Is it bad (or good) that I now think in centimetres for height (I'm trying to shake off imperial in almost everything now - thinking in kg for weight....)?
It's not morally bad, though it seems a waste of effort. Stone is a great measure if weight. It's substantial enough to be meaningful 'I need to lose a stone and a half'. Nobody needs to lose a kilo. Some people could shit a kilo in a single setting. As for cm and height, that strikes me as daft.
Shitting a kilo would be quite an achievement but shitting an American pound, as they like to use to weigh themselves, is definitely on the cards. Not that I routinely weigh my stools.
"Also in the campaign period at least 1 flight will take off for Rwanda, perhaps more with one on eve of polling. ....... The Rwanda flights will return Ref voters back to the Conservatives. You can say recent polling on Rwanda doesn’t suggest the Rwanda flights will generate a stampede of Ref back to Con, and I will laugh at you because that hypothetical polling is a poor predictive measure for how humans radically change their views once elections are called and Rwanda flights are happening."
I can see the headline: 50 Flown to Rwanda, 500 more come over the Channel
Which rather suggests that the the government don’t actually want ANY flights to take off. They want to replicate the anger around Brexit with the anger that the Rwanda plan is being thwarted by the blob, and used that as Johnson used Brexit. So arguably if you want the Tories to lose, and you are involved in refugee claims in court, don’t block the flights… As you have outlined, there will be far more coming than going.
Though some people (52%) actually thought that Brexit was a good idea, no one, well almost no one, thinks Rwanda is other than a very expensive gimmick.
There's a real fear it might work. Hence all the attacks on it by the UN, third sector and refugee charities. They are worried it will set a precedent.
This explains their confused attack lines: they seamlessly switch from its terrible to it will make no difference at all and back again.
Some of us simply find it an extraordinarily badly planned project with no realistic scope of working beyond a few hundred migrants a year. Horrendously expensive for the results.
It's Groundnut Scheme level thinking.
Once upon a time, Tories supported (a) prudence in public spending (b) the rule of law (UK) (c) the rule of law (international).
Nah, it's Guardianista virtue-signalling circle-jerk masturbation for social and professional acceptance reasons.
We all know this. So do you.
The Conservatives are languishing in the polls and to work out why, I think it’s valuable to examine Casino Royale’s post here.
First, CR argues by assertion, ‘it’s right because I say it’s right’. This echoes the Conservative government passing an act to say Rwanda is safe, irrespective of the facts.
Secondly, CR tries to link the debate to the culture wars by throwing in “virtue-signalling”. The Tories have repeatedly tried the same, but it’s not proven popular with the voters.
Thirdly, there’s no attempt at polite discourse here. It’s just straight to the insults, ‘owning the libs’. This is also failing to be attractive to the electorate.
What a lot of rubbish. I've said that (a) the visceral reaction to it is because the UN, charities and refugees themselves fear it might be effective and that (b) that's because they favour open borders and have a strange sense of cultural relativism.
Their real worry is that they know this offer might prove very popular with the voters, if it worked, and hence all the moves to strangle it at birth.
If you think the same tough choices don't await SKS in a few months time then I've got a bridge to sell you.
Can we pick this apart a little? "The UN, charities and refugees themselves fear it might be effective". Which bit of the UN, which charities etc? The UN very much wants to STOP mass refugee events and the crises they create. You suggest that they favour "open borders" the context of millions fleeing war and poverty and then ending up stuck in giant refugee camps being tended to by the UN. You think the UN actually want to be on the hook feeding millions of refugees? really?
The key to this is "if it worked" and as all the experts in every related field have pointed out - it can't work because structurally its bonkers.
You have linked the "deport them to Rwanda" policy as being opposed by a globalist cabal - the UN, charities, refugees - who apparently want refugees. So is their fear that every refugees globally might end up sent to Rwanda?
Lets just look at the asylum seekers in the UK. There's c. 100,000 already here, with more arriving every day in sizeable numbers. So call it 120,000 on the basis that "Rwanda works" and people stop arriving.
Rwanda can't take 120,000 We can't process 120,000 through the courts We can't intern 120,000 prior to them going to court We can't process the 120,000's applications due to a lack of money and resources in the Home Office We can't keep track of 120,000 after booking their arrival. We lose them.
So the rather basic problem with you/Leon endlessly championing the policy is that the policy was written in crayon to appeal to morons. You two aren't morons, yet suck it up like you are.
Why?
I can't remember who coined the term 'simplism', or applied it to political thinking, but there's a lot of it about.
Basically, any argument that boils down to They Should Just... is simplism. Especially when you don't specify who They are. Brexit ended up being about simplism- They Should Just give us the benefits of EU membership that we valued without the messy bits we disliked. They Should Just quarantine the vulnerable during the pandemic was another. Or, on the left, They Should Just get the rich to pay more tax. Or, in this case, They Should Just stop coming over here.
Trouble is, it's rarely as simple as Just Doing This. For taxes, it's totally fair to point out that if you overpluck the goose, it will fly away. That the nice bits about Europe depend on the messy plumbing. That the sausages are tasty but you don't want to see them being made.
I'm not going to blame voters for wanting a simpler world, or for voting for it. But it's blooming irresponsible for opinion formers or wannabe leaders to pretend they can deliver one.
I disagree with pretty much every bit of this post, and it's not surprising, because it goes to the heart of where I think we diverge politically. In almost all such cases, we are loftily informed that 'it isn't as simple as that' - but the simple solution under discussion is never tried.
Crime is a one example - simply make the consequences of doing crime a bit worse than the benefits of doing crime, and crime will fall. 'Oh that's far too simplistic' we're told - 'the reasons for crime are vastly complex, involving social issues, family breakdown, poverty, inequality etc., and we must reject 'simple solutions' and 'tackle those other issues''. So the simple solution is never applied. ..
The US laboratory has fairly clearly demonstrated that isn't true.
You don’t have to go all the way to the US. In the UK we’ve tried tougher sentencing multiple times. In fact one of the issues with our crime policy is it’s basically a sentencing policy. To my mind sentencing is too distant from the actual commission of the crime, too abstract.
I do think the stats show some fairly simple answers to vast swathes of crime. Tightening up security, making it harder to nick stuff, and ensuring criminals actually get caught by following up on reports, all shown time and time again to work. Why did everyone start stealing Land Rovers? Because their security was shit.
I wonder what proportion of the petty criminal brigade now bother with physical theft? Its pretty low margin, high risk.
For the organised I would suggest creating ltd companies and bankrupting them. For the less organised just petty online fraud.
You would have to be extremely unlucky to get jailed for either, and probably pays better than typical physical theft.
In some ways the rest of the world will miss the @SNP. They've done us a favour by retesting lots of very very stupid policies.. so we can all be absolutely sure they don't work. Who will do that for us now?
"Also in the campaign period at least 1 flight will take off for Rwanda, perhaps more with one on eve of polling. ....... The Rwanda flights will return Ref voters back to the Conservatives. You can say recent polling on Rwanda doesn’t suggest the Rwanda flights will generate a stampede of Ref back to Con, and I will laugh at you because that hypothetical polling is a poor predictive measure for how humans radically change their views once elections are called and Rwanda flights are happening."
I can see the headline: 50 Flown to Rwanda, 500 more come over the Channel
Which rather suggests that the the government don’t actually want ANY flights to take off. They want to replicate the anger around Brexit with the anger that the Rwanda plan is being thwarted by the blob, and used that as Johnson used Brexit. So arguably if you want the Tories to lose, and you are involved in refugee claims in court, don’t block the flights… As you have outlined, there will be far more coming than going.
Though some people (52%) actually thought that Brexit was a good idea, no one, well almost no one, thinks Rwanda is other than a very expensive gimmick.
There's a real fear it might work. Hence all the attacks on it by the UN, third sector and refugee charities. They are worried it will set a precedent.
This explains their confused attack lines: they seamlessly switch from its terrible to it will make no difference at all and back again.
Some of us simply find it an extraordinarily badly planned project with no realistic scope of working beyond a few hundred migrants a year. Horrendously expensive for the results.
It's Groundnut Scheme level thinking.
Once upon a time, Tories supported (a) prudence in public spending (b) the rule of law (UK) (c) the rule of law (international).
Nah, it's Guardianista virtue-signalling circle-jerk masturbation for social and professional acceptance reasons.
We all know this. So do you.
The Conservatives are languishing in the polls and to work out why, I think it’s valuable to examine Casino Royale’s post here.
First, CR argues by assertion, ‘it’s right because I say it’s right’. This echoes the Conservative government passing an act to say Rwanda is safe, irrespective of the facts.
Secondly, CR tries to link the debate to the culture wars by throwing in “virtue-signalling”. The Tories have repeatedly tried the same, but it’s not proven popular with the voters.
Thirdly, there’s no attempt at polite discourse here. It’s just straight to the insults, ‘owning the libs’. This is also failing to be attractive to the electorate.
What a lot of rubbish. I've said that (a) the visceral reaction to it is because the UN, charities and refugees themselves fear it might be effective and that (b) that's because they favour open borders and have a strange sense of cultural relativism.
Their real worry is that they know this offer might prove very popular with the voters, if it worked, and hence all the moves to strangle it at birth.
If you think the same tough choices don't await SKS in a few months time then I've got a bridge to sell you.
Can we pick this apart a little? "The UN, charities and refugees themselves fear it might be effective". Which bit of the UN, which charities etc? The UN very much wants to STOP mass refugee events and the crises they create. You suggest that they favour "open borders" the context of millions fleeing war and poverty and then ending up stuck in giant refugee camps being tended to by the UN. You think the UN actually want to be on the hook feeding millions of refugees? really?
The key to this is "if it worked" and as all the experts in every related field have pointed out - it can't work because structurally its bonkers.
You have linked the "deport them to Rwanda" policy as being opposed by a globalist cabal - the UN, charities, refugees - who apparently want refugees. So is their fear that every refugees globally might end up sent to Rwanda?
Lets just look at the asylum seekers in the UK. There's c. 100,000 already here, with more arriving every day in sizeable numbers. So call it 120,000 on the basis that "Rwanda works" and people stop arriving.
Rwanda can't take 120,000 We can't process 120,000 through the courts We can't intern 120,000 prior to them going to court We can't process the 120,000's applications due to a lack of money and resources in the Home Office We can't keep track of 120,000 after booking their arrival. We lose them.
So the rather basic problem with you/Leon endlessly championing the policy is that the policy was written in crayon to appeal to morons. You two aren't morons, yet suck it up like you are.
Why?
I can't remember who coined the term 'simplism', or applied it to political thinking, but there's a lot of it about.
Basically, any argument that boils down to They Should Just... is simplism. Especially when you don't specify who They are. Brexit ended up being about simplism- They Should Just give us the benefits of EU membership that we valued without the messy bits we disliked. They Should Just quarantine the vulnerable during the pandemic was another. Or, on the left, They Should Just get the rich to pay more tax. Or, in this case, They Should Just stop coming over here.
Trouble is, it's rarely as simple as Just Doing This. For taxes, it's totally fair to point out that if you overpluck the goose, it will fly away. That the nice bits about Europe depend on the messy plumbing. That the sausages are tasty but you don't want to see them being made.
I'm not going to blame voters for wanting a simpler world, or for voting for it. But it's blooming irresponsible for opinion formers or wannabe leaders to pretend they can deliver one.
I disagree with pretty much every bit of this post, and it's not surprising, because it goes to the heart of where I think we diverge politically. In almost all such cases, we are loftily informed that 'it isn't as simple as that' - but the simple solution under discussion is never tried.
Crime is a one example - simply make the consequences of doing crime a bit worse than the benefits of doing crime, and crime will fall. 'Oh that's far too simplistic' we're told - 'the reasons for crime are vastly complex, involving social issues, family breakdown, poverty, inequality etc., and we must reject 'simple solutions' and 'tackle those other issues''. So the simple solution is never applied. ..
The US laboratory has fairly clearly demonstrated that isn't true.
You don’t have to go all the way to the US. In the UK we’ve tried tougher sentencing multiple times. In fact one of the issues with our crime policy is it’s basically a sentencing policy. To my mind sentencing is too distant from the actual commission of the crime, too abstract.
I do think the stats show some fairly simple answers to vast swathes of crime. Tightening up security, making it harder to nick stuff, and ensuring criminals actually get caught by following up on reports, all shown time and time again to work. Why did everyone start stealing Land Rovers? Because their security was shit.
Yes, the risk-reward analysis of crime has little to do with the severity of the punishment if convicted, and much more to do with the chances of being caught. We have a problem in that there's little chance of being caught while committing many crimes, so why not take the risk? The recent furore over shoplifting is a good example; very little chance of being prosecuted.
Sunak should turn it into a defence of imperial measures.
Please god no, I find the occasional burst of focus by the government on imperial measure nostalgia to be bizarre and inexplicable.
Compared with other "wedge" issues it's harmless and should therefore be encouraged.
A Tory manifesto based on hedgerows, dry stone walls, Britain in Bloom, £100 million for church roof repairs, Barn Owl boxes and Imperial measures might actually be quite successful.
Another miserable day dawns. It might get up to 12C if we’re lucky today. 10 tomorrow. Rain all afternoon and tomorrow morning. The joys of spring.
Perhaps this will help?
Wall-to-wall sunshine in the Crozon peninsula, Brittany. And warm
I’m having a cappuccino and the traditional Breton cake, the “koign amman”
Unlike the cider, and even the crepe, I can’t recommend the “koign amman”
It’s some pastry apparently dipped in thick liquid sugar then deep fried. Intensely sweet and cracks your teeth, just about tolerable if you dip it in your coffee. Maybe
Not sure that sounds like it will help you lose further weight!!
Another miserable day dawns. It might get up to 12C if we’re lucky today. 10 tomorrow. Rain all afternoon and tomorrow morning. The joys of spring.
Perhaps this will help?
Wall-to-wall sunshine in the Crozon peninsula, Brittany. And warm
I’m having a cappuccino and the traditional Breton cake, the “koign amman”
Unlike the cider, and even the crepe, I can’t recommend the “koign amman”
It’s some pastry apparently dipped in thick liquid sugar then deep fried. Intensely sweet and cracks your teeth, just about tolerable if you dip it in your coffee. Maybe
Not sure that sounds like it will help you lose further weight!!
Yes, I also thought that
My usual motto is "try everything twice - because if you didn't like it the first time, maybe you just got it wrong". Worked for me with heroin, hated it first time around, second Mmm
However I am going to make an exception for the "koign amman". That's it. Over
"Also in the campaign period at least 1 flight will take off for Rwanda, perhaps more with one on eve of polling. ....... The Rwanda flights will return Ref voters back to the Conservatives. You can say recent polling on Rwanda doesn’t suggest the Rwanda flights will generate a stampede of Ref back to Con, and I will laugh at you because that hypothetical polling is a poor predictive measure for how humans radically change their views once elections are called and Rwanda flights are happening."
I can see the headline: 50 Flown to Rwanda, 500 more come over the Channel
Which rather suggests that the the government don’t actually want ANY flights to take off. They want to replicate the anger around Brexit with the anger that the Rwanda plan is being thwarted by the blob, and used that as Johnson used Brexit. So arguably if you want the Tories to lose, and you are involved in refugee claims in court, don’t block the flights… As you have outlined, there will be far more coming than going.
Though some people (52%) actually thought that Brexit was a good idea, no one, well almost no one, thinks Rwanda is other than a very expensive gimmick.
There's a real fear it might work. Hence all the attacks on it by the UN, third sector and refugee charities. They are worried it will set a precedent.
This explains their confused attack lines: they seamlessly switch from its terrible to it will make no difference at all and back again.
Some of us simply find it an extraordinarily badly planned project with no realistic scope of working beyond a few hundred migrants a year. Horrendously expensive for the results.
It's Groundnut Scheme level thinking.
Once upon a time, Tories supported (a) prudence in public spending (b) the rule of law (UK) (c) the rule of law (international).
Nah, it's Guardianista virtue-signalling circle-jerk masturbation for social and professional acceptance reasons.
We all know this. So do you.
The Conservatives are languishing in the polls and to work out why, I think it’s valuable to examine Casino Royale’s post here.
First, CR argues by assertion, ‘it’s right because I say it’s right’. This echoes the Conservative government passing an act to say Rwanda is safe, irrespective of the facts.
Secondly, CR tries to link the debate to the culture wars by throwing in “virtue-signalling”. The Tories have repeatedly tried the same, but it’s not proven popular with the voters.
Thirdly, there’s no attempt at polite discourse here. It’s just straight to the insults, ‘owning the libs’. This is also failing to be attractive to the electorate.
What a lot of rubbish. I've said that (a) the visceral reaction to it is because the UN, charities and refugees themselves fear it might be effective and that (b) that's because they favour open borders and have a strange sense of cultural relativism.
Their real worry is that they know this offer might prove very popular with the voters, if it worked, and hence all the moves to strangle it at birth.
If you think the same tough choices don't await SKS in a few months time then I've got a bridge to sell you.
Can we pick this apart a little? "The UN, charities and refugees themselves fear it might be effective". Which bit of the UN, which charities etc? The UN very much wants to STOP mass refugee events and the crises they create. You suggest that they favour "open borders" the context of millions fleeing war and poverty and then ending up stuck in giant refugee camps being tended to by the UN. You think the UN actually want to be on the hook feeding millions of refugees? really?
The key to this is "if it worked" and as all the experts in every related field have pointed out - it can't work because structurally its bonkers.
You have linked the "deport them to Rwanda" policy as being opposed by a globalist cabal - the UN, charities, refugees - who apparently want refugees. So is their fear that every refugees globally might end up sent to Rwanda?
Lets just look at the asylum seekers in the UK. There's c. 100,000 already here, with more arriving every day in sizeable numbers. So call it 120,000 on the basis that "Rwanda works" and people stop arriving.
Rwanda can't take 120,000 We can't process 120,000 through the courts We can't intern 120,000 prior to them going to court We can't process the 120,000's applications due to a lack of money and resources in the Home Office We can't keep track of 120,000 after booking their arrival. We lose them.
So the rather basic problem with you/Leon endlessly championing the policy is that the policy was written in crayon to appeal to morons. You two aren't morons, yet suck it up like you are.
Why?
I can't remember who coined the term 'simplism', or applied it to political thinking, but there's a lot of it about.
Basically, any argument that boils down to They Should Just... is simplism. Especially when you don't specify who They are. Brexit ended up being about simplism- They Should Just give us the benefits of EU membership that we valued without the messy bits we disliked. They Should Just quarantine the vulnerable during the pandemic was another. Or, on the left, They Should Just get the rich to pay more tax. Or, in this case, They Should Just stop coming over here.
Trouble is, it's rarely as simple as Just Doing This. For taxes, it's totally fair to point out that if you overpluck the goose, it will fly away. That the nice bits about Europe depend on the messy plumbing. That the sausages are tasty but you don't want to see them being made.
I'm not going to blame voters for wanting a simpler world, or for voting for it. But it's blooming irresponsible for opinion formers or wannabe leaders to pretend they can deliver one.
I disagree with pretty much every bit of this post, and it's not surprising, because it goes to the heart of where I think we diverge politically. In almost all such cases, we are loftily informed that 'it isn't as simple as that' - but the simple solution under discussion is never tried.
Crime is a one example - simply make the consequences of doing crime a bit worse than the benefits of doing crime, and crime will fall. 'Oh that's far too simplistic' we're told - 'the reasons for crime are vastly complex, involving social issues, family breakdown, poverty, inequality etc., and we must reject 'simple solutions' and 'tackle those other issues''. So the simple solution is never applied.
The same is true of every other issue. I am all for trying a simple solution, it failing, and realising a more complex multilayered approach is needed. What I am not for is never trying that simple solution, for decades, because it's too simple.
Another miserable day dawns. It might get up to 12C if we’re lucky today. 10 tomorrow. Rain all afternoon and tomorrow morning. The joys of spring.
I'm loving this chilly spring, though I assume farmers are not.
Each to his own. I think it’s fair to assume it’s not just farmers who are not loving this chilly spring.
But frankly it’s not just the chill, it’s the relentless cloud and rain.
To seriously cheer you up - and your vines - the forecast is for quite a switch come Monday. Finally some real spring sunshine and warmth for southern England. Be of good cheer!
"Also in the campaign period at least 1 flight will take off for Rwanda, perhaps more with one on eve of polling. ....... The Rwanda flights will return Ref voters back to the Conservatives. You can say recent polling on Rwanda doesn’t suggest the Rwanda flights will generate a stampede of Ref back to Con, and I will laugh at you because that hypothetical polling is a poor predictive measure for how humans radically change their views once elections are called and Rwanda flights are happening."
I can see the headline: 50 Flown to Rwanda, 500 more come over the Channel
Which rather suggests that the the government don’t actually want ANY flights to take off. They want to replicate the anger around Brexit with the anger that the Rwanda plan is being thwarted by the blob, and used that as Johnson used Brexit. So arguably if you want the Tories to lose, and you are involved in refugee claims in court, don’t block the flights… As you have outlined, there will be far more coming than going.
Though some people (52%) actually thought that Brexit was a good idea, no one, well almost no one, thinks Rwanda is other than a very expensive gimmick.
There's a real fear it might work. Hence all the attacks on it by the UN, third sector and refugee charities. They are worried it will set a precedent.
This explains their confused attack lines: they seamlessly switch from its terrible to it will make no difference at all and back again.
Some of us simply find it an extraordinarily badly planned project with no realistic scope of working beyond a few hundred migrants a year. Horrendously expensive for the results.
It's Groundnut Scheme level thinking.
Once upon a time, Tories supported (a) prudence in public spending (b) the rule of law (UK) (c) the rule of law (international).
Nah, it's Guardianista virtue-signalling circle-jerk masturbation for social and professional acceptance reasons.
We all know this. So do you.
The Conservatives are languishing in the polls and to work out why, I think it’s valuable to examine Casino Royale’s post here.
First, CR argues by assertion, ‘it’s right because I say it’s right’. This echoes the Conservative government passing an act to say Rwanda is safe, irrespective of the facts.
Secondly, CR tries to link the debate to the culture wars by throwing in “virtue-signalling”. The Tories have repeatedly tried the same, but it’s not proven popular with the voters.
Thirdly, there’s no attempt at polite discourse here. It’s just straight to the insults, ‘owning the libs’. This is also failing to be attractive to the electorate.
What a lot of rubbish. I've said that (a) the visceral reaction to it is because the UN, charities and refugees themselves fear it might be effective and that (b) that's because they favour open borders and have a strange sense of cultural relativism.
Their real worry is that they know this offer might prove very popular with the voters, if it worked, and hence all the moves to strangle it at birth.
If you think the same tough choices don't await SKS in a few months time then I've got a bridge to sell you.
Can we pick this apart a little? "The UN, charities and refugees themselves fear it might be effective". Which bit of the UN, which charities etc? The UN very much wants to STOP mass refugee events and the crises they create. You suggest that they favour "open borders" the context of millions fleeing war and poverty and then ending up stuck in giant refugee camps being tended to by the UN. You think the UN actually want to be on the hook feeding millions of refugees? really?
The key to this is "if it worked" and as all the experts in every related field have pointed out - it can't work because structurally its bonkers.
You have linked the "deport them to Rwanda" policy as being opposed by a globalist cabal - the UN, charities, refugees - who apparently want refugees. So is their fear that every refugees globally might end up sent to Rwanda?
Lets just look at the asylum seekers in the UK. There's c. 100,000 already here, with more arriving every day in sizeable numbers. So call it 120,000 on the basis that "Rwanda works" and people stop arriving.
Rwanda can't take 120,000 We can't process 120,000 through the courts We can't intern 120,000 prior to them going to court We can't process the 120,000's applications due to a lack of money and resources in the Home Office We can't keep track of 120,000 after booking their arrival. We lose them.
So the rather basic problem with you/Leon endlessly championing the policy is that the policy was written in crayon to appeal to morons. You two aren't morons, yet suck it up like you are.
Why?
I can't remember who coined the term 'simplism', or applied it to political thinking, but there's a lot of it about.
Basically, any argument that boils down to They Should Just... is simplism. Especially when you don't specify who They are. Brexit ended up being about simplism- They Should Just give us the benefits of EU membership that we valued without the messy bits we disliked. They Should Just quarantine the vulnerable during the pandemic was another. Or, on the left, They Should Just get the rich to pay more tax. Or, in this case, They Should Just stop coming over here.
Trouble is, it's rarely as simple as Just Doing This. For taxes, it's totally fair to point out that if you overpluck the goose, it will fly away. That the nice bits about Europe depend on the messy plumbing. That the sausages are tasty but you don't want to see them being made.
I'm not going to blame voters for wanting a simpler world, or for voting for it. But it's blooming irresponsible for opinion formers or wannabe leaders to pretend they can deliver one.
I disagree with pretty much every bit of this post, and it's not surprising, because it goes to the heart of where I think we diverge politically. In almost all such cases, we are loftily informed that 'it isn't as simple as that' - but the simple solution under discussion is never tried.
Crime is a one example - simply make the consequences of doing crime a bit worse than the benefits of doing crime, and crime will fall. 'Oh that's far too simplistic' we're told - 'the reasons for crime are vastly complex, involving social issues, family breakdown, poverty, inequality etc., and we must reject 'simple solutions' and 'tackle those other issues''. So the simple solution is never applied. ..
The US laboratory has fairly clearly demonstrated that isn't true.
You don’t have to go all the way to the US. In the UK we’ve tried tougher sentencing multiple times. In fact one of the issues with our crime policy is it’s basically a sentencing policy. To my mind sentencing is too distant from the actual commission of the crime, too abstract.
I do think the stats show some fairly simple answers to vast swathes of crime. Tightening up security, making it harder to nick stuff, and ensuring criminals actually get caught by following up on reports, all shown time and time again to work. Why did everyone start stealing Land Rovers? Because their security was shit.
Deterrence roughly equals sanction multiplied by chance of being caught and punished. The size of the sanction barely matters if the chance of experiencing it is low.
But if you are unwilling or unable to pay to make the probability high, you have to make the consequences utterly horrific. And it still probably fails. So the death penalty is probably a mistake pragmatically (lower chance of juries convicting) and Rwanda is unlikely to deter in its current configuration. And cutting petty crime is going to cost you, in increased eyes on the streets.
And policy-wise, small scale, experiments that have been thought through in advance are great. Testing a hypothesis, if you like. But there's a gap between that and trying something because you want it to work and brushing aside objections because they come from the wrong people.
"Also in the campaign period at least 1 flight will take off for Rwanda, perhaps more with one on eve of polling. ....... The Rwanda flights will return Ref voters back to the Conservatives. You can say recent polling on Rwanda doesn’t suggest the Rwanda flights will generate a stampede of Ref back to Con, and I will laugh at you because that hypothetical polling is a poor predictive measure for how humans radically change their views once elections are called and Rwanda flights are happening."
I can see the headline: 50 Flown to Rwanda, 500 more come over the Channel
Which rather suggests that the the government don’t actually want ANY flights to take off. They want to replicate the anger around Brexit with the anger that the Rwanda plan is being thwarted by the blob, and used that as Johnson used Brexit. So arguably if you want the Tories to lose, and you are involved in refugee claims in court, don’t block the flights… As you have outlined, there will be far more coming than going.
Though some people (52%) actually thought that Brexit was a good idea, no one, well almost no one, thinks Rwanda is other than a very expensive gimmick.
There's a real fear it might work. Hence all the attacks on it by the UN, third sector and refugee charities. They are worried it will set a precedent.
This explains their confused attack lines: they seamlessly switch from its terrible to it will make no difference at all and back again.
Some of us simply find it an extraordinarily badly planned project with no realistic scope of working beyond a few hundred migrants a year. Horrendously expensive for the results.
It's Groundnut Scheme level thinking.
Once upon a time, Tories supported (a) prudence in public spending (b) the rule of law (UK) (c) the rule of law (international).
Nah, it's Guardianista virtue-signalling circle-jerk masturbation for social and professional acceptance reasons.
We all know this. So do you.
The Conservatives are languishing in the polls and to work out why, I think it’s valuable to examine Casino Royale’s post here.
First, CR argues by assertion, ‘it’s right because I say it’s right’. This echoes the Conservative government passing an act to say Rwanda is safe, irrespective of the facts.
Secondly, CR tries to link the debate to the culture wars by throwing in “virtue-signalling”. The Tories have repeatedly tried the same, but it’s not proven popular with the voters.
Thirdly, there’s no attempt at polite discourse here. It’s just straight to the insults, ‘owning the libs’. This is also failing to be attractive to the electorate.
What a lot of rubbish. I've said that (a) the visceral reaction to it is because the UN, charities and refugees themselves fear it might be effective and that (b) that's because they favour open borders and have a strange sense of cultural relativism.
Their real worry is that they know this offer might prove very popular with the voters, if it worked, and hence all the moves to strangle it at birth.
If you think the same tough choices don't await SKS in a few months time then I've got a bridge to sell you.
