfolkPassmore and @Malmesbury are right, it would alienate them and Biden's own voters. It would be the most imposing act of electoral suicide since Heath called an election on 'Who Governs Britain?'
Trump making her his VP candidate might work but that requires (a) him to be sane and (b) Haley to be willing to accept. Neither seems terribly likely.
The biggest risk of all for Trump is that her voters sit on their hands at the election and hand it to Biden by default. That's also the way I read her concession speech.
(I am assuming she won't do a third party run - all the reasons Trump wouldn't have still apply to her, plus she might still be in the running for 2028 when Trump will definitely not be one way or another.)
Tend to agree. Biden mustn't risk alienating the Democratic base. The only example I can think offhand when it might have been worth the risk, was when John McCain was considering making Joe Lieberman his VP pick. In the end he selected Sarah Palin which was certainly not a good idea. LIeberman would have been far more unsettling for Obama and definitely worth the risk as winning that election was always going to be very hard for a Republican after two terms of W.
Boris Johnson succeeded in putting the Tories out of power for a generation it looks like.
I think in years to come people will re-assess 2019 as the election that Jeremy Corbyn lost and Johnson got lucky.
People will see Starmer as the heir to Johnson, continuing his Red, White and Blue Brexit policies.
It's a constant source of wonder to me how so many people on here feel able to write the history of Keir Starmer's premiership before a single day of it has yet transpired. PBers are truly an impressive bunch.
Obviously that's not a great idea, and but I suspect the predominant view of the future history of Starmer is similar to the view these futurist historians would take of any possible next PM of the UK.
Which is that whoever wins next time operates in circumstances and constraints by which it is impossible to do well, and difficult to do OK.
And the big bit of evidence for this is that in the realm of political commentary there are no big ideas that are both plausible and possible with respect to the politics, the economics or, in most cases, both. The UK's situation is that whatever your future vision you would not start from here.
It is going to be interesting to see what happens if both the Republican Party in the US and the Conservative Party here lose in their respective elections.
@HYUFD seems adamant a defeated Conservative Party will move further from the traditional One Nation platform to a more National Conservative position which I define as socially conservative, nationalist, anti-immigration, sceptical on climate change and broadly in favour of lower taxes and higher spending (especially the maintenance of pensioner benefits).
How long does that continue before someone somewhere cries "enough"? The argument seems to be Starmer and Labour will rapidly become hugely unpopular and that will allow almost any incarantion of the Conservatives the opportunity to regain power in 2029. Perhaps, perhaps not.
In America, does Trumpite populism die with Trump (or rather with another defeat)? Does Donald Junior or Eric become the standard bearer for their father's legacy - does someone else come forward or would there be enough of a vacuum for Haley to return in 2028 as a traditional Republican facing either President or VP Harris as the Democrat candidate? I think it's fair to save both the Republican and Democratic primaries in 2028 will be more interesting than they have been this year.
The opposition party usually gets a boost of numbers as those dissatisfied with the incumbent Government try to register their discontent. This influx of more moderate opinion will likely force the party back to more centrist positions. It could well be by 2034 the Conservative Party will be unrecognisable from the party now in office.
Whilst there is continued mass immigration at the southern border Trumpite populism wont die. This is what Elon Musk tweeted today.
Incentives drive behavior.
Until the loss of votes from ushering in vast numbers of illegal immigrants exceeds the likely gain of votes over time (as they are gradually legalized), the Democratic Party has a strong incentive to maximize illegal immigration.
NYT blog - Biden has extended a hand to Haley supporters by highlighting his hopes for common ground on issues including the preservation of democracy, support for NATO and “treating each other with decency and dignity and respect.” It’s not clear how many Haley voters would be open to backing Biden, though. A recent NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist Poll found that 82 percent of Haley voters said they would back Trump against Biden, but some are clearly potential crossover voters.
About 20% of about 30% is about worth about six percentage points in the polls, so VERY well worth having.
I know it doesn't really work like that as relatively few people have actually voted in the primaries, and it's complex due to different rules in different states, but she's picked up about three in ten votes cast, so that's presumably a very rough idea of about a quarter to a third of GOP or GOP-leaning conservatives being Trump-sceptical, and 20% of them is a sizeable prize.
As Haley suspends her campaign, Biden calls her 'courageous' while Trump says he 'trounced' her.
Where her voters go now likely decides the general election and Biden has just gone one up in getting them in his camp
Biden should replace Harris with Haley in the VP slot.
I suggested this a few weeks back. Would be a brilliant move.
Completely crackers.
The fact Nikki Haley is a rational person who doesn't like what happened on 6th January 2021 does not mean she has anything in common with the Democrats in policy terms.
She is, as she said in her speech today, a conservative - and a staunch one at that. As Trump's UN ambassador, she managed the US's withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement, not just because Trump wanted it but because it's her view - and she says she'd withdraw again. She supported a move to put a federal 15 week limit on abortion, and has side-stepped whether she'd personally want to go for a full ban if she could. She's said Florida's controversial "don't say gay" law for schools fails to go far enough. She's advocated for steep cuts in Medicare and social security. She was staunchly anti-unionisation of Boeing's South Carolina plant as Governor.
The idea she would, as VP (and potentially President as Biden is famously not a young man) pursue policies that in any way suited even the bluest blue dog Democrat is absolutely and obviously for the birds.
Putting her on the VP ticket would be, at best, confusing - and in reality would alienate anyone even vaguely liberal. And she'd not have the slightest interest in participating in any way in such a farce.
Yet without winning Haley voters, especially Independents, Biden will almost certainly lose in November. Indeed some Haley voters even voted Biden in 2020
Biden making Haley VP would not attract the Haley voters. @SirNorfolkPassmore and @Malmesbury are right, it would alienate them and Biden's own voters. It would be the most imposing act of electoral suicide since Heath called an election on 'Who Governs Britain?'
Trump making her his VP candidate might work but that requires (a) him to be sane and (b) Haley to be willing to accept. Neither seems terribly likely.
The biggest risk of all for Trump is that her voters sit on their hands at the election and hand it to Biden by default. That's also the way I read her concession speech.
(I am assuming she won't do a third party run - all the reasons Trump wouldn't have still apply to her, plus she might still be in the running for 2028 when Trump will definitely not be one way or another.)
A lot of anti-Trump Republicans have been pretty mild in their criticism of him, or they have confusingly been quite damning but still committed to supporting him nonetheless. It's understandable when it's people who still want to be relevant in the party since you cannot be outright opposed to Trump and do that, though people who bend the knee still get mocked and attacked for their sin of standing against him so it's questionable if it is worth it. But it's surprising there are not more who are essentially out of the game being willing to be more unequivocal.
With Haley if she is indeed wanting to see him lose, it is presumably a fine line - she has ramped up criticism, but waverers may turn back to Trump if she says vote Biden or stay at home. But if she can play it as Trump has to earn your vote, wink wink he hasn't, then possibly that is more effective?
As it is once they drop out have any candidates been relevant? I don't see anything much from Christie anymore.
Who was the last defeated primary candidate to be invited on to the ticket in the same election? I keep coming up with GH Bush in 1980, but surely there must have been one more recent than that?
Joe Biden, surely? Or did he pull out so early it doesn't count?
Er, Kamala Harris, surely? She similarly was DNS rather than DNF, but she certainly filed to run and did pretty well in the polls after evicerating one Joseph Robinette Biden Junior in an early debate.
I had completely forgotten. I don't know if she gets more of a profile over there, but I forget she even exists sometimes, which is harsh on her.
I remmeber Bernie, Gabbard, Warren, KLOBUCHAR, Buttigieg, and Bloomberg.
Boris Johnson succeeded in putting the Tories out of power for a generation it looks like.
I think in years to come people will re-assess 2019 as the election that Jeremy Corbyn lost and Johnson got lucky.
People will see Starmer as the heir to Johnson, continuing his Red, White and Blue Brexit policies.
It's a constant source of wonder to me how so many people on here feel able to write the history of Keir Starmer's premiership before a single day of it has yet transpired. PBers are truly an impressive bunch.
Obviously that's not a great idea, and but I suspect the predominant view of the future history of Starmer is similar to the view these futurist historians would take of any possible next PM of the UK.
Which is that whoever wins next time operates in circumstances and constraints by which it is impossible to do well, and difficult to do OK.
And the big bit of evidence for this is that in the realm of political commentary there are no big ideas that are both plausible and possible with respect to the politics, the economics or, in most cases, both. The UK's situation is that whatever your future vision you would not start from here.
Yes for example end mass immigration and the uk economy goes into freefall at least temporarily. No politician wants that.
It is going to be interesting to see what happens if both the Republican Party in the US and the Conservative Party here lose in their respective elections.
@HYUFD seems adamant a defeated Conservative Party will move further from the traditional One Nation platform to a more National Conservative position which I define as socially conservative, nationalist, anti-immigration, sceptical on climate change and broadly in favour of lower taxes and higher spending (especially the maintenance of pensioner benefits).
How long does that continue before someone somewhere cries "enough"? The argument seems to be Starmer and Labour will rapidly become hugely unpopular and that will allow almost any incarantion of the Conservatives the opportunity to regain power in 2029. Perhaps, perhaps not.
In America, does Trumpite populism die with Trump (or rather with another defeat)? Does Donald Junior or Eric become the standard bearer for their father's legacy - does someone else come forward or would there be enough of a vacuum for Haley to return in 2028 as a traditional Republican facing either President or VP Harris as the Democrat candidate? I think it's fair to save both the Republican and Democratic primaries in 2028 will be more interesting than they have been this year.
The opposition party usually gets a boost of numbers as those dissatisfied with the incumbent Government try to register their discontent. This influx of more moderate opinion will likely force the party back to more centrist positions. It could well be by 2034 the Conservative Party will be unrecognisable from the party now in office.
I think Trump is hell-bent - in his Mafia boss way - on turning the Republicans into a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Trump Corporation. The appointment of his daughter-in-law to the RNC is a sure sign. It will take an almighty battle - with blood on the walls - to wrench control from him and his minions. It's all pretty wretched as we can't expect the Democrats to win in perpetuity even if Biden prevails in November.
