Today's teens drink less, smoke less, take fewer drugs, commit fewer crimes and get pregnant less than their parents or grandparents. What problem are the Tories trying to solve?
Maybe a stint of national service is calculated to turn the kids to drink and fags which will boost treasury coffers with the VAT and boost the drunken pregnancies boosting the birth rate. Sounds perfectly sensible.
I seem to recall one or two girls I knew discovering they were pregnant after their boyfriends National Service embarkation leave. 18 months later, when the lad came home from Singapore……… Of course, if the chap was being posted to Germany he might get a long weekend to get married.
Also, if the new National Service is going to apply to girls as well as boys things could get quite complicated.
I would have thought that it would be impossible to restrict it to men, even if they wanted to!
They'll have to have a system of exemptions - including for pregnancy, and for people with caring responsibilities.
But what about illness and disability? Will there be a system of assessments, reviews, and appeals like there is for PIP?
Also for apprentices and the like, as already remarked on here.
No conscientious objection, though: just don't tick the squaddy box.
[Still wondering at the apparent mismatch between a paid year as a plastic officer and 24 weekends doing what will in some cases look remarkably similar to a court sentence of community service. Which compares rather adversely with actual sentences passed on actual MPs for doing actual crimes.)
The Conservative Party will outperform expectations on 4 July, and will get more than 200 seats. The LibDems will more than double their seat count, and will do rather better in terms of vote share than the current polls predict, but will miss out on a dozen seats by small margins. The SNP will hold on to their number two spot, getting around 30 seats. And Labour will manage an inverse of 2019, achieving a majority of around 80.
You heard it here first.
How do you come to this conclusion?
Simples:
(a) Sea changes don't happen very often. A reversion to the mean is much more likely than a new paradigm. Not impossible, of course, but (like recessions) they are predicted far more often than they actually happen.
(b) The LibDems often flatter to deceive, and it's hard to get 30+ seats on a low teens vote share. Not impossible (see the LD performance in Scotland for a clear demonstration of extremely efficient vote), but unlikely.
(c) Campaign gaffs and the like don't usually make that much difference. See Pussygate, etc.
(d) The Reform vote (see council elections / byelections / etc) doesn't actually seem to actually, you know, vote. And I think that in close races, there is plenty of opportunity for them to be squeezed. Which Reform voter wants to let in a LibDem?
(e) The Labour vote is usually overstated somewhat by the polls. (See London)
After the election, the Conservative Party is going to have to face this reality
I know it will be both painful and difficult - most current Conservative voters don't want to rejoin - but it is very clear how public opinion is going to evolve given this demographic skew
How did the Boomers vote in 1975?
Probably about 75% to 25% in favour of joining the EEC.
Nobody besides MPs and Lords voted in favour of joining the EEC.
On the evening of the Referendum I sat on my garden wall alongside the lady from next-door, who was a Conservative councillor. I was Chair of the local Liberals and normally we were, at election times, at daggers drawn. We’d been out all day, door knocking or, in my case, with a loudspeaker van. We looked at each other….. this was about 8pm …… what do we do now? And decided we couldn’t door-knock any more….. we didn’t really have canvass returns …. and we couldn’t use the loudspeaker any more. So we gave up and went our separate ways.
Had this national service been in force when I was 18 my career would never have got off the ground. I'd gone to Vogue House seeing if they were looking for assistants and they said they weren't but gave me the name of a well known photographer who shared a studio on Kings Road.
She was a New Yorker nutty as a fruitcake and gave me the job on the spot. If this bonkers Tory plan had been around then instead of shooting for Vogue I'd probably be bombing Gaza
You never know Roger, after a stint in the Artists Rifles in Borneo you might have become the British Robert Capa.
Was there anything more utterly British than using turning the Artists Rifles onto a special forces unit?
After the election, the Conservative Party is going to have to face this reality
I know it will be both painful and difficult - most current Conservative voters don't want to rejoin - but it is very clear how public opinion is going to evolve given this demographic skew
Ask them about rejoin with the Euro and even with younger voters there is much less enthusiasm for rejoin
The journos are going to tucker themselves out before manifestos launch at this rate. Its too full on. Redfield appear not to have bothered this week.