Can we pick this apart a little? "The UN, charities and refugees themselves fear it might be effective". Which bit of the UN, which charities etc? The UN very much wants to STOP mass refugee events and the crises they create. You suggest that they favour "open borders" the context of millions fleeing war and poverty and then ending up stuck in giant refugee camps being tended to by the UN. You think the UN actually want to be on the hook feeding millions of refugees? really?
The key to this is "if it worked" and as all the experts in every related field have pointed out - it can't work because structurally its bonkers.
You have linked the "deport them to Rwanda" policy as being opposed by a globalist cabal - the UN, charities, refugees - who apparently want refugees. So is their fear that every refugees globally might end up sent to Rwanda?
Lets just look at the asylum seekers in the UK. There's c. 100,000 already here, with more arriving every day in sizeable numbers. So call it 120,000 on the basis that "Rwanda works" and people stop arriving.
Rwanda can't take 120,000 We can't process 120,000 through the courts We can't intern 120,000 prior to them going to court We can't process the 120,000's applications due to a lack of money and resources in the Home Office We can't keep track of 120,000 after booking their arrival. We lose them.
So the rather basic problem with you/Leon endlessly championing the policy is that the policy was written in crayon to appeal to morons. You two aren't morons, yet suck it up like you are.
Why?
I can't remember who coined the term 'simplism', or applied it to political thinking, but there's a lot of it about.
Basically, any argument that boils down to They Should Just... is simplism. Especially when you don't specify who They are. Brexit ended up being about simplism- They Should Just give us the benefits of EU membership that we valued without the messy bits we disliked. They Should Just quarantine the vulnerable during the pandemic was another. Or, on the left, They Should Just get the rich to pay more tax. Or, in this case, They Should Just stop coming over here.
Trouble is, it's rarely as simple as Just Doing This. For taxes, it's totally fair to point out that if you overpluck the goose, it will fly away. That the nice bits about Europe depend on the messy plumbing. That the sausages are tasty but you don't want to see them being made.
I'm not going to blame voters for wanting a simpler world, or for voting for it. But it's blooming irresponsible for opinion formers or wannabe leaders to pretend they can deliver one.
I disagree with pretty much every bit of this post, and it's not surprising, because it goes to the heart of where I think we diverge politically. In almost all such cases, we are loftily informed that 'it isn't as simple as that' - but the simple solution under discussion is never tried.
Crime is a one example - simply make the consequences of doing crime a bit worse than the benefits of doing crime, and crime will fall. 'Oh that's far too simplistic' we're told - 'the reasons for crime are vastly complex, involving social issues, family breakdown, poverty, inequality etc., and we must reject 'simple solutions' and 'tackle those other issues''. So the simple solution is never applied. ..
The US laboratory has fairly clearly demonstrated that isn't true.
You don’t have to go all the way to the US. In the UK we’ve tried tougher sentencing multiple times. In fact one of the issues with our crime policy is it’s basically a sentencing policy. To my mind sentencing is too distant from the actual commission of the crime, too abstract.
I do think the stats show some fairly simple answers to vast swathes of crime. Tightening up security, making it harder to nick stuff, and ensuring criminals actually get caught by following up on reports, all shown time and time again to work. Why did everyone start stealing Land Rovers? Because their security was shit.
Yes, the risk-reward analysis of crime has little to do with the severity of the punishment if convicted, and much more to do with the chances of being caught. We have a problem in that there's little chance of being caught while committing many crimes, so why not take the risk? The recent furore over shoplifting is a good example; very little chance of being prosecuted.
By the nature of criminals they are not good at weighing up the consequences. Certainty of being caught and a quick trial deter more than length of sentence IMO. We fail on both of those.
I wonder if the Tory founded Yougov would do a poll about whether the public would find it acceptable for The Tory party to accept donations from a donor who called for a Labour MP to be shot?
In some ways the rest of the world will miss the @SNP. They've done us a favour by retesting lots of very very stupid policies.. so we can all be absolutely sure they don't work. Who will do that for us now?
Carefully forgetting those that worked and were adopted elsewhere in UK and carefully pretended to be Unionist ideas all along.
I look forward to the first Rwandan refugee fleeing from conflict in Rwanda to the UK being returned to safe place Rwanda at great expense. I read that monies from UK to Rwanda have so far added 3% to Rwandan GDP so I guess that’s nice.
Labour should have enough good ammunition sticking to policy and politics and the very large number of failures of the government, their numerous incidents of self-contradiction, etc, not to have time to draw upon playground insults.
You call it "playground insults". A serious politician would call is "good-humoured HoC banter".
Same thing really. They learn it at Eton and Oxford.
And that's Ange's real problem.
She didn't learn the game at Oxford. At best, that means she's doing it slightly but revealingly wrong. At worst, she's an oik who shouldn't stray where she doesn't belong.
It's an interesting one, of course fundamentally it has to be wrong. However it is probably a category or so less wrong than race, sex or even weight, as whilst height does matter to a lot of things including self image through to earning potential, it tends to matter only a little.
I would place it in the somewhat unacceptable category, and am certainly guilty of using it on occasion.
I don't mind teasing people for their height so long as they are about the same height as me. So anything in the 5ft 6-7 range. We're short, but not that short, so no point getting precious about it.
Beyond that and it's too mean.
I had a work colleague around 5'4 who I would occasionally tease, but I know a bloke about 4'9 and I wouldn't dream of ribbing him. I'm about 5'7 or 5'8.
"Also in the campaign period at least 1 flight will take off for Rwanda, perhaps more with one on eve of polling. ....... The Rwanda flights will return Ref voters back to the Conservatives. You can say recent polling on Rwanda doesn’t suggest the Rwanda flights will generate a stampede of Ref back to Con, and I will laugh at you because that hypothetical polling is a poor predictive measure for how humans radically change their views once elections are called and Rwanda flights are happening."
I can see the headline: 50 Flown to Rwanda, 500 more come over the Channel
Which rather suggests that the the government don’t actually want ANY flights to take off. They want to replicate the anger around Brexit with the anger that the Rwanda plan is being thwarted by the blob, and used that as Johnson used Brexit. So arguably if you want the Tories to lose, and you are involved in refugee claims in court, don’t block the flights… As you have outlined, there will be far more coming than going.
Though some people (52%) actually thought that Brexit was a good idea, no one, well almost no one, thinks Rwanda is other than a very expensive gimmick.
There's a real fear it might work. Hence all the attacks on it by the UN, third sector and refugee charities. They are worried it will set a precedent.
This explains their confused attack lines: they seamlessly switch from its terrible to it will make no difference at all and back again.
Some of us simply find it an extraordinarily badly planned project with no realistic scope of working beyond a few hundred migrants a year. Horrendously expensive for the results.
It's Groundnut Scheme level thinking.
Once upon a time, Tories supported (a) prudence in public spending (b) the rule of law (UK) (c) the rule of law (international).
Nah, it's Guardianista virtue-signalling circle-jerk masturbation for social and professional acceptance reasons.
We all know this. So do you.
The Conservatives are languishing in the polls and to work out why, I think it’s valuable to examine Casino Royale’s post here.
First, CR argues by assertion, ‘it’s right because I say it’s right’. This echoes the Conservative government passing an act to say Rwanda is safe, irrespective of the facts.
Secondly, CR tries to link the debate to the culture wars by throwing in “virtue-signalling”. The Tories have repeatedly tried the same, but it’s not proven popular with the voters.
Thirdly, there’s no attempt at polite discourse here. It’s just straight to the insults, ‘owning the libs’. This is also failing to be attractive to the electorate.
What a lot of rubbish. I've said that (a) the visceral reaction to it is because the UN, charities and refugees themselves fear it might be effective and that (b) that's because they favour open borders and have a strange sense of cultural relativism.
Their real worry is that they know this offer might prove very popular with the voters, if it worked, and hence all the moves to strangle it at birth.
If you think the same tough choices don't await SKS in a few months time then I've got a bridge to sell you.
Can we pick this apart a little? "The UN, charities and refugees themselves fear it might be effective". Which bit of the UN, which charities etc? The UN very much wants to STOP mass refugee events and the crises they create. You suggest that they favour "open borders" the context of millions fleeing war and poverty and then ending up stuck in giant refugee camps being tended to by the UN. You think the UN actually want to be on the hook feeding millions of refugees? really?
The key to this is "if it worked" and as all the experts in every related field have pointed out - it can't work because structurally its bonkers.
You have linked the "deport them to Rwanda" policy as being opposed by a globalist cabal - the UN, charities, refugees - who apparently want refugees. So is their fear that every refugees globally might end up sent to Rwanda?
Lets just look at the asylum seekers in the UK. There's c. 100,000 already here, with more arriving every day in sizeable numbers. So call it 120,000 on the basis that "Rwanda works" and people stop arriving.
Rwanda can't take 120,000 We can't process 120,000 through the courts We can't intern 120,000 prior to them going to court We can't process the 120,000's applications due to a lack of money and resources in the Home Office We can't keep track of 120,000 after booking their arrival. We lose them.
So the rather basic problem with you/Leon endlessly championing the policy is that the policy was written in crayon to appeal to morons. You two aren't morons, yet suck it up like you are.
Why?
I can't remember who coined the term 'simplism', or applied it to political thinking, but there's a lot of it about.
Basically, any argument that boils down to They Should Just... is simplism. Especially when you don't specify who They are. Brexit ended up being about simplism- They Should Just give us the benefits of EU membership that we valued without the messy bits we disliked. They Should Just quarantine the vulnerable during the pandemic was another. Or, on the left, They Should Just get the rich to pay more tax. Or, in this case, They Should Just stop coming over here.
Trouble is, it's rarely as simple as Just Doing This. For taxes, it's totally fair to point out that if you overpluck the goose, it will fly away. That the nice bits about Europe depend on the messy plumbing. That the sausages are tasty but you don't want to see them being made.
I'm not going to blame voters for wanting a simpler world, or for voting for it. But it's blooming irresponsible for opinion formers or wannabe leaders to pretend they can deliver one.
I disagree with pretty much every bit of this post, and it's not surprising, because it goes to the heart of where I think we diverge politically. In almost all such cases, we are loftily informed that 'it isn't as simple as that' - but the simple solution under discussion is never tried.
Crime is a one example - simply make the consequences of doing crime a bit worse than the benefits of doing crime, and crime will fall. 'Oh that's far too simplistic' we're told - 'the reasons for crime are vastly complex, involving social issues, family breakdown, poverty, inequality etc., and we must reject 'simple solutions' and 'tackle those other issues''. So the simple solution is never applied. ..
The US laboratory has fairly clearly demonstrated that isn't true.
You don’t have to go all the way to the US. In the UK we’ve tried tougher sentencing multiple times. In fact one of the issues with our crime policy is it’s basically a sentencing policy. To my mind sentencing is too distant from the actual commission of the crime, too abstract.
I do think the stats show some fairly simple answers to vast swathes of crime. Tightening up security, making it harder to nick stuff, and ensuring criminals actually get caught by following up on reports, all shown time and time again to work. Why did everyone start stealing Land Rovers? Because their security was shit.
Yes, the risk-reward analysis of crime has little to do with the severity of the punishment if convicted, and much more to do with the chances of being caught. We have a problem in that there's little chance of being caught while committing many crimes, so why not take the risk? The recent furore over shoplifting is a good example; very little chance of being prosecuted.
By the nature of criminals they are not good at weighing up the consequences. Certainty of being caught and a quick trial deter more than length of sentence IMO. We fail on both of those.
Maybe SKS should put “fast track justice for young offenders” on his pledge card.
"Also in the campaign period at least 1 flight will take off for Rwanda, perhaps more with one on eve of polling. ....... The Rwanda flights will return Ref voters back to the Conservatives. You can say recent polling on Rwanda doesn’t suggest the Rwanda flights will generate a stampede of Ref back to Con, and I will laugh at you because that hypothetical polling is a poor predictive measure for how humans radically change their views once elections are called and Rwanda flights are happening."
I can see the headline: 50 Flown to Rwanda, 500 more come over the Channel
Which rather suggests that the the government don’t actually want ANY flights to take off. They want to replicate the anger around Brexit with the anger that the Rwanda plan is being thwarted by the blob, and used that as Johnson used Brexit. So arguably if you want the Tories to lose, and you are involved in refugee claims in court, don’t block the flights… As you have outlined, there will be far more coming than going.
Though some people (52%) actually thought that Brexit was a good idea, no one, well almost no one, thinks Rwanda is other than a very expensive gimmick.
There's a real fear it might work. Hence all the attacks on it by the UN, third sector and refugee charities. They are worried it will set a precedent.
This explains their confused attack lines: they seamlessly switch from its terrible to it will make no difference at all and back again.
Some of us simply find it an extraordinarily badly planned project with no realistic scope of working beyond a few hundred migrants a year. Horrendously expensive for the results.
It's Groundnut Scheme level thinking.
Once upon a time, Tories supported (a) prudence in public spending (b) the rule of law (UK) (c) the rule of law (international).
Nah, it's Guardianista virtue-signalling circle-jerk masturbation for social and professional acceptance reasons.
We all know this. So do you.
The Conservatives are languishing in the polls and to work out why, I think it’s valuable to examine Casino Royale’s post here.
First, CR argues by assertion, ‘it’s right because I say it’s right’. This echoes the Conservative government passing an act to say Rwanda is safe, irrespective of the facts.
Secondly, CR tries to link the debate to the culture wars by throwing in “virtue-signalling”. The Tories have repeatedly tried the same, but it’s not proven popular with the voters.
Thirdly, there’s no attempt at polite discourse here. It’s just straight to the insults, ‘owning the libs’. This is also failing to be attractive to the electorate.
What a lot of rubbish. I've said that (a) the visceral reaction to it is because the UN, charities and refugees themselves fear it might be effective and that (b) that's because they favour open borders and have a strange sense of cultural relativism.
Their real worry is that they know this offer might prove very popular with the voters, if it worked, and hence all the moves to strangle it at birth.
If you think the same tough choices don't await SKS in a few months time then I've got a bridge to sell you.
Can we pick this apart a little? "The UN, charities and refugees themselves fear it might be effective". Which bit of the UN, which charities etc? The UN very much wants to STOP mass refugee events and the crises they create. You suggest that they favour "open borders" the context of millions fleeing war and poverty and then ending up stuck in giant refugee camps being tended to by the UN. You think the UN actually want to be on the hook feeding millions of refugees? really?
The key to this is "if it worked" and as all the experts in every related field have pointed out - it can't work because structurally its bonkers.
You have linked the "deport them to Rwanda" policy as being opposed by a globalist cabal - the UN, charities, refugees - who apparently want refugees. So is their fear that every refugees globally might end up sent to Rwanda?
Lets just look at the asylum seekers in the UK. There's c. 100,000 already here, with more arriving every day in sizeable numbers. So call it 120,000 on the basis that "Rwanda works" and people stop arriving.
Rwanda can't take 120,000 We can't process 120,000 through the courts We can't intern 120,000 prior to them going to court We can't process the 120,000's applications due to a lack of money and resources in the Home Office We can't keep track of 120,000 after booking their arrival. We lose them.
So the rather basic problem with you/Leon endlessly championing the policy is that the policy was written in crayon to appeal to morons. You two aren't morons, yet suck it up like you are.
Why?
I can't remember who coined the term 'simplism', or applied it to political thinking, but there's a lot of it about.
Basically, any argument that boils down to They Should Just... is simplism. Especially when you don't specify who They are. Brexit ended up being about simplism- They Should Just give us the benefits of EU membership that we valued without the messy bits we disliked. They Should Just quarantine the vulnerable during the pandemic was another. Or, on the left, They Should Just get the rich to pay more tax. Or, in this case, They Should Just stop coming over here.
Trouble is, it's rarely as simple as Just Doing This. For taxes, it's totally fair to point out that if you overpluck the goose, it will fly away. That the nice bits about Europe depend on the messy plumbing. That the sausages are tasty but you don't want to see them being made.
I'm not going to blame voters for wanting a simpler world, or for voting for it. But it's blooming irresponsible for opinion formers or wannabe leaders to pretend they can deliver one.
I disagree with pretty much every bit of this post, and it's not surprising, because it goes to the heart of where I think we diverge politically. In almost all such cases, we are loftily informed that 'it isn't as simple as that' - but the simple solution under discussion is never tried.
Crime is a one example - simply make the consequences of doing crime a bit worse than the benefits of doing crime, and crime will fall. 'Oh that's far too simplistic' we're told - 'the reasons for crime are vastly complex, involving social issues, family breakdown, poverty, inequality etc., and we must reject 'simple solutions' and 'tackle those other issues''. So the simple solution is never applied. ..
The US laboratory has fairly clearly demonstrated that isn't true.
You don’t have to go all the way to the US. In the UK we’ve tried tougher sentencing multiple times. In fact one of the issues with our crime policy is it’s basically a sentencing policy. To my mind sentencing is too distant from the actual commission of the crime, too abstract.
I do think the stats show some fairly simple answers to vast swathes of crime. Tightening up security, making it harder to nick stuff, and ensuring criminals actually get caught by following up on reports, all shown time and time again to work. Why did everyone start stealing Land Rovers? Because their security was shit.
Yes, the risk-reward analysis of crime has little to do with the severity of the punishment if convicted, and much more to do with the chances of being caught. We have a problem in that there's little chance of being caught while committing many crimes, so why not take the risk? The recent furore over shoplifting is a good example; very little chance of being prosecuted.
By the nature of criminals they are not good at weighing up the consequences. Certainty of being caught and a quick trial deter more than length of sentence IMO. We fail on both of those.
We had a discussion here about shoplifting recently. That’s a crime where one is quite likely to be caught but apart from being barred from the shop nothing is likely to be done about it, by either the police or the courts. Although there was a case in a local paper recently where a persistent shoplifter has been banned from all shops in the town where he lives. Not sure how that’s enforced!
"Also in the campaign period at least 1 flight will take off for Rwanda, perhaps more with one on eve of polling. ....... The Rwanda flights will return Ref voters back to the Conservatives. You can say recent polling on Rwanda doesn’t suggest the Rwanda flights will generate a stampede of Ref back to Con, and I will laugh at you because that hypothetical polling is a poor predictive measure for how humans radically change their views once elections are called and Rwanda flights are happening."
I can see the headline: 50 Flown to Rwanda, 500 more come over the Channel
Which rather suggests that the the government don’t actually want ANY flights to take off. They want to replicate the anger around Brexit with the anger that the Rwanda plan is being thwarted by the blob, and used that as Johnson used Brexit. So arguably if you want the Tories to lose, and you are involved in refugee claims in court, don’t block the flights… As you have outlined, there will be far more coming than going.
Though some people (52%) actually thought that Brexit was a good idea, no one, well almost no one, thinks Rwanda is other than a very expensive gimmick.
There's a real fear it might work. Hence all the attacks on it by the UN, third sector and refugee charities. They are worried it will set a precedent.
This explains their confused attack lines: they seamlessly switch from its terrible to it will make no difference at all and back again.
Some of us simply find it an extraordinarily badly planned project with no realistic scope of working beyond a few hundred migrants a year. Horrendously expensive for the results.
It's Groundnut Scheme level thinking.
Once upon a time, Tories supported (a) prudence in public spending (b) the rule of law (UK) (c) the rule of law (international).
Nah, it's Guardianista virtue-signalling circle-jerk masturbation for social and professional acceptance reasons.
We all know this. So do you.
The Conservatives are languishing in the polls and to work out why, I think it’s valuable to examine Casino Royale’s post here.
First, CR argues by assertion, ‘it’s right because I say it’s right’. This echoes the Conservative government passing an act to say Rwanda is safe, irrespective of the facts.
Secondly, CR tries to link the debate to the culture wars by throwing in “virtue-signalling”. The Tories have repeatedly tried the same, but it’s not proven popular with the voters.
Thirdly, there’s no attempt at polite discourse here. It’s just straight to the insults, ‘owning the libs’. This is also failing to be attractive to the electorate.
What a lot of rubbish. I've said that (a) the visceral reaction to it is because the UN, charities and refugees themselves fear it might be effective and that (b) that's because they favour open borders and have a strange sense of cultural relativism.
Their real worry is that they know this offer might prove very popular with the voters, if it worked, and hence all the moves to strangle it at birth.
If you think the same tough choices don't await SKS in a few months time then I've got a bridge to sell you.
Can we pick this apart a little? "The UN, charities and refugees themselves fear it might be effective". Which bit of the UN, which charities etc? The UN very much wants to STOP mass refugee events and the crises they create. You suggest that they favour "open borders" the context of millions fleeing war and poverty and then ending up stuck in giant refugee camps being tended to by the UN. You think the UN actually want to be on the hook feeding millions of refugees? really?
The key to this is "if it worked" and as all the experts in every related field have pointed out - it can't work because structurally its bonkers.
You have linked the "deport them to Rwanda" policy as being opposed by a globalist cabal - the UN, charities, refugees - who apparently want refugees. So is their fear that every refugees globally might end up sent to Rwanda?
Lets just look at the asylum seekers in the UK. There's c. 100,000 already here, with more arriving every day in sizeable numbers. So call it 120,000 on the basis that "Rwanda works" and people stop arriving.
Rwanda can't take 120,000 We can't process 120,000 through the courts We can't intern 120,000 prior to them going to court We can't process the 120,000's applications due to a lack of money and resources in the Home Office We can't keep track of 120,000 after booking their arrival. We lose them.
So the rather basic problem with you/Leon endlessly championing the policy is that the policy was written in crayon to appeal to morons. You two aren't morons, yet suck it up like you are.
Why?
I can't remember who coined the term 'simplism', or applied it to political thinking, but there's a lot of it about.
Basically, any argument that boils down to They Should Just... is simplism. Especially when you don't specify who They are. Brexit ended up being about simplism- They Should Just give us the benefits of EU membership that we valued without the messy bits we disliked. They Should Just quarantine the vulnerable during the pandemic was another. Or, on the left, They Should Just get the rich to pay more tax. Or, in this case, They Should Just stop coming over here.
Trouble is, it's rarely as simple as Just Doing This. For taxes, it's totally fair to point out that if you overpluck the goose, it will fly away. That the nice bits about Europe depend on the messy plumbing. That the sausages are tasty but you don't want to see them being made.
I'm not going to blame voters for wanting a simpler world, or for voting for it. But it's blooming irresponsible for opinion formers or wannabe leaders to pretend they can deliver one.
I disagree with pretty much every bit of this post, and it's not surprising, because it goes to the heart of where I think we diverge politically. In almost all such cases, we are loftily informed that 'it isn't as simple as that' - but the simple solution under discussion is never tried.
Crime is a one example - simply make the consequences of doing crime a bit worse than the benefits of doing crime, and crime will fall. 'Oh that's far too simplistic' we're told - 'the reasons for crime are vastly complex, involving social issues, family breakdown, poverty, inequality etc., and we must reject 'simple solutions' and 'tackle those other issues''. So the simple solution is never applied. ..
The US laboratory has fairly clearly demonstrated that isn't true.
You don’t have to go all the way to the US. In the UK we’ve tried tougher sentencing multiple times. In fact one of the issues with our crime policy is it’s basically a sentencing policy. To my mind sentencing is too distant from the actual commission of the crime, too abstract.
I do think the stats show some fairly simple answers to vast swathes of crime. Tightening up security, making it harder to nick stuff, and ensuring criminals actually get caught by following up on reports, all shown time and time again to work. Why did everyone start stealing Land Rovers? Because their security was shit.
Yes, the risk-reward analysis of crime has little to do with the severity of the punishment if convicted, and much more to do with the chances of being caught. We have a problem in that there's little chance of being caught while committing many crimes, so why not take the risk? The recent furore over shoplifting is a good example; very little chance of being prosecuted.
By the nature of criminals they are not good at weighing up the consequences. Certainty of being caught and a quick trial deter more than length of sentence IMO. We fail on both of those.
Another problem is, once someone has a criminal conviction and all that goes with it, they don't have much more to lose from getting another one
"Also in the campaign period at least 1 flight will take off for Rwanda, perhaps more with one on eve of polling. ....... The Rwanda flights will return Ref voters back to the Conservatives. You can say recent polling on Rwanda doesn’t suggest the Rwanda flights will generate a stampede of Ref back to Con, and I will laugh at you because that hypothetical polling is a poor predictive measure for how humans radically change their views once elections are called and Rwanda flights are happening."
I can see the headline: 50 Flown to Rwanda, 500 more come over the Channel
Which rather suggests that the the government don’t actually want ANY flights to take off. They want to replicate the anger around Brexit with the anger that the Rwanda plan is being thwarted by the blob, and used that as Johnson used Brexit. So arguably if you want the Tories to lose, and you are involved in refugee claims in court, don’t block the flights… As you have outlined, there will be far more coming than going.
Though some people (52%) actually thought that Brexit was a good idea, no one, well almost no one, thinks Rwanda is other than a very expensive gimmick.
There's a real fear it might work. Hence all the attacks on it by the UN, third sector and refugee charities. They are worried it will set a precedent.
This explains their confused attack lines: they seamlessly switch from its terrible to it will make no difference at all and back again.
Some of us simply find it an extraordinarily badly planned project with no realistic scope of working beyond a few hundred migrants a year. Horrendously expensive for the results.
It's Groundnut Scheme level thinking.
Once upon a time, Tories supported (a) prudence in public spending (b) the rule of law (UK) (c) the rule of law (international).
Nah, it's Guardianista virtue-signalling circle-jerk masturbation for social and professional acceptance reasons.
We all know this. So do you.
The Conservatives are languishing in the polls and to work out why, I think it’s valuable to examine Casino Royale’s post here.
First, CR argues by assertion, ‘it’s right because I say it’s right’. This echoes the Conservative government passing an act to say Rwanda is safe, irrespective of the facts.
Secondly, CR tries to link the debate to the culture wars by throwing in “virtue-signalling”. The Tories have repeatedly tried the same, but it’s not proven popular with the voters.
Thirdly, there’s no attempt at polite discourse here. It’s just straight to the insults, ‘owning the libs’. This is also failing to be attractive to the electorate.
What a lot of rubbish. I've said that (a) the visceral reaction to it is because the UN, charities and refugees themselves fear it might be effective and that (b) that's because they favour open borders and have a strange sense of cultural relativism.
Their real worry is that they know this offer might prove very popular with the voters, if it worked, and hence all the moves to strangle it at birth.
If you think the same tough choices don't await SKS in a few months time then I've got a bridge to sell you.
Can we pick this apart a little? "The UN, charities and refugees themselves fear it might be effective". Which bit of the UN, which charities etc? The UN very much wants to STOP mass refugee events and the crises they create. You suggest that they favour "open borders" the context of millions fleeing war and poverty and then ending up stuck in giant refugee camps being tended to by the UN. You think the UN actually want to be on the hook feeding millions of refugees? really?
The key to this is "if it worked" and as all the experts in every related field have pointed out - it can't work because structurally its bonkers.
You have linked the "deport them to Rwanda" policy as being opposed by a globalist cabal - the UN, charities, refugees - who apparently want refugees. So is their fear that every refugees globally might end up sent to Rwanda?
Lets just look at the asylum seekers in the UK. There's c. 100,000 already here, with more arriving every day in sizeable numbers. So call it 120,000 on the basis that "Rwanda works" and people stop arriving.
Rwanda can't take 120,000 We can't process 120,000 through the courts We can't intern 120,000 prior to them going to court We can't process the 120,000's applications due to a lack of money and resources in the Home Office We can't keep track of 120,000 after booking their arrival. We lose them.
So the rather basic problem with you/Leon endlessly championing the policy is that the policy was written in crayon to appeal to morons. You two aren't morons, yet suck it up like you are.
Why?
I can't remember who coined the term 'simplism', or applied it to political thinking, but there's a lot of it about.
Basically, any argument that boils down to They Should Just... is simplism. Especially when you don't specify who They are. Brexit ended up being about simplism- They Should Just give us the benefits of EU membership that we valued without the messy bits we disliked. They Should Just quarantine the vulnerable during the pandemic was another. Or, on the left, They Should Just get the rich to pay more tax. Or, in this case, They Should Just stop coming over here.
Trouble is, it's rarely as simple as Just Doing This. For taxes, it's totally fair to point out that if you overpluck the goose, it will fly away. That the nice bits about Europe depend on the messy plumbing. That the sausages are tasty but you don't want to see them being made.
I'm not going to blame voters for wanting a simpler world, or for voting for it. But it's blooming irresponsible for opinion formers or wannabe leaders to pretend they can deliver one.
I disagree with pretty much every bit of this post, and it's not surprising, because it goes to the heart of where I think we diverge politically. In almost all such cases, we are loftily informed that 'it isn't as simple as that' - but the simple solution under discussion is never tried.