It is going to be interesting to see what happens if both the Republican Party in the US and the Conservative Party here lose in their respective elections.
@HYUFD seems adamant a defeated Conservative Party will move further from the traditional One Nation platform to a more National Conservative position which I define as socially conservative, nationalist, anti-immigration, sceptical on climate change and broadly in favour of lower taxes and higher spending (especially the maintenance of pensioner benefits).
How long does that continue before someone somewhere cries "enough"? The argument seems to be Starmer and Labour will rapidly become hugely unpopular and that will allow almost any incarantion of the Conservatives the opportunity to regain power in 2029. Perhaps, perhaps not.
In America, does Trumpite populism die with Trump (or rather with another defeat)? Does Donald Junior or Eric become the standard bearer for their father's legacy - does someone else come forward or would there be enough of a vacuum for Haley to return in 2028 as a traditional Republican facing either President or VP Harris as the Democrat candidate? I think it's fair to save both the Republican and Democratic primaries in 2028 will be more interesting than they have been this year.
The opposition party usually gets a boost of numbers as those dissatisfied with the incumbent Government try to register their discontent. This influx of more moderate opinion will likely force the party back to more centrist positions. It could well be by 2034 the Conservative Party will be unrecognisable from the party now in office.
Whilst there is continued mass immigration at the southern border Trumpite populism wont die. This is what Elon Musk tweeted today.
Incentives drive behavior.
Until the loss of votes from ushering in vast numbers of illegal immigrants exceeds the likely gain of votes over time (as they are gradually legalized), the Democratic Party has a strong incentive to maximize illegal immigration.
There's a certain irony that under Obama, illegal immigration at the Southern border came down sharply, before first rising under Trump and then Biden.
It is going to be interesting to see what happens if both the Republican Party in the US and the Conservative Party here lose in their respective elections.
@HYUFD seems adamant a defeated Conservative Party will move further from the traditional One Nation platform to a more National Conservative position which I define as socially conservative, nationalist, anti-immigration, sceptical on climate change and broadly in favour of lower taxes and higher spending (especially the maintenance of pensioner benefits).
How long does that continue before someone somewhere cries "enough"? The argument seems to be Starmer and Labour will rapidly become hugely unpopular and that will allow almost any incarantion of the Conservatives the opportunity to regain power in 2029. Perhaps, perhaps not.
In America, does Trumpite populism die with Trump (or rather with another defeat)? Does Donald Junior or Eric become the standard bearer for their father's legacy - does someone else come forward or would there be enough of a vacuum for Haley to return in 2028 as a traditional Republican facing either President or VP Harris as the Democrat candidate? I think it's fair to save both the Republican and Democratic primaries in 2028 will be more interesting than they have been this year.
The opposition party usually gets a boost of numbers as those dissatisfied with the incumbent Government try to register their discontent. This influx of more moderate opinion will likely force the party back to more centrist positions. It could well be by 2034 the Conservative Party will be unrecognisable from the party now in office.
Whilst there is continued mass immigration at the southern border Trumpite populism wont die. This is what Elon Musk tweeted today.
Incentives drive behavior.
Until the loss of votes from ushering in vast numbers of illegal immigrants exceeds the likely gain of votes over time (as they are gradually legalized), the Democratic Party has a strong incentive to maximize illegal immigration.
As Haley suspends her campaign, Biden calls her 'courageous' while Trump says he 'trounced' her.
Where her voters go now likely decides the general election and Biden has just gone one up in getting them in his camp
Biden should replace Harris with Haley in the VP slot.
I suggested this a few weeks back. Would be a brilliant move.
Completely crackers.
The fact Nikki Haley is a rational person who doesn't like what happened on 6th January 2021 does not mean she has anything in common with the Democrats in policy terms.
She is, as she said in her speech today, a conservative - and a staunch one at that. As Trump's UN ambassador, she managed the US's withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement, not just because Trump wanted it but because it's her view - and she says she'd withdraw again. She supported a move to put a federal 15 week limit on abortion, and has side-stepped whether she'd personally want to go for a full ban if she could. She's said Florida's controversial "don't say gay" law for schools fails to go far enough. She's advocated for steep cuts in Medicare and social security. She was staunchly anti-unionisation of Boeing's South Carolina plant as Governor.
The idea she would, as VP (and potentially President as Biden is famously not a young man) pursue policies that in any way suited even the bluest blue dog Democrat is absolutely and obviously for the birds.
Putting her on the VP ticket would be, at best, confusing - and in reality would alienate anyone even vaguely liberal. And she'd not have the slightest interest in participating in any way in such a farce.
Yet without winning Haley voters, especially Independents, Biden will almost certainly lose in November. Indeed some Haley voters even voted Biden in 2020
Biden making Haley VP would not attract the Haley voters. @SirNorfolkPassmore and @Malmesbury are right, it would alienate them and Biden's own voters. It would be the most imposing act of electoral suicide since Heath called an election on 'Who Governs Britain?'
Trump making her his VP candidate might work but that requires (a) him to be sane and (b) Haley to be willing to accept. Neither seems terribly likely.
The biggest risk of all for Trump is that her voters sit on their hands at the election and hand it to Biden by default. That's also the way I read her concession speech.
(I am assuming she won't do a third party run - all the reasons Trump wouldn't have still apply to her, plus she might still be in the running for 2028 when Trump will definitely not be one way or another.)
A lot of anti-Trump Republicans have been pretty mild in their criticism of him, or they have confusingly been quite damning but still committed to supporting him nonetheless. It's understandable when it's people who still want to be relevant in the party since you cannot be outright opposed to Trump and do that, though people who bend the knee still get mocked and attacked for their sin of standing against him so it's questionable if it is worth it. But it's surprising there are not more who are essentially out of the game being willing to be more unequivocal.
With Haley if she is indeed wanting to see him lose, it is presumably a fine line - she has ramped up criticism, but waverers may turn back to Trump if she says vote Biden or stay at home. But if she can play it as Trump has to earn your vote, wink wink he hasn't, then possibly that is more effective?
As it is once they drop out have any candidates been relevant? I don't see anything much from Christie anymore.
Who was the last defeated primary candidate to be invited on to the ticket in the same election? I keep coming up with GH Bush in 1980, but surely there must have been one more recent than that?
Joe Biden, surely? Or did he pull out so early it doesn't count?
Er, Kamala Harris, surely? She similarly was DNS rather than DNF, but she certainly filed to run and did pretty well in the polls after evicerating one Joseph Robinette Biden Junior in an early debate.
I had completely forgotten. I don't know if she gets more of a profile over there, but I forget she even exists sometimes, which is harsh on her.
I remmeber Bernie, Gabbard, Warren, KLOBUCHAR, Buttigieg, and Bloomberg.
Well, they made it to the starting line. But she was briefly second to Biden after a strong debate showing in the summer, before a slow fade in the Autumn and out by Xmas.
I mean, it does slightly depend how you count "beaten" in the case of those who withdraw before Iowa. But I think it's fair to say if you file to stand, and say "I'm running for President" and appear on the debate stage, then that counts. Indeed, Harris was on the ballot in early voting states (albeit with negligible votes as she had in fact withdrawn and endorsed Biden).
Boris Johnson succeeded in putting the Tories out of power for a generation it looks like.
I think in years to come people will re-assess 2019 as the election that Jeremy Corbyn lost and Johnson got lucky.
People will see Starmer as the heir to Johnson, continuing his Red, White and Blue Brexit policies.
It's a constant source of wonder to me how so many people on here feel able to write the history of Keir Starmer's premiership before a single day of it has yet transpired. PBers are truly an impressive bunch.
Obviously that's not a great idea, and but I suspect the predominant view of the future history of Starmer is similar to the view these futurist historians would take of any possible next PM of the UK.
Which is that whoever wins next time operates in circumstances and constraints by which it is impossible to do well, and difficult to do OK.
And the big bit of evidence for this is that in the realm of political commentary there are no big ideas that are both plausible and possible with respect to the politics, the economics or, in most cases, both. The UK's situation is that whatever your future vision you would not start from here.
My three point proposal to transform Britain's prospects:
1) Recreate Canary Wharf in Milton Keynes - set aside a couple of grid squares for high-rise skyscrapers as part of a plan to allow the population to grow up to a million 2) Accelerate the East-West rail project to link it to Oxford and Cambridge 3) Profit
It is going to be interesting to see what happens if both the Republican Party in the US and the Conservative Party here lose in their respective elections.
@HYUFD seems adamant a defeated Conservative Party will move further from the traditional One Nation platform to a more National Conservative position which I define as socially conservative, nationalist, anti-immigration, sceptical on climate change and broadly in favour of lower taxes and higher spending (especially the maintenance of pensioner benefits).
How long does that continue before someone somewhere cries "enough"? The argument seems to be Starmer and Labour will rapidly become hugely unpopular and that will allow almost any incarantion of the Conservatives the opportunity to regain power in 2029. Perhaps, perhaps not.
In America, does Trumpite populism die with Trump (or rather with another defeat)? Does Donald Junior or Eric become the standard bearer for their father's legacy - does someone else come forward or would there be enough of a vacuum for Haley to return in 2028 as a traditional Republican facing either President or VP Harris as the Democrat candidate? I think it's fair to save both the Republican and Democratic primaries in 2028 will be more interesting than they have been this year.
The opposition party usually gets a boost of numbers as those dissatisfied with the incumbent Government try to register their discontent. This influx of more moderate opinion will likely force the party back to more centrist positions. It could well be by 2034 the Conservative Party will be unrecognisable from the party now in office.
Whilst there is continued mass immigration at the southern border Trumpite populism wont die. This is what Elon Musk tweeted today.
Incentives drive behavior.
Until the loss of votes from ushering in vast numbers of illegal immigrants exceeds the likely gain of votes over time (as they are gradually legalized), the Democratic Party has a strong incentive to maximize illegal immigration.
There's a certain irony that under Obama, illegal immigration at the Southern border came down sharply, before first rising under Trump and then Biden.
Like our own cross-channel travellers, it may be more down to factors in other countries than actual border policies; the latter can only mitigate the former.