Crime is a one example - simply make the consequences of doing crime a bit worse than the benefits of doing crime, and crime will fall. 'Oh that's far too simplistic' we're told - 'the reasons for crime are vastly complex, involving social issues, family breakdown, poverty, inequality etc., and we must reject 'simple solutions' and 'tackle those other issues''. So the simple solution is never applied. ..
The US laboratory has fairly clearly demonstrated that isn't true.
You don’t have to go all the way to the US. In the UK we’ve tried tougher sentencing multiple times. In fact one of the issues with our crime policy is it’s basically a sentencing policy. To my mind sentencing is too distant from the actual commission of the crime, too abstract.
I do think the stats show some fairly simple answers to vast swathes of crime. Tightening up security, making it harder to nick stuff, and ensuring criminals actually get caught by following up on reports, all shown time and time again to work. Why did everyone start stealing Land Rovers? Because their security was shit.
Yes, the risk-reward analysis of crime has little to do with the severity of the punishment if convicted, and much more to do with the chances of being caught. We have a problem in that there's little chance of being caught while committing many crimes, so why not take the risk? The recent furore over shoplifting is a good example; very little chance of being prosecuted.
By the nature of criminals they are not good at weighing up the consequences. Certainty of being caught and a quick trial deter more than length of sentence IMO. We fail on both of those.
Maybe SKS should put “fast track justice for young offenders” on his pledge card.
Fast track corporal punishment as an alternative to prison would solve many problems in one go.
"Also in the campaign period at least 1 flight will take off for Rwanda, perhaps more with one on eve of polling. ....... The Rwanda flights will return Ref voters back to the Conservatives. You can say recent polling on Rwanda doesn’t suggest the Rwanda flights will generate a stampede of Ref back to Con, and I will laugh at you because that hypothetical polling is a poor predictive measure for how humans radically change their views once elections are called and Rwanda flights are happening."
I can see the headline: 50 Flown to Rwanda, 500 more come over the Channel
Which rather suggests that the the government don’t actually want ANY flights to take off. They want to replicate the anger around Brexit with the anger that the Rwanda plan is being thwarted by the blob, and used that as Johnson used Brexit. So arguably if you want the Tories to lose, and you are involved in refugee claims in court, don’t block the flights… As you have outlined, there will be far more coming than going.
Though some people (52%) actually thought that Brexit was a good idea, no one, well almost no one, thinks Rwanda is other than a very expensive gimmick.
There's a real fear it might work. Hence all the attacks on it by the UN, third sector and refugee charities. They are worried it will set a precedent.
This explains their confused attack lines: they seamlessly switch from its terrible to it will make no difference at all and back again.
Some of us simply find it an extraordinarily badly planned project with no realistic scope of working beyond a few hundred migrants a year. Horrendously expensive for the results.
It's Groundnut Scheme level thinking.
Once upon a time, Tories supported (a) prudence in public spending (b) the rule of law (UK) (c) the rule of law (international).
Nah, it's Guardianista virtue-signalling circle-jerk masturbation for social and professional acceptance reasons.
We all know this. So do you.
The Conservatives are languishing in the polls and to work out why, I think it’s valuable to examine Casino Royale’s post here.
First, CR argues by assertion, ‘it’s right because I say it’s right’. This echoes the Conservative government passing an act to say Rwanda is safe, irrespective of the facts.
Secondly, CR tries to link the debate to the culture wars by throwing in “virtue-signalling”. The Tories have repeatedly tried the same, but it’s not proven popular with the voters.
Thirdly, there’s no attempt at polite discourse here. It’s just straight to the insults, ‘owning the libs’. This is also failing to be attractive to the electorate.
What a lot of rubbish. I've said that (a) the visceral reaction to it is because the UN, charities and refugees themselves fear it might be effective and that (b) that's because they favour open borders and have a strange sense of cultural relativism.
Their real worry is that they know this offer might prove very popular with the voters, if it worked, and hence all the moves to strangle it at birth.
If you think the same tough choices don't await SKS in a few months time then I've got a bridge to sell you.
Can we pick this apart a little? "The UN, charities and refugees themselves fear it might be effective". Which bit of the UN, which charities etc? The UN very much wants to STOP mass refugee events and the crises they create. You suggest that they favour "open borders" the context of millions fleeing war and poverty and then ending up stuck in giant refugee camps being tended to by the UN. You think the UN actually want to be on the hook feeding millions of refugees? really?
The key to this is "if it worked" and as all the experts in every related field have pointed out - it can't work because structurally its bonkers.
You have linked the "deport them to Rwanda" policy as being opposed by a globalist cabal - the UN, charities, refugees - who apparently want refugees. So is their fear that every refugees globally might end up sent to Rwanda?
Lets just look at the asylum seekers in the UK. There's c. 100,000 already here, with more arriving every day in sizeable numbers. So call it 120,000 on the basis that "Rwanda works" and people stop arriving.
Rwanda can't take 120,000 We can't process 120,000 through the courts We can't intern 120,000 prior to them going to court We can't process the 120,000's applications due to a lack of money and resources in the Home Office We can't keep track of 120,000 after booking their arrival. We lose them.
So the rather basic problem with you/Leon endlessly championing the policy is that the policy was written in crayon to appeal to morons. You two aren't morons, yet suck it up like you are.
Why?
I can't remember who coined the term 'simplism', or applied it to political thinking, but there's a lot of it about.
Basically, any argument that boils down to They Should Just... is simplism. Especially when you don't specify who They are. Brexit ended up being about simplism- They Should Just give us the benefits of EU membership that we valued without the messy bits we disliked. They Should Just quarantine the vulnerable during the pandemic was another. Or, on the left, They Should Just get the rich to pay more tax. Or, in this case, They Should Just stop coming over here.
Trouble is, it's rarely as simple as Just Doing This. For taxes, it's totally fair to point out that if you overpluck the goose, it will fly away. That the nice bits about Europe depend on the messy plumbing. That the sausages are tasty but you don't want to see them being made.
I'm not going to blame voters for wanting a simpler world, or for voting for it. But it's blooming irresponsible for opinion formers or wannabe leaders to pretend they can deliver one.
I disagree with pretty much every bit of this post, and it's not surprising, because it goes to the heart of where I think we diverge politically. In almost all such cases, we are loftily informed that 'it isn't as simple as that' - but the simple solution under discussion is never tried.
Crime is a one example - simply make the consequences of doing crime a bit worse than the benefits of doing crime, and crime will fall. 'Oh that's far too simplistic' we're told - 'the reasons for crime are vastly complex, involving social issues, family breakdown, poverty, inequality etc., and we must reject 'simple solutions' and 'tackle those other issues''. So the simple solution is never applied. ..
The US laboratory has fairly clearly demonstrated that isn't true.
You don’t have to go all the way to the US. In the UK we’ve tried tougher sentencing multiple times. In fact one of the issues with our crime policy is it’s basically a sentencing policy. To my mind sentencing is too distant from the actual commission of the crime, too abstract.
I do think the stats show some fairly simple answers to vast swathes of crime. Tightening up security, making it harder to nick stuff, and ensuring criminals actually get caught by following up on reports, all shown time and time again to work. Why did everyone start stealing Land Rovers? Because their security was shit.
As you say, it's complicated. Crime rates correlate with a whole load of things - and quite poorly with incarceration rates. I'd agree that an efficient criminal justice system, where crime detection rates (and by extension the probability of getting caught) are high, and time to trial is low, is quite likely to make a difference.
Is it bad (or good) that I now think in centimetres for height (I'm trying to shake off imperial in almost everything now - thinking in kg for weight....)?
It's not morally bad, though it seems a waste of effort. Stone is a great measure if weight. It's substantial enough to be meaningful 'I need to lose a stone and a half'. Nobody needs to lose a kilo. Some people could shit a kilo in a single setting. As for cm and height, that strikes me as daft.
Shitting a kilo would be quite an achievement but shitting an American pound, as they like to use to weigh themselves, is definitely on the cards. Not that I routinely weigh my stools.
You could always weigh yourself "before" and "after".
Another miserable day dawns. It might get up to 12C if we’re lucky today. 10 tomorrow. Rain all afternoon and tomorrow morning. The joys of spring.
Perhaps this will help?
Wall-to-wall sunshine in the Crozon peninsula, Brittany. And warm
I’m having a cappuccino and the traditional Breton cake, the “koign amman”
Unlike the cider, and even the crepe, I can’t recommend the “koign amman”
It’s some pastry apparently dipped in thick liquid sugar then deep fried. Intensely sweet and cracks your teeth, just about tolerable if you dip it in your coffee. Maybe
Do you have this trip planned out beforehand or are you deciding what to do as you go along? IYDMMA.
"Also in the campaign period at least 1 flight will take off for Rwanda, perhaps more with one on eve of polling. ....... The Rwanda flights will return Ref voters back to the Conservatives. You can say recent polling on Rwanda doesn’t suggest the Rwanda flights will generate a stampede of Ref back to Con, and I will laugh at you because that hypothetical polling is a poor predictive measure for how humans radically change their views once elections are called and Rwanda flights are happening."
I can see the headline: 50 Flown to Rwanda, 500 more come over the Channel
Which rather suggests that the the government don’t actually want ANY flights to take off. They want to replicate the anger around Brexit with the anger that the Rwanda plan is being thwarted by the blob, and used that as Johnson used Brexit. So arguably if you want the Tories to lose, and you are involved in refugee claims in court, don’t block the flights… As you have outlined, there will be far more coming than going.
Though some people (52%) actually thought that Brexit was a good idea, no one, well almost no one, thinks Rwanda is other than a very expensive gimmick.
There's a real fear it might work. Hence all the attacks on it by the UN, third sector and refugee charities. They are worried it will set a precedent.
This explains their confused attack lines: they seamlessly switch from its terrible to it will make no difference at all and back again.
Some of us simply find it an extraordinarily badly planned project with no realistic scope of working beyond a few hundred migrants a year. Horrendously expensive for the results.
It's Groundnut Scheme level thinking.
Once upon a time, Tories supported (a) prudence in public spending (b) the rule of law (UK) (c) the rule of law (international).
Nah, it's Guardianista virtue-signalling circle-jerk masturbation for social and professional acceptance reasons.
We all know this. So do you.
The Conservatives are languishing in the polls and to work out why, I think it’s valuable to examine Casino Royale’s post here.
First, CR argues by assertion, ‘it’s right because I say it’s right’. This echoes the Conservative government passing an act to say Rwanda is safe, irrespective of the facts.
Secondly, CR tries to link the debate to the culture wars by throwing in “virtue-signalling”. The Tories have repeatedly tried the same, but it’s not proven popular with the voters.
Thirdly, there’s no attempt at polite discourse here. It’s just straight to the insults, ‘owning the libs’. This is also failing to be attractive to the electorate.
What a lot of rubbish. I've said that (a) the visceral reaction to it is because the UN, charities and refugees themselves fear it might be effective and that (b) that's because they favour open borders and have a strange sense of cultural relativism.
Their real worry is that they know this offer might prove very popular with the voters, if it worked, and hence all the moves to strangle it at birth.
If you think the same tough choices don't await SKS in a few months time then I've got a bridge to sell you.
Can we pick this apart a little? "The UN, charities and refugees themselves fear it might be effective". Which bit of the UN, which charities etc? The UN very much wants to STOP mass refugee events and the crises they create. You suggest that they favour "open borders" the context of millions fleeing war and poverty and then ending up stuck in giant refugee camps being tended to by the UN. You think the UN actually want to be on the hook feeding millions of refugees? really?
The key to this is "if it worked" and as all the experts in every related field have pointed out - it can't work because structurally its bonkers.
You have linked the "deport them to Rwanda" policy as being opposed by a globalist cabal - the UN, charities, refugees - who apparently want refugees. So is their fear that every refugees globally might end up sent to Rwanda?
Lets just look at the asylum seekers in the UK. There's c. 100,000 already here, with more arriving every day in sizeable numbers. So call it 120,000 on the basis that "Rwanda works" and people stop arriving.
Rwanda can't take 120,000 We can't process 120,000 through the courts We can't intern 120,000 prior to them going to court We can't process the 120,000's applications due to a lack of money and resources in the Home Office We can't keep track of 120,000 after booking their arrival. We lose them.
So the rather basic problem with you/Leon endlessly championing the policy is that the policy was written in crayon to appeal to morons. You two aren't morons, yet suck it up like you are.
Why?
I can't remember who coined the term 'simplism', or applied it to political thinking, but there's a lot of it about.
Basically, any argument that boils down to They Should Just... is simplism. Especially when you don't specify who They are. Brexit ended up being about simplism- They Should Just give us the benefits of EU membership that we valued without the messy bits we disliked. They Should Just quarantine the vulnerable during the pandemic was another. Or, on the left, They Should Just get the rich to pay more tax. Or, in this case, They Should Just stop coming over here.
Trouble is, it's rarely as simple as Just Doing This. For taxes, it's totally fair to point out that if you overpluck the goose, it will fly away. That the nice bits about Europe depend on the messy plumbing. That the sausages are tasty but you don't want to see them being made.
I'm not going to blame voters for wanting a simpler world, or for voting for it. But it's blooming irresponsible for opinion formers or wannabe leaders to pretend they can deliver one.
I disagree with pretty much every bit of this post, and it's not surprising, because it goes to the heart of where I think we diverge politically. In almost all such cases, we are loftily informed that 'it isn't as simple as that' - but the simple solution under discussion is never tried.
Crime is a one example - simply make the consequences of doing crime a bit worse than the benefits of doing crime, and crime will fall. 'Oh that's far too simplistic' we're told - 'the reasons for crime are vastly complex, involving social issues, family breakdown, poverty, inequality etc., and we must reject 'simple solutions' and 'tackle those other issues''. So the simple solution is never applied. ..
The US laboratory has fairly clearly demonstrated that isn't true.
You don’t have to go all the way to the US. In the UK we’ve tried tougher sentencing multiple times. In fact one of the issues with our crime policy is it’s basically a sentencing policy. To my mind sentencing is too distant from the actual commission of the crime, too abstract.
I do think the stats show some fairly simple answers to vast swathes of crime. Tightening up security, making it harder to nick stuff, and ensuring criminals actually get caught by following up on reports, all shown time and time again to work. Why did everyone start stealing Land Rovers? Because their security was shit.
Yes, the risk-reward analysis of crime has little to do with the severity of the punishment if convicted, and much more to do with the chances of being caught. We have a problem in that there's little chance of being caught while committing many crimes, so why not take the risk? The recent furore over shoplifting is a good example; very little chance of being prosecuted.
By the nature of criminals they are not good at weighing up the consequences. Certainty of being caught and a quick trial deter more than length of sentence IMO. We fail on both of those.
Another problem is, once someone has a criminal conviction and all that goes with it, they don't have much more to lose from getting another one
And, I've seen it reported that 1 in 3 men in the UK have a criminal conviction.
"Also in the campaign period at least 1 flight will take off for Rwanda, perhaps more with one on eve of polling. ....... The Rwanda flights will return Ref voters back to the Conservatives. You can say recent polling on Rwanda doesn’t suggest the Rwanda flights will generate a stampede of Ref back to Con, and I will laugh at you because that hypothetical polling is a poor predictive measure for how humans radically change their views once elections are called and Rwanda flights are happening."
I can see the headline: 50 Flown to Rwanda, 500 more come over the Channel
Which rather suggests that the the government don’t actually want ANY flights to take off. They want to replicate the anger around Brexit with the anger that the Rwanda plan is being thwarted by the blob, and used that as Johnson used Brexit. So arguably if you want the Tories to lose, and you are involved in refugee claims in court, don’t block the flights… As you have outlined, there will be far more coming than going.
Though some people (52%) actually thought that Brexit was a good idea, no one, well almost no one, thinks Rwanda is other than a very expensive gimmick.
There's a real fear it might work. Hence all the attacks on it by the UN, third sector and refugee charities. They are worried it will set a precedent.
This explains their confused attack lines: they seamlessly switch from its terrible to it will make no difference at all and back again.
Some of us simply find it an extraordinarily badly planned project with no realistic scope of working beyond a few hundred migrants a year. Horrendously expensive for the results.
It's Groundnut Scheme level thinking.
Once upon a time, Tories supported (a) prudence in public spending (b) the rule of law (UK) (c) the rule of law (international).
Nah, it's Guardianista virtue-signalling circle-jerk masturbation for social and professional acceptance reasons.
We all know this. So do you.
The Conservatives are languishing in the polls and to work out why, I think it’s valuable to examine Casino Royale’s post here.
First, CR argues by assertion, ‘it’s right because I say it’s right’. This echoes the Conservative government passing an act to say Rwanda is safe, irrespective of the facts.
Secondly, CR tries to link the debate to the culture wars by throwing in “virtue-signalling”. The Tories have repeatedly tried the same, but it’s not proven popular with the voters.
Thirdly, there’s no attempt at polite discourse here. It’s just straight to the insults, ‘owning the libs’. This is also failing to be attractive to the electorate.
What a lot of rubbish. I've said that (a) the visceral reaction to it is because the UN, charities and refugees themselves fear it might be effective and that (b) that's because they favour open borders and have a strange sense of cultural relativism.
Their real worry is that they know this offer might prove very popular with the voters, if it worked, and hence all the moves to strangle it at birth.
If you think the same tough choices don't await SKS in a few months time then I've got a bridge to sell you.
Can we pick this apart a little? "The UN, charities and refugees themselves fear it might be effective". Which bit of the UN, which charities etc? The UN very much wants to STOP mass refugee events and the crises they create. You suggest that they favour "open borders" the context of millions fleeing war and poverty and then ending up stuck in giant refugee camps being tended to by the UN. You think the UN actually want to be on the hook feeding millions of refugees? really?
The key to this is "if it worked" and as all the experts in every related field have pointed out - it can't work because structurally its bonkers.
You have linked the "deport them to Rwanda" policy as being opposed by a globalist cabal - the UN, charities, refugees - who apparently want refugees. So is their fear that every refugees globally might end up sent to Rwanda?
Lets just look at the asylum seekers in the UK. There's c. 100,000 already here, with more arriving every day in sizeable numbers. So call it 120,000 on the basis that "Rwanda works" and people stop arriving.
Rwanda can't take 120,000 We can't process 120,000 through the courts We can't intern 120,000 prior to them going to court We can't process the 120,000's applications due to a lack of money and resources in the Home Office We can't keep track of 120,000 after booking their arrival. We lose them.
So the rather basic problem with you/Leon endlessly championing the policy is that the policy was written in crayon to appeal to morons. You two aren't morons, yet suck it up like you are.
Why?
I can't remember who coined the term 'simplism', or applied it to political thinking, but there's a lot of it about.
Basically, any argument that boils down to They Should Just... is simplism. Especially when you don't specify who They are. Brexit ended up being about simplism- They Should Just give us the benefits of EU membership that we valued without the messy bits we disliked. They Should Just quarantine the vulnerable during the pandemic was another. Or, on the left, They Should Just get the rich to pay more tax. Or, in this case, They Should Just stop coming over here.
Trouble is, it's rarely as simple as Just Doing This. For taxes, it's totally fair to point out that if you overpluck the goose, it will fly away. That the nice bits about Europe depend on the messy plumbing. That the sausages are tasty but you don't want to see them being made.
I'm not going to blame voters for wanting a simpler world, or for voting for it. But it's blooming irresponsible for opinion formers or wannabe leaders to pretend they can deliver one.
I disagree with pretty much every bit of this post, and it's not surprising, because it goes to the heart of where I think we diverge politically. In almost all such cases, we are loftily informed that 'it isn't as simple as that' - but the simple solution under discussion is never tried.
Crime is a one example - simply make the consequences of doing crime a bit worse than the benefits of doing crime, and crime will fall. 'Oh that's far too simplistic' we're told - 'the reasons for crime are vastly complex, involving social issues, family breakdown, poverty, inequality etc., and we must reject 'simple solutions' and 'tackle those other issues''. So the simple solution is never applied. ..
The US laboratory has fairly clearly demonstrated that isn't true.
You don’t have to go all the way to the US. In the UK we’ve tried tougher sentencing multiple times. In fact one of the issues with our crime policy is it’s basically a sentencing policy. To my mind sentencing is too distant from the actual commission of the crime, too abstract.
I do think the stats show some fairly simple answers to vast swathes of crime. Tightening up security, making it harder to nick stuff, and ensuring criminals actually get caught by following up on reports, all shown time and time again to work. Why did everyone start stealing Land Rovers? Because their security was shit.
Yes, the risk-reward analysis of crime has little to do with the severity of the punishment if convicted, and much more to do with the chances of being caught. We have a problem in that there's little chance of being caught while committing many crimes, so why not take the risk? The recent furore over shoplifting is a good example; very little chance of being prosecuted.
By the nature of criminals they are not good at weighing up the consequences. Certainty of being caught and a quick trial deter more than length of sentence IMO. We fail on both of those.
Another problem is, once someone has a criminal conviction and all that goes with it, they don't have much more to lose from getting another one
And, I've seen it reported that 1 in 3 men in the UK have a criminal conviction.
"Also in the campaign period at least 1 flight will take off for Rwanda, perhaps more with one on eve of polling. ....... The Rwanda flights will return Ref voters back to the Conservatives. You can say recent polling on Rwanda doesn’t suggest the Rwanda flights will generate a stampede of Ref back to Con, and I will laugh at you because that hypothetical polling is a poor predictive measure for how humans radically change their views once elections are called and Rwanda flights are happening."
I can see the headline: 50 Flown to Rwanda, 500 more come over the Channel
Which rather suggests that the the government don’t actually want ANY flights to take off. They want to replicate the anger around Brexit with the anger that the Rwanda plan is being thwarted by the blob, and used that as Johnson used Brexit. So arguably if you want the Tories to lose, and you are involved in refugee claims in court, don’t block the flights… As you have outlined, there will be far more coming than going.
Though some people (52%) actually thought that Brexit was a good idea, no one, well almost no one, thinks Rwanda is other than a very expensive gimmick.
There's a real fear it might work. Hence all the attacks on it by the UN, third sector and refugee charities. They are worried it will set a precedent.
This explains their confused attack lines: they seamlessly switch from its terrible to it will make no difference at all and back again.
Some of us simply find it an extraordinarily badly planned project with no realistic scope of working beyond a few hundred migrants a year. Horrendously expensive for the results.
It's Groundnut Scheme level thinking.
Once upon a time, Tories supported (a) prudence in public spending (b) the rule of law (UK) (c) the rule of law (international).
Nah, it's Guardianista virtue-signalling circle-jerk masturbation for social and professional acceptance reasons.
We all know this. So do you.
The Conservatives are languishing in the polls and to work out why, I think it’s valuable to examine Casino Royale’s post here.
First, CR argues by assertion, ‘it’s right because I say it’s right’. This echoes the Conservative government passing an act to say Rwanda is safe, irrespective of the facts.
Secondly, CR tries to link the debate to the culture wars by throwing in “virtue-signalling”. The Tories have repeatedly tried the same, but it’s not proven popular with the voters.
Thirdly, there’s no attempt at polite discourse here. It’s just straight to the insults, ‘owning the libs’. This is also failing to be attractive to the electorate.
What a lot of rubbish. I've said that (a) the visceral reaction to it is because the UN, charities and refugees themselves fear it might be effective and that (b) that's because they favour open borders and have a strange sense of cultural relativism.
Their real worry is that they know this offer might prove very popular with the voters, if it worked, and hence all the moves to strangle it at birth.
If you think the same tough choices don't await SKS in a few months time then I've got a bridge to sell you.
Can we pick this apart a little? "The UN, charities and refugees themselves fear it might be effective". Which bit of the UN, which charities etc? The UN very much wants to STOP mass refugee events and the crises they create. You suggest that they favour "open borders" the context of millions fleeing war and poverty and then ending up stuck in giant refugee camps being tended to by the UN. You think the UN actually want to be on the hook feeding millions of refugees? really?
The key to this is "if it worked" and as all the experts in every related field have pointed out - it can't work because structurally its bonkers.
You have linked the "deport them to Rwanda" policy as being opposed by a globalist cabal - the UN, charities, refugees - who apparently want refugees. So is their fear that every refugees globally might end up sent to Rwanda?
Lets just look at the asylum seekers in the UK. There's c. 100,000 already here, with more arriving every day in sizeable numbers. So call it 120,000 on the basis that "Rwanda works" and people stop arriving.
Rwanda can't take 120,000 We can't process 120,000 through the courts We can't intern 120,000 prior to them going to court We can't process the 120,000's applications due to a lack of money and resources in the Home Office We can't keep track of 120,000 after booking their arrival. We lose them.
So the rather basic problem with you/Leon endlessly championing the policy is that the policy was written in crayon to appeal to morons. You two aren't morons, yet suck it up like you are.
Why?
I can't remember who coined the term 'simplism', or applied it to political thinking, but there's a lot of it about.
Basically, any argument that boils down to They Should Just... is simplism. Especially when you don't specify who They are. Brexit ended up being about simplism- They Should Just give us the benefits of EU membership that we valued without the messy bits we disliked. They Should Just quarantine the vulnerable during the pandemic was another. Or, on the left, They Should Just get the rich to pay more tax. Or, in this case, They Should Just stop coming over here.
Trouble is, it's rarely as simple as Just Doing This. For taxes, it's totally fair to point out that if you overpluck the goose, it will fly away. That the nice bits about Europe depend on the messy plumbing. That the sausages are tasty but you don't want to see them being made.
I'm not going to blame voters for wanting a simpler world, or for voting for it. But it's blooming irresponsible for opinion formers or wannabe leaders to pretend they can deliver one.
I disagree with pretty much every bit of this post, and it's not surprising, because it goes to the heart of where I think we diverge politically. In almost all such cases, we are loftily informed that 'it isn't as simple as that' - but the simple solution under discussion is never tried.
Crime is a one example - simply make the consequences of doing crime a bit worse than the benefits of doing crime, and crime will fall. 'Oh that's far too simplistic' we're told - 'the reasons for crime are vastly complex, involving social issues, family breakdown, poverty, inequality etc., and we must reject 'simple solutions' and 'tackle those other issues''. So the simple solution is never applied. ..
The US laboratory has fairly clearly demonstrated that isn't true.
You don’t have to go all the way to the US. In the UK we’ve tried tougher sentencing multiple times. In fact one of the issues with our crime policy is it’s basically a sentencing policy. To my mind sentencing is too distant from the actual commission of the crime, too abstract.
I do think the stats show some fairly simple answers to vast swathes of crime. Tightening up security, making it harder to nick stuff, and ensuring criminals actually get caught by following up on reports, all shown time and time again to work. Why did everyone start stealing Land Rovers? Because their security was shit.
Yes, the risk-reward analysis of crime has little to do with the severity of the punishment if convicted, and much more to do with the chances of being caught. We have a problem in that there's little chance of being caught while committing many crimes, so why not take the risk? The recent furore over shoplifting is a good example; very little chance of being prosecuted.
By the nature of criminals they are not good at weighing up the consequences. Certainty of being caught and a quick trial deter more than length of sentence IMO. We fail on both of those.
Maybe SKS should put “fast track justice for young offenders” on his pledge card.
SKS should march young offenders to the cashpoint machine.
Is it bad (or good) that I now think in centimetres for height (I'm trying to shake off imperial in almost everything now - thinking in kg for weight....)?
It's not morally bad, though it seems a waste of effort. Stone is a great measure if weight. It's substantial enough to be meaningful 'I need to lose a stone and a half'. Nobody needs to lose a kilo. Some people could shit a kilo in a single setting. As for cm and height, that strikes me as daft.
Shitting a kilo would be quite an achievement but shitting an American pound, as they like to use to weigh themselves, is definitely on the cards. Not that I routinely weigh my stools.
You could always weigh yourself "before" and "after".
"Also in the campaign period at least 1 flight will take off for Rwanda, perhaps more with one on eve of polling. ....... The Rwanda flights will return Ref voters back to the Conservatives. You can say recent polling on Rwanda doesn’t suggest the Rwanda flights will generate a stampede of Ref back to Con, and I will laugh at you because that hypothetical polling is a poor predictive measure for how humans radically change their views once elections are called and Rwanda flights are happening."
I can see the headline: 50 Flown to Rwanda, 500 more come over the Channel
Which rather suggests that the the government don’t actually want ANY flights to take off. They want to replicate the anger around Brexit with the anger that the Rwanda plan is being thwarted by the blob, and used that as Johnson used Brexit. So arguably if you want the Tories to lose, and you are involved in refugee claims in court, don’t block the flights… As you have outlined, there will be far more coming than going.
Though some people (52%) actually thought that Brexit was a good idea, no one, well almost no one, thinks Rwanda is other than a very expensive gimmick.
There's a real fear it might work. Hence all the attacks on it by the UN, third sector and refugee charities. They are worried it will set a precedent.
This explains their confused attack lines: they seamlessly switch from its terrible to it will make no difference at all and back again.
Some of us simply find it an extraordinarily badly planned project with no realistic scope of working beyond a few hundred migrants a year. Horrendously expensive for the results.
It's Groundnut Scheme level thinking.
Once upon a time, Tories supported (a) prudence in public spending (b) the rule of law (UK) (c) the rule of law (international).
Nah, it's Guardianista virtue-signalling circle-jerk masturbation for social and professional acceptance reasons.
We all know this. So do you.
The Conservatives are languishing in the polls and to work out why, I think it’s valuable to examine Casino Royale’s post here.
First, CR argues by assertion, ‘it’s right because I say it’s right’. This echoes the Conservative government passing an act to say Rwanda is safe, irrespective of the facts.
Secondly, CR tries to link the debate to the culture wars by throwing in “virtue-signalling”. The Tories have repeatedly tried the same, but it’s not proven popular with the voters.
Thirdly, there’s no attempt at polite discourse here. It’s just straight to the insults, ‘owning the libs’. This is also failing to be attractive to the electorate.
What a lot of rubbish. I've said that (a) the visceral reaction to it is because the UN, charities and refugees themselves fear it might be effective and that (b) that's because they favour open borders and have a strange sense of cultural relativism.
Their real worry is that they know this offer might prove very popular with the voters, if it worked, and hence all the moves to strangle it at birth.
If you think the same tough choices don't await SKS in a few months time then I've got a bridge to sell you.
Can we pick this apart a little? "The UN, charities and refugees themselves fear it might be effective". Which bit of the UN, which charities etc? The UN very much wants to STOP mass refugee events and the crises they create. You suggest that they favour "open borders" the context of millions fleeing war and poverty and then ending up stuck in giant refugee camps being tended to by the UN. You think the UN actually want to be on the hook feeding millions of refugees? really?
The key to this is "if it worked" and as all the experts in every related field have pointed out - it can't work because structurally its bonkers.
You have linked the "deport them to Rwanda" policy as being opposed by a globalist cabal - the UN, charities, refugees - who apparently want refugees. So is their fear that every refugees globally might end up sent to Rwanda?
Lets just look at the asylum seekers in the UK. There's c. 100,000 already here, with more arriving every day in sizeable numbers. So call it 120,000 on the basis that "Rwanda works" and people stop arriving.
Rwanda can't take 120,000 We can't process 120,000 through the courts We can't intern 120,000 prior to them going to court We can't process the 120,000's applications due to a lack of money and resources in the Home Office We can't keep track of 120,000 after booking their arrival. We lose them.
So the rather basic problem with you/Leon endlessly championing the policy is that the policy was written in crayon to appeal to morons. You two aren't morons, yet suck it up like you are.
Why?
I can't remember who coined the term 'simplism', or applied it to political thinking, but there's a lot of it about.
Basically, any argument that boils down to They Should Just... is simplism. Especially when you don't specify who They are. Brexit ended up being about simplism- They Should Just give us the benefits of EU membership that we valued without the messy bits we disliked. They Should Just quarantine the vulnerable during the pandemic was another. Or, on the left, They Should Just get the rich to pay more tax. Or, in this case, They Should Just stop coming over here.
Trouble is, it's rarely as simple as Just Doing This. For taxes, it's totally fair to point out that if you overpluck the goose, it will fly away. That the nice bits about Europe depend on the messy plumbing. That the sausages are tasty but you don't want to see them being made.
I'm not going to blame voters for wanting a simpler world, or for voting for it. But it's blooming irresponsible for opinion formers or wannabe leaders to pretend they can deliver one.
I disagree with pretty much every bit of this post, and it's not surprising, because it goes to the heart of where I think we diverge politically. In almost all such cases, we are loftily informed that 'it isn't as simple as that' - but the simple solution under discussion is never tried.
Crime is a one example - simply make the consequences of doing crime a bit worse than the benefits of doing crime, and crime will fall. 'Oh that's far too simplistic' we're told - 'the reasons for crime are vastly complex, involving social issues, family breakdown, poverty, inequality etc., and we must reject 'simple solutions' and 'tackle those other issues''. So the simple solution is never applied. ..
The US laboratory has fairly clearly demonstrated that isn't true.
You don’t have to go all the way to the US. In the UK we’ve tried tougher sentencing multiple times. In fact one of the issues with our crime policy is it’s basically a sentencing policy. To my mind sentencing is too distant from the actual commission of the crime, too abstract.
I do think the stats show some fairly simple answers to vast swathes of crime. Tightening up security, making it harder to nick stuff, and ensuring criminals actually get caught by following up on reports, all shown time and time again to work. Why did everyone start stealing Land Rovers? Because their security was shit.
Yes, the risk-reward analysis of crime has little to do with the severity of the punishment if convicted, and much more to do with the chances of being caught. We have a problem in that there's little chance of being caught while committing many crimes, so why not take the risk? The recent furore over shoplifting is a good example; very little chance of being prosecuted.
By the nature of criminals they are not good at weighing up the consequences. Certainty of being caught and a quick trial deter more than length of sentence IMO. We fail on both of those.
This discussion cries out for a long piece on guilt vs shame in psychology, something I've learned a lot about in the process of being an adoptive parent. I wonder if @TheScreamingEagles would be interested in me writing one? Not directly political, but it underpins a lot of issues.
"Also in the campaign period at least 1 flight will take off for Rwanda, perhaps more with one on eve of polling. ....... The Rwanda flights will return Ref voters back to the Conservatives. You can say recent polling on Rwanda doesn’t suggest the Rwanda flights will generate a stampede of Ref back to Con, and I will laugh at you because that hypothetical polling is a poor predictive measure for how humans radically change their views once elections are called and Rwanda flights are happening."
I can see the headline: 50 Flown to Rwanda, 500 more come over the Channel
Which rather suggests that the the government don’t actually want ANY flights to take off. They want to replicate the anger around Brexit with the anger that the Rwanda plan is being thwarted by the blob, and used that as Johnson used Brexit. So arguably if you want the Tories to lose, and you are involved in refugee claims in court, don’t block the flights… As you have outlined, there will be far more coming than going.
Though some people (52%) actually thought that Brexit was a good idea, no one, well almost no one, thinks Rwanda is other than a very expensive gimmick.
There's a real fear it might work. Hence all the attacks on it by the UN, third sector and refugee charities. They are worried it will set a precedent.
This explains their confused attack lines: they seamlessly switch from its terrible to it will make no difference at all and back again.
Some of us simply find it an extraordinarily badly planned project with no realistic scope of working beyond a few hundred migrants a year. Horrendously expensive for the results.
It's Groundnut Scheme level thinking.
Once upon a time, Tories supported (a) prudence in public spending (b) the rule of law (UK) (c) the rule of law (international).
Nah, it's Guardianista virtue-signalling circle-jerk masturbation for social and professional acceptance reasons.
We all know this. So do you.
The Conservatives are languishing in the polls and to work out why, I think it’s valuable to examine Casino Royale’s post here.
First, CR argues by assertion, ‘it’s right because I say it’s right’. This echoes the Conservative government passing an act to say Rwanda is safe, irrespective of the facts.
Secondly, CR tries to link the debate to the culture wars by throwing in “virtue-signalling”. The Tories have repeatedly tried the same, but it’s not proven popular with the voters.
Thirdly, there’s no attempt at polite discourse here. It’s just straight to the insults, ‘owning the libs’. This is also failing to be attractive to the electorate.
What a lot of rubbish. I've said that (a) the visceral reaction to it is because the UN, charities and refugees themselves fear it might be effective and that (b) that's because they favour open borders and have a strange sense of cultural relativism.
Their real worry is that they know this offer might prove very popular with the voters, if it worked, and hence all the moves to strangle it at birth.
If you think the same tough choices don't await SKS in a few months time then I've got a bridge to sell you.
Can we pick this apart a little? "The UN, charities and refugees themselves fear it might be effective". Which bit of the UN, which charities etc? The UN very much wants to STOP mass refugee events and the crises they create. You suggest that they favour "open borders" the context of millions fleeing war and poverty and then ending up stuck in giant refugee camps being tended to by the UN. You think the UN actually want to be on the hook feeding millions of refugees? really?
The key to this is "if it worked" and as all the experts in every related field have pointed out - it can't work because structurally its bonkers.
You have linked the "deport them to Rwanda" policy as being opposed by a globalist cabal - the UN, charities, refugees - who apparently want refugees. So is their fear that every refugees globally might end up sent to Rwanda?
Lets just look at the asylum seekers in the UK. There's c. 100,000 already here, with more arriving every day in sizeable numbers. So call it 120,000 on the basis that "Rwanda works" and people stop arriving.
Rwanda can't take 120,000 We can't process 120,000 through the courts We can't intern 120,000 prior to them going to court We can't process the 120,000's applications due to a lack of money and resources in the Home Office We can't keep track of 120,000 after booking their arrival. We lose them.
So the rather basic problem with you/Leon endlessly championing the policy is that the policy was written in crayon to appeal to morons. You two aren't morons, yet suck it up like you are.
Why?
I can't remember who coined the term 'simplism', or applied it to political thinking, but there's a lot of it about.
Basically, any argument that boils down to They Should Just... is simplism. Especially when you don't specify who They are. Brexit ended up being about simplism- They Should Just give us the benefits of EU membership that we valued without the messy bits we disliked. They Should Just quarantine the vulnerable during the pandemic was another. Or, on the left, They Should Just get the rich to pay more tax. Or, in this case, They Should Just stop coming over here.
Trouble is, it's rarely as simple as Just Doing This. For taxes, it's totally fair to point out that if you overpluck the goose, it will fly away. That the nice bits about Europe depend on the messy plumbing. That the sausages are tasty but you don't want to see them being made.
I'm not going to blame voters for wanting a simpler world, or for voting for it. But it's blooming irresponsible for opinion formers or wannabe leaders to pretend they can deliver one.
I disagree with pretty much every bit of this post, and it's not surprising, because it goes to the heart of where I think we diverge politically. In almost all such cases, we are loftily informed that 'it isn't as simple as that' - but the simple solution under discussion is never tried.
Crime is a one example - simply make the consequences of doing crime a bit worse than the benefits of doing crime, and crime will fall. 'Oh that's far too simplistic' we're told - 'the reasons for crime are vastly complex, involving social issues, family breakdown, poverty, inequality etc., and we must reject 'simple solutions' and 'tackle those other issues''. So the simple solution is never applied. ..
The US laboratory has fairly clearly demonstrated that isn't true.
You don’t have to go all the way to the US. In the UK we’ve tried tougher sentencing multiple times. In fact one of the issues with our crime policy is it’s basically a sentencing policy. To my mind sentencing is too distant from the actual commission of the crime, too abstract.
I do think the stats show some fairly simple answers to vast swathes of crime. Tightening up security, making it harder to nick stuff, and ensuring criminals actually get caught by following up on reports, all shown time and time again to work. Why did everyone start stealing Land Rovers? Because their security was shit.
Yes, the risk-reward analysis of crime has little to do with the severity of the punishment if convicted, and much more to do with the chances of being caught. We have a problem in that there's little chance of being caught while committing many crimes, so why not take the risk? The recent furore over shoplifting is a good example; very little chance of being prosecuted.
By the nature of criminals they are not good at weighing up the consequences. Certainty of being caught and a quick trial deter more than length of sentence IMO. We fail on both of those.
Another problem is, once someone has a criminal conviction and all that goes with it, they don't have much more to lose from getting another one
And, I've seen it reported that 1 in 3 men in the UK have a criminal conviction.
Two out of the last three prime ministers had FPN fines over partygate.
"Also in the campaign period at least 1 flight will take off for Rwanda, perhaps more with one on eve of polling. ....... The Rwanda flights will return Ref voters back to the Conservatives. You can say recent polling on Rwanda doesn’t suggest the Rwanda flights will generate a stampede of Ref back to Con, and I will laugh at you because that hypothetical polling is a poor predictive measure for how humans radically change their views once elections are called and Rwanda flights are happening."
I can see the headline: 50 Flown to Rwanda, 500 more come over the Channel
Which rather suggests that the the government don’t actually want ANY flights to take off. They want to replicate the anger around Brexit with the anger that the Rwanda plan is being thwarted by the blob, and used that as Johnson used Brexit. So arguably if you want the Tories to lose, and you are involved in refugee claims in court, don’t block the flights… As you have outlined, there will be far more coming than going.
Though some people (52%) actually thought that Brexit was a good idea, no one, well almost no one, thinks Rwanda is other than a very expensive gimmick.
There's a real fear it might work. Hence all the attacks on it by the UN, third sector and refugee charities. They are worried it will set a precedent.
This explains their confused attack lines: they seamlessly switch from its terrible to it will make no difference at all and back again.
Some of us simply find it an extraordinarily badly planned project with no realistic scope of working beyond a few hundred migrants a year. Horrendously expensive for the results.
It's Groundnut Scheme level thinking.
Once upon a time, Tories supported (a) prudence in public spending (b) the rule of law (UK) (c) the rule of law (international).
Nah, it's Guardianista virtue-signalling circle-jerk masturbation for social and professional acceptance reasons.
We all know this. So do you.
The Conservatives are languishing in the polls and to work out why, I think it’s valuable to examine Casino Royale’s post here.
First, CR argues by assertion, ‘it’s right because I say it’s right’. This echoes the Conservative government passing an act to say Rwanda is safe, irrespective of the facts.
Secondly, CR tries to link the debate to the culture wars by throwing in “virtue-signalling”. The Tories have repeatedly tried the same, but it’s not proven popular with the voters.
Thirdly, there’s no attempt at polite discourse here. It’s just straight to the insults, ‘owning the libs’. This is also failing to be attractive to the electorate.
What a lot of rubbish. I've said that (a) the visceral reaction to it is because the UN, charities and refugees themselves fear it might be effective and that (b) that's because they favour open borders and have a strange sense of cultural relativism.
Their real worry is that they know this offer might prove very popular with the voters, if it worked, and hence all the moves to strangle it at birth.
If you think the same tough choices don't await SKS in a few months time then I've got a bridge to sell you.
Can we pick this apart a little? "The UN, charities and refugees themselves fear it might be effective". Which bit of the UN, which charities etc? The UN very much wants to STOP mass refugee events and the crises they create. You suggest that they favour "open borders" the context of millions fleeing war and poverty and then ending up stuck in giant refugee camps being tended to by the UN. You think the UN actually want to be on the hook feeding millions of refugees? really?
The key to this is "if it worked" and as all the experts in every related field have pointed out - it can't work because structurally its bonkers.
You have linked the "deport them to Rwanda" policy as being opposed by a globalist cabal - the UN, charities, refugees - who apparently want refugees. So is their fear that every refugees globally might end up sent to Rwanda?
Lets just look at the asylum seekers in the UK. There's c. 100,000 already here, with more arriving every day in sizeable numbers. So call it 120,000 on the basis that "Rwanda works" and people stop arriving.
Rwanda can't take 120,000 We can't process 120,000 through the courts We can't intern 120,000 prior to them going to court We can't process the 120,000's applications due to a lack of money and resources in the Home Office We can't keep track of 120,000 after booking their arrival. We lose them.
So the rather basic problem with you/Leon endlessly championing the policy is that the policy was written in crayon to appeal to morons. You two aren't morons, yet suck it up like you are.
Why?
I can't remember who coined the term 'simplism', or applied it to political thinking, but there's a lot of it about.
Basically, any argument that boils down to They Should Just... is simplism. Especially when you don't specify who They are. Brexit ended up being about simplism- They Should Just give us the benefits of EU membership that we valued without the messy bits we disliked. They Should Just quarantine the vulnerable during the pandemic was another. Or, on the left, They Should Just get the rich to pay more tax. Or, in this case, They Should Just stop coming over here.
Trouble is, it's rarely as simple as Just Doing This. For taxes, it's totally fair to point out that if you overpluck the goose, it will fly away. That the nice bits about Europe depend on the messy plumbing. That the sausages are tasty but you don't want to see them being made.
I'm not going to blame voters for wanting a simpler world, or for voting for it. But it's blooming irresponsible for opinion formers or wannabe leaders to pretend they can deliver one.
Up to a point, Lord Copper.
In my experience those who work in the private sector are more likely to see opportunities, whereas those in the public sector are more likely to see risks. It makes sense, given taking a job in the private sector is inherently riskier, but generally better rewarded.
It is one of the main reasons why I abhor the growth of the role of the state. It tallies with a growth of risk aversion, stagnation and, ironically, the general enshittification (thanks @viewcode) of the common weal.
Lots of those who work for the state will opine about difficulties, or overemphasise the compilications.
Enshittification is a term that was first used about Twitter, Google, Amazon etc., which are all in the private sector. Cory Doctorow invented the term when writing about digital platforms shifting from serving their users to serving shareholders.
"Also in the campaign period at least 1 flight will take off for Rwanda, perhaps more with one on eve of polling. ....... The Rwanda flights will return Ref voters back to the Conservatives. You can say recent polling on Rwanda doesn’t suggest the Rwanda flights will generate a stampede of Ref back to Con, and I will laugh at you because that hypothetical polling is a poor predictive measure for how humans radically change their views once elections are called and Rwanda flights are happening."
I can see the headline: 50 Flown to Rwanda, 500 more come over the Channel
Which rather suggests that the the government don’t actually want ANY flights to take off. They want to replicate the anger around Brexit with the anger that the Rwanda plan is being thwarted by the blob, and used that as Johnson used Brexit. So arguably if you want the Tories to lose, and you are involved in refugee claims in court, don’t block the flights… As you have outlined, there will be far more coming than going.
Though some people (52%) actually thought that Brexit was a good idea, no one, well almost no one, thinks Rwanda is other than a very expensive gimmick.
There's a real fear it might work. Hence all the attacks on it by the UN, third sector and refugee charities. They are worried it will set a precedent.
This explains their confused attack lines: they seamlessly switch from its terrible to it will make no difference at all and back again.
Some of us simply find it an extraordinarily badly planned project with no realistic scope of working beyond a few hundred migrants a year. Horrendously expensive for the results.
It's Groundnut Scheme level thinking.
Once upon a time, Tories supported (a) prudence in public spending (b) the rule of law (UK) (c) the rule of law (international).
Nah, it's Guardianista virtue-signalling circle-jerk masturbation for social and professional acceptance reasons.
We all know this. So do you.
The Conservatives are languishing in the polls and to work out why, I think it’s valuable to examine Casino Royale’s post here.
First, CR argues by assertion, ‘it’s right because I say it’s right’. This echoes the Conservative government passing an act to say Rwanda is safe, irrespective of the facts.
Secondly, CR tries to link the debate to the culture wars by throwing in “virtue-signalling”. The Tories have repeatedly tried the same, but it’s not proven popular with the voters.
Thirdly, there’s no attempt at polite discourse here. It’s just straight to the insults, ‘owning the libs’. This is also failing to be attractive to the electorate.
What a lot of rubbish. I've said that (a) the visceral reaction to it is because the UN, charities and refugees themselves fear it might be effective and that (b) that's because they favour open borders and have a strange sense of cultural relativism.
Their real worry is that they know this offer might prove very popular with the voters, if it worked, and hence all the moves to strangle it at birth.
If you think the same tough choices don't await SKS in a few months time then I've got a bridge to sell you.
Can we pick this apart a little? "The UN, charities and refugees themselves fear it might be effective". Which bit of the UN, which charities etc? The UN very much wants to STOP mass refugee events and the crises they create. You suggest that they favour "open borders" the context of millions fleeing war and poverty and then ending up stuck in giant refugee camps being tended to by the UN. You think the UN actually want to be on the hook feeding millions of refugees? really?
The key to this is "if it worked" and as all the experts in every related field have pointed out - it can't work because structurally its bonkers.
You have linked the "deport them to Rwanda" policy as being opposed by a globalist cabal - the UN, charities, refugees - who apparently want refugees. So is their fear that every refugees globally might end up sent to Rwanda?
Lets just look at the asylum seekers in the UK. There's c. 100,000 already here, with more arriving every day in sizeable numbers. So call it 120,000 on the basis that "Rwanda works" and people stop arriving.
Rwanda can't take 120,000 We can't process 120,000 through the courts We can't intern 120,000 prior to them going to court We can't process the 120,000's applications due to a lack of money and resources in the Home Office We can't keep track of 120,000 after booking their arrival. We lose them.
So the rather basic problem with you/Leon endlessly championing the policy is that the policy was written in crayon to appeal to morons. You two aren't morons, yet suck it up like you are.
Why?
I can't remember who coined the term 'simplism', or applied it to political thinking, but there's a lot of it about.
Basically, any argument that boils down to They Should Just... is simplism. Especially when you don't specify who They are. Brexit ended up being about simplism- They Should Just give us the benefits of EU membership that we valued without the messy bits we disliked. They Should Just quarantine the vulnerable during the pandemic was another. Or, on the left, They Should Just get the rich to pay more tax. Or, in this case, They Should Just stop coming over here.
Trouble is, it's rarely as simple as Just Doing This. For taxes, it's totally fair to point out that if you overpluck the goose, it will fly away. That the nice bits about Europe depend on the messy plumbing. That the sausages are tasty but you don't want to see them being made.
I'm not going to blame voters for wanting a simpler world, or for voting for it. But it's blooming irresponsible for opinion formers or wannabe leaders to pretend they can deliver one.
I disagree with pretty much every bit of this post, and it's not surprising, because it goes to the heart of where I think we diverge politically. In almost all such cases, we are loftily informed that 'it isn't as simple as that' - but the simple solution under discussion is never tried.
Crime is a one example - simply make the consequences of doing crime a bit worse than the benefits of doing crime, and crime will fall. 'Oh that's far too simplistic' we're told - 'the reasons for crime are vastly complex, involving social issues, family breakdown, poverty, inequality etc., and we must reject 'simple solutions' and 'tackle those other issues''. So the simple solution is never applied. ..
The US laboratory has fairly clearly demonstrated that isn't true.
You don’t have to go all the way to the US. In the UK we’ve tried tougher sentencing multiple times. In fact one of the issues with our crime policy is it’s basically a sentencing policy. To my mind sentencing is too distant from the actual commission of the crime, too abstract.
I do think the stats show some fairly simple answers to vast swathes of crime. Tightening up security, making it harder to nick stuff, and ensuring criminals actually get caught by following up on reports, all shown time and time again to work. Why did everyone start stealing Land Rovers? Because their security was shit.
As you say, it's complicated. Crime rates correlate with a whole load of things - and quite poorly with incarceration rates. I'd agree that an efficient criminal justice system, where crime detection rates (and by extension the probability of getting caught) are high, and time to trial is low, is quite likely to make a difference.
I am baffled as to why nobody thought that I wasn't including 'being caught and put on trial' within my definition of the consequences of the crime being more negative than the benefits. Being caught is the fundamental negative externality.
I think that we all have lazy mental shorthand and when some people read 'negative consequences' they just think of some Major era Minister threatening to throw away the key.
I wonder if the Tory founded Yougov would do a poll about whether the public would find it acceptable for The Tory party to accept donations from a donor who called for a Labour MP to be shot?
Better make it an MP full stop. The one you might be thinking of wasn't a Labour MP at the time.
Edit: Noit that it detracts from your point, of course!
Is it bad (or good) that I now think in centimetres for height (I'm trying to shake off imperial in almost everything now - thinking in kg for weight....)?
It's not morally bad, though it seems a waste of effort. Stone is a great measure if weight. It's substantial enough to be meaningful 'I need to lose a stone and a half'. Nobody needs to lose a kilo. Some people could shit a kilo in a single setting. As for cm and height, that strikes me as daft.
Shitting a kilo would be quite an achievement but shitting an American pound, as they like to use to weigh themselves, is definitely on the cards. Not that I routinely weigh my stools.
You could always weigh yourself "before" and "after".
I read of a visitor's book in a stately home (I want to say it was Glamis Castle) where the guests had to list their weight alongside their name. It lead to qualifying notes like 'in hunting boots after a heavy meal'.
"Also in the campaign period at least 1 flight will take off for Rwanda, perhaps more with one on eve of polling. ....... The Rwanda flights will return Ref voters back to the Conservatives. You can say recent polling on Rwanda doesn’t suggest the Rwanda flights will generate a stampede of Ref back to Con, and I will laugh at you because that hypothetical polling is a poor predictive measure for how humans radically change their views once elections are called and Rwanda flights are happening."
I can see the headline: 50 Flown to Rwanda, 500 more come over the Channel
Which rather suggests that the the government don’t actually want ANY flights to take off. They want to replicate the anger around Brexit with the anger that the Rwanda plan is being thwarted by the blob, and used that as Johnson used Brexit. So arguably if you want the Tories to lose, and you are involved in refugee claims in court, don’t block the flights… As you have outlined, there will be far more coming than going.
Though some people (52%) actually thought that Brexit was a good idea, no one, well almost no one, thinks Rwanda is other than a very expensive gimmick.
There's a real fear it might work. Hence all the attacks on it by the UN, third sector and refugee charities. They are worried it will set a precedent.
This explains their confused attack lines: they seamlessly switch from its terrible to it will make no difference at all and back again.
Some of us simply find it an extraordinarily badly planned project with no realistic scope of working beyond a few hundred migrants a year. Horrendously expensive for the results.
It's Groundnut Scheme level thinking.
Once upon a time, Tories supported (a) prudence in public spending (b) the rule of law (UK) (c) the rule of law (international).
Nah, it's Guardianista virtue-signalling circle-jerk masturbation for social and professional acceptance reasons.
We all know this. So do you.
The Conservatives are languishing in the polls and to work out why, I think it’s valuable to examine Casino Royale’s post here.
First, CR argues by assertion, ‘it’s right because I say it’s right’. This echoes the Conservative government passing an act to say Rwanda is safe, irrespective of the facts.
Secondly, CR tries to link the debate to the culture wars by throwing in “virtue-signalling”. The Tories have repeatedly tried the same, but it’s not proven popular with the voters.
Thirdly, there’s no attempt at polite discourse here. It’s just straight to the insults, ‘owning the libs’. This is also failing to be attractive to the electorate.
What a lot of rubbish. I've said that (a) the visceral reaction to it is because the UN, charities and refugees themselves fear it might be effective and that (b) that's because they favour open borders and have a strange sense of cultural relativism.
Their real worry is that they know this offer might prove very popular with the voters, if it worked, and hence all the moves to strangle it at birth.
If you think the same tough choices don't await SKS in a few months time then I've got a bridge to sell you.
Can we pick this apart a little? "The UN, charities and refugees themselves fear it might be effective". Which bit of the UN, which charities etc? The UN very much wants to STOP mass refugee events and the crises they create. You suggest that they favour "open borders" the context of millions fleeing war and poverty and then ending up stuck in giant refugee camps being tended to by the UN. You think the UN actually want to be on the hook feeding millions of refugees? really?
The key to this is "if it worked" and as all the experts in every related field have pointed out - it can't work because structurally its bonkers.
You have linked the "deport them to Rwanda" policy as being opposed by a globalist cabal - the UN, charities, refugees - who apparently want refugees. So is their fear that every refugees globally might end up sent to Rwanda?
Lets just look at the asylum seekers in the UK. There's c. 100,000 already here, with more arriving every day in sizeable numbers. So call it 120,000 on the basis that "Rwanda works" and people stop arriving.
Rwanda can't take 120,000 We can't process 120,000 through the courts We can't intern 120,000 prior to them going to court We can't process the 120,000's applications due to a lack of money and resources in the Home Office We can't keep track of 120,000 after booking their arrival. We lose them.
So the rather basic problem with you/Leon endlessly championing the policy is that the policy was written in crayon to appeal to morons. You two aren't morons, yet suck it up like you are.
Why?
I can't remember who coined the term 'simplism', or applied it to political thinking, but there's a lot of it about.
Basically, any argument that boils down to They Should Just... is simplism. Especially when you don't specify who They are. Brexit ended up being about simplism- They Should Just give us the benefits of EU membership that we valued without the messy bits we disliked. They Should Just quarantine the vulnerable during the pandemic was another. Or, on the left, They Should Just get the rich to pay more tax. Or, in this case, They Should Just stop coming over here.
Trouble is, it's rarely as simple as Just Doing This. For taxes, it's totally fair to point out that if you overpluck the goose, it will fly away. That the nice bits about Europe depend on the messy plumbing. That the sausages are tasty but you don't want to see them being made.
I'm not going to blame voters for wanting a simpler world, or for voting for it. But it's blooming irresponsible for opinion formers or wannabe leaders to pretend they can deliver one.
I disagree with pretty much every bit of this post, and it's not surprising, because it goes to the heart of where I think we diverge politically. In almost all such cases, we are loftily informed that 'it isn't as simple as that' - but the simple solution under discussion is never tried.
Crime is a one example - simply make the consequences of doing crime a bit worse than the benefits of doing crime, and crime will fall. 'Oh that's far too simplistic' we're told - 'the reasons for crime are vastly complex, involving social issues, family breakdown, poverty, inequality etc., and we must reject 'simple solutions' and 'tackle those other issues''. So the simple solution is never applied. ..
The US laboratory has fairly clearly demonstrated that isn't true.