It is going to be interesting to see what happens if both the Republican Party in the US and the Conservative Party here lose in their respective elections.
@HYUFD seems adamant a defeated Conservative Party will move further from the traditional One Nation platform to a more National Conservative position which I define as socially conservative, nationalist, anti-immigration, sceptical on climate change and broadly in favour of lower taxes and higher spending (especially the maintenance of pensioner benefits).
How long does that continue before someone somewhere cries "enough"? The argument seems to be Starmer and Labour will rapidly become hugely unpopular and that will allow almost any incarantion of the Conservatives the opportunity to regain power in 2029. Perhaps, perhaps not.
In America, does Trumpite populism die with Trump (or rather with another defeat)? Does Donald Junior or Eric become the standard bearer for their father's legacy - does someone else come forward or would there be enough of a vacuum for Haley to return in 2028 as a traditional Republican facing either President or VP Harris as the Democrat candidate? I think it's fair to save both the Republican and Democratic primaries in 2028 will be more interesting than they have been this year.
The opposition party usually gets a boost of numbers as those dissatisfied with the incumbent Government try to register their discontent. This influx of more moderate opinion will likely force the party back to more centrist positions. It could well be by 2034 the Conservative Party will be unrecognisable from the party now in office.
I think Trump is hell-bent - in his Mafia boss way - on turning the Republicans into a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Trump Corporation. The appointment of his daughter-in-law to the RNC is a sure sign. It will take an almighty battle - with blood on the walls - to wrench control from him and his minions. It's all pretty wretched as we can't expect the Democrats to win in perpetuity even if Biden prevails in November.
And of course if Biden wins unless its a massive win which is unlikely Trump will just claim the election was rigged and mobilise his supporters.
Oh just seen Hunt say about wanting to abolish National Insurance. About damn time, well done! Hunt is really going after my vote it seems, if the Tories would just abandon NIMBYism he'd get my vote back speaking like that.
Hope Starmer matches that pledge so it might actually happen.
That would be a disaster, NI should be ringfenced to fund the state pension and contributions based JSA and contribute to healthcare as it originally was established for. Otherwise we move even further away from contributory welfare
That ship sailed long ago, retired, was sold on, retired, sold scrapped on a beach in India, the metal recycled into another ship, which was scrapped... repeat about 20 times.
NI is just another flavour of tax. Hell, that is the definition that the Treasury/Inland Revenue agreed to in international tax agreements.
Also worth noting that people unemployed and on benefits get NIC "contributions".
Only the gullible still think NIC is anything other than a tax. Or contributory.
You can't get JSA now without enough NI contributions at work, only UC
They should be out working , fill up all these jobs. The lazy young barsteward sprefer to lounge about on freebies
It is going to be interesting to see what happens if both the Republican Party in the US and the Conservative Party here lose in their respective elections.
@HYUFD seems adamant a defeated Conservative Party will move further from the traditional One Nation platform to a more National Conservative position which I define as socially conservative, nationalist, anti-immigration, sceptical on climate change and broadly in favour of lower taxes and higher spending (especially the maintenance of pensioner benefits).
How long does that continue before someone somewhere cries "enough"? The argument seems to be Starmer and Labour will rapidly become hugely unpopular and that will allow almost any incarantion of the Conservatives the opportunity to regain power in 2029. Perhaps, perhaps not.
In America, does Trumpite populism die with Trump (or rather with another defeat)? Does Donald Junior or Eric become the standard bearer for their father's legacy - does someone else come forward or would there be enough of a vacuum for Haley to return in 2028 as a traditional Republican facing either President or VP Harris as the Democrat candidate? I think it's fair to save both the Republican and Democratic primaries in 2028 will be more interesting than they have been this year.
The opposition party usually gets a boost of numbers as those dissatisfied with the incumbent Government try to register their discontent. This influx of more moderate opinion will likely force the party back to more centrist positions. It could well be by 2034 the Conservative Party will be unrecognisable from the party now in office.
Whilst there is continued mass immigration at the southern border Trumpite populism wont die. This is what Elon Musk tweeted today.
Incentives drive behavior.
Until the loss of votes from ushering in vast numbers of illegal immigrants exceeds the likely gain of votes over time (as they are gradually legalized), the Democratic Party has a strong incentive to maximize illegal immigration.
There's a certain irony that under Obama, illegal immigration at the Southern border came down sharply, before first rising under Trump and then Biden.
Like our own cross-channel travellers, it may be more down to factors in other countries than actual border policies; the latter can only mitigate the former.
One could say the factor in France is that the percentage of asylum applications that are successful is a third of the percentage that are successful in the UK.
But given that it's our useless Home Office that has made us the global outlier not France being particularly mean, it's still a pull factor not a push factor.
Boris Johnson succeeded in putting the Tories out of power for a generation it looks like.
I think in years to come people will re-assess 2019 as the election that Jeremy Corbyn lost and Johnson got lucky.
At times it seems to me that in 2019 the electorate wanted Brexit, but not the Tories other policies.
It may be why the Tories are busy implementing much of the 2019 Labour manifesto, and still stealing Lab policies today.
The thing the electorate wanted in 2019 was high quality leadership and statesmanlike competence. We were faced with a very difficult thing to implement domestically, following the 52-48 vote, which is a terrible position to start from, the inability of parliament to do its just at the critical moment of need, and we had the hardest negotiation to achieve with the EU as they decided they had no reason to do us favours.
What we got was a Boris much worse as a person than even sceptics expected, Covid and Ukraine, Truss and a Tory party behaving like a creche.
It is going to be interesting to see what happens if both the Republican Party in the US and the Conservative Party here lose in their respective elections.
@HYUFD seems adamant a defeated Conservative Party will move further from the traditional One Nation platform to a more National Conservative position which I define as socially conservative, nationalist, anti-immigration, sceptical on climate change and broadly in favour of lower taxes and higher spending (especially the maintenance of pensioner benefits).
How long does that continue before someone somewhere cries "enough"? The argument seems to be Starmer and Labour will rapidly become hugely unpopular and that will allow almost any incarantion of the Conservatives the opportunity to regain power in 2029. Perhaps, perhaps not.
In America, does Trumpite populism die with Trump (or rather with another defeat)? Does Donald Junior or Eric become the standard bearer for their father's legacy - does someone else come forward or would there be enough of a vacuum for Haley to return in 2028 as a traditional Republican facing either President or VP Harris as the Democrat candidate? I think it's fair to save both the Republican and Democratic primaries in 2028 will be more interesting than they have been this year.
The opposition party usually gets a boost of numbers as those dissatisfied with the incumbent Government try to register their discontent. This influx of more moderate opinion will likely force the party back to more centrist positions. It could well be by 2034 the Conservative Party will be unrecognisable from the party now in office.
Whilst there is continued mass immigration at the southern border Trumpite populism wont die. This is what Elon Musk tweeted today.
Incentives drive behavior.
Until the loss of votes from ushering in vast numbers of illegal immigrants exceeds the likely gain of votes over time (as they are gradually legalized), the Democratic Party has a strong incentive to maximize illegal immigration.
Boris Johnson succeeded in putting the Tories out of power for a generation it looks like.
I think in years to come people will re-assess 2019 as the election that Jeremy Corbyn lost and Johnson got lucky.
People will see Starmer as the heir to Johnson, continuing his Red, White and Blue Brexit policies.
It's a constant source of wonder to me how so many people on here feel able to write the history of Keir Starmer's premiership before a single day of it has yet transpired. PBers are truly an impressive bunch.
Obviously that's not a great idea, and but I suspect the predominant view of the future history of Starmer is similar to the view these futurist historians would take of any possible next PM of the UK.
Which is that whoever wins next time operates in circumstances and constraints by which it is impossible to do well, and difficult to do OK.
And the big bit of evidence for this is that in the realm of political commentary there are no big ideas that are both plausible and possible with respect to the politics, the economics or, in most cases, both. The UK's situation is that whatever your future vision you would not start from here.
Yes there's no money. But most of the people doing this crystal ball advance history of Starmer's time as PM say he failed because he was dull and lacked ideas.
As Haley suspends her campaign, Biden calls her 'courageous' while Trump says he 'trounced' her.
Where her voters go now likely decides the general election and Biden has just gone one up in getting them in his camp
Biden should replace Harris with Haley in the VP slot.
I suggested this a few weeks back. Would be a brilliant move.
Her views on Israel/Palestine would be toxic for young Democrat activists.
It would be an insane move.
1) Haley would be thrown out of the Republican Party. 2) Trumps MAGA base would be enthused by the revelation that the Republican opposition to Trump is literally a RINO 3) The left of the Democrats would take this as proof that Biden is a DINO. 4) Biden would be handing the presidency (if he won) to the opposite party, if something happened to him.
It’s about as likely as the Ulster Unionists suddenly favouring a United Ireland.
It is a shame, I suppose, that Alan Alda isn’t available to run as the moderate Republican who can win 50 states.
The original planned ending of West Wing was him winning, by the way.
I don't care what the makers said, I was watching it irl and there was no way Alda was going to win.
The original script plan was for him to win.
The fantasy faction of the writers won out over the realists.
I thought it was because John Spencer died, so they thought it would be too much to have to kill of his character *and* have the Dems losing?
Boris Johnson succeeded in putting the Tories out of power for a generation it looks like.
I think in years to come people will re-assess 2019 as the election that Jeremy Corbyn lost and Johnson got lucky.
People will see Starmer as the heir to Johnson, continuing his Red, White and Blue Brexit policies.
It's a constant source of wonder to me how so many people on here feel able to write the history of Keir Starmer's premiership before a single day of it has yet transpired. PBers are truly an impressive bunch.
Exactly. Thatcher, Blair, Cameron - we didn't really know in advance how any of them would turn out, and certainly couldn't foresee at the beginning how it would end for each of them. Johnson and Truss are the exceptions, where the nature of the s***show we were in for was obvious, to those who were looking, all along.
You expected Johnson to be some kind of egregious Putin patsy, and then had to invent a tenuous conspiracy theory to explain why he turned out to be the most resolute Western opponent of the invasion of Ukraine.
Nah, he was just two faced enough to shaft Putin as much as everyone else he has shafted over the years.
It is going to be interesting to see what happens if both the Republican Party in the US and the Conservative Party here lose in their respective elections.
@HYUFD seems adamant a defeated Conservative Party will move further from the traditional One Nation platform to a more National Conservative position which I define as socially conservative, nationalist, anti-immigration, sceptical on climate change and broadly in favour of lower taxes and higher spending (especially the maintenance of pensioner benefits).
How long does that continue before someone somewhere cries "enough"? The argument seems to be Starmer and Labour will rapidly become hugely unpopular and that will allow almost any incarantion of the Conservatives the opportunity to regain power in 2029. Perhaps, perhaps not.
In America, does Trumpite populism die with Trump (or rather with another defeat)? Does Donald Junior or Eric become the standard bearer for their father's legacy - does someone else come forward or would there be enough of a vacuum for Haley to return in 2028 as a traditional Republican facing either President or VP Harris as the Democrat candidate? I think it's fair to save both the Republican and Democratic primaries in 2028 will be more interesting than they have been this year.
The opposition party usually gets a boost of numbers as those dissatisfied with the incumbent Government try to register their discontent. This influx of more moderate opinion will likely force the party back to more centrist positions. It could well be by 2034 the Conservative Party will be unrecognisable from the party now in office.
Whilst there is continued mass immigration at the southern border Trumpite populism wont die. This is what Elon Musk tweeted today.
Incentives drive behavior.
Until the loss of votes from ushering in vast numbers of illegal immigrants exceeds the likely gain of votes over time (as they are gradually legalized), the Democratic Party has a strong incentive to maximize illegal immigration.
There's a certain irony that under Obama, illegal immigration at the Southern border came down sharply, before first rising under Trump and then Biden.
Like our own cross-channel travellers, it may be more down to factors in other countries than actual border policies; the latter can only mitigate the former.
One could say the factor in France is that the percentage of asylum applications that are successful is a third of the percentage that are successful in the UK.
But given that it's our useless Home Office that has made us the global outlier not France being particularly mean, it's still a pull factor not a push factor.
Boris Johnson succeeded in putting the Tories out of power for a generation it looks like.
I think in years to come people will re-assess 2019 as the election that Jeremy Corbyn lost and Johnson got lucky.
People will see Starmer as the heir to Johnson, continuing his Red, White and Blue Brexit policies.
It's a constant source of wonder to me how so many people on here feel able to write the history of Keir Starmer's premiership before a single day of it has yet transpired. PBers are truly an impressive bunch.
Exactly. Thatcher, Blair, Cameron - we didn't really know in advance how any of them would turn out, and certainly couldn't foresee at the beginning how it would end for each of them. Johnson and Truss are the exceptions, where the nature of the s***show we were in for was obvious, to those who were looking, all along.
You expected Johnson to be some kind of egregious Putin patsy, and then had to invent a tenuous conspiracy theory to explain why he turned out to be the most resolute Western opponent of the invasion of Ukraine.
Nah, he was just two faced enough to shaft Putin as much as everyone else he has shafted over the years.
It's amazing how far some people will go to actually deny that Johnson might actually have done good on one or two occasions.
What he did on Ukraine was right, and I believe for the right reasons.
The Child Benefit withdrawal changes look like the biggest middle-class tax break.
Moving it from £50–60k, to £60-80k is a huge difference.
Nobody thinks about the poor pensioners
Who are still benefiting from the triple lock.
And if pensioners don't like Rishi who else have they got to vote for?
The full state pension is £11,502 pa, 2024/25. Roughly half the minimum wage. It is not unrealistic to ensure that it doesn't lose its already small value. Plenty of pensioners (thankfully I am not one of them) live on not very much.
It is going to be interesting to see what happens if both the Republican Party in the US and the Conservative Party here lose in their respective elections.
@HYUFD seems adamant a defeated Conservative Party will move further from the traditional One Nation platform to a more National Conservative position which I define as socially conservative, nationalist, anti-immigration, sceptical on climate change and broadly in favour of lower taxes and higher spending (especially the maintenance of pensioner benefits).
How long does that continue before someone somewhere cries "enough"? The argument seems to be Starmer and Labour will rapidly become hugely unpopular and that will allow almost any incarantion of the Conservatives the opportunity to regain power in 2029. Perhaps, perhaps not.
In America, does Trumpite populism die with Trump (or rather with another defeat)? Does Donald Junior or Eric become the standard bearer for their father's legacy - does someone else come forward or would there be enough of a vacuum for Haley to return in 2028 as a traditional Republican facing either President or VP Harris as the Democrat candidate? I think it's fair to save both the Republican and Democratic primaries in 2028 will be more interesting than they have been this year.
The opposition party usually gets a boost of numbers as those dissatisfied with the incumbent Government try to register their discontent. This influx of more moderate opinion will likely force the party back to more centrist positions. It could well be by 2034 the Conservative Party will be unrecognisable from the party now in office.
I think Trump is hell-bent - in his Mafia boss way - on turning the Republicans into a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Trump Corporation. The appointment of his daughter-in-law to the RNC is a sure sign. It will take an almighty battle - with blood on the walls - to wrench control from him and his minions. It's all pretty wretched as we can't expect the Democrats to win in perpetuity even if Biden prevails in November.
But what does that mean, really, when Trump is dead? I mean, a lot of people will fetishise him in the way people did with Thatcher or Reagan some time after they'd become incapable and then died.
But it's easy to do that when the person can't say "Er, no, you're a prick". Truss doing Thatcher was pure cosplay, for instance. Thatcher wouldn't have given it the time of day had she been alive and fully capable, possibly pointing out that Liz was dicking about in the Lib Dems when she was beating the unions.
Trump might yet have a big role in 2028, or maybe even in 2032. But he might well be dead or more obviously suffering from dementia than he is now. After that, people genuflect for a while but the world keeps spinning and people find new ways to win. Don Jr fancies himself, but it's essentially reflected glory.
It is going to be interesting to see what happens if both the Republican Party in the US and the Conservative Party here lose in their respective elections.
@HYUFD seems adamant a defeated Conservative Party will move further from the traditional One Nation platform to a more National Conservative position which I define as socially conservative, nationalist, anti-immigration, sceptical on climate change and broadly in favour of lower taxes and higher spending (especially the maintenance of pensioner benefits).
How long does that continue before someone somewhere cries "enough"? The argument seems to be Starmer and Labour will rapidly become hugely unpopular and that will allow almost any incarantion of the Conservatives the opportunity to regain power in 2029. Perhaps, perhaps not.
In America, does Trumpite populism die with Trump (or rather with another defeat)? Does Donald Junior or Eric become the standard bearer for their father's legacy - does someone else come forward or would there be enough of a vacuum for Haley to return in 2028 as a traditional Republican facing either President or VP Harris as the Democrat candidate? I think it's fair to save both the Republican and Democratic primaries in 2028 will be more interesting than they have been this year.
The opposition party usually gets a boost of numbers as those dissatisfied with the incumbent Government try to register their discontent. This influx of more moderate opinion will likely force the party back to more centrist positions. It could well be by 2034 the Conservative Party will be unrecognisable from the party now in office.
I think Trump is hell-bent - in his Mafia boss way - on turning the Republicans into a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Trump Corporation. The appointment of his daughter-in-law to the RNC is a sure sign. It will take an almighty battle - with blood on the walls - to wrench control from him and his minions. It's all pretty wretched as we can't expect the Democrats to win in perpetuity even if Biden prevails in November.
And of course if Biden wins unless its a massive win which is unlikely Trump will just claim the election was rigged and mobilise his supporters.
He can't realistically mobilise from Mar-a-Lago. What made 6th January dangerous was that he was in fact in the White House, did in fact have the nuclear football, had in fact got people in the key offices of state (albeit many didn't go along with it). Even then, whilst it was insurrection and Pence and others were bloody lucky they got to the saferoom, it wasn't that close to success.
The danger would potentially be the situation in 2028 if Trump wins. Then he gets the keys back and doesn't appoint dangerous RINOs like Pence and Bill Barr (!) this time.
The number of right-wing folk musing on how badly Starmer will fail is surely the best evidence that the Cons are doomed. They might be right - the leftwingers who did the same for Johnson were certainly proved right - but that doesn't alter what is going to happen sometime over the next ten months.
If only the Govt had tried running the country well instead of constantly playing silly buggers. Starmer isn't going to walk into any of their oh-so-obvious elephant traps and none of their wizard wheezes will fly with a public that have right royally had enough of them.
The Child Benefit withdrawal changes look like the biggest middle-class tax break.
Moving it from £50–60k, to £60-80k is a huge difference.
Nobody thinks about the poor pensioners
Who are still benefiting from the triple lock.
And if pensioners don't like Rishi who else have they got to vote for?
The full state pension is £11,502 pa, 2024/25. Roughly half the minimum wage. It is not unrealistic to ensure that it doesn't lose its already small value. Plenty of pensioners (thankfully I am not one of them) live on not very much.
But the converse is also true. Many pensioners live on a hell of a lot at a time in life when their outgoings are usually low: no mortgage, no student loans, no commuting costs, kids off their hands etc. By focusing on universal benefits such as the pension we spend our money incredibly inefficiently leaving not enough for those genuinely in need.
The number of right-wing folk musing on how badly Starmer will fail is surely the best evidence that the Cons are doomed. They might be right - the leftwingers who did the same for Johnson were certainly proved right - but that doesn't alter what is going to happen sometime over the next ten months.
If only the Govt had tried running the country well instead of constantly playing silly buggers. Starmer isn't going to walk into any of their oh-so-obvious elephant traps and none of their wizard wheezes will fly with a public that have right royally had enough of them.
It doesn’t matter what political skill SKS shows, the Tories will ignore it and pretend he’s an idiot. It is precisely this attitude that has allowed him to completely out-gun them at every turn.
Looking at the results from yesterday's party primaries for US House in Alabama's new 2nd district - and who doesn't? - found out a fun fact.
Namely, that while the 2nd-place Democrat, Anthony Daniels (22.4%) is currently minority leader in Alabama state house, his district is in NORTH Alabama, while the 2nd congressional district is in SOUTH Alabama.