You don’t have to go all the way to the US. In the UK we’ve tried tougher sentencing multiple times. In fact one of the issues with our crime policy is it’s basically a sentencing policy. To my mind sentencing is too distant from the actual commission of the crime, too abstract.
I do think the stats show some fairly simple answers to vast swathes of crime. Tightening up security, making it harder to nick stuff, and ensuring criminals actually get caught by following up on reports, all shown time and time again to work. Why did everyone start stealing Land Rovers? Because their security was shit.
Yes, the risk-reward analysis of crime has little to do with the severity of the punishment if convicted, and much more to do with the chances of being caught. We have a problem in that there's little chance of being caught while committing many crimes, so why not take the risk? The recent furore over shoplifting is a good example; very little chance of being prosecuted.
By the nature of criminals they are not good at weighing up the consequences. Certainty of being caught and a quick trial deter more than length of sentence IMO. We fail on both of those.
Not just crims, either.
Otherwise lotteries wouldn't work. Or companies with highly polarised pay scales. (If you go to work for MegaOnmiBank, you probably won't make it to the top where the really huge salaries are made. But plenty of smart people are willing to give it a shot.)
Here's an interesting fact for you. Half of men are below average height.
Half of men are below median height. Height distribution is somewhat skewed, with a mean below the median, so less than half of men are below mean height.
"Also in the campaign period at least 1 flight will take off for Rwanda, perhaps more with one on eve of polling. ....... The Rwanda flights will return Ref voters back to the Conservatives. You can say recent polling on Rwanda doesn’t suggest the Rwanda flights will generate a stampede of Ref back to Con, and I will laugh at you because that hypothetical polling is a poor predictive measure for how humans radically change their views once elections are called and Rwanda flights are happening."
I can see the headline: 50 Flown to Rwanda, 500 more come over the Channel
Which rather suggests that the the government don’t actually want ANY flights to take off. They want to replicate the anger around Brexit with the anger that the Rwanda plan is being thwarted by the blob, and used that as Johnson used Brexit. So arguably if you want the Tories to lose, and you are involved in refugee claims in court, don’t block the flights… As you have outlined, there will be far more coming than going.
Though some people (52%) actually thought that Brexit was a good idea, no one, well almost no one, thinks Rwanda is other than a very expensive gimmick.
There's a real fear it might work. Hence all the attacks on it by the UN, third sector and refugee charities. They are worried it will set a precedent.
This explains their confused attack lines: they seamlessly switch from its terrible to it will make no difference at all and back again.
Some of us simply find it an extraordinarily badly planned project with no realistic scope of working beyond a few hundred migrants a year. Horrendously expensive for the results.
It's Groundnut Scheme level thinking.
Once upon a time, Tories supported (a) prudence in public spending (b) the rule of law (UK) (c) the rule of law (international).
Nah, it's Guardianista virtue-signalling circle-jerk masturbation for social and professional acceptance reasons.
We all know this. So do you.
The Conservatives are languishing in the polls and to work out why, I think it’s valuable to examine Casino Royale’s post here.
First, CR argues by assertion, ‘it’s right because I say it’s right’. This echoes the Conservative government passing an act to say Rwanda is safe, irrespective of the facts.
Secondly, CR tries to link the debate to the culture wars by throwing in “virtue-signalling”. The Tories have repeatedly tried the same, but it’s not proven popular with the voters.
Thirdly, there’s no attempt at polite discourse here. It’s just straight to the insults, ‘owning the libs’. This is also failing to be attractive to the electorate.
What a lot of rubbish. I've said that (a) the visceral reaction to it is because the UN, charities and refugees themselves fear it might be effective and that (b) that's because they favour open borders and have a strange sense of cultural relativism.
Their real worry is that they know this offer might prove very popular with the voters, if it worked, and hence all the moves to strangle it at birth.
If you think the same tough choices don't await SKS in a few months time then I've got a bridge to sell you.
Can we pick this apart a little? "The UN, charities and refugees themselves fear it might be effective". Which bit of the UN, which charities etc? The UN very much wants to STOP mass refugee events and the crises they create. You suggest that they favour "open borders" the context of millions fleeing war and poverty and then ending up stuck in giant refugee camps being tended to by the UN. You think the UN actually want to be on the hook feeding millions of refugees? really?
The key to this is "if it worked" and as all the experts in every related field have pointed out - it can't work because structurally its bonkers.
You have linked the "deport them to Rwanda" policy as being opposed by a globalist cabal - the UN, charities, refugees - who apparently want refugees. So is their fear that every refugees globally might end up sent to Rwanda?
Lets just look at the asylum seekers in the UK. There's c. 100,000 already here, with more arriving every day in sizeable numbers. So call it 120,000 on the basis that "Rwanda works" and people stop arriving.
Rwanda can't take 120,000 We can't process 120,000 through the courts We can't intern 120,000 prior to them going to court We can't process the 120,000's applications due to a lack of money and resources in the Home Office We can't keep track of 120,000 after booking their arrival. We lose them.
So the rather basic problem with you/Leon endlessly championing the policy is that the policy was written in crayon to appeal to morons. You two aren't morons, yet suck it up like you are.
Why?
I can't remember who coined the term 'simplism', or applied it to political thinking, but there's a lot of it about.
Basically, any argument that boils down to They Should Just... is simplism. Especially when you don't specify who They are. Brexit ended up being about simplism- They Should Just give us the benefits of EU membership that we valued without the messy bits we disliked. They Should Just quarantine the vulnerable during the pandemic was another. Or, on the left, They Should Just get the rich to pay more tax. Or, in this case, They Should Just stop coming over here.
Trouble is, it's rarely as simple as Just Doing This. For taxes, it's totally fair to point out that if you overpluck the goose, it will fly away. That the nice bits about Europe depend on the messy plumbing. That the sausages are tasty but you don't want to see them being made.
I'm not going to blame voters for wanting a simpler world, or for voting for it. But it's blooming irresponsible for opinion formers or wannabe leaders to pretend they can deliver one.
I disagree with pretty much every bit of this post, and it's not surprising, because it goes to the heart of where I think we diverge politically. In almost all such cases, we are loftily informed that 'it isn't as simple as that' - but the simple solution under discussion is never tried.
Crime is a one example - simply make the consequences of doing crime a bit worse than the benefits of doing crime, and crime will fall. 'Oh that's far too simplistic' we're told - 'the reasons for crime are vastly complex, involving social issues, family breakdown, poverty, inequality etc., and we must reject 'simple solutions' and 'tackle those other issues''. So the simple solution is never applied. ..
The US laboratory has fairly clearly demonstrated that isn't true.
You don’t have to go all the way to the US. In the UK we’ve tried tougher sentencing multiple times. In fact one of the issues with our crime policy is it’s basically a sentencing policy. To my mind sentencing is too distant from the actual commission of the crime, too abstract.
I do think the stats show some fairly simple answers to vast swathes of crime. Tightening up security, making it harder to nick stuff, and ensuring criminals actually get caught by following up on reports, all shown time and time again to work. Why did everyone start stealing Land Rovers? Because their security was shit.
Yes, the risk-reward analysis of crime has little to do with the severity of the punishment if convicted, and much more to do with the chances of being caught. We have a problem in that there's little chance of being caught while committing many crimes, so why not take the risk? The recent furore over shoplifting is a good example; very little chance of being prosecuted.
By the nature of criminals they are not good at weighing up the consequences. Certainty of being caught and a quick trial deter more than length of sentence IMO. We fail on both of those.
Not just crims, either.
Otherwise lotteries wouldn't work. Or companies with highly polarised pay scales. (If you go to work for MegaOnmiBank, you probably won't make it to the top where the really huge salaries are made. But plenty of smart people are willing to give it a shot.)
Is it bad (or good) that I now think in centimetres for height (I'm trying to shake off imperial in almost everything now - thinking in kg for weight....)?
It's not morally bad, though it seems a waste of effort. Stone is a great measure if weight. It's substantial enough to be meaningful 'I need to lose a stone and a half'. Nobody needs to lose a kilo. Some people could shit a kilo in a single setting. As for cm and height, that strikes me as daft.
Shitting a kilo would be quite an achievement but shitting an American pound, as they like to use to weigh themselves, is definitely on the cards. Not that I routinely weigh my stools.
You could always weigh yourself "before" and "after".
I read of a visitor's book in a stately home (I want to say it was Glamis Castle) where the guests had to list their weight alongside their name. It lead to qualifying notes like 'in hunting boots after a heavy meal'.
"Also in the campaign period at least 1 flight will take off for Rwanda, perhaps more with one on eve of polling. ....... The Rwanda flights will return Ref voters back to the Conservatives. You can say recent polling on Rwanda doesn’t suggest the Rwanda flights will generate a stampede of Ref back to Con, and I will laugh at you because that hypothetical polling is a poor predictive measure for how humans radically change their views once elections are called and Rwanda flights are happening."
I can see the headline: 50 Flown to Rwanda, 500 more come over the Channel
Which rather suggests that the the government don’t actually want ANY flights to take off. They want to replicate the anger around Brexit with the anger that the Rwanda plan is being thwarted by the blob, and used that as Johnson used Brexit. So arguably if you want the Tories to lose, and you are involved in refugee claims in court, don’t block the flights… As you have outlined, there will be far more coming than going.
Though some people (52%) actually thought that Brexit was a good idea, no one, well almost no one, thinks Rwanda is other than a very expensive gimmick.
There's a real fear it might work. Hence all the attacks on it by the UN, third sector and refugee charities. They are worried it will set a precedent.
This explains their confused attack lines: they seamlessly switch from its terrible to it will make no difference at all and back again.
Some of us simply find it an extraordinarily badly planned project with no realistic scope of working beyond a few hundred migrants a year. Horrendously expensive for the results.
It's Groundnut Scheme level thinking.
Once upon a time, Tories supported (a) prudence in public spending (b) the rule of law (UK) (c) the rule of law (international).
Nah, it's Guardianista virtue-signalling circle-jerk masturbation for social and professional acceptance reasons.
We all know this. So do you.
The Conservatives are languishing in the polls and to work out why, I think it’s valuable to examine Casino Royale’s post here.
First, CR argues by assertion, ‘it’s right because I say it’s right’. This echoes the Conservative government passing an act to say Rwanda is safe, irrespective of the facts.
Secondly, CR tries to link the debate to the culture wars by throwing in “virtue-signalling”. The Tories have repeatedly tried the same, but it’s not proven popular with the voters.
Thirdly, there’s no attempt at polite discourse here. It’s just straight to the insults, ‘owning the libs’. This is also failing to be attractive to the electorate.
What a lot of rubbish. I've said that (a) the visceral reaction to it is because the UN, charities and refugees themselves fear it might be effective and that (b) that's because they favour open borders and have a strange sense of cultural relativism.
Their real worry is that they know this offer might prove very popular with the voters, if it worked, and hence all the moves to strangle it at birth.
If you think the same tough choices don't await SKS in a few months time then I've got a bridge to sell you.
Can we pick this apart a little? "The UN, charities and refugees themselves fear it might be effective". Which bit of the UN, which charities etc? The UN very much wants to STOP mass refugee events and the crises they create. You suggest that they favour "open borders" the context of millions fleeing war and poverty and then ending up stuck in giant refugee camps being tended to by the UN. You think the UN actually want to be on the hook feeding millions of refugees? really?
The key to this is "if it worked" and as all the experts in every related field have pointed out - it can't work because structurally its bonkers.
You have linked the "deport them to Rwanda" policy as being opposed by a globalist cabal - the UN, charities, refugees - who apparently want refugees. So is their fear that every refugees globally might end up sent to Rwanda?
Lets just look at the asylum seekers in the UK. There's c. 100,000 already here, with more arriving every day in sizeable numbers. So call it 120,000 on the basis that "Rwanda works" and people stop arriving.
Rwanda can't take 120,000 We can't process 120,000 through the courts We can't intern 120,000 prior to them going to court We can't process the 120,000's applications due to a lack of money and resources in the Home Office We can't keep track of 120,000 after booking their arrival. We lose them.
So the rather basic problem with you/Leon endlessly championing the policy is that the policy was written in crayon to appeal to morons. You two aren't morons, yet suck it up like you are.
Why?
I can't remember who coined the term 'simplism', or applied it to political thinking, but there's a lot of it about.
Basically, any argument that boils down to They Should Just... is simplism. Especially when you don't specify who They are. Brexit ended up being about simplism- They Should Just give us the benefits of EU membership that we valued without the messy bits we disliked. They Should Just quarantine the vulnerable during the pandemic was another. Or, on the left, They Should Just get the rich to pay more tax. Or, in this case, They Should Just stop coming over here.
Trouble is, it's rarely as simple as Just Doing This. For taxes, it's totally fair to point out that if you overpluck the goose, it will fly away. That the nice bits about Europe depend on the messy plumbing. That the sausages are tasty but you don't want to see them being made.
I'm not going to blame voters for wanting a simpler world, or for voting for it. But it's blooming irresponsible for opinion formers or wannabe leaders to pretend they can deliver one.
I disagree with pretty much every bit of this post, and it's not surprising, because it goes to the heart of where I think we diverge politically. In almost all such cases, we are loftily informed that 'it isn't as simple as that' - but the simple solution under discussion is never tried.
Crime is a one example - simply make the consequences of doing crime a bit worse than the benefits of doing crime, and crime will fall. 'Oh that's far too simplistic' we're told - 'the reasons for crime are vastly complex, involving social issues, family breakdown, poverty, inequality etc., and we must reject 'simple solutions' and 'tackle those other issues''. So the simple solution is never applied. ..
The US laboratory has fairly clearly demonstrated that isn't true.
You don’t have to go all the way to the US. In the UK we’ve tried tougher sentencing multiple times. In fact one of the issues with our crime policy is it’s basically a sentencing policy. To my mind sentencing is too distant from the actual commission of the crime, too abstract.
I do think the stats show some fairly simple answers to vast swathes of crime. Tightening up security, making it harder to nick stuff, and ensuring criminals actually get caught by following up on reports, all shown time and time again to work. Why did everyone start stealing Land Rovers? Because their security was shit.
Yes, the risk-reward analysis of crime has little to do with the severity of the punishment if convicted, and much more to do with the chances of being caught. We have a problem in that there's little chance of being caught while committing many crimes, so why not take the risk? The recent furore over shoplifting is a good example; very little chance of being prosecuted.
By the nature of criminals they are not good at weighing up the consequences. Certainty of being caught and a quick trial deter more than length of sentence IMO. We fail on both of those.
This discussion cries out for a long piece on guilt vs shame in psychology, something I've learned a lot about in the process of being an adoptive parent. I wonder if @TheScreamingEagles would be interested in me writing one? Not directly political, but it underpins a lot of issues.
"Also in the campaign period at least 1 flight will take off for Rwanda, perhaps more with one on eve of polling. ....... The Rwanda flights will return Ref voters back to the Conservatives. You can say recent polling on Rwanda doesn’t suggest the Rwanda flights will generate a stampede of Ref back to Con, and I will laugh at you because that hypothetical polling is a poor predictive measure for how humans radically change their views once elections are called and Rwanda flights are happening."
I can see the headline: 50 Flown to Rwanda, 500 more come over the Channel
Which rather suggests that the the government don’t actually want ANY flights to take off. They want to replicate the anger around Brexit with the anger that the Rwanda plan is being thwarted by the blob, and used that as Johnson used Brexit. So arguably if you want the Tories to lose, and you are involved in refugee claims in court, don’t block the flights… As you have outlined, there will be far more coming than going.
Though some people (52%) actually thought that Brexit was a good idea, no one, well almost no one, thinks Rwanda is other than a very expensive gimmick.
There's a real fear it might work. Hence all the attacks on it by the UN, third sector and refugee charities. They are worried it will set a precedent.
This explains their confused attack lines: they seamlessly switch from its terrible to it will make no difference at all and back again.
Some of us simply find it an extraordinarily badly planned project with no realistic scope of working beyond a few hundred migrants a year. Horrendously expensive for the results.
It's Groundnut Scheme level thinking.
Once upon a time, Tories supported (a) prudence in public spending (b) the rule of law (UK) (c) the rule of law (international).
Nah, it's Guardianista virtue-signalling circle-jerk masturbation for social and professional acceptance reasons.
We all know this. So do you.
The Conservatives are languishing in the polls and to work out why, I think it’s valuable to examine Casino Royale’s post here.
First, CR argues by assertion, ‘it’s right because I say it’s right’. This echoes the Conservative government passing an act to say Rwanda is safe, irrespective of the facts.
Secondly, CR tries to link the debate to the culture wars by throwing in “virtue-signalling”. The Tories have repeatedly tried the same, but it’s not proven popular with the voters.
Thirdly, there’s no attempt at polite discourse here. It’s just straight to the insults, ‘owning the libs’. This is also failing to be attractive to the electorate.
What a lot of rubbish. I've said that (a) the visceral reaction to it is because the UN, charities and refugees themselves fear it might be effective and that (b) that's because they favour open borders and have a strange sense of cultural relativism.
Their real worry is that they know this offer might prove very popular with the voters, if it worked, and hence all the moves to strangle it at birth.
If you think the same tough choices don't await SKS in a few months time then I've got a bridge to sell you.
Can we pick this apart a little? "The UN, charities and refugees themselves fear it might be effective". Which bit of the UN, which charities etc? The UN very much wants to STOP mass refugee events and the crises they create. You suggest that they favour "open borders" the context of millions fleeing war and poverty and then ending up stuck in giant refugee camps being tended to by the UN. You think the UN actually want to be on the hook feeding millions of refugees? really?
The key to this is "if it worked" and as all the experts in every related field have pointed out - it can't work because structurally its bonkers.
You have linked the "deport them to Rwanda" policy as being opposed by a globalist cabal - the UN, charities, refugees - who apparently want refugees. So is their fear that every refugees globally might end up sent to Rwanda?
Lets just look at the asylum seekers in the UK. There's c. 100,000 already here, with more arriving every day in sizeable numbers. So call it 120,000 on the basis that "Rwanda works" and people stop arriving.
Rwanda can't take 120,000 We can't process 120,000 through the courts We can't intern 120,000 prior to them going to court We can't process the 120,000's applications due to a lack of money and resources in the Home Office We can't keep track of 120,000 after booking their arrival. We lose them.
So the rather basic problem with you/Leon endlessly championing the policy is that the policy was written in crayon to appeal to morons. You two aren't morons, yet suck it up like you are.
Why?
I can't remember who coined the term 'simplism', or applied it to political thinking, but there's a lot of it about.
Basically, any argument that boils down to They Should Just... is simplism. Especially when you don't specify who They are. Brexit ended up being about simplism- They Should Just give us the benefits of EU membership that we valued without the messy bits we disliked. They Should Just quarantine the vulnerable during the pandemic was another. Or, on the left, They Should Just get the rich to pay more tax. Or, in this case, They Should Just stop coming over here.
Trouble is, it's rarely as simple as Just Doing This. For taxes, it's totally fair to point out that if you overpluck the goose, it will fly away. That the nice bits about Europe depend on the messy plumbing. That the sausages are tasty but you don't want to see them being made.
I'm not going to blame voters for wanting a simpler world, or for voting for it. But it's blooming irresponsible for opinion formers or wannabe leaders to pretend they can deliver one.
I disagree with pretty much every bit of this post, and it's not surprising, because it goes to the heart of where I think we diverge politically. In almost all such cases, we are loftily informed that 'it isn't as simple as that' - but the simple solution under discussion is never tried.
Crime is a one example - simply make the consequences of doing crime a bit worse than the benefits of doing crime, and crime will fall. 'Oh that's far too simplistic' we're told - 'the reasons for crime are vastly complex, involving social issues, family breakdown, poverty, inequality etc., and we must reject 'simple solutions' and 'tackle those other issues''. So the simple solution is never applied. ..
The US laboratory has fairly clearly demonstrated that isn't true.
You don’t have to go all the way to the US. In the UK we’ve tried tougher sentencing multiple times. In fact one of the issues with our crime policy is it’s basically a sentencing policy. To my mind sentencing is too distant from the actual commission of the crime, too abstract.
I do think the stats show some fairly simple answers to vast swathes of crime. Tightening up security, making it harder to nick stuff, and ensuring criminals actually get caught by following up on reports, all shown time and time again to work. Why did everyone start stealing Land Rovers? Because their security was shit.
Yes, the risk-reward analysis of crime has little to do with the severity of the punishment if convicted, and much more to do with the chances of being caught. We have a problem in that there's little chance of being caught while committing many crimes, so why not take the risk? The recent furore over shoplifting is a good example; very little chance of being prosecuted.
By the nature of criminals they are not good at weighing up the consequences. Certainty of being caught and a quick trial deter more than length of sentence IMO. We fail on both of those.
Maybe SKS should put “fast track justice for young offenders” on his pledge card.
Fast track corporal punishment as an alternative to prison would solve many problems in one go.
Recalling the 'short sharp shock', it would be very interesting to see some stats on what its impact was. The scheme was concurrent with an actual lessening of custodial sentencing for youth crime (as with so many eye-catching Government initiatives - see Rwanda), so one can't glean much from the topline figures.
"Also in the campaign period at least 1 flight will take off for Rwanda, perhaps more with one on eve of polling. ....... The Rwanda flights will return Ref voters back to the Conservatives. You can say recent polling on Rwanda doesn’t suggest the Rwanda flights will generate a stampede of Ref back to Con, and I will laugh at you because that hypothetical polling is a poor predictive measure for how humans radically change their views once elections are called and Rwanda flights are happening."
I can see the headline: 50 Flown to Rwanda, 500 more come over the Channel
Which rather suggests that the the government don’t actually want ANY flights to take off. They want to replicate the anger around Brexit with the anger that the Rwanda plan is being thwarted by the blob, and used that as Johnson used Brexit. So arguably if you want the Tories to lose, and you are involved in refugee claims in court, don’t block the flights… As you have outlined, there will be far more coming than going.
Though some people (52%) actually thought that Brexit was a good idea, no one, well almost no one, thinks Rwanda is other than a very expensive gimmick.
There's a real fear it might work. Hence all the attacks on it by the UN, third sector and refugee charities. They are worried it will set a precedent.
This explains their confused attack lines: they seamlessly switch from its terrible to it will make no difference at all and back again.
Some of us simply find it an extraordinarily badly planned project with no realistic scope of working beyond a few hundred migrants a year. Horrendously expensive for the results.
It's Groundnut Scheme level thinking.
Once upon a time, Tories supported (a) prudence in public spending (b) the rule of law (UK) (c) the rule of law (international).
Nah, it's Guardianista virtue-signalling circle-jerk masturbation for social and professional acceptance reasons.
We all know this. So do you.
The Conservatives are languishing in the polls and to work out why, I think it’s valuable to examine Casino Royale’s post here.
First, CR argues by assertion, ‘it’s right because I say it’s right’. This echoes the Conservative government passing an act to say Rwanda is safe, irrespective of the facts.
Secondly, CR tries to link the debate to the culture wars by throwing in “virtue-signalling”. The Tories have repeatedly tried the same, but it’s not proven popular with the voters.
Thirdly, there’s no attempt at polite discourse here. It’s just straight to the insults, ‘owning the libs’. This is also failing to be attractive to the electorate.
What a lot of rubbish. I've said that (a) the visceral reaction to it is because the UN, charities and refugees themselves fear it might be effective and that (b) that's because they favour open borders and have a strange sense of cultural relativism.
Their real worry is that they know this offer might prove very popular with the voters, if it worked, and hence all the moves to strangle it at birth.
If you think the same tough choices don't await SKS in a few months time then I've got a bridge to sell you.
Can we pick this apart a little? "The UN, charities and refugees themselves fear it might be effective". Which bit of the UN, which charities etc? The UN very much wants to STOP mass refugee events and the crises they create. You suggest that they favour "open borders" the context of millions fleeing war and poverty and then ending up stuck in giant refugee camps being tended to by the UN. You think the UN actually want to be on the hook feeding millions of refugees? really?
The key to this is "if it worked" and as all the experts in every related field have pointed out - it can't work because structurally its bonkers.
You have linked the "deport them to Rwanda" policy as being opposed by a globalist cabal - the UN, charities, refugees - who apparently want refugees. So is their fear that every refugees globally might end up sent to Rwanda?
Lets just look at the asylum seekers in the UK. There's c. 100,000 already here, with more arriving every day in sizeable numbers. So call it 120,000 on the basis that "Rwanda works" and people stop arriving.
Rwanda can't take 120,000 We can't process 120,000 through the courts We can't intern 120,000 prior to them going to court We can't process the 120,000's applications due to a lack of money and resources in the Home Office We can't keep track of 120,000 after booking their arrival. We lose them.
So the rather basic problem with you/Leon endlessly championing the policy is that the policy was written in crayon to appeal to morons. You two aren't morons, yet suck it up like you are.
Why?
I can't remember who coined the term 'simplism', or applied it to political thinking, but there's a lot of it about.
Basically, any argument that boils down to They Should Just... is simplism. Especially when you don't specify who They are. Brexit ended up being about simplism- They Should Just give us the benefits of EU membership that we valued without the messy bits we disliked. They Should Just quarantine the vulnerable during the pandemic was another. Or, on the left, They Should Just get the rich to pay more tax. Or, in this case, They Should Just stop coming over here.
Trouble is, it's rarely as simple as Just Doing This. For taxes, it's totally fair to point out that if you overpluck the goose, it will fly away. That the nice bits about Europe depend on the messy plumbing. That the sausages are tasty but you don't want to see them being made.
I'm not going to blame voters for wanting a simpler world, or for voting for it. But it's blooming irresponsible for opinion formers or wannabe leaders to pretend they can deliver one.
Up to a point, Lord Copper.
In my experience those who work in the private sector are more likely to see opportunities, whereas those in the public sector are more likely to see risks. It makes sense, given taking a job in the private sector is inherently riskier, but generally better rewarded.
It is one of the main reasons why I abhor the growth of the role of the state. It tallies with a growth of risk aversion, stagnation and, ironically, the general enshittification (thanks @viewcode) of the common weal.
Lots of those who work for the state will opine about difficulties, or overemphasise the compilications.
This is an interesting viewpoint. I worked my first decade and a half or so in the public sector and since I've worked most of a decade in the private sector.
I get a definite sense in the private sector of not having enough time to do things properly. You have to be quite strong-willed to be able to stand up and say stop, when things aren't good enough. But you also have to exercise the judgement to know when things are good enough, even if you can see how they might be better with a bit more time.
So there's a sense in which in the private sector things can get stripped down to the essentials, and you get what is important done a lot faster. But the dividing line between good enough and let's hope we get paid before it falls apart is much argued over.
"Also in the campaign period at least 1 flight will take off for Rwanda, perhaps more with one on eve of polling. ....... The Rwanda flights will return Ref voters back to the Conservatives. You can say recent polling on Rwanda doesn’t suggest the Rwanda flights will generate a stampede of Ref back to Con, and I will laugh at you because that hypothetical polling is a poor predictive measure for how humans radically change their views once elections are called and Rwanda flights are happening."
I can see the headline: 50 Flown to Rwanda, 500 more come over the Channel
Which rather suggests that the the government don’t actually want ANY flights to take off. They want to replicate the anger around Brexit with the anger that the Rwanda plan is being thwarted by the blob, and used that as Johnson used Brexit. So arguably if you want the Tories to lose, and you are involved in refugee claims in court, don’t block the flights… As you have outlined, there will be far more coming than going.
Though some people (52%) actually thought that Brexit was a good idea, no one, well almost no one, thinks Rwanda is other than a very expensive gimmick.
There's a real fear it might work. Hence all the attacks on it by the UN, third sector and refugee charities. They are worried it will set a precedent.
This explains their confused attack lines: they seamlessly switch from its terrible to it will make no difference at all and back again.
Some of us simply find it an extraordinarily badly planned project with no realistic scope of working beyond a few hundred migrants a year. Horrendously expensive for the results.
It's Groundnut Scheme level thinking.
Once upon a time, Tories supported (a) prudence in public spending (b) the rule of law (UK) (c) the rule of law (international).
Nah, it's Guardianista virtue-signalling circle-jerk masturbation for social and professional acceptance reasons.
We all know this. So do you.
The Conservatives are languishing in the polls and to work out why, I think it’s valuable to examine Casino Royale’s post here.
First, CR argues by assertion, ‘it’s right because I say it’s right’. This echoes the Conservative government passing an act to say Rwanda is safe, irrespective of the facts.
Secondly, CR tries to link the debate to the culture wars by throwing in “virtue-signalling”. The Tories have repeatedly tried the same, but it’s not proven popular with the voters.
Thirdly, there’s no attempt at polite discourse here. It’s just straight to the insults, ‘owning the libs’. This is also failing to be attractive to the electorate.
What a lot of rubbish. I've said that (a) the visceral reaction to it is because the UN, charities and refugees themselves fear it might be effective and that (b) that's because they favour open borders and have a strange sense of cultural relativism.
Their real worry is that they know this offer might prove very popular with the voters, if it worked, and hence all the moves to strangle it at birth.
If you think the same tough choices don't await SKS in a few months time then I've got a bridge to sell you.
Can we pick this apart a little? "The UN, charities and refugees themselves fear it might be effective". Which bit of the UN, which charities etc? The UN very much wants to STOP mass refugee events and the crises they create. You suggest that they favour "open borders" the context of millions fleeing war and poverty and then ending up stuck in giant refugee camps being tended to by the UN. You think the UN actually want to be on the hook feeding millions of refugees? really?
The key to this is "if it worked" and as all the experts in every related field have pointed out - it can't work because structurally its bonkers.
You have linked the "deport them to Rwanda" policy as being opposed by a globalist cabal - the UN, charities, refugees - who apparently want refugees. So is their fear that every refugees globally might end up sent to Rwanda?
Lets just look at the asylum seekers in the UK. There's c. 100,000 already here, with more arriving every day in sizeable numbers. So call it 120,000 on the basis that "Rwanda works" and people stop arriving.
Rwanda can't take 120,000 We can't process 120,000 through the courts We can't intern 120,000 prior to them going to court We can't process the 120,000's applications due to a lack of money and resources in the Home Office We can't keep track of 120,000 after booking their arrival. We lose them.
So the rather basic problem with you/Leon endlessly championing the policy is that the policy was written in crayon to appeal to morons. You two aren't morons, yet suck it up like you are.
Why?
I can't remember who coined the term 'simplism', or applied it to political thinking, but there's a lot of it about.
Basically, any argument that boils down to They Should Just... is simplism. Especially when you don't specify who They are. Brexit ended up being about simplism- They Should Just give us the benefits of EU membership that we valued without the messy bits we disliked. They Should Just quarantine the vulnerable during the pandemic was another. Or, on the left, They Should Just get the rich to pay more tax. Or, in this case, They Should Just stop coming over here.
Trouble is, it's rarely as simple as Just Doing This. For taxes, it's totally fair to point out that if you overpluck the goose, it will fly away. That the nice bits about Europe depend on the messy plumbing. That the sausages are tasty but you don't want to see them being made.
I'm not going to blame voters for wanting a simpler world, or for voting for it. But it's blooming irresponsible for opinion formers or wannabe leaders to pretend they can deliver one.
I disagree with pretty much every bit of this post, and it's not surprising, because it goes to the heart of where I think we diverge politically. In almost all such cases, we are loftily informed that 'it isn't as simple as that' - but the simple solution under discussion is never tried.
Crime is a one example - simply make the consequences of doing crime a bit worse than the benefits of doing crime, and crime will fall. 'Oh that's far too simplistic' we're told - 'the reasons for crime are vastly complex, involving social issues, family breakdown, poverty, inequality etc., and we must reject 'simple solutions' and 'tackle those other issues''. So the simple solution is never applied. ..
The US laboratory has fairly clearly demonstrated that isn't true.
You don’t have to go all the way to the US. In the UK we’ve tried tougher sentencing multiple times. In fact one of the issues with our crime policy is it’s basically a sentencing policy. To my mind sentencing is too distant from the actual commission of the crime, too abstract.
I do think the stats show some fairly simple answers to vast swathes of crime. Tightening up security, making it harder to nick stuff, and ensuring criminals actually get caught by following up on reports, all shown time and time again to work. Why did everyone start stealing Land Rovers? Because their security was shit.
Yes, the risk-reward analysis of crime has little to do with the severity of the punishment if convicted, and much more to do with the chances of being caught. We have a problem in that there's little chance of being caught while committing many crimes, so why not take the risk? The recent furore over shoplifting is a good example; very little chance of being prosecuted.
By the nature of criminals they are not good at weighing up the consequences. Certainty of being caught and a quick trial deter more than length of sentence IMO. We fail on both of those.
Another problem is, once someone has a criminal conviction and all that goes with it, they don't have much more to lose from getting another one
And, I've seen it reported that 1 in 3 men in the UK have a criminal conviction.
"Also in the campaign period at least 1 flight will take off for Rwanda, perhaps more with one on eve of polling. ....... The Rwanda flights will return Ref voters back to the Conservatives. You can say recent polling on Rwanda doesn’t suggest the Rwanda flights will generate a stampede of Ref back to Con, and I will laugh at you because that hypothetical polling is a poor predictive measure for how humans radically change their views once elections are called and Rwanda flights are happening."
I can see the headline: 50 Flown to Rwanda, 500 more come over the Channel
Which rather suggests that the the government don’t actually want ANY flights to take off. They want to replicate the anger around Brexit with the anger that the Rwanda plan is being thwarted by the blob, and used that as Johnson used Brexit. So arguably if you want the Tories to lose, and you are involved in refugee claims in court, don’t block the flights… As you have outlined, there will be far more coming than going.
Though some people (52%) actually thought that Brexit was a good idea, no one, well almost no one, thinks Rwanda is other than a very expensive gimmick.
There's a real fear it might work. Hence all the attacks on it by the UN, third sector and refugee charities. They are worried it will set a precedent.
This explains their confused attack lines: they seamlessly switch from its terrible to it will make no difference at all and back again.
Some of us simply find it an extraordinarily badly planned project with no realistic scope of working beyond a few hundred migrants a year. Horrendously expensive for the results.
It's Groundnut Scheme level thinking.
Once upon a time, Tories supported (a) prudence in public spending (b) the rule of law (UK) (c) the rule of law (international).
Nah, it's Guardianista virtue-signalling circle-jerk masturbation for social and professional acceptance reasons.
We all know this. So do you.
The Conservatives are languishing in the polls and to work out why, I think it’s valuable to examine Casino Royale’s post here.
First, CR argues by assertion, ‘it’s right because I say it’s right’. This echoes the Conservative government passing an act to say Rwanda is safe, irrespective of the facts.
Secondly, CR tries to link the debate to the culture wars by throwing in “virtue-signalling”. The Tories have repeatedly tried the same, but it’s not proven popular with the voters.
Thirdly, there’s no attempt at polite discourse here. It’s just straight to the insults, ‘owning the libs’. This is also failing to be attractive to the electorate.
What a lot of rubbish. I've said that (a) the visceral reaction to it is because the UN, charities and refugees themselves fear it might be effective and that (b) that's because they favour open borders and have a strange sense of cultural relativism.
Their real worry is that they know this offer might prove very popular with the voters, if it worked, and hence all the moves to strangle it at birth.
If you think the same tough choices don't await SKS in a few months time then I've got a bridge to sell you.
Can we pick this apart a little? "The UN, charities and refugees themselves fear it might be effective". Which bit of the UN, which charities etc? The UN very much wants to STOP mass refugee events and the crises they create. You suggest that they favour "open borders" the context of millions fleeing war and poverty and then ending up stuck in giant refugee camps being tended to by the UN. You think the UN actually want to be on the hook feeding millions of refugees? really?
The key to this is "if it worked" and as all the experts in every related field have pointed out - it can't work because structurally its bonkers.
You have linked the "deport them to Rwanda" policy as being opposed by a globalist cabal - the UN, charities, refugees - who apparently want refugees. So is their fear that every refugees globally might end up sent to Rwanda?
Lets just look at the asylum seekers in the UK. There's c. 100,000 already here, with more arriving every day in sizeable numbers. So call it 120,000 on the basis that "Rwanda works" and people stop arriving.
Rwanda can't take 120,000 We can't process 120,000 through the courts We can't intern 120,000 prior to them going to court We can't process the 120,000's applications due to a lack of money and resources in the Home Office We can't keep track of 120,000 after booking their arrival. We lose them.
So the rather basic problem with you/Leon endlessly championing the policy is that the policy was written in crayon to appeal to morons. You two aren't morons, yet suck it up like you are.
Why?
I can't remember who coined the term 'simplism', or applied it to political thinking, but there's a lot of it about.
Basically, any argument that boils down to They Should Just... is simplism. Especially when you don't specify who They are. Brexit ended up being about simplism- They Should Just give us the benefits of EU membership that we valued without the messy bits we disliked. They Should Just quarantine the vulnerable during the pandemic was another. Or, on the left, They Should Just get the rich to pay more tax. Or, in this case, They Should Just stop coming over here.
Trouble is, it's rarely as simple as Just Doing This. For taxes, it's totally fair to point out that if you overpluck the goose, it will fly away. That the nice bits about Europe depend on the messy plumbing. That the sausages are tasty but you don't want to see them being made.
I'm not going to blame voters for wanting a simpler world, or for voting for it. But it's blooming irresponsible for opinion formers or wannabe leaders to pretend they can deliver one.
I disagree with pretty much every bit of this post, and it's not surprising, because it goes to the heart of where I think we diverge politically. In almost all such cases, we are loftily informed that 'it isn't as simple as that' - but the simple solution under discussion is never tried.
Crime is a one example - simply make the consequences of doing crime a bit worse than the benefits of doing crime, and crime will fall. 'Oh that's far too simplistic' we're told - 'the reasons for crime are vastly complex, involving social issues, family breakdown, poverty, inequality etc., and we must reject 'simple solutions' and 'tackle those other issues''. So the simple solution is never applied. ..
The US laboratory has fairly clearly demonstrated that isn't true.
You don’t have to go all the way to the US. In the UK we’ve tried tougher sentencing multiple times. In fact one of the issues with our crime policy is it’s basically a sentencing policy. To my mind sentencing is too distant from the actual commission of the crime, too abstract.
I do think the stats show some fairly simple answers to vast swathes of crime. Tightening up security, making it harder to nick stuff, and ensuring criminals actually get caught by following up on reports, all shown time and time again to work. Why did everyone start stealing Land Rovers? Because their security was shit.
Yes, the risk-reward analysis of crime has little to do with the severity of the punishment if convicted, and much more to do with the chances of being caught. We have a problem in that there's little chance of being caught while committing many crimes, so why not take the risk? The recent furore over shoplifting is a good example; very little chance of being prosecuted.
By the nature of criminals they are not good at weighing up the consequences. Certainty of being caught and a quick trial deter more than length of sentence IMO. We fail on both of those.
Another problem is, once someone has a criminal conviction and all that goes with it, they don't have much more to lose from getting another one
And, I've seen it reported that 1 in 3 men in the UK have a criminal conviction.
Is it bad (or good) that I now think in centimetres for height (I'm trying to shake off imperial in almost everything now - thinking in kg for weight....)?
It's not morally bad, though it seems a waste of effort. Stone is a great measure if weight. It's substantial enough to be meaningful 'I need to lose a stone and a half'. Nobody needs to lose a kilo. Some people could shit a kilo in a single setting. As for cm and height, that strikes me as daft.
Shitting a kilo would be quite an achievement but shitting an American pound, as they like to use to weigh themselves, is definitely on the cards. Not that I routinely weigh my stools.
You could always weigh yourself "before" and "after".
I read of a visitor's book in a stately home (I want to say it was Glamis Castle) where the guests had to list their weight alongside their name. It lead to qualifying notes like 'in hunting boots after a heavy meal'.
It all sounds rather lovely, though there's not a chance in hell I could squeeze in 'afternoon tea' between Christmas lunch and dinner. It's all I can do to have some cheese and crackers for the rest of the day given how much Turkey I stuff away.
Britain estimates 450,000 Russian troops killed or wounded - Britain estimates that 450,000 Russian military personnel have been killed or wounded and over 10,000 Russian armoured vehicles have been destroyed in Ukraine.
I don't like it. It's playground stuff. But fwiw I don't think Sunak's height (lack of) is what hurts him image-wise it's more the general lack of him. He really is very tiny.
Yes, I'm disappointed with Sunak for his timidity. To say he's not a strong leader would be a gross understatement. He is weak - so was Johnson, but weak in a different way.
This isn't anything to do with his height, of course. Inexperience probably has a lot to do with it.
"Also in the campaign period at least 1 flight will take off for Rwanda, perhaps more with one on eve of polling. ....... The Rwanda flights will return Ref voters back to the Conservatives. You can say recent polling on Rwanda doesn’t suggest the Rwanda flights will generate a stampede of Ref back to Con, and I will laugh at you because that hypothetical polling is a poor predictive measure for how humans radically change their views once elections are called and Rwanda flights are happening."
I can see the headline: 50 Flown to Rwanda, 500 more come over the Channel
Which rather suggests that the the government don’t actually want ANY flights to take off. They want to replicate the anger around Brexit with the anger that the Rwanda plan is being thwarted by the blob, and used that as Johnson used Brexit. So arguably if you want the Tories to lose, and you are involved in refugee claims in court, don’t block the flights… As you have outlined, there will be far more coming than going.
Though some people (52%) actually thought that Brexit was a good idea, no one, well almost no one, thinks Rwanda is other than a very expensive gimmick.
There's a real fear it might work. Hence all the attacks on it by the UN, third sector and refugee charities. They are worried it will set a precedent.
This explains their confused attack lines: they seamlessly switch from its terrible to it will make no difference at all and back again.
Some of us simply find it an extraordinarily badly planned project with no realistic scope of working beyond a few hundred migrants a year. Horrendously expensive for the results.
It's Groundnut Scheme level thinking.
Once upon a time, Tories supported (a) prudence in public spending (b) the rule of law (UK) (c) the rule of law (international).
Nah, it's Guardianista virtue-signalling circle-jerk masturbation for social and professional acceptance reasons.
We all know this. So do you.
The Conservatives are languishing in the polls and to work out why, I think it’s valuable to examine Casino Royale’s post here.
First, CR argues by assertion, ‘it’s right because I say it’s right’. This echoes the Conservative government passing an act to say Rwanda is safe, irrespective of the facts.
Secondly, CR tries to link the debate to the culture wars by throwing in “virtue-signalling”. The Tories have repeatedly tried the same, but it’s not proven popular with the voters.
Thirdly, there’s no attempt at polite discourse here. It’s just straight to the insults, ‘owning the libs’. This is also failing to be attractive to the electorate.
What a lot of rubbish. I've said that (a) the visceral reaction to it is because the UN, charities and refugees themselves fear it might be effective and that (b) that's because they favour open borders and have a strange sense of cultural relativism.
Their real worry is that they know this offer might prove very popular with the voters, if it worked, and hence all the moves to strangle it at birth.
If you think the same tough choices don't await SKS in a few months time then I've got a bridge to sell you.
Can we pick this apart a little? "The UN, charities and refugees themselves fear it might be effective". Which bit of the UN, which charities etc? The UN very much wants to STOP mass refugee events and the crises they create. You suggest that they favour "open borders" the context of millions fleeing war and poverty and then ending up stuck in giant refugee camps being tended to by the UN. You think the UN actually want to be on the hook feeding millions of refugees? really?
The key to this is "if it worked" and as all the experts in every related field have pointed out - it can't work because structurally its bonkers.
You have linked the "deport them to Rwanda" policy as being opposed by a globalist cabal - the UN, charities, refugees - who apparently want refugees. So is their fear that every refugees globally might end up sent to Rwanda?
Lets just look at the asylum seekers in the UK. There's c. 100,000 already here, with more arriving every day in sizeable numbers. So call it 120,000 on the basis that "Rwanda works" and people stop arriving.
Rwanda can't take 120,000 We can't process 120,000 through the courts We can't intern 120,000 prior to them going to court We can't process the 120,000's applications due to a lack of money and resources in the Home Office We can't keep track of 120,000 after booking their arrival. We lose them.
So the rather basic problem with you/Leon endlessly championing the policy is that the policy was written in crayon to appeal to morons. You two aren't morons, yet suck it up like you are.
Why?
I can't remember who coined the term 'simplism', or applied it to political thinking, but there's a lot of it about.
Basically, any argument that boils down to They Should Just... is simplism. Especially when you don't specify who They are. Brexit ended up being about simplism- They Should Just give us the benefits of EU membership that we valued without the messy bits we disliked. They Should Just quarantine the vulnerable during the pandemic was another. Or, on the left, They Should Just get the rich to pay more tax. Or, in this case, They Should Just stop coming over here.
Trouble is, it's rarely as simple as Just Doing This. For taxes, it's totally fair to point out that if you overpluck the goose, it will fly away. That the nice bits about Europe depend on the messy plumbing. That the sausages are tasty but you don't want to see them being made.
I'm not going to blame voters for wanting a simpler world, or for voting for it. But it's blooming irresponsible for opinion formers or wannabe leaders to pretend they can deliver one.
I disagree with pretty much every bit of this post, and it's not surprising, because it goes to the heart of where I think we diverge politically. In almost all such cases, we are loftily informed that 'it isn't as simple as that' - but the simple solution under discussion is never tried.
Crime is a one example - simply make the consequences of doing crime a bit worse than the benefits of doing crime, and crime will fall. 'Oh that's far too simplistic' we're told - 'the reasons for crime are vastly complex, involving social issues, family breakdown, poverty, inequality etc., and we must reject 'simple solutions' and 'tackle those other issues''. So the simple solution is never applied. ..
The US laboratory has fairly clearly demonstrated that isn't true.
You don’t have to go all the way to the US. In the UK we’ve tried tougher sentencing multiple times. In fact one of the issues with our crime policy is it’s basically a sentencing policy. To my mind sentencing is too distant from the actual commission of the crime, too abstract.
I do think the stats show some fairly simple answers to vast swathes of crime. Tightening up security, making it harder to nick stuff, and ensuring criminals actually get caught by following up on reports, all shown time and time again to work. Why did everyone start stealing Land Rovers? Because their security was shit.
Yes, the risk-reward analysis of crime has little to do with the severity of the punishment if convicted, and much more to do with the chances of being caught. We have a problem in that there's little chance of being caught while committing many crimes, so why not take the risk? The recent furore over shoplifting is a good example; very little chance of being prosecuted.
By the nature of criminals they are not good at weighing up the consequences. Certainty of being caught and a quick trial deter more than length of sentence IMO. We fail on both of those.
Another problem is, once someone has a criminal conviction and all that goes with it, they don't have much more to lose from getting another one
And, I've seen it reported that 1 in 3 men in the UK have a criminal conviction.
I don't like it. It's playground stuff. But fwiw I don't think Sunak's height (lack of) is what hurts him image-wise it's more the general lack of him. He really is very tiny.
Yes, I'm disappointed with Sunak for his timidity. To say he's not a strong leader would be a gross understatement. He is weak - so was Johnson, but weak in a different way.
This isn't anything to do with his height, of course. Inexperience probably has a lot to do with it.
In terms of political stature, Rishi would be something of a midget if he were six foot six. Not entirely his fault that he got to the top too soon, though he didn't object at the time.
That he can probably buy clothes in the school uniform section at M+S is another matter. And unfortunately for him, one reinforces the other psychologically. See also Major's greyness or Johnson's scruffiness (though BoJo played up to that).
"Also in the campaign period at least 1 flight will take off for Rwanda, perhaps more with one on eve of polling. ....... The Rwanda flights will return Ref voters back to the Conservatives. You can say recent polling on Rwanda doesn’t suggest the Rwanda flights will generate a stampede of Ref back to Con, and I will laugh at you because that hypothetical polling is a poor predictive measure for how humans radically change their views once elections are called and Rwanda flights are happening."
I can see the headline: 50 Flown to Rwanda, 500 more come over the Channel
Which rather suggests that the the government don’t actually want ANY flights to take off. They want to replicate the anger around Brexit with the anger that the Rwanda plan is being thwarted by the blob, and used that as Johnson used Brexit. So arguably if you want the Tories to lose, and you are involved in refugee claims in court, don’t block the flights… As you have outlined, there will be far more coming than going.
Though some people (52%) actually thought that Brexit was a good idea, no one, well almost no one, thinks Rwanda is other than a very expensive gimmick.
There's a real fear it might work. Hence all the attacks on it by the UN, third sector and refugee charities. They are worried it will set a precedent.
This explains their confused attack lines: they seamlessly switch from its terrible to it will make no difference at all and back again.
Some of us simply find it an extraordinarily badly planned project with no realistic scope of working beyond a few hundred migrants a year. Horrendously expensive for the results.
It's Groundnut Scheme level thinking.
Once upon a time, Tories supported (a) prudence in public spending (b) the rule of law (UK) (c) the rule of law (international).
Nah, it's Guardianista virtue-signalling circle-jerk masturbation for social and professional acceptance reasons.
We all know this. So do you.
The Conservatives are languishing in the polls and to work out why, I think it’s valuable to examine Casino Royale’s post here.
First, CR argues by assertion, ‘it’s right because I say it’s right’. This echoes the Conservative government passing an act to say Rwanda is safe, irrespective of the facts.
Secondly, CR tries to link the debate to the culture wars by throwing in “virtue-signalling”. The Tories have repeatedly tried the same, but it’s not proven popular with the voters.
Thirdly, there’s no attempt at polite discourse here. It’s just straight to the insults, ‘owning the libs’. This is also failing to be attractive to the electorate.
What a lot of rubbish. I've said that (a) the visceral reaction to it is because the UN, charities and refugees themselves fear it might be effective and that (b) that's because they favour open borders and have a strange sense of cultural relativism.
Their real worry is that they know this offer might prove very popular with the voters, if it worked, and hence all the moves to strangle it at birth.
If you think the same tough choices don't await SKS in a few months time then I've got a bridge to sell you.
Can we pick this apart a little? "The UN, charities and refugees themselves fear it might be effective". Which bit of the UN, which charities etc? The UN very much wants to STOP mass refugee events and the crises they create. You suggest that they favour "open borders" the context of millions fleeing war and poverty and then ending up stuck in giant refugee camps being tended to by the UN. You think the UN actually want to be on the hook feeding millions of refugees? really?
The key to this is "if it worked" and as all the experts in every related field have pointed out - it can't work because structurally its bonkers.
You have linked the "deport them to Rwanda" policy as being opposed by a globalist cabal - the UN, charities, refugees - who apparently want refugees. So is their fear that every refugees globally might end up sent to Rwanda?
Lets just look at the asylum seekers in the UK. There's c. 100,000 already here, with more arriving every day in sizeable numbers. So call it 120,000 on the basis that "Rwanda works" and people stop arriving.
Rwanda can't take 120,000 We can't process 120,000 through the courts We can't intern 120,000 prior to them going to court We can't process the 120,000's applications due to a lack of money and resources in the Home Office We can't keep track of 120,000 after booking their arrival. We lose them.
So the rather basic problem with you/Leon endlessly championing the policy is that the policy was written in crayon to appeal to morons. You two aren't morons, yet suck it up like you are.
Why?
I can't remember who coined the term 'simplism', or applied it to political thinking, but there's a lot of it about.
Basically, any argument that boils down to They Should Just... is simplism. Especially when you don't specify who They are. Brexit ended up being about simplism- They Should Just give us the benefits of EU membership that we valued without the messy bits we disliked. They Should Just quarantine the vulnerable during the pandemic was another. Or, on the left, They Should Just get the rich to pay more tax. Or, in this case, They Should Just stop coming over here.
Trouble is, it's rarely as simple as Just Doing This. For taxes, it's totally fair to point out that if you overpluck the goose, it will fly away. That the nice bits about Europe depend on the messy plumbing. That the sausages are tasty but you don't want to see them being made.
I'm not going to blame voters for wanting a simpler world, or for voting for it. But it's blooming irresponsible for opinion formers or wannabe leaders to pretend they can deliver one.
I disagree with pretty much every bit of this post, and it's not surprising, because it goes to the heart of where I think we diverge politically. In almost all such cases, we are loftily informed that 'it isn't as simple as that' - but the simple solution under discussion is never tried.
Crime is a one example - simply make the consequences of doing crime a bit worse than the benefits of doing crime, and crime will fall. 'Oh that's far too simplistic' we're told - 'the reasons for crime are vastly complex, involving social issues, family breakdown, poverty, inequality etc., and we must reject 'simple solutions' and 'tackle those other issues''. So the simple solution is never applied. ..
The US laboratory has fairly clearly demonstrated that isn't true.
You don’t have to go all the way to the US. In the UK we’ve tried tougher sentencing multiple times. In fact one of the issues with our crime policy is it’s basically a sentencing policy. To my mind sentencing is too distant from the actual commission of the crime, too abstract.
I do think the stats show some fairly simple answers to vast swathes of crime. Tightening up security, making it harder to nick stuff, and ensuring criminals actually get caught by following up on reports, all shown time and time again to work. Why did everyone start stealing Land Rovers? Because their security was shit.
Yes, the risk-reward analysis of crime has little to do with the severity of the punishment if convicted, and much more to do with the chances of being caught. We have a problem in that there's little chance of being caught while committing many crimes, so why not take the risk? The recent furore over shoplifting is a good example; very little chance of being prosecuted.
By the nature of criminals they are not good at weighing up the consequences. Certainty of being caught and a quick trial deter more than length of sentence IMO. We fail on both of those.
Another problem is, once someone has a criminal conviction and all that goes with it, they don't have much more to lose from getting another one
And, I've seen it reported that 1 in 3 men in the UK have a criminal conviction.
"Also in the campaign period at least 1 flight will take off for Rwanda, perhaps more with one on eve of polling. ....... The Rwanda flights will return Ref voters back to the Conservatives. You can say recent polling on Rwanda doesn’t suggest the Rwanda flights will generate a stampede of Ref back to Con, and I will laugh at you because that hypothetical polling is a poor predictive measure for how humans radically change their views once elections are called and Rwanda flights are happening."
I can see the headline: 50 Flown to Rwanda, 500 more come over the Channel
Which rather suggests that the the government don’t actually want ANY flights to take off. They want to replicate the anger around Brexit with the anger that the Rwanda plan is being thwarted by the blob, and used that as Johnson used Brexit. So arguably if you want the Tories to lose, and you are involved in refugee claims in court, don’t block the flights… As you have outlined, there will be far more coming than going.
Though some people (52%) actually thought that Brexit was a good idea, no one, well almost no one, thinks Rwanda is other than a very expensive gimmick.
There's a real fear it might work. Hence all the attacks on it by the UN, third sector and refugee charities. They are worried it will set a precedent.
This explains their confused attack lines: they seamlessly switch from its terrible to it will make no difference at all and back again.
Some of us simply find it an extraordinarily badly planned project with no realistic scope of working beyond a few hundred migrants a year. Horrendously expensive for the results.
It's Groundnut Scheme level thinking.
Once upon a time, Tories supported (a) prudence in public spending (b) the rule of law (UK) (c) the rule of law (international).
Nah, it's Guardianista virtue-signalling circle-jerk masturbation for social and professional acceptance reasons.
We all know this. So do you.
The Conservatives are languishing in the polls and to work out why, I think it’s valuable to examine Casino Royale’s post here.
First, CR argues by assertion, ‘it’s right because I say it’s right’. This echoes the Conservative government passing an act to say Rwanda is safe, irrespective of the facts.
Secondly, CR tries to link the debate to the culture wars by throwing in “virtue-signalling”. The Tories have repeatedly tried the same, but it’s not proven popular with the voters.
Thirdly, there’s no attempt at polite discourse here. It’s just straight to the insults, ‘owning the libs’. This is also failing to be attractive to the electorate.
What a lot of rubbish. I've said that (a) the visceral reaction to it is because the UN, charities and refugees themselves fear it might be effective and that (b) that's because they favour open borders and have a strange sense of cultural relativism.
Their real worry is that they know this offer might prove very popular with the voters, if it worked, and hence all the moves to strangle it at birth.
If you think the same tough choices don't await SKS in a few months time then I've got a bridge to sell you.
Can we pick this apart a little? "The UN, charities and refugees themselves fear it might be effective". Which bit of the UN, which charities etc? The UN very much wants to STOP mass refugee events and the crises they create. You suggest that they favour "open borders" the context of millions fleeing war and poverty and then ending up stuck in giant refugee camps being tended to by the UN. You think the UN actually want to be on the hook feeding millions of refugees? really?
The key to this is "if it worked" and as all the experts in every related field have pointed out - it can't work because structurally its bonkers.
You have linked the "deport them to Rwanda" policy as being opposed by a globalist cabal - the UN, charities, refugees - who apparently want refugees. So is their fear that every refugees globally might end up sent to Rwanda?
Lets just look at the asylum seekers in the UK. There's c. 100,000 already here, with more arriving every day in sizeable numbers. So call it 120,000 on the basis that "Rwanda works" and people stop arriving.
Rwanda can't take 120,000 We can't process 120,000 through the courts We can't intern 120,000 prior to them going to court We can't process the 120,000's applications due to a lack of money and resources in the Home Office We can't keep track of 120,000 after booking their arrival. We lose them.
So the rather basic problem with you/Leon endlessly championing the policy is that the policy was written in crayon to appeal to morons. You two aren't morons, yet suck it up like you are.
Why?
I can't remember who coined the term 'simplism', or applied it to political thinking, but there's a lot of it about.
Basically, any argument that boils down to They Should Just... is simplism. Especially when you don't specify who They are. Brexit ended up being about simplism- They Should Just give us the benefits of EU membership that we valued without the messy bits we disliked. They Should Just quarantine the vulnerable during the pandemic was another. Or, on the left, They Should Just get the rich to pay more tax. Or, in this case, They Should Just stop coming over here.