US Constitutional requirement is that members of Congress be inhabitants of their state NOT district.
However, as practical matter, most voters - especially rural voters - want a representative who is from their district. And closer to their own local, the better.
Which helps explain why 1st-place Democrat, Shomari Figures (43.5%) built up such a lead in the primary AND (yours truly reckons) will be tough for Daniels to beat in the April 16 runoff.
For in addition to serving in the Biden administration under AG Merrick Garland (a fellow Alabaman) Figures belongs to a local Black political dynasty of sorts in Mobile (30% of the Dem primary vote) thus local roots AND base; note he garnered 60% of the vote from Mobile County.
Plus beyond this base, Figures carried 7 other counties across the district, compared to 4 won by Daniels, and 1 carried by 3rd-place finisher Napoleon Bracy, a state house member also from Mobile.
My guess is that county patterns heavily impacted by endorsements, etc. by local elected officials and other opinion leaders, plus focus of individual candidate efforts & spending.
Including plenty from "outside" interests (though this is a federal election) for example the "Israel lobby".
Why? Because the winner of the April Democratic runoff is a VERY good bet to be elected this November.
The Child Benefit withdrawal changes look like the biggest middle-class tax break.
Moving it from £50–60k, to £60-80k is a huge difference.
Nobody thinks about the poor pensioners
Who are still benefiting from the triple lock.
And if pensioners don't like Rishi who else have they got to vote for?
The full state pension is £11,502 pa, 2024/25. Roughly half the minimum wage. It is not unrealistic to ensure that it doesn't lose its already small value. Plenty of pensioners (thankfully I am not one of them) live on not very much.
Is that really a fair comparison, though? Low income pensioners will, amongst other benefits in kind, receive pension credit. Very many recipients of the state pension will own their home outright and face very low costs, or have other pensions or substantial savings. Indeed a lot are neither asset nor cash poor.
There are certainly poor pensioners - some very poor. But it's sleight of hand to suggest that the only or even best way to deal with that genuine issue is to keep upping the income of all pensioners including very rich ones.
Further, it's just wrong to say that the triple lock merely ensures the existing state pension doesn't lose value. It ensures it gains value inexorably over time - it's the GREATER of average wage rises, inflation, or 2.5%. That might have been the right policy when it was established, and might even still be today, but it doesn't merely ensure it keeps up - it means it catches up.
I'm always skeptical of names associated with Hitch-Hiker:
Colin Colin (a.k.a. part #223219B) is a small, round, melon-sized, flying security robot which Ford Prefect enslaves to aid in his escape from the newly re-organized Guide offices in the novel Mostly Harmless. "Its motion sensors are the usual Sirius Cybernetics garbage." Ford captures Colin by trapping the robot with his towel and re-wiring the robot's pleasure circuits, inducing a cyber-ecstasy trip.
Ford uses Colin's cheerfulness to break into the Guide's corporate accounting software in order to plant a Trojan Horse module that will automatically pay anything billed to his InfiniDim Enterprises credit card. Colin also saves Ford's life when the Guide's new security force, the Vogons, fire at him with a rocket launcher after Ford feels the need to jump out of the window. Colin was last seen being sent (at the risk of possible incineration) to look after the delivery of the Guide Mark II to Arthur Dent in the Vogon postal
I trust I will be convinced otherwise in due course
I listened to the budget speech live, and when I heard Hunt working through his NHS section, as someone who has spent a lifetime working with public sector budgeting, I thought I knew what his game was.
Having set out how the future spending plan (CPI plus 1%) was being retained, he launched into his investment plan to improve NHS productivity with this vast IT programme, then started talking about the recurring savings this would achieve through improved productivity, and mentioned that he'd got NHS agreement to sign up to these.
At this point I presumed his game was to deduct the anticipated savings, which would grow cumulatively year on year, from the red book forecasts of future NHS spending, thereby creating a nice stream of credits to the that he is using to offset the costs of the tax cuts.
This would, of course, mean that the "inflation +1%" is the "before" number, with the "after" - and actual funding delivered - being "inflation +1% - predicted improved productivity".
If this is the case, this will be the 'catch' in his forward forecasts, waiting for some journalist to uncover.
On the other hand, if you take the earlier part of his speech at his word, the NHS would get the inflation +1% and in addition get to re-invest the savings from improved productivity into meeting growing demand and improving services.
All my experience of IT projects is that they don't actually deliver the predicted savings that went into the business case to justify them, but - assuming things work out well - enable you to do more stuff or better work within the same resouces that you had before. If that happens, and he's taken the former approach of nabbing the savings in advance, that's a lot of financial gried coming down the line.
Once they hire some very expensive consultants to install XP SP2 things will improve. Those waiting lists will vanish - mark my words.
The Child Benefit withdrawal changes look like the biggest middle-class tax break.
Moving it from £50–60k, to £60-80k is a huge difference.
Nobody thinks about the poor pensioners
Who are still benefiting from the triple lock.
And if pensioners don't like Rishi who else have they got to vote for?
The full state pension is £11,502 pa, 2024/25. Roughly half the minimum wage. It is not unrealistic to ensure that it doesn't lose its already small value. Plenty of pensioners (thankfully I am not one of them) live on not very much.
But the converse is also true. Many pensioners live on a hell of a lot at a time in life when their outgoings are usually low: no mortgage, no student loans, no commuting costs, kids off their hands etc. By focusing on universal benefits such as the pension we spend our money incredibly inefficiently leaving not enough for those genuinely in need.
So focus on the ones that do live on a hell of a lot, and leave the rest alone.
Ed Conways chart is the most significant. As I predicted yesterday another “tax cutting “ budget miraculously increases the tax burden.
The State still thinks it needs to spend more of our money and that it can do so better than we can. Everything else is fluff.
Tax is eye watering nowadays , absolutely shocking when you see the deductions.
Yep but it’s what we get for it that really grates. A police system that all too often is a genuine hazard, a military that can’t fire a missile or get a boat out of port, an education system that leaves millions illiterate and unemployable, worse and worse local services, a criminal justice system that is on its knees and, I would admit despite my previous post, pretty modest pensions. It’s not even close to value for money and in Scotland it’s even worse.
I'm always skeptical of names associated with Hitch-Hiker:
Colin Colin (a.k.a. part #223219B) is a small, round, melon-sized, flying security robot which Ford Prefect enslaves to aid in his escape from the newly re-organized Guide offices in the novel Mostly Harmless. "Its motion sensors are the usual Sirius Cybernetics garbage." Ford captures Colin by trapping the robot with his towel and re-wiring the robot's pleasure circuits, inducing a cyber-ecstasy trip.
Ford uses Colin's cheerfulness to break into the Guide's corporate accounting software in order to plant a Trojan Horse module that will automatically pay anything billed to his InfiniDim Enterprises credit card. Colin also saves Ford's life when the Guide's new security force, the Vogons, fire at him with a rocket launcher after Ford feels the need to jump out of the window. Colin was last seen being sent (at the risk of possible incineration) to look after the delivery of the Guide Mark II to Arthur Dent in the Vogon postal
I trust I will be convinced otherwise in due course
I have a pro-Musk/anti-Biden tweet from crazybob2020 already lined up to prove you wrong. Or right. Or something.
The Child Benefit withdrawal changes look like the biggest middle-class tax break.
Moving it from £50–60k, to £60-80k is a huge difference.
Nobody thinks about the poor pensioners
Who are still benefiting from the triple lock.
And if pensioners don't like Rishi who else have they got to vote for?
The full state pension is £11,502 pa, 2024/25. Roughly half the minimum wage. It is not unrealistic to ensure that it doesn't lose its already small value. Plenty of pensioners (thankfully I am not one of them) live on not very much.
But the converse is also true. Many pensioners live on a hell of a lot at a time in life when their outgoings are usually low: no mortgage, no student loans, no commuting costs, kids off their hands etc. By focusing on universal benefits such as the pension we spend our money incredibly inefficiently leaving not enough for those genuinely in need.
So focus on the ones that do live on a hell of a lot, and leave the rest alone.
We need to stop giving them money. Personally I would taper the pension for anyone whose personal pensions were worth more than 2x the pension. But then, I am not looking to be elected.
Ed Conways chart is the most significant. As I predicted yesterday another “tax cutting “ budget miraculously increases the tax burden.
The State still thinks it needs to spend more of our money and that it can do so better than we can. Everything else is fluff.
Tax is eye watering nowadays , absolutely shocking when you see the deductions.
Yep but it’s what we get for it that really grates. A police system that all too often is a genuine hazard, a military that can’t fire a missile or get a boat out of port, an education system that leaves millions illiterate and unemployable, worse and worse local services, a criminal justice system that is on its knees and, I would admit despite my previous post, pretty modest pensions. It’s not even close to value for money and in Scotland it’s even worse.
In fairness, the police system has always been dreadful. As for the others we've gone from 'pot luck' to 'bad luck'.
The Child Benefit withdrawal changes look like the biggest middle-class tax break.
Moving it from £50–60k, to £60-80k is a huge difference.
Nobody thinks about the poor pensioners
Who are still benefiting from the triple lock.
And if pensioners don't like Rishi who else have they got to vote for?
The full state pension is £11,502 pa, 2024/25. Roughly half the minimum wage. It is not unrealistic to ensure that it doesn't lose its already small value. Plenty of pensioners (thankfully I am not one of them) live on not very much.
But the converse is also true. Many pensioners live on a hell of a lot at a time in life when their outgoings are usually low: no mortgage, no student loans, no commuting costs, kids off their hands etc. By focusing on universal benefits such as the pension we spend our money incredibly inefficiently leaving not enough for those genuinely in need.
So focus on the ones that do live on a hell of a lot, and leave the rest alone.
We need to stop giving them money. Personally I would taper the pension for anyone whose personal pensions were worth more than 2x the pension. But then, I am not looking to be elected.
You are setting up a moral hazard there. Why save for a pension if the government is just going to claw it back. Why not spend the money on avocado toast, lattes and cocaine?
I listened to the budget speech live, and when I heard Hunt working through his NHS section, as someone who has spent a lifetime working with public sector budgeting, I thought I knew what his game was.