Trouble is, it's rarely as simple as Just Doing This. For taxes, it's totally fair to point out that if you overpluck the goose, it will fly away. That the nice bits about Europe depend on the messy plumbing. That the sausages are tasty but you don't want to see them being made.
I'm not going to blame voters for wanting a simpler world, or for voting for it. But it's blooming irresponsible for opinion formers or wannabe leaders to pretend they can deliver one.
I disagree with pretty much every bit of this post, and it's not surprising, because it goes to the heart of where I think we diverge politically. In almost all such cases, we are loftily informed that 'it isn't as simple as that' - but the simple solution under discussion is never tried.
Crime is a one example - simply make the consequences of doing crime a bit worse than the benefits of doing crime, and crime will fall. 'Oh that's far too simplistic' we're told - 'the reasons for crime are vastly complex, involving social issues, family breakdown, poverty, inequality etc., and we must reject 'simple solutions' and 'tackle those other issues''. So the simple solution is never applied. ..
The US laboratory has fairly clearly demonstrated that isn't true.
You don’t have to go all the way to the US. In the UK we’ve tried tougher sentencing multiple times. In fact one of the issues with our crime policy is it’s basically a sentencing policy. To my mind sentencing is too distant from the actual commission of the crime, too abstract.
I do think the stats show some fairly simple answers to vast swathes of crime. Tightening up security, making it harder to nick stuff, and ensuring criminals actually get caught by following up on reports, all shown time and time again to work. Why did everyone start stealing Land Rovers? Because their security was shit.
Yes, the risk-reward analysis of crime has little to do with the severity of the punishment if convicted, and much more to do with the chances of being caught. We have a problem in that there's little chance of being caught while committing many crimes, so why not take the risk? The recent furore over shoplifting is a good example; very little chance of being prosecuted.
By the nature of criminals they are not good at weighing up the consequences. Certainty of being caught and a quick trial deter more than length of sentence IMO. We fail on both of those.
Another problem is, once someone has a criminal conviction and all that goes with it, they don't have much more to lose from getting another one
And, I've seen it reported that 1 in 3 men in the UK have a criminal conviction.
That seems a high figure.
From people born in 1953 apparently. Doubt it is anything like that for 1973 or 1993.
Britain estimates 450,000 Russian troops killed or wounded - Britain estimates that 450,000 Russian military personnel have been killed or wounded and over 10,000 Russian armoured vehicles have been destroyed in Ukraine.
In some ways the rest of the world will miss the @SNP. They've done us a favour by retesting lots of very very stupid policies.. so we can all be absolutely sure they don't work. Who will do that for us now?
I don't like it. It's playground stuff. But fwiw I don't think Sunak's height (lack of) is what hurts him image-wise it's more the general lack of him. He really is very tiny.
Yes, I'm disappointed with Sunak for his timidity. To say he's not a strong leader would be a gross understatement. He is weak - so was Johnson, but weak in a different way.
This isn't anything to do with his height, of course. Inexperience probably has a lot to do with it.
Johnson was weak like a windsock, or perhaps more flatteringly a sailing boat, as he did occasionally try to influence his own course. He could be blown in any direction, some of them positive, many of them not.
Sunak isn't a windsock; he doesn't have that unpredictability. Sunak is weak like a pile of iron filings in the face of large magnets - these magnets being people and organisations with power and wealth. He appears to have no ambitions whatsoever for his time in office - even his much-vaunted smoking policy is a long term Department of Health ambition that successive PMs had shitcanned. That leaves chess boards and maths till 18. Otherwise, it's which potentate can I please today.
Britain estimates 450,000 Russian troops killed or wounded - Britain estimates that 450,000 Russian military personnel have been killed or wounded and over 10,000 Russian armoured vehicles have been destroyed in Ukraine.
From Russia's perspective (on the Eastern front) WW2 levels of madness.
That's the big question: will Russia's experience be WW1 (utterly lost and regime changed), or WW2 (won at drastic cost)?
In both cases, and now, they are fighting by throwing incredible numbers of people at the battle. But in WW2, they had vast numbers of other nations fighting as well - most notably, Ukrainians.
I don't like it. It's playground stuff. But fwiw I don't think Sunak's height (lack of) is what hurts him image-wise it's more the general lack of him. He really is very tiny.
Yes, I'm disappointed with Sunak for his timidity. To say he's not a strong leader would be a gross understatement. He is weak - so was Johnson, but weak in a different way.
This isn't anything to do with his height, of course. Inexperience probably has a lot to do with it.
In terms of political stature, Rishi would be something of a midget if he were six foot six. Not entirely his fault that he got to the top too soon, though he didn't object at the time.
That he can probably buy clothes in the school uniform section at M+S is another matter. And unfortunately for him, one reinforces the other psychologically. See also Major's greyness or Johnson's scruffiness (though BoJo played up to that).
It is more complicated than that. Rishi was a well-regarded Chancellor of the Exchequer who had supported the country during the pandemic. Rishi was the responsible expert who had warned that Liz Truss's policies would spook the markets and tank the economy, and he was proved right.
So what went wrong after Rishi became Prime Minister? Mainly, CCHQ sending him into PMQs with Boris's scripts rather than letting him play a straight bat. Boris has a deep, booming voice. Rishi is quite high pitched with a rising intonation. Rishi's suits look too short, as if he has outgrown them. All this combines with his average height and slight frame to make him look an inconsequential, overgrown schoolboy.
The caption says it's in "Lower Belgrave Street in Victoria at the spot where a witness says the horses lost control", but I couldn't find a place in LBSt that looks like that - not even outside no.46 where Lord Lucan's nanny was murdered. Other sources give Belgrave Square.
The Independent coyly say the route they show is "estimated":
However the curved road the horses are galloping down in this news clip https://youtu.be/I6iKhXGDwjA?si=-sq43MKCJfRJerl0&t=2 is Aldwych, specifically at the point where Melbourne Place intersects Aldwych. The building with the flags on it is Melbourne House, Australian High Commission.
Britain estimates 450,000 Russian troops killed or wounded - Britain estimates that 450,000 Russian military personnel have been killed or wounded and over 10,000 Russian armoured vehicles have been destroyed in Ukraine.
From Russia's perspective (on the Eastern front) WW2 levels of madness.
That's the big question: will Russia's experience be WW1 (utterly lost and regime changed), or WW2 (won at drastic cost)?
In both cases, and now, they are fighting by throwing incredible numbers of people at the battle. But in WW2, they had vast numbers of other nations fighting as well - most notably, Ukrainians.
It’s a category error: the poster is criticising the plant for not being able to do something it wasn’t designed to do.
If it makes money (by buying electricity when it’s cheap or negative priced and selling when it’s expensive), they’ll build more.
5 acres doesn’t seem that much. A solar farm or gas power station covering 5 acres wouldn’t be able to power the whole grid for a microsecond let alone 15 seconds.
I don't like it. It's playground stuff. But fwiw I don't think Sunak's height (lack of) is what hurts him image-wise it's more the general lack of him. He really is very tiny.
Yes, I'm disappointed with Sunak for his timidity. To say he's not a strong leader would be a gross understatement. He is weak - so was Johnson, but weak in a different way.
This isn't anything to do with his height, of course. Inexperience probably has a lot to do with it.
In terms of political stature, Rishi would be something of a midget if he were six foot six. Not entirely his fault that he got to the top too soon, though he didn't object at the time.
That he can probably buy clothes in the school uniform section at M+S is another matter. And unfortunately for him, one reinforces the other psychologically. See also Major's greyness or Johnson's scruffiness (though BoJo played up to that).
It is more complicated than that. Rishi was a well-regarded Chancellor of the Exchequer who had supported the country during the pandemic. Rishi was the responsible expert who had warned that Liz Truss's policies would spook the markets and tank the economy, and he was proved right.
So what went wrong after Rishi became Prime Minister? Mainly, CCHQ sending him into PMQs with Boris's scripts rather than letting him play a straight bat. Boris has a deep, booming voice. Rishi is quite high pitched with a rising intonation. Rishi's suits look too short, as if he has outgrown them. All this combines with his average height and slight frame to make him look an inconsequential, overgrown schoolboy.
I find it hilarious that people are still trying to sell the tripe Rishi's issues have been presentational. Yes his presentation is crap, but what has he had that's been worth presenting?
Our economy is in massively dire straits - the result not of anything as recent as Brexit, but of decades of capital flight, foreign takeovers, an all-consuming engorged state and cheerfully ignored balance of trade deficits. We don't need the area manager of paperclips keeping a 'steady hand' on things - we need serious reform. We need someone to deliver that reform more capably than Truss tried to, but that's not an argument for Rishi's total leadership vacuum.
I don't like it. It's playground stuff. But fwiw I don't think Sunak's height (lack of) is what hurts him image-wise it's more the general lack of him. He really is very tiny.
Yes, I'm disappointed with Sunak for his timidity. To say he's not a strong leader would be a gross understatement. He is weak - so was Johnson, but weak in a different way.
This isn't anything to do with his height, of course. Inexperience probably has a lot to do with it.
In terms of political stature, Rishi would be something of a midget if he were six foot six. Not entirely his fault that he got to the top too soon, though he didn't object at the time.
That he can probably buy clothes in the school uniform section at M+S is another matter. And unfortunately for him, one reinforces the other psychologically. See also Major's greyness or Johnson's scruffiness (though BoJo played up to that).
It is more complicated than that. Rishi was a well-regarded Chancellor of the Exchequer who had supported the country during the pandemic. Rishi was the responsible expert who had warned that Liz Truss's policies would spook the markets and tank the economy, and he was proved right.
So what went wrong after Rishi became Prime Minister? Mainly, CCHQ sending him into PMQs with Boris's scripts rather than letting him play a straight bat. Boris has a deep, booming voice. Rishi is quite high pitched with a rising intonation. Rishi's suits look too short, as if he has outgrown them. All this combines with his average height and slight frame to make him look an inconsequential, overgrown schoolboy.
Like May, I think Rishi might have made a perfectly competent, if unremarkable, PM in good times. I think he faces at least two fundamental problems.
*) The current Conservative Party is ungovernable. That is not his fault; I don't doubt any leader would be able to do any better. Thatcher didn't. Major didn't.
*) He is at the arse-end of a tired government that has run out of ideas. At least, good, saleable ideas. There is an intellectual, moral and strategic vacuum at the heart of the government, and because of the first problem, he has zero room to fill that vacuum with his ideas. Hence, he is reacting, rather than acting.
Both Labour and the Conservatives - and the SNP, for that matter, are filled with people like Rishi and May. People who might make reasonable and at least half-competent ministers. But the top job requires so much more than that, especially when the sh*t hits the fan.
We need a GE, and to give the other guys a go for a couple of terms - until they too run out of ideas and become ungovernable. It didn't take too long before Brown's minions started undermining Blair.
"Also in the campaign period at least 1 flight will take off for Rwanda, perhaps more with one on eve of polling. ....... The Rwanda flights will return Ref voters back to the Conservatives. You can say recent polling on Rwanda doesn’t suggest the Rwanda flights will generate a stampede of Ref back to Con, and I will laugh at you because that hypothetical polling is a poor predictive measure for how humans radically change their views once elections are called and Rwanda flights are happening."
I can see the headline: 50 Flown to Rwanda, 500 more come over the Channel
Which rather suggests that the the government don’t actually want ANY flights to take off. They want to replicate the anger around Brexit with the anger that the Rwanda plan is being thwarted by the blob, and used that as Johnson used Brexit. So arguably if you want the Tories to lose, and you are involved in refugee claims in court, don’t block the flights… As you have outlined, there will be far more coming than going.
Though some people (52%) actually thought that Brexit was a good idea, no one, well almost no one, thinks Rwanda is other than a very expensive gimmick.
There's a real fear it might work. Hence all the attacks on it by the UN, third sector and refugee charities. They are worried it will set a precedent.
This explains their confused attack lines: they seamlessly switch from its terrible to it will make no difference at all and back again.
Some of us simply find it an extraordinarily badly planned project with no realistic scope of working beyond a few hundred migrants a year. Horrendously expensive for the results.
It's Groundnut Scheme level thinking.
Once upon a time, Tories supported (a) prudence in public spending (b) the rule of law (UK) (c) the rule of law (international).
Nah, it's Guardianista virtue-signalling circle-jerk masturbation for social and professional acceptance reasons.
We all know this. So do you.
The Conservatives are languishing in the polls and to work out why, I think it’s valuable to examine Casino Royale’s post here.
First, CR argues by assertion, ‘it’s right because I say it’s right’. This echoes the Conservative government passing an act to say Rwanda is safe, irrespective of the facts.
Secondly, CR tries to link the debate to the culture wars by throwing in “virtue-signalling”. The Tories have repeatedly tried the same, but it’s not proven popular with the voters.
Thirdly, there’s no attempt at polite discourse here. It’s just straight to the insults, ‘owning the libs’. This is also failing to be attractive to the electorate.
What a lot of rubbish. I've said that (a) the visceral reaction to it is because the UN, charities and refugees themselves fear it might be effective and that (b) that's because they favour open borders and have a strange sense of cultural relativism.
Their real worry is that they know this offer might prove very popular with the voters, if it worked, and hence all the moves to strangle it at birth.
If you think the same tough choices don't await SKS in a few months time then I've got a bridge to sell you.
Can we pick this apart a little? "The UN, charities and refugees themselves fear it might be effective". Which bit of the UN, which charities etc? The UN very much wants to STOP mass refugee events and the crises they create. You suggest that they favour "open borders" the context of millions fleeing war and poverty and then ending up stuck in giant refugee camps being tended to by the UN. You think the UN actually want to be on the hook feeding millions of refugees? really?
The key to this is "if it worked" and as all the experts in every related field have pointed out - it can't work because structurally its bonkers.
You have linked the "deport them to Rwanda" policy as being opposed by a globalist cabal - the UN, charities, refugees - who apparently want refugees. So is their fear that every refugees globally might end up sent to Rwanda?
Lets just look at the asylum seekers in the UK. There's c. 100,000 already here, with more arriving every day in sizeable numbers. So call it 120,000 on the basis that "Rwanda works" and people stop arriving.
Rwanda can't take 120,000 We can't process 120,000 through the courts We can't intern 120,000 prior to them going to court We can't process the 120,000's applications due to a lack of money and resources in the Home Office We can't keep track of 120,000 after booking their arrival. We lose them.
So the rather basic problem with you/Leon endlessly championing the policy is that the policy was written in crayon to appeal to morons. You two aren't morons, yet suck it up like you are.
Why?
I can't remember who coined the term 'simplism', or applied it to political thinking, but there's a lot of it about.
Basically, any argument that boils down to They Should Just... is simplism. Especially when you don't specify who They are. Brexit ended up being about simplism- They Should Just give us the benefits of EU membership that we valued without the messy bits we disliked. They Should Just quarantine the vulnerable during the pandemic was another. Or, on the left, They Should Just get the rich to pay more tax. Or, in this case, They Should Just stop coming over here.
Trouble is, it's rarely as simple as Just Doing This. For taxes, it's totally fair to point out that if you overpluck the goose, it will fly away. That the nice bits about Europe depend on the messy plumbing. That the sausages are tasty but you don't want to see them being made.
I'm not going to blame voters for wanting a simpler world, or for voting for it. But it's blooming irresponsible for opinion formers or wannabe leaders to pretend they can deliver one.
I disagree with pretty much every bit of this post, and it's not surprising, because it goes to the heart of where I think we diverge politically. In almost all such cases, we are loftily informed that 'it isn't as simple as that' - but the simple solution under discussion is never tried.
Crime is a one example - simply make the consequences of doing crime a bit worse than the benefits of doing crime, and crime will fall. 'Oh that's far too simplistic' we're told - 'the reasons for crime are vastly complex, involving social issues, family breakdown, poverty, inequality etc., and we must reject 'simple solutions' and 'tackle those other issues''. So the simple solution is never applied. ..
The US laboratory has fairly clearly demonstrated that isn't true.
You don’t have to go all the way to the US. In the UK we’ve tried tougher sentencing multiple times. In fact one of the issues with our crime policy is it’s basically a sentencing policy. To my mind sentencing is too distant from the actual commission of the crime, too abstract.
I do think the stats show some fairly simple answers to vast swathes of crime. Tightening up security, making it harder to nick stuff, and ensuring criminals actually get caught by following up on reports, all shown time and time again to work. Why did everyone start stealing Land Rovers? Because their security was shit.
Yes, the risk-reward analysis of crime has little to do with the severity of the punishment if convicted, and much more to do with the chances of being caught. We have a problem in that there's little chance of being caught while committing many crimes, so why not take the risk? The recent furore over shoplifting is a good example; very little chance of being prosecuted.
By the nature of criminals they are not good at weighing up the consequences. Certainty of being caught and a quick trial deter more than length of sentence IMO. We fail on both of those.
Another problem is, once someone has a criminal conviction and all that goes with it, they don't have much more to lose from getting another one
And, I've seen it reported that 1 in 3 men in the UK have a criminal conviction.
That seems a high figure.
I suspect a very high percentage of that will be minor driving offences.
Another miserable day dawns. It might get up to 12C if we’re lucky today. 10 tomorrow. Rain all afternoon and tomorrow morning. The joys of spring.
Perhaps this will help?
Wall-to-wall sunshine in the Crozon peninsula, Brittany. And warm
I’m having a cappuccino and the traditional Breton cake, the “koign amman”
Unlike the cider, and even the crepe, I can’t recommend the “koign amman”
It’s some pastry apparently dipped in thick liquid sugar then deep fried. Intensely sweet and cracks your teeth, just about tolerable if you dip it in your coffee. Maybe
Not sure that sounds like it will help you lose further weight!!
Another miserable day dawns. It might get up to 12C if we’re lucky today. 10 tomorrow. Rain all afternoon and tomorrow morning. The joys of spring.
Perhaps this will help?
Wall-to-wall sunshine in the Crozon peninsula, Brittany. And warm
I’m having a cappuccino and the traditional Breton cake, the “koign amman”
Unlike the cider, and even the crepe, I can’t recommend the “koign amman”
It’s some pastry apparently dipped in thick liquid sugar then deep fried. Intensely sweet and cracks your teeth, just about tolerable if you dip it in your coffee. Maybe
Not sure that sounds like it will help you lose further weight!!
Yes, I also thought that
My usual motto is "try everything twice - because if you didn't like it the first time, maybe you just got it wrong". Worked for me with heroin, hated it first time around, second Mmm
However I am going to make an exception for the "koign amman". That's it. Over
On subject of cakes:
John McTernan @johnmcternan · 40m Sir Keith Joseph love British Rail fruit cake so much his private secretary used to have to buy in a supply to have in the office.
If you covered the area of Hinkley 'C' you could just about manage 24 hours, at a cost of 6.5bn.
But it isn't for the same purpose. I think these are mainly meant to maintain supply frequency when switching and to avoid turning on plants in order to run them at half capacity.
Is it bad (or good) that I now think in centimetres for height (I'm trying to shake off imperial in almost everything now - thinking in kg for weight....)?
It's not morally bad, though it seems a waste of effort. Stone is a great measure if weight. It's substantial enough to be meaningful 'I need to lose a stone and a half'. Nobody needs to lose a kilo. Some people could shit a kilo in a single setting. As for cm and height, that strikes me as daft.
Shitting a kilo would be quite an achievement but shitting an American pound, as they like to use to weigh themselves, is definitely on the cards. Not that I routinely weigh my stools.
You could always weigh yourself "before" and "after".
I read of a visitor's book in a stately home (I want to say it was Glamis Castle) where the guests had to list their weight alongside their name. It lead to qualifying notes like 'in hunting boots after a heavy meal'.
Many, many years ago I took Mrs S to a smartish country hotel. After signing the visitors book she, being an inveterate reader, started leafing through. "Oh look, the so-and-sos were here last month. The thingummyjigs were here last year." I realised to my horror that if she went back two years she'd find my own name again, allied with a different young lady. Fortunately she lost interest after about eighteen months.
Britain estimates 450,000 Russian troops killed or wounded - Britain estimates that 450,000 Russian military personnel have been killed or wounded and over 10,000 Russian armoured vehicles have been destroyed in Ukraine.
From Russia's perspective (on the Eastern front) WW2 levels of madness.
That's the big question: will Russia's experience be WW1 (utterly lost and regime changed), or WW2 (won at drastic cost)?
In both cases, and now, they are fighting by throwing incredible numbers of people at the battle. But in WW2, they had vast numbers of other nations fighting as well - most notably, Ukrainians.
And American equipment.
Recently I've been watching some YouTube videos on this. AIUI, the current Russian view (shared by many historians) is that western aid to Russia had little effect on the war with Germany - they were going to win anyway. The majority of aid from the west came *after* the Battle of Kursk, as an example. But Stalin certainly did not seem to think so at the time, or for a while after the war was won.
In the end it's impossible to know, but i think I'm safe to say one thing: Russia *may* have won without that aid, but they would have lost millions more men, and had their economy wrecked even more, if they had not received it.
"Also in the campaign period at least 1 flight will take off for Rwanda, perhaps more with one on eve of polling. ....... The Rwanda flights will return Ref voters back to the Conservatives. You can say recent polling on Rwanda doesn’t suggest the Rwanda flights will generate a stampede of Ref back to Con, and I will laugh at you because that hypothetical polling is a poor predictive measure for how humans radically change their views once elections are called and Rwanda flights are happening."
I can see the headline: 50 Flown to Rwanda, 500 more come over the Channel
Which rather suggests that the the government don’t actually want ANY flights to take off. They want to replicate the anger around Brexit with the anger that the Rwanda plan is being thwarted by the blob, and used that as Johnson used Brexit. So arguably if you want the Tories to lose, and you are involved in refugee claims in court, don’t block the flights… As you have outlined, there will be far more coming than going.
Though some people (52%) actually thought that Brexit was a good idea, no one, well almost no one, thinks Rwanda is other than a very expensive gimmick.
There's a real fear it might work. Hence all the attacks on it by the UN, third sector and refugee charities. They are worried it will set a precedent.
This explains their confused attack lines: they seamlessly switch from its terrible to it will make no difference at all and back again.
Some of us simply find it an extraordinarily badly planned project with no realistic scope of working beyond a few hundred migrants a year. Horrendously expensive for the results.
It's Groundnut Scheme level thinking.
Once upon a time, Tories supported (a) prudence in public spending (b) the rule of law (UK) (c) the rule of law (international).
Nah, it's Guardianista virtue-signalling circle-jerk masturbation for social and professional acceptance reasons.
We all know this. So do you.
The Conservatives are languishing in the polls and to work out why, I think it’s valuable to examine Casino Royale’s post here.
First, CR argues by assertion, ‘it’s right because I say it’s right’. This echoes the Conservative government passing an act to say Rwanda is safe, irrespective of the facts.
Secondly, CR tries to link the debate to the culture wars by throwing in “virtue-signalling”. The Tories have repeatedly tried the same, but it’s not proven popular with the voters.
Thirdly, there’s no attempt at polite discourse here. It’s just straight to the insults, ‘owning the libs’. This is also failing to be attractive to the electorate.
What a lot of rubbish. I've said that (a) the visceral reaction to it is because the UN, charities and refugees themselves fear it might be effective and that (b) that's because they favour open borders and have a strange sense of cultural relativism.
Their real worry is that they know this offer might prove very popular with the voters, if it worked, and hence all the moves to strangle it at birth.
If you think the same tough choices don't await SKS in a few months time then I've got a bridge to sell you.
Can we pick this apart a little? "The UN, charities and refugees themselves fear it might be effective". Which bit of the UN, which charities etc? The UN very much wants to STOP mass refugee events and the crises they create. You suggest that they favour "open borders" the context of millions fleeing war and poverty and then ending up stuck in giant refugee camps being tended to by the UN. You think the UN actually want to be on the hook feeding millions of refugees? really?
The key to this is "if it worked" and as all the experts in every related field have pointed out - it can't work because structurally its bonkers.
You have linked the "deport them to Rwanda" policy as being opposed by a globalist cabal - the UN, charities, refugees - who apparently want refugees. So is their fear that every refugees globally might end up sent to Rwanda?
Lets just look at the asylum seekers in the UK. There's c. 100,000 already here, with more arriving every day in sizeable numbers. So call it 120,000 on the basis that "Rwanda works" and people stop arriving.
Rwanda can't take 120,000 We can't process 120,000 through the courts We can't intern 120,000 prior to them going to court We can't process the 120,000's applications due to a lack of money and resources in the Home Office We can't keep track of 120,000 after booking their arrival. We lose them.
So the rather basic problem with you/Leon endlessly championing the policy is that the policy was written in crayon to appeal to morons. You two aren't morons, yet suck it up like you are.
Why?
I can't remember who coined the term 'simplism', or applied it to political thinking, but there's a lot of it about.
Basically, any argument that boils down to They Should Just... is simplism. Especially when you don't specify who They are. Brexit ended up being about simplism- They Should Just give us the benefits of EU membership that we valued without the messy bits we disliked. They Should Just quarantine the vulnerable during the pandemic was another. Or, on the left, They Should Just get the rich to pay more tax. Or, in this case, They Should Just stop coming over here.
Trouble is, it's rarely as simple as Just Doing This. For taxes, it's totally fair to point out that if you overpluck the goose, it will fly away. That the nice bits about Europe depend on the messy plumbing. That the sausages are tasty but you don't want to see them being made.
I'm not going to blame voters for wanting a simpler world, or for voting for it. But it's blooming irresponsible for opinion formers or wannabe leaders to pretend they can deliver one.
I disagree with pretty much every bit of this post, and it's not surprising, because it goes to the heart of where I think we diverge politically. In almost all such cases, we are loftily informed that 'it isn't as simple as that' - but the simple solution under discussion is never tried.
Crime is a one example - simply make the consequences of doing crime a bit worse than the benefits of doing crime, and crime will fall. 'Oh that's far too simplistic' we're told - 'the reasons for crime are vastly complex, involving social issues, family breakdown, poverty, inequality etc., and we must reject 'simple solutions' and 'tackle those other issues''. So the simple solution is never applied. ..
The US laboratory has fairly clearly demonstrated that isn't true.
You don’t have to go all the way to the US. In the UK we’ve tried tougher sentencing multiple times. In fact one of the issues with our crime policy is it’s basically a sentencing policy. To my mind sentencing is too distant from the actual commission of the crime, too abstract.
I do think the stats show some fairly simple answers to vast swathes of crime. Tightening up security, making it harder to nick stuff, and ensuring criminals actually get caught by following up on reports, all shown time and time again to work. Why did everyone start stealing Land Rovers? Because their security was shit.
Yes, the risk-reward analysis of crime has little to do with the severity of the punishment if convicted, and much more to do with the chances of being caught. We have a problem in that there's little chance of being caught while committing many crimes, so why not take the risk? The recent furore over shoplifting is a good example; very little chance of being prosecuted.
By the nature of criminals they are not good at weighing up the consequences. Certainty of being caught and a quick trial deter more than length of sentence IMO. We fail on both of those.
Another problem is, once someone has a criminal conviction and all that goes with it, they don't have much more to lose from getting another one
And, I've seen it reported that 1 in 3 men in the UK have a criminal conviction.
That seems a high figure.
I suspect a very high percentage of that will be minor driving offences.
Looks like minor driving offences not included - notes inclusion from dangerous/drunk/disqualified driving.
"The Offenders Index covers data from 1963 for ‘standard list’ offences resulting in a conviction at a court in England or Wales. Standard list offences are all indictable and triable-either-way offences plus a range of the more serious summary offences such assault, criminal damage (£5,000 or less) and driving without insurance. There have been changes in the 'standard list' over time and when analysing the cohorts it is necessary to take these into account. The most recent changes took place in 1995 and 1996, when several offences (including all categories of common assault, driving whilst disqualified, driving with excess alcohol, and dangerous driving) were added to the ‘standard list’. The inclusion of these offences increased the overall number of standard list offences recorded in 1996 by close to 100,000 offences to 450,000"
The caption says it's in "Lower Belgrave Street in Victoria at the spot where a witness says the horses lost control", but I couldn't find a place in LBSt that looks like that - not even outside no.46 where Lord Lucan's nanny was murdered. Other sources give Belgrave Square.
The Independent coyly say the route they show is "estimated":
However the curved road the horses are galloping down in this news clip https://youtu.be/I6iKhXGDwjA?si=-sq43MKCJfRJerl0&t=2 is Aldwych, specifically at the point where Melbourne Place intersects Aldwych. The building with the flags on it is Melbourne House, Australian High Commission.
It is a relatively straight run from Knightsbridge to Aldwych where the runaway horses were filmed
Thanks for this.
So the horses were either inside the barracks or else a very short way outside it - maybe on the same latitude as Buckingham Palace. Building works on Rotten Row didn't sound right.