Having set out how the future spending plan (CPI plus 1%) was being retained, he launched into his investment plan to improve NHS productivity with this vast IT programme, then started talking about the recurring savings this would achieve through improved productivity, and mentioned that he'd got NHS agreement to sign up to these.
At this point I presumed his game was to deduct the anticipated savings, which would grow cumulatively year on year, from the red book forecasts of future NHS spending, thereby creating a nice stream of credits to the that he is using to offset the costs of the tax cuts.
This would, of course, mean that the "inflation +1%" is the "before" number, with the "after" - and actual funding delivered - being "inflation +1% - predicted improved productivity".
If this is the case, this will be the 'catch' in his forward forecasts, waiting for some journalist to uncover.
On the other hand, if you take the earlier part of his speech at his word, the NHS would get the inflation +1% and in addition get to re-invest the savings from improved productivity into meeting growing demand and improving services.
All my experience of IT projects is that they don't actually deliver the predicted savings that went into the business case to justify them, but - assuming things work out well - enable you to do more stuff or better work within the same resouces that you had before. If that happens, and he's taken the former approach of nabbing the savings in advance, that's a lot of financial gried coming down the line.
In your final sentence, is "gried" a typo for "grief" OR is it "greed"?
Jesus Christ stop being so ridiculously unpleasant to @Colin
By all means argue his points or examine his failings but trying to chase him off the site for “posting too many comments on his first day” is FUCKING RIDICULOUS
Let’s face it this site is now down to an unappetising bunch of tedious Woke lawyers, accountants and retired IT nerds, and me and @BlancheLivermore
We need fresh blood. Desperately. Don’t chase it away
As @Colin asked for a photo I for one will be friendly and do as he requests
I’ve just been for a dip in our local waterfall (under my hotel room). Omg it is Edenic. The butterflies dance over your head and the fish come up to say hello. Absolute bliss
I listened to the budget speech live, and when I heard Hunt working through his NHS section, as someone who has spent a lifetime working with public sector budgeting, I thought I knew what his game was.
Having set out how the future spending plan (CPI plus 1%) was being retained, he launched into his investment plan to improve NHS productivity with this vast IT programme, then started talking about the recurring savings this would achieve through improved productivity, and mentioned that he'd got NHS agreement to sign up to these.
At this point I presumed his game was to deduct the anticipated savings, which would grow cumulatively year on year, from the red book forecasts of future NHS spending, thereby creating a nice stream of credits to the that he is using to offset the costs of the tax cuts.
This would, of course, mean that the "inflation +1%" is the "before" number, with the "after" - and actual funding delivered - being "inflation +1% - predicted improved productivity".
If this is the case, this will be the 'catch' in his forward forecasts, waiting for some journalist to uncover.
On the other hand, if you take the earlier part of his speech at his word, the NHS would get the inflation +1% and in addition get to re-invest the savings from improved productivity into meeting growing demand and improving services.
All my experience of IT projects is that they don't actually deliver the predicted savings that went into the business case to justify them, but - assuming things work out well - enable you to do more stuff or better work within the same resouces that you had before. If that happens, and he's taken the former approach of nabbing the savings in advance, that's a lot of financial gried coming down the line.
In your final sentence, is "gried" a typo for "grief" OR is it "greed"?
Jesus Christ stop being so ridiculously unpleasant to @Colin
By all means argue his points or examine his failings but trying to chase him off the site for “posting too many comments on his first day” is FUCKING RIDICULOUS
Let’s face it this site is now down to an unappetising bunch of tedious Woke lawyers, accountants and retired IT nerds, and me and @BlancheLivermore
We need fresh blood. Desperately. Don’t chase it away
As @Colin asked for a photo I for one will be friendly and do as he requests
I’ve just been for a dip in our local waterfall (under my hotel room). Omg it is Edenic. The butterflies dance over your head and the fish come up to say hello. Absolute bliss
Honestly mate its water off a ducks back. I know people resort to ad hominem personal attacks when they have no other arguments. Nice photo by the way.
It is going to be interesting to see what happens if both the Republican Party in the US and the Conservative Party here lose in their respective elections.
@HYUFD seems adamant a defeated Conservative Party will move further from the traditional One Nation platform to a more National Conservative position which I define as socially conservative, nationalist, anti-immigration, sceptical on climate change and broadly in favour of lower taxes and higher spending (especially the maintenance of pensioner benefits).
How long does that continue before someone somewhere cries "enough"? The argument seems to be Starmer and Labour will rapidly become hugely unpopular and that will allow almost any incarantion of the Conservatives the opportunity to regain power in 2029. Perhaps, perhaps not.
In America, does Trumpite populism die with Trump (or rather with another defeat)? Does Donald Junior or Eric become the standard bearer for their father's legacy - does someone else come forward or would there be enough of a vacuum for Haley to return in 2028 as a traditional Republican facing either President or VP Harris as the Democrat candidate? I think it's fair to save both the Republican and Democratic primaries in 2028 will be more interesting than they have been this year.
The opposition party usually gets a boost of numbers as those dissatisfied with the incumbent Government try to register their discontent. This influx of more moderate opinion will likely force the party back to more centrist positions. It could well be by 2034 the Conservative Party will be unrecognisable from the party now in office.
Whilst there is continued mass immigration at the southern border Trumpite populism wont die. This is what Elon Musk tweeted today.
Incentives drive behavior.
Until the loss of votes from ushering in vast numbers of illegal immigrants exceeds the likely gain of votes over time (as they are gradually legalized), the Democratic Party has a strong incentive to maximize illegal immigration.
Jesus Christ stop being so ridiculously unpleasant to @Colin
By all means argue his points or examine his failings but trying to chase him off the site for “posting too many comments on his first day” is FUCKING RIDICULOUS
Let’s face it this site is now down to an unappetising bunch of tedious Woke lawyers, accountants and retired IT nerds, and me and @BlancheLivermore
We need fresh blood. Desperately. Don’t chase it away
As @Colin asked for a photo I for one will be friendly and do as he requests
I’ve just been for a dip in our local waterfall (under my hotel room). Omg it is Edenic. The butterflies dance over your head and the fish come up to say hello. Absolute bliss
Honestly mate its water off a ducks back. I know people resort to ad hominem personal attacks when they have no other arguments. Nice photo by the way.
I mean, you may be a bot, or you may not. You may be a Putinite shill, or not. EVEN IF YOU ARE you should be politely received - even welcomed as a newbie - until and unless you break some major rule that provokes a ban
This site is dying because of a deadly dull Woke consensus that doesn’t just react badly to right wing opinions, it secretly (or not-so-secretly) yearns to forbid them entirely. In that it reflects so much modern discourse. Unfortunately
Jesus Christ stop being so ridiculously unpleasant to @Colin
By all means argue his points or examine his failings but trying to chase him off the site for “posting too many comments on his first day” is FUCKING RIDICULOUS
Let’s face it this site is now down to an unappetising bunch of tedious Woke lawyers, accountants and retired IT nerds, and me and @BlancheLivermore
We need fresh blood. Desperately. Don’t chase it away
As @Colin asked for a photo I for one will be friendly and do as he requests
I’ve just been for a dip in our local waterfall (under my hotel room). Omg it is Edenic. The butterflies dance over your head and the fish come up to say hello. Absolute bliss
The Child Benefit withdrawal changes look like the biggest middle-class tax break.
Moving it from £50–60k, to £60-80k is a huge difference.
Nobody thinks about the poor pensioners
Who are still benefiting from the triple lock.
And if pensioners don't like Rishi who else have they got to vote for?
The full state pension is £11,502 pa, 2024/25. Roughly half the minimum wage. It is not unrealistic to ensure that it doesn't lose its already small value. Plenty of pensioners (thankfully I am not one of them) live on not very much.
But the converse is also true. Many pensioners live on a hell of a lot at a time in life when their outgoings are usually low: no mortgage, no student loans, no commuting costs, kids off their hands etc. By focusing on universal benefits such as the pension we spend our money incredibly inefficiently leaving not enough for those genuinely in need.
So focus on the ones that do live on a hell of a lot, and leave the rest alone.
We need to stop giving them money. Personally I would taper the pension for anyone whose personal pensions were worth more than 2x the pension. But then, I am not looking to be elected.
You are setting up a moral hazard there. Why save for a pension if the government is just going to claw it back. Why not spend the money on avocado toast, lattes and cocaine?
Your local greasy spoon has a more adventurous menu than mine.
The Child Benefit withdrawal changes look like the biggest middle-class tax break.
Moving it from £50–60k, to £60-80k is a huge difference.
Nobody thinks about the poor pensioners
Who are still benefiting from the triple lock.
And if pensioners don't like Rishi who else have they got to vote for?
The full state pension is £11,502 pa, 2024/25. Roughly half the minimum wage. It is not unrealistic to ensure that it doesn't lose its already small value. Plenty of pensioners (thankfully I am not one of them) live on not very much.
But the converse is also true. Many pensioners live on a hell of a lot at a time in life when their outgoings are usually low: no mortgage, no student loans, no commuting costs, kids off their hands etc. By focusing on universal benefits such as the pension we spend our money incredibly inefficiently leaving not enough for those genuinely in need.
So focus on the ones that do live on a hell of a lot, and leave the rest alone.
We need to stop giving them money. Personally I would taper the pension for anyone whose personal pensions were worth more than 2x the pension. But then, I am not looking to be elected.
I think the taxation of pensioners ought to be looked at - and perhaps will if, as looks possible, NI is submerged into IT. But the state pension itself is a sort of Universal Basic Income for old people and as such has the advantage of preventing most of the most abject poverty + does not discourage personal saving/planning for retirement income.
If this were a pub quiz, I’d have guessed far earlier than 400m years for the first trees. Earth was super-dull for the first 4Bn years then.
What is also amazing is that the bacteria that break down trees were a couple hundred millions after trees evolved. So for a while there were just loads and loads of trees piling up that had fallen over and didn't rot.
Jesus Christ stop being so ridiculously unpleasant to @Colin
By all means argue his points or examine his failings but trying to chase him off the site for “posting too many comments on his first day” is FUCKING RIDICULOUS
Let’s face it this site is now down to an unappetising bunch of tedious Woke lawyers, accountants and retired IT nerds, and me and @BlancheLivermore
We need fresh blood. Desperately. Don’t chase it away
As @Colin asked for a photo I for one will be friendly and do as he requests
I’ve just been for a dip in our local waterfall (under my hotel room). Omg it is Edenic. The butterflies dance over your head and the fish come up to say hello. Absolute bliss
What the hell is that abomination of a beer?
The word “light” should never appear on beer.
I would hate to start an argument, but regardless of the merits of the word 'light' on beer, there is, I assert one interesting fact about beer. Which is that non-alcoholic beer actually tastes of beer, whereas non-alcoholic wine tastes of nothing interesting at all, and certainly has no relation to wine. Do others think the same?
The Child Benefit withdrawal changes look like the biggest middle-class tax break.
Moving it from £50–60k, to £60-80k is a huge difference.
Nobody thinks about the poor pensioners
Who are still benefiting from the triple lock.
And if pensioners don't like Rishi who else have they got to vote for?
The full state pension is £11,502 pa, 2024/25. Roughly half the minimum wage. It is not unrealistic to ensure that it doesn't lose its already small value. Plenty of pensioners (thankfully I am not one of them) live on not very much.
But the converse is also true. Many pensioners live on a hell of a lot at a time in life when their outgoings are usually low: no mortgage, no student loans, no commuting costs, kids off their hands etc. By focusing on universal benefits such as the pension we spend our money incredibly inefficiently leaving not enough for those genuinely in need.
So focus on the ones that do live on a hell of a lot, and leave the rest alone.
We need to stop giving them money. Personally I would taper the pension for anyone whose personal pensions were worth more than 2x the pension. But then, I am not looking to be elected.
You are setting up a moral hazard there. Why save for a pension if the government is just going to claw it back. Why not spend the money on avocado toast, lattes and cocaine?
That is true but if people do that they boost current consumption and growth. And my proposal would be that the tapering would be gradual so those with private pensions of up to £22k would still get the full pension. Those on £33k would be getting half and only those on more than £44k would get none at all. By that point you are well above the average income. The savings would be immense and allow us to support those who really need it more.
The Child Benefit withdrawal changes look like the biggest middle-class tax break.
Moving it from £50–60k, to £60-80k is a huge difference.
Nobody thinks about the poor pensioners
Who are still benefiting from the triple lock.
And if pensioners don't like Rishi who else have they got to vote for?
The full state pension is £11,502 pa, 2024/25. Roughly half the minimum wage. It is not unrealistic to ensure that it doesn't lose its already small value. Plenty of pensioners (thankfully I am not one of them) live on not very much.
But the converse is also true. Many pensioners live on a hell of a lot at a time in life when their outgoings are usually low: no mortgage, no student loans, no commuting costs, kids off their hands etc. By focusing on universal benefits such as the pension we spend our money incredibly inefficiently leaving not enough for those genuinely in need.
So focus on the ones that do live on a hell of a lot, and leave the rest alone.
We need to stop giving them money. Personally I would taper the pension for anyone whose personal pensions were worth more than 2x the pension. But then, I am not looking to be elected.
I think the taxation of pensioners ought to be looked at - and perhaps will if, as looks possible, NI is submerged into IT. But the state pension itself is a sort of Universal Basic Income for old people and as such has the advantage of preventing most of the most abject poverty + does not discourage personal saving/planning for retirement income.
There’s something in harmonising the pension, tax and NI thresholds, and various UC cut-offs. But it’s a complex picture.
If we’re binning NI we should also harmonise income, dividend, and capital gains tax rates; and in so doing probably cut the rate.
Jesus Christ stop being so ridiculously unpleasant to @Colin
By all means argue his points or examine his failings but trying to chase him off the site for “posting too many comments on his first day” is FUCKING RIDICULOUS
Let’s face it this site is now down to an unappetising bunch of tedious Woke lawyers, accountants and retired IT nerds, and me and @BlancheLivermore
We need fresh blood. Desperately. Don’t chase it away
As @Colin asked for a photo I for one will be friendly and do as he requests
I’ve just been for a dip in our local waterfall (under my hotel room). Omg it is Edenic. The butterflies dance over your head and the fish come up to say hello. Absolute bliss
Honestly mate its water off a ducks back. I know people resort to ad hominem personal attacks when they have no other arguments. Nice photo by the way.
I mean, you may be a bot, or you may not. You may be a Putinite shill, or not. EVEN IF YOU ARE you should be politely received - even welcomed as a newbie - until and unless you break some major rule that provokes a ban
This site is dying because of a deadly dull Woke consensus that doesn’t just react badly to right wing opinions, it secretly (or not-so-secretly) yearns to forbid them entirely. In that it reflects so much modern discourse. Unfortunately
Ive monitored this site for a while. Amazingly the so called Putinist shills have been totally correct about the ukraine war and the consensus on here embarrassingly wrong although i will admit you yourself finally came round to a better way of seeing things. But as for the likes of Bartholomew Roberts totally laughable.
Ed Conways chart is the most significant. As I predicted yesterday another “tax cutting “ budget miraculously increases the tax burden.
The State still thinks it needs to spend more of our money and that it can do so better than we can. Everything else is fluff.
The Tories will be going round claiming to have cut people's taxes. As people see their taxes go to the highest they have ever been .
Don't the Tories get it? People aren't as stupid as they think. You can't say to voters struggling for money that they've never had it so good. That they can't let labour come in and ruin the good times.
Jesus Christ stop being so ridiculously unpleasant to @Colin
By all means argue his points or examine his failings but trying to chase him off the site for “posting too many comments on his first day” is FUCKING RIDICULOUS
Let’s face it this site is now down to an unappetising bunch of tedious Woke lawyers, accountants and retired IT nerds, and me and @BlancheLivermore
We need fresh blood. Desperately. Don’t chase it away
As @Colin asked for a photo I for one will be friendly and do as he requests
I’ve just been for a dip in our local waterfall (under my hotel room). Omg it is Edenic. The butterflies dance over your head and the fish come up to say hello. Absolute bliss
What the hell is that abomination of a beer?
The word “light” should never appear on beer.
I would hate to start an argument, but regardless of the merits of the word 'light' on beer, there is, I assert one interesting fact about beer. Which is that non-alcoholic beer actually tastes of beer, whereas non-alcoholic wine tastes of nothing interesting at all, and certainly has no relation to wine. Do others think the same?
I sort of agree, but I also think that the taste of beer is so closely linked to the buzz of the alcohol that it still never feels “right”. It can, however, be a nice “savoury” drink to have with a meal when driving in a way that (as you say) alcohol free wine doesn’t seem to be able to achieve.
Comments
Edit - John Edwards 2004. Before he was famous...
Cummings, in his pomp and before his eye test and falling out with the PM, gave Javid an ultimatum to sack advisers and put in Cummings' hand-picked people as his top Treasury team. Javid refused and resigned. Sunak was then in a strong position as to lose one Chancellor could be seen as unfortunate, but to lose two would be deemed carelessness. He did accept some Number 10 people, but also insisted on his own team, and increasingly sidelined those with loyalties to his neighbour as both Johnson's and Cummings' positions weakened for different albeit related reasons. Ultimately, of course, the avalanche of departures which killed Johnson in 2022 was started by Sunak... and by none other than then Health Secretary, Javid.
So the idea Sunak was a stooge, and that Johnson was in a position to transform economic policy is wrong. He was probably in his strongest position immediately on appointing Sunak, but within days COVID took over the agenda completely so whether he'd planned anything or not, the window had closed forever.
with apparently close to 100% reported (source NYT)
Donald J. Trump
9,243 87.6% = 20 delegates (100%)
20
Nikki Haley
1,266 12.0%
Vivek Ramaswamy
45 0.4%
Total reported
10,554
Note four Alaska state house districts reporting ZERO votes as of Noon Wednesday: 37,38,39 and 40.
> these four districts stretch from the Aleutians past the Bering Strait and Point Barrow all the way to Canada; inhabitants and voters are mostly Alaska Natives and Inuit.
I now suspect he will announce this as early as tomorrow, and certainly by next Wednesday.
Whatever day he does it, it will be at 1038 in mornings.
Add in Corbyn who had been exposed for what he really was, plus a vaguely charismatic Johnson and you get an 80 seat majority.
Having set out how the future spending plan (CPI plus 1%) was being retained, he launched into his investment plan to improve NHS productivity with this vast IT programme, then started talking about the recurring savings this would achieve through improved productivity, and mentioned that he'd got NHS agreement to sign up to these.
At this point I presumed his game was to deduct the anticipated savings, which would grow cumulatively year on year, from the red book forecasts of future NHS spending, thereby creating a nice stream of credits to the that he is using to offset the costs of the tax cuts.
This would, of course, mean that the "inflation +1%" is the "before" number, with the "after" - and actual funding delivered - being "inflation +1% - predicted improved productivity".
If this is the case, this will be the 'catch' in his forward forecasts, waiting for some journalist to uncover.
On the other hand, if you take the earlier part of his speech at his word, the NHS would get the inflation +1% and in addition get to re-invest the savings from improved productivity into meeting growing demand and improving services.
All my experience of IT projects is that they don't actually deliver the predicted savings that went into the business case to justify them, but - assuming things work out well - enable you to do more stuff or better work within the same resouces that you had before. If that happens, and he's taken the former approach of nabbing the savings in advance, that's a lot of financial gried coming down the line.
Quite the change though. It's good but I do miss one thing. Before, if there was a post slagging me off and somebody went in and maliciously 'liked' it, I'd know who that was and I would put their avatar on my dartboard in the attic and throw darts at it for half an hour or so (which helped). I can't do this now.
https://x.com/disclosetv/status/1765032997995081999?s=20
@HYUFD seems adamant a defeated Conservative Party will move further from the traditional One Nation platform to a more National Conservative position which I define as socially conservative, nationalist, anti-immigration, sceptical on climate change and broadly in favour of lower taxes and higher spending (especially the maintenance of pensioner benefits).