I can believe what Nicholas Drummond says, that the initiating incident caused direct injuries to horses and personnel. If he is right and a building contractor was clearly negligent I doubt that the MOD will have to sue them - they will just send them the bill.
On the other hand, as military horses they are presumably trained to cope with explosions better than most horses. I was once in the vicinity of a riot in London in which a police horse was wounded and I was impressed by the poor animal's forbearance and discipline (and disgusted by the attitude of one of the rioters who wanted to cause further injury to the horse).
I don't like it. It's playground stuff. But fwiw I don't think Sunak's height (lack of) is what hurts him image-wise it's more the general lack of him. He really is very tiny.
Yes, I'm disappointed with Sunak for his timidity. To say he's not a strong leader would be a gross understatement. He is weak - so was Johnson, but weak in a different way.
This isn't anything to do with his height, of course. Inexperience probably has a lot to do with it.
Johnson was weak like a windsock, or perhaps more flatteringly a sailing boat, as he did occasionally try to influence his own course. He could be blown in any direction, some of them positive, many of them not.
Sunak isn't a windsock; he doesn't have that unpredictability. Sunak is weak like a pile of iron filings in the face of large magnets - these magnets being people and organisations with power and wealth. He appears to have no ambitions whatsoever for his time in office - even his much-vaunted smoking policy is a long term Department of Health ambition that successive PMs had shitcanned. That leaves chess boards and maths till 18. Otherwise, it's which potentate can I please today.
Truss has listened, and she has learned. She will rise again. And this time she will deliver. Mary Elizabeth, mother, queen, your time has come. And your time is now.
15 seconds of the entire grid is something like 125 MWh, if you use 30GW as total grid demand. So it's more likely to be providing around 10MW for twelve hours or so.
We'd never need to power the entire grid from batteries, because we'd always have some nuclear, some hydro, even some wind, so it's a bit silly to measure it in those terms.
"Also in the campaign period at least 1 flight will take off for Rwanda, perhaps more with one on eve of polling. ....... The Rwanda flights will return Ref voters back to the Conservatives. You can say recent polling on Rwanda doesn’t suggest the Rwanda flights will generate a stampede of Ref back to Con, and I will laugh at you because that hypothetical polling is a poor predictive measure for how humans radically change their views once elections are called and Rwanda flights are happening."
I can see the headline: 50 Flown to Rwanda, 500 more come over the Channel
Which rather suggests that the the government don’t actually want ANY flights to take off. They want to replicate the anger around Brexit with the anger that the Rwanda plan is being thwarted by the blob, and used that as Johnson used Brexit. So arguably if you want the Tories to lose, and you are involved in refugee claims in court, don’t block the flights… As you have outlined, there will be far more coming than going.
Though some people (52%) actually thought that Brexit was a good idea, no one, well almost no one, thinks Rwanda is other than a very expensive gimmick.
There's a real fear it might work. Hence all the attacks on it by the UN, third sector and refugee charities. They are worried it will set a precedent.
This explains their confused attack lines: they seamlessly switch from its terrible to it will make no difference at all and back again.
Some of us simply find it an extraordinarily badly planned project with no realistic scope of working beyond a few hundred migrants a year. Horrendously expensive for the results.
It's Groundnut Scheme level thinking.
Once upon a time, Tories supported (a) prudence in public spending (b) the rule of law (UK) (c) the rule of law (international).
Nah, it's Guardianista virtue-signalling circle-jerk masturbation for social and professional acceptance reasons.
We all know this. So do you.
The Conservatives are languishing in the polls and to work out why, I think it’s valuable to examine Casino Royale’s post here.
First, CR argues by assertion, ‘it’s right because I say it’s right’. This echoes the Conservative government passing an act to say Rwanda is safe, irrespective of the facts.
Secondly, CR tries to link the debate to the culture wars by throwing in “virtue-signalling”. The Tories have repeatedly tried the same, but it’s not proven popular with the voters.
Thirdly, there’s no attempt at polite discourse here. It’s just straight to the insults, ‘owning the libs’. This is also failing to be attractive to the electorate.
What a lot of rubbish. I've said that (a) the visceral reaction to it is because the UN, charities and refugees themselves fear it might be effective and that (b) that's because they favour open borders and have a strange sense of cultural relativism.
Their real worry is that they know this offer might prove very popular with the voters, if it worked, and hence all the moves to strangle it at birth.
If you think the same tough choices don't await SKS in a few months time then I've got a bridge to sell you.
Can we pick this apart a little? "The UN, charities and refugees themselves fear it might be effective". Which bit of the UN, which charities etc? The UN very much wants to STOP mass refugee events and the crises they create. You suggest that they favour "open borders" the context of millions fleeing war and poverty and then ending up stuck in giant refugee camps being tended to by the UN. You think the UN actually want to be on the hook feeding millions of refugees? really?
The key to this is "if it worked" and as all the experts in every related field have pointed out - it can't work because structurally its bonkers.
You have linked the "deport them to Rwanda" policy as being opposed by a globalist cabal - the UN, charities, refugees - who apparently want refugees. So is their fear that every refugees globally might end up sent to Rwanda?
Lets just look at the asylum seekers in the UK. There's c. 100,000 already here, with more arriving every day in sizeable numbers. So call it 120,000 on the basis that "Rwanda works" and people stop arriving.
Rwanda can't take 120,000 We can't process 120,000 through the courts We can't intern 120,000 prior to them going to court We can't process the 120,000's applications due to a lack of money and resources in the Home Office We can't keep track of 120,000 after booking their arrival. We lose them.
So the rather basic problem with you/Leon endlessly championing the policy is that the policy was written in crayon to appeal to morons. You two aren't morons, yet suck it up like you are.
Why?
I can't remember who coined the term 'simplism', or applied it to political thinking, but there's a lot of it about.
Basically, any argument that boils down to They Should Just... is simplism. Especially when you don't specify who They are. Brexit ended up being about simplism- They Should Just give us the benefits of EU membership that we valued without the messy bits we disliked. They Should Just quarantine the vulnerable during the pandemic was another. Or, on the left, They Should Just get the rich to pay more tax. Or, in this case, They Should Just stop coming over here.
Trouble is, it's rarely as simple as Just Doing This. For taxes, it's totally fair to point out that if you overpluck the goose, it will fly away. That the nice bits about Europe depend on the messy plumbing. That the sausages are tasty but you don't want to see them being made.
I'm not going to blame voters for wanting a simpler world, or for voting for it. But it's blooming irresponsible for opinion formers or wannabe leaders to pretend they can deliver one.
I disagree with pretty much every bit of this post, and it's not surprising, because it goes to the heart of where I think we diverge politically. In almost all such cases, we are loftily informed that 'it isn't as simple as that' - but the simple solution under discussion is never tried.
Crime is a one example - simply make the consequences of doing crime a bit worse than the benefits of doing crime, and crime will fall. 'Oh that's far too simplistic' we're told - 'the reasons for crime are vastly complex, involving social issues, family breakdown, poverty, inequality etc., and we must reject 'simple solutions' and 'tackle those other issues''. So the simple solution is never applied. ..
The US laboratory has fairly clearly demonstrated that isn't true.
You don’t have to go all the way to the US. In the UK we’ve tried tougher sentencing multiple times. In fact one of the issues with our crime policy is it’s basically a sentencing policy. To my mind sentencing is too distant from the actual commission of the crime, too abstract.
I do think the stats show some fairly simple answers to vast swathes of crime. Tightening up security, making it harder to nick stuff, and ensuring criminals actually get caught by following up on reports, all shown time and time again to work. Why did everyone start stealing Land Rovers? Because their security was shit.
Yes, the risk-reward analysis of crime has little to do with the severity of the punishment if convicted, and much more to do with the chances of being caught. We have a problem in that there's little chance of being caught while committing many crimes, so why not take the risk? The recent furore over shoplifting is a good example; very little chance of being prosecuted.
By the nature of criminals they are not good at weighing up the consequences. Certainty of being caught and a quick trial deter more than length of sentence IMO. We fail on both of those.
Another problem is, once someone has a criminal conviction and all that goes with it, they don't have much more to lose from getting another one
And, I've seen it reported that 1 in 3 men in the UK have a criminal conviction.
That seems a high figure.
I suspect a very high percentage of that will be minor driving offences.
I was assuming minor offences like that wouldn't be included.
Britain estimates 450,000 Russian troops killed or wounded - Britain estimates that 450,000 Russian military personnel have been killed or wounded and over 10,000 Russian armoured vehicles have been destroyed in Ukraine.
From Russia's perspective (on the Eastern front) WW2 levels of madness.
That's the big question: will Russia's experience be WW1 (utterly lost and regime changed), or WW2 (won at drastic cost)?
In both cases, and now, they are fighting by throwing incredible numbers of people at the battle. But in WW2, they had vast numbers of other nations fighting as well - most notably, Ukrainians.
Russian demographics were bad before they lost so many young men. Now it is becoming an unfolding catastrophe. The only thing they can cling onto is Donald Trump, and that is a pretty shoogly peg to hang your entire geopolitical strategy on.
The idea that they could now launch any successful attack on NATO anytime soon has fallen apart, and Russian soft power has collapsed around the world. Of course none of this stops Putin from being dangerous, but on current trajectories, victory seems a far distant prospect for the increasingly primitive Russian military machine.
The F-16s, ATACMS and lots more ammunition are all coming soon, and the respite this gives the ZSU could put Russia under serious pressure within quite a short period. If there is no prospect of the Trump/GOP coming to Putin´s rescue, a lot of people in and around the Kremlin are going to start to ask difficult questions. As long as NATO stays united and the USA stays onside, the chances of a Russian victory fade very rapidly.
Review and reform Carer's Allowance to increase support and reduce overpayments
We want a full review and reform of Carer’s Allowance to ensure that it works well at supporting unpaid carers, including raising the level and eligibility criteria for the benefit. We want systems to be modernised and urgent action from DWP to cap and prevent large overpayment debts for carers.
Review and reform Carer's Allowance to increase support and reduce overpayments
We want a full review and reform of Carer’s Allowance to ensure that it works well at supporting unpaid carers, including raising the level and eligibility criteria for the benefit. We want systems to be modernised and urgent action from DWP to cap and prevent large overpayment debts for carers.
Signed. Sadly probably more impact petitioning ITV to make a drama about it than petitioning parliament directly.
Another miserable day dawns. It might get up to 12C if we’re lucky today. 10 tomorrow. Rain all afternoon and tomorrow morning. The joys of spring.
Perhaps this will help?
Wall-to-wall sunshine in the Crozon peninsula, Brittany. And warm
I’m having a cappuccino and the traditional Breton cake, the “koign amman”
Unlike the cider, and even the crepe, I can’t recommend the “koign amman”
It’s some pastry apparently dipped in thick liquid sugar then deep fried. Intensely sweet and cracks your teeth, just about tolerable if you dip it in your coffee. Maybe
Not sure that sounds like it will help you lose further weight!!
Another miserable day dawns. It might get up to 12C if we’re lucky today. 10 tomorrow. Rain all afternoon and tomorrow morning. The joys of spring.
Perhaps this will help?
Wall-to-wall sunshine in the Crozon peninsula, Brittany. And warm
I’m having a cappuccino and the traditional Breton cake, the “koign amman”
Unlike the cider, and even the crepe, I can’t recommend the “koign amman”
It’s some pastry apparently dipped in thick liquid sugar then deep fried. Intensely sweet and cracks your teeth, just about tolerable if you dip it in your coffee. Maybe
Not sure that sounds like it will help you lose further weight!!
Yes, I also thought that
My usual motto is "try everything twice - because if you didn't like it the first time, maybe you just got it wrong". Worked for me with heroin, hated it first time around, second Mmm
However I am going to make an exception for the "koign amman". That's it. Over
Review and reform Carer's Allowance to increase support and reduce overpayments
We want a full review and reform of Carer’s Allowance to ensure that it works well at supporting unpaid carers, including raising the level and eligibility criteria for the benefit. We want systems to be modernised and urgent action from DWP to cap and prevent large overpayment debts for carers.
Signed. Sadly probably more impact petitioning ITV to make a drama about it than petitioning parliament directly.
Donald Trump’s aides have drawn up secret plans to oust the chairman of the Federal Reserve and allow the president to set interest rates, according to reports.
Allies are said to have drawn up a range of proposals for the way monetary policy could be run in a second Trump administration, including rolling back the independence of the central bank, which has been critical to the functioning of the economy and financial system in recent decades.
Supporters of the Republican candidate have compiled a 10-page document with a new vision for the running of the central bank and monetary policy, according to the Wall Street Journal.
For all Israel's brutality in Gaza, we should not forget what started this:
"At one point, she was held with another woman, who was 18 years old and kidnapped while she was barefoot and still in her pyjamas. Moran, who understands a little Arabic, remembers overhearing their captors discuss who would take the women as their wives.
She said they even found the younger woman's mother among the other hostages and brought her in, asking for permission to marry her daughter.
"When you move from house to house, you need to be 'examined' to see that you're not hiding something on you," Moran said, sarcasm tilting across her face. "It's a 'really necessary test', as they explain it to you."
Review and reform Carer's Allowance to increase support and reduce overpayments
We want a full review and reform of Carer’s Allowance to ensure that it works well at supporting unpaid carers, including raising the level and eligibility criteria for the benefit. We want systems to be modernised and urgent action from DWP to cap and prevent large overpayment debts for carers.
Signed. Sadly probably more impact petitioning ITV to make a drama about it than petitioning parliament directly.
Another miserable day dawns. It might get up to 12C if we’re lucky today. 10 tomorrow. Rain all afternoon and tomorrow morning. The joys of spring.
Perhaps this will help?
Wall-to-wall sunshine in the Crozon peninsula, Brittany. And warm
I’m having a cappuccino and the traditional Breton cake, the “koign amman”
Unlike the cider, and even the crepe, I can’t recommend the “koign amman”
It’s some pastry apparently dipped in thick liquid sugar then deep fried. Intensely sweet and cracks your teeth, just about tolerable if you dip it in your coffee. Maybe
Not sure that sounds like it will help you lose further weight!!
Another miserable day dawns. It might get up to 12C if we’re lucky today. 10 tomorrow. Rain all afternoon and tomorrow morning. The joys of spring.
Perhaps this will help?
Wall-to-wall sunshine in the Crozon peninsula, Brittany. And warm
I’m having a cappuccino and the traditional Breton cake, the “koign amman”
Unlike the cider, and even the crepe, I can’t recommend the “koign amman”
It’s some pastry apparently dipped in thick liquid sugar then deep fried. Intensely sweet and cracks your teeth, just about tolerable if you dip it in your coffee. Maybe
Not sure that sounds like it will help you lose further weight!!
Yes, I also thought that
My usual motto is "try everything twice - because if you didn't like it the first time, maybe you just got it wrong". Worked for me with heroin, hated it first time around, second Mmm
However I am going to make an exception for the "koign amman". That's it. Over
On subject of cakes:
John McTernan @johnmcternan · 40m Sir Keith Joseph love British Rail fruit cake so much his private secretary used to have to buy in a supply to have in the office.
I don't like it. It's playground stuff. But fwiw I don't think Sunak's height (lack of) is what hurts him image-wise it's more the general lack of him. He really is very tiny.
Yes, I'm disappointed with Sunak for his timidity. To say he's not a strong leader would be a gross understatement. He is weak - so was Johnson, but weak in a different way.
This isn't anything to do with his height, of course. Inexperience probably has a lot to do with it.
Johnson was weak like a windsock, or perhaps more flatteringly a sailing boat, as he did occasionally try to influence his own course. He could be blown in any direction, some of them positive, many of them not.
Sunak isn't a windsock; he doesn't have that unpredictability. Sunak is weak like a pile of iron filings in the face of large magnets - these magnets being people and organisations with power and wealth. He appears to have no ambitions whatsoever for his time in office - even his much-vaunted smoking policy is a long term Department of Health ambition that successive PMs had shitcanned. That leaves chess boards and maths till 18. Otherwise, it's which potentate can I please today.
Truss has listened, and she has learned. She will rise again. And this time she will deliver. Mary Elizabeth, mother, queen, your time has come. And your time is now.
She is like the famous Victorian submarine - Resurgam.
Kouign-amann tastes like a novelty item invented in a Scottish fish and chip shop.
Probably, like the Edinburgh novelties, invented for and demanded by gullible tourists.
The Stonehaven novelties please.
None here, though ... whitebait, calamari, hungry already ... and the pizzas and burgers are *grilled* not battered and deepfried unlike the Edinburgh chippies (which startled an Italian colleague when we went in for a supper and he ordered one)
I don't like it. It's playground stuff. But fwiw I don't think Sunak's height (lack of) is what hurts him image-wise it's more the general lack of him. He really is very tiny.
Yes, I'm disappointed with Sunak for his timidity. To say he's not a strong leader would be a gross understatement. He is weak - so was Johnson, but weak in a different way.
This isn't anything to do with his height, of course. Inexperience probably has a lot to do with it.
Johnson was weak like a windsock, or perhaps more flatteringly a sailing boat, as he did occasionally try to influence his own course. He could be blown in any direction, some of them positive, many of them not.
Sunak isn't a windsock; he doesn't have that unpredictability. Sunak is weak like a pile of iron filings in the face of large magnets - these magnets being people and organisations with power and wealth. He appears to have no ambitions whatsoever for his time in office - even his much-vaunted smoking policy is a long term Department of Health ambition that successive PMs had shitcanned. That leaves chess boards and maths till 18. Otherwise, it's which potentate can I please today.
Truss has listened, and she has learned. She will rise again. And this time she will deliver. Mary Elizabeth, mother, queen, your time has come. And your time is now.
She is like the famous Victorian submarine - Resurgam.
"Resurgam: the journal of the Federation of British Cremation Authorities"
Comments
For the organised I would suggest creating ltd companies and bankrupting them. For the less organised just petty online fraud.
You would have to be extremely unlucky to get jailed for either, and probably pays better than typical physical theft.
In some ways the rest of the world will miss the @SNP. They've done us a favour by retesting lots of very very stupid policies.. so we can all be absolutely sure they don't work. Who will do that for us now?
The recent furore over shoplifting is a good example; very little chance of being prosecuted.
A Tory manifesto based on hedgerows, dry stone walls, Britain in Bloom, £100 million for church roof repairs, Barn Owl boxes and Imperial measures might actually be quite successful.
My usual motto is "try everything twice - because if you didn't like it the first time, maybe you just got it wrong". Worked for me with heroin, hated it first time around, second Mmm
However I am going to make an exception for the "koign amman". That's it. Over
Right. I have to do some ACTUAL WORK
Manana
But if you are unwilling or unable to pay to make the probability high, you have to make the consequences utterly horrific. And it still probably fails. So the death penalty is probably a mistake pragmatically (lower chance of juries convicting) and Rwanda is unlikely to deter in its current configuration. And cutting petty crime is going to cost you, in increased eyes on the streets.
And policy-wise, small scale, experiments that have been thought through in advance are great. Testing a hypothesis, if you like. But there's a gap between that and trying something because you want it to work and brushing aside objections because they come from the wrong people.
https://x.com/sundersays/status/1783593889179287576?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q
https://twitter.com/PrivateEyeNews/status/1783172206886826049
Although there was a case in a local paper recently where a persistent shoplifter has been banned from all shops in the town where he lives.
Not sure how that’s enforced!
Crime rates correlate with a whole load of things - and quite poorly with incarceration rates.
I'd agree that an efficient criminal justice system, where crime detection rates (and by extension the probability of getting caught) are high, and time to trial is low, is quite likely to make a difference.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santorio_Santorio#/media/File:J._Quincy,_Medicina_Statica;_being_the_aphorisms..._Wellcome_L0030962.jpg
I think that we all have lazy mental shorthand and when some people read 'negative consequences' they just think of some Major era Minister threatening to throw away the key.
Metric Stormtroopers, on the other hand, were 180cm
Edit: Noit that it detracts from your point, of course!
Otherwise lotteries wouldn't work. Or companies with highly polarised pay scales. (If you go to work for MegaOnmiBank, you probably won't make it to the top where the really huge salaries are made. But plenty of smart people are willing to give it a shot.)
Or, come to think of it, politics.
https://www.marieclaire.com/celebrity/a38208317/queen-elizabeth-weighs-guests-kate-middleton-prince-william-christmas-sandringham/
I get a definite sense in the private sector of not having enough time to do things properly. You have to be quite strong-willed to be able to stand up and say stop, when things aren't good enough. But you also have to exercise the judgement to know when things are good enough, even if you can see how they might be better with a bit more time.
So there's a sense in which in the private sector things can get stripped down to the essentials, and you get what is important done a lot faster. But the dividing line between good enough and let's hope we get paid before it falls apart is much argued over.
https://www.personnelchecks.co.uk/latest-news/criminal-record-checks-increasing#:~:text=Data from the Ministry of,when just looking at men.
UK Defence Journal
@UKDefJournal
Britain estimates 450,000 Russian troops killed or wounded - Britain estimates that 450,000 Russian military personnel have been killed or wounded and over 10,000 Russian armoured vehicles have been destroyed in Ukraine.
https://twitter.com/UKDefJournal/status/1784127179904745601
====
WW1 levels of madness.
This isn't anything to do with his height, of course. Inexperience probably has a lot to do with it.
That he can probably buy clothes in the school uniform section at M+S is another matter. And unfortunately for him, one reinforces the other psychologically. See also Major's greyness or Johnson's scruffiness (though BoJo played up to that).
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-44207104
This one's quite old, but I wouldn't be surprised with the number of court cases and the prisons bursting:
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2002/apr/14/workandcareers.observercashsection
The opposition will love this , they can portray him as both weak and desperate and now being told what to do by Salmonds Alba Party.
Really the SNP need to get rid of him , hanging onto the next GE will do untold damage to the party .
"Perspective on Electricity Storage in UK
The 'Biggest Battery in Europe' is installed at Cottingham, nr Hull
It cost £75,000,000 (say 90,000,000 Euros/Dollars)
It takes 5 acres of land
And could power the UK's national electricity grid for just 15 seconds before going flat"
https://twitter.com/latimeralder/status/1784090934516281758
Sunak isn't a windsock; he doesn't have that unpredictability. Sunak is weak like a pile of iron filings in the face of large magnets - these magnets being people and organisations with power and wealth. He appears to have no ambitions whatsoever for his time in office - even his much-vaunted smoking policy is a long term Department of Health ambition that successive PMs had shitcanned. That leaves chess boards and maths till 18. Otherwise, it's which potentate can I please today.
In both cases, and now, they are fighting by throwing incredible numbers of people at the battle. But in WW2, they had vast numbers of other nations fighting as well - most notably, Ukrainians.
So what went wrong after Rishi became Prime Minister? Mainly, CCHQ sending him into PMQs with Boris's scripts rather than letting him play a straight bat. Boris has a deep, booming voice. Rishi is quite high pitched with a rising intonation. Rishi's suits look too short, as if he has outgrown them. All this combines with his average height and slight frame to make him look an inconsequential, overgrown schoolboy.
I assume this is a reference to the Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment at Hyde Park Barracks in Knightsbridge
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_Cavalry_Mounted_Regiment
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyde_Park_Barracks,_London
It is a relatively straight run from Knightsbridge to Aldwych where the runaway horses were filmed
If it makes money (by buying electricity when it’s cheap or negative priced and selling when it’s expensive), they’ll build more.
5 acres doesn’t seem that much. A solar farm or gas power station covering 5 acres wouldn’t be able to power the whole grid for a microsecond let alone 15 seconds.
Our economy is in massively dire straits - the result not of anything as recent as Brexit, but of decades of capital flight, foreign takeovers, an all-consuming engorged state and cheerfully ignored balance of trade deficits. We don't need the area manager of paperclips keeping a 'steady hand' on things - we need serious reform. We need someone to deliver that reform more capably than Truss tried to, but that's not an argument for Rishi's total leadership vacuum.
*) The current Conservative Party is ungovernable. That is not his fault; I don't doubt any leader would be able to do any better. Thatcher didn't. Major didn't.
*) He is at the arse-end of a tired government that has run out of ideas. At least, good, saleable ideas. There is an intellectual, moral and strategic vacuum at the heart of the government, and because of the first problem, he has zero room to fill that vacuum with his ideas. Hence, he is reacting, rather than acting.
Both Labour and the Conservatives - and the SNP, for that matter, are filled with people like Rishi and May. People who might make reasonable and at least half-competent ministers. But the top job requires so much more than that, especially when the sh*t hits the fan.
We need a GE, and to give the other guys a go for a couple of terms - until they too run out of ideas and become ungovernable. It didn't take too long before Brown's minions started undermining Blair.
John McTernan
@johnmcternan
·
40m
Sir Keith Joseph love British Rail fruit cake so much his private secretary used to have to buy in a supply to have in the office.
https://twitter.com/johnmcternan/status/1784171363588100278
If you covered the area of Hinkley 'C' you could just about manage 24 hours, at a cost of 6.5bn.
But it isn't for the same purpose. I think these are mainly meant to maintain supply frequency when switching and to avoid turning on plants in order to run them at half capacity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease#Significance_of_Lend-Lease
In the end it's impossible to know, but i think I'm safe to say one thing: Russia *may* have won without that aid, but they would have lost millions more men, and had their economy wrecked even more, if they had not received it.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/217474/criminal-histories-bulletin.pdf
"The Offenders Index covers data from 1963 for ‘standard list’ offences resulting in a
conviction at a court in England or Wales. Standard list offences are all indictable and
triable-either-way offences plus a range of the more serious summary offences such
assault, criminal damage (£5,000 or less) and driving without insurance. There have
been changes in the 'standard list' over time and when analysing the cohorts it is
necessary to take these into account. The most recent changes took place in 1995 and
1996, when several offences (including all categories of common assault, driving whilst
disqualified, driving with excess alcohol, and dangerous driving) were added to the
‘standard list’. The inclusion of these offences increased the overall number of standard
list offences recorded in 1996 by close to 100,000 offences to 450,000"
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1870718759725920
So the horses were either inside the barracks or else a very short way outside it - maybe on the same latitude as Buckingham Palace. Building works on Rotten Row didn't sound right.
I can believe what Nicholas Drummond says, that the initiating incident caused direct injuries to horses and personnel. If he is right and a building contractor was clearly negligent I doubt that the MOD will have to sue them - they will just send them the bill.
On the other hand, as military horses they are presumably trained to cope with explosions better than most horses. I was once in the vicinity of a riot in London in which a police horse was wounded and I was impressed by the poor animal's forbearance and discipline (and disgusted by the attitude of one of the rioters who wanted to cause further injury to the horse).
We'd never need to power the entire grid from batteries, because we'd always have some nuclear, some hydro, even some wind, so it's a bit silly to measure it in those terms.
The idea that they could now launch any successful attack on NATO anytime soon has fallen apart, and Russian soft power has collapsed around the world. Of course none of this stops Putin from being dangerous, but on current trajectories, victory seems a far distant prospect for the increasingly primitive Russian military machine.
The F-16s, ATACMS and lots more ammunition are all coming soon, and the respite this gives the ZSU could put Russia under serious pressure within quite a short period. If there is no prospect of the Trump/GOP coming to Putin´s rescue, a lot of people in and around the Kremlin are going to start to ask difficult questions. As long as NATO stays united and the USA stays onside, the chances of a Russian victory fade very rapidly.
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/660485?utm_source=Carers UK&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=14452782_Overpayments petition - email to campaigners&dm_i=74C,8LRU6,AAWZHC,ZO1IR,1
Review and reform Carer's Allowance to increase support and reduce overpayments
We want a full review and reform of Carer’s Allowance to ensure that it works well at supporting unpaid carers, including raising the level and eligibility criteria for the benefit. We want systems to be modernised and urgent action from DWP to cap and prevent large overpayment debts for carers.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/north-devon-barnstaple-college-of-policing-b1154200.html
Allies are said to have drawn up a range of proposals for the way monetary policy could be run in a second Trump administration, including rolling back the independence of the central bank, which has been critical to the functioning of the economy and financial system in recent decades.
Supporters of the Republican candidate have compiled a 10-page document with a new vision for the running of the central bank and monetary policy, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Telegraph
"At one point, she was held with another woman, who was 18 years old and kidnapped while she was barefoot and still in her pyjamas. Moran, who understands a little Arabic, remembers overhearing their captors discuss who would take the women as their wives.
She said they even found the younger woman's mother among the other hostages and brought her in, asking for permission to marry her daughter.
"When you move from house to house, you need to be 'examined' to see that you're not hiding something on you," Moran said, sarcasm tilting across her face. "It's a 'really necessary test', as they explain it to you."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-68891217
I wonder how busy Toby Jones is at the moment?
https://anstrutherfishbar.co.uk/todays-menu#menu_top
https://search.worldcat.org/title/resurgam-the-journal-of-the-federation-of-british-cremation-authorities/oclc/863263482