How long does that continue before someone somewhere cries "enough"? The argument seems to be Starmer and Labour will rapidly become hugely unpopular and that will allow almost any incarantion of the Conservatives the opportunity to regain power in 2029. Perhaps, perhaps not.
In America, does Trumpite populism die with Trump (or rather with another defeat)? Does Donald Junior or Eric become the standard bearer for their father's legacy - does someone else come forward or would there be enough of a vacuum for Haley to return in 2028 as a traditional Republican facing either President or VP Harris as the Democrat candidate? I think it's fair to save both the Republican and Democratic primaries in 2028 will be more interesting than they have been this year.
The opposition party usually gets a boost of numbers as those dissatisfied with the incumbent Government try to register their discontent. This influx of more moderate opinion will likely force the party back to more centrist positions. It could well be by 2034 the Conservative Party will be unrecognisable from the party now in office.
Personally reckon you're correct both ways!
But even if we accept that Boris could not immediately transform economic policy upon appointing Sunak as being true - he was facing some unprecedented cirumstances and I think it is true that limited his options in the short term - that was not the point being made. The point was that some Boris fans have attempted to suggest he really wanted to change things but they blame Sunak for not being able to.
I fundamentally don't buy PMs whinging about their Chancellors anyway, especially when one was still powerful enough among MPs that 1/3 wanted him back after he was ousted, but if he had wanted to change things then I think he would have done something earlier, even if he could not at the very instant Sunak was appointed.
Am I to believe he totally intended to but was just unlucky that at the very moment he was finally able to he was ousted?
That's not even me saying Boris was inherently bad, I think he got some calls right as PM on Covid and Ukraine among others, but it's just not plausible to me he wanted to do a Trussite reinvention but apparently never got around to it. Not even a small start in that direction?
More plausible to me is that Truss was going after the Boris loyalist vote, and was happy to endorse a message she believed in but which was logically inconsistent with saying he should still have been PM, when he did not announce such plans. It worked, so was a smart thing to do.
The NTSB being so publicly annoyed with Boeing feels no-optimal for Boeing. But what can anyone do without risking handing the commercial airliner market to Airbus?
Which is that whoever wins next time operates in circumstances and constraints by which it is impossible to do well, and difficult to do OK.
And the big bit of evidence for this is that in the realm of political commentary there are no big ideas that are both plausible and possible with respect to the politics, the economics or, in most cases, both. The UK's situation is that whatever your future vision you would not start from here.
This is what Elon Musk tweeted today.
Incentives drive behavior.
Until the loss of votes from ushering in vast numbers of illegal immigrants exceeds the likely gain of votes over time (as they are gradually legalized), the Democratic Party has a strong incentive to maximize illegal immigration.
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1765405574525542779?s=20
I know it doesn't really work like that as relatively few people have actually voted in the primaries, and it's complex due to different rules in different states, but she's picked up about three in ten votes cast, so that's presumably a very rough idea of about a quarter to a third of GOP or GOP-leaning conservatives being Trump-sceptical, and 20% of them is a sizeable prize.
I remmeber Bernie, Gabbard, Warren, KLOBUCHAR, Buttigieg, and Bloomberg.
I mean, it does slightly depend how you count "beaten" in the case of those who withdraw before Iowa. But I think it's fair to say if you file to stand, and say "I'm running for President" and appear on the debate stage, then that counts. Indeed, Harris was on the ballot in early voting states (albeit with negligible votes as she had in fact withdrawn and endorsed Biden).
1) Recreate Canary Wharf in Milton Keynes - set aside a couple of grid squares for high-rise skyscrapers as part of a plan to allow the population to grow up to a million
2) Accelerate the East-West rail project to link it to Oxford and Cambridge
3) Profit
And if pensioners don't like Rishi who else have they got to vote for?
But given that it's our useless Home Office that has made us the global outlier not France being particularly mean, it's still a pull factor not a push factor.
https://www.migrationwatchuk.org/briefing-paper/511/recent-change-in-the-uk-asylum-grant-rate
What we got was a Boris much worse as a person than even sceptics expected, Covid and Ukraine, Truss and a Tory party behaving like a creche.
Bloomberg (via Seattle Times) - Musk says he won’t donate to either presidential candidate
Pretty rich (pun intended) coming from guy giving mega-bucks in-kind contributions to Trump via X.
You'd have thought the poll leads were the other way round based on how both sides behaved.
The State still thinks it needs to spend more of our money and that it can do so better than we can. Everything else is fluff.
Given the way Russia is using immigration as a political weapon, I wouldn't be surprised if they were minorly involved in this area as well.
(They were flying immigrants toRussia and Belarus, then driving them to the Polish, Finnish and Estonian borders
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-67503800
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2023/01/18/russia-to-weaponise-migration-to-eu-with-increased-flights-into-kaliningrad-report-warns
And Russians themselves into the US:
https://globalinitiative.net/analysis/russian-migrant-smugglers-us-southern-border/
What he did on Ukraine was right, and I believe for the right reasons.
But it's easy to do that when the person can't say "Er, no, you're a prick". Truss doing Thatcher was pure cosplay, for instance. Thatcher wouldn't have given it the time of day had she been alive and fully capable, possibly pointing out that Liz was dicking about in the Lib Dems when she was beating the unions.
Trump might yet have a big role in 2028, or maybe even in 2032. But he might well be dead or more obviously suffering from dementia than he is now. After that, people genuflect for a while but the world keeps spinning and people find new ways to win. Don Jr fancies himself, but it's essentially reflected glory.
The danger would potentially be the situation in 2028 if Trump wins. Then he gets the keys back and doesn't appoint dangerous RINOs like Pence and Bill Barr (!) this time.
If only the Govt had tried running the country well instead of constantly playing silly buggers. Starmer isn't going to walk into any of their oh-so-obvious elephant traps and none of their wizard wheezes will fly with a public that have right royally had enough of them.
Underrate him at your peril I would say.
Namely, that while the 2nd-place Democrat, Anthony Daniels (22.4%) is currently minority leader in Alabama state house, his district is in NORTH Alabama, while the 2nd congressional district is in SOUTH Alabama.
US Constitutional requirement is that members of Congress be inhabitants of their state NOT district.
However, as practical matter, most voters - especially rural voters - want a representative who is from their district. And closer to their own local, the better.
Which helps explain why 1st-place Democrat, Shomari Figures (43.5%) built up such a lead in the primary AND (yours truly reckons) will be tough for Daniels to beat in the April 16 runoff.
For in addition to serving in the Biden administration under AG Merrick Garland (a fellow Alabaman) Figures belongs to a local Black political dynasty of sorts in Mobile (30% of the Dem primary vote) thus local roots AND base; note he garnered 60% of the vote from Mobile County.
Plus beyond this base, Figures carried 7 other counties across the district, compared to 4 won by Daniels, and 1 carried by 3rd-place finisher Napoleon Bracy, a state house member also from Mobile.
My guess is that county patterns heavily impacted by endorsements, etc. by local elected officials and other opinion leaders, plus focus of individual candidate efforts & spending.
Including plenty from "outside" interests (though this is a federal election) for example the "Israel lobby".
Why? Because the winner of the April Democratic runoff is a VERY good bet to be elected this November.
There are certainly poor pensioners - some very poor. But it's sleight of hand to suggest that the only or even best way to deal with that genuine issue is to keep upping the income of all pensioners including very rich ones.
Further, it's just wrong to say that the triple lock merely ensures the existing state pension doesn't lose value. It ensures it gains value inexorably over time - it's the GREATER of average wage rises, inflation, or 2.5%. That might have been the right policy when it was established, and might even still be today, but it doesn't merely ensure it keeps up - it means it catches up.
Colin
Colin (a.k.a. part #223219B) is a small, round, melon-sized, flying security robot which Ford Prefect enslaves to aid in his escape from the newly re-organized Guide offices in the novel Mostly Harmless. "Its motion sensors are the usual Sirius Cybernetics garbage." Ford captures Colin by trapping the robot with his towel and re-wiring the robot's pleasure circuits, inducing a cyber-ecstasy trip.
Ford uses Colin's cheerfulness to break into the Guide's corporate accounting software in order to plant a Trojan Horse module that will automatically pay anything billed to his InfiniDim Enterprises credit card. Colin also saves Ford's life when the Guide's new security force, the Vogons, fire at him with a rocket launcher after Ford feels the need to jump out of the window. Colin was last seen being sent (at the risk of possible incineration) to look after the delivery of the Guide Mark II to Arthur Dent in the Vogon postal
I trust I will be convinced otherwise in due course
Oh Happy Day - Blind Boys of Alabama
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFbKMWsiF5o&list=OLAK5uy_neIZmwZ4fHUuPHibsFAlCnjv_2YYGfW44&index=6
PB - covering all the bases. Or wickets or wtf you call 'em.
By all means argue his points or examine his failings but trying to chase him off the site for “posting too many comments on his first day” is FUCKING RIDICULOUS
Let’s face it this site is now down to an unappetising bunch of tedious Woke lawyers, accountants and retired IT nerds, and me and @BlancheLivermore
We need fresh blood. Desperately. Don’t chase it away
As @Colin asked for a photo I for one will be friendly and do as he requests
I’ve just been for a dip in our local waterfall (under my hotel room). Omg it is Edenic. The butterflies dance over your head and the fish come up to say hello. Absolute bliss
This site is dying because of a deadly dull Woke consensus that doesn’t just react badly to right wing opinions, it secretly (or not-so-secretly) yearns to forbid them entirely. In that it reflects so much modern discourse. Unfortunately
As time marches on, he's been left.
The word “light” should never appear on beer.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/mar/06/worlds-oldest-fossilised-trees-discovered-along-devon-and-somerset-coast
It’s a sign the state’s attorney general is nearing a decision about whether to bring criminal charges.
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/06/donald-trump-2020-election-probe-arizona-00145377
The savings would be immense and allow us to support those who really need it more.
If we’re binning NI we should also harmonise income, dividend, and capital gains tax rates; and in so doing probably cut the rate.
Don't the Tories get it? People aren't as stupid as they think. You can't say to voters struggling for money that they've never had it so good. That they can't let labour come in and ruin the good times.
What good times?