They had a British journalist talking about the election campaign on RTË radio this lunchtime and he couldn't stop laughing when asked if the Tories had any chance at all, or about the National Service policy.
I do get the impression that journalists are completely failing to establish any professional detachment when reporting on the election. They need to get out there and talk to some real people, rather than sharing memes with each other on twitter.
There are aspects of modern elections that are very difficult to report on in the traditional way. In particular two things.
There are no real ideological issues to discuss between the overall vision of the two parties that can win - all are committed to: defence, NATO, welfare state, free education to 18, pensions, capitalism, NHS, growth and making things work better by magic. Nothing to see to separate them except window dressing.
And second, neither Lab nor Con are addressing tax, spend, debt, deficit, social care, post-Brexit settlement, climate change etc in any way which marks either a mutual differentiation or a fruitful alternative to discuss. They have worked out how to close them down.
So what is left for journalism to do? Discussion of polling is more than sufficient already.
Today's teens drink less, smoke less, take fewer drugs, commit fewer crimes and get pregnant less than their parents or grandparents. What problem are the Tories trying to solve?
Maybe a stint of national service is calculated to turn the kids to drink and fags which will boost treasury coffers with the VAT and boost the drunken pregnancies boosting the birth rate. Sounds perfectly sensible.
I seem to recall one or two girls I knew discovering they were pregnant after their boyfriends National Service embarkation leave. 18 months later, when the lad came home from Singapore……… Of course, if the chap was being posted to Germany he might get a long weekend to get married.
Also, if the new National Service is going to apply to girls as well as boys things could get quite complicated.
I would have thought that it would be impossible to restrict it to men, even if they wanted to!
They'll have to have a system of exemptions - including for pregnancy, and for people with caring responsibilities.
But what about illness and disability? Will there be a system of assessments, reviews, and appeals like there is for PIP?
Also for apprentices and the like, as already remarked on here.
No conscientious objection, though: just don't tick the squaddy box.
[Still wondering at the apparent mismatch between a paid year as a plastic officer and 24 weekends doing what will in some cases look remarkably similar to a court sentence of community service. Which compares rather adversely with actual sentences passed on actual MPs for doing actual crimes.)
Surely the military option wouldn’t be as officers, more like CCF and then used to do guard duties to free up other soldiers with anyone showing promise sent on courses which are worthwhile and might make them consider switching to Sandhurst.
A bit of basic infantry training and you can replace the RAF regiment on the cheap.
After the election, the Conservative Party is going to have to face this reality
I know it will be both painful and difficult - most current Conservative voters don't want to rejoin - but it is very clear how public opinion is going to evolve given this demographic skew
Incredible figures. Starmer's going to be forced to rejoin. As someone said yesterday 'how can a government who are responsible for taking away the opportunity to work and live in 28 countries dare to speak about giving 18 year olds opportunities by getting them to spend a year in uniform'
The journos are going to tucker themselves out before manifestos launch at this rate. Its too full on. Redfield appear not to have bothered this week.
They had a British journalist talking about the election campaign on RTË radio this lunchtime and he couldn't stop laughing when asked if the Tories had any chance at all, or about the National Service policy.
I do get the impression that journalists are completely failing to establish any professional detachment when reporting on the election. They need to get out there and talk to some real people, rather than sharing memes with each other on twitter.
There are aspects of modern elections that are very difficult to report on in the traditional way. In particular two things.
There are no real ideological issues to discuss between the overall vision of the two parties that can win - all are committed to: defence, NATO, welfare state, free education to 18, pensions, capitalism, NHS, growth and making things work better by magic. Nothing to see to separate them except window dressing.
And second, neither Lab nor Con are addressing tax, spend, debt, deficit, social care, post-Brexit settlement, climate change etc in any way which marks either a mutual differentiation or a fruitful alternative to discuss. They have worked out how to close them down.
So what is left for journalism to do? Discussion of polling is more than sufficient already.
Sadly I think that analysis is correct. Having meaningful disagreements and debates on public policy is too risky. You might upset someone.
@Steven_Swinford Rishi Sunak tells @Peston he is committed to staying in the UK for 'years to come' after Lord Goldsmith claims that he will 'disappear off to California' if Tories lose election
'It's just simply not true. This is my home. My team just got promoted back in the Premiership and I hope to be watching them for years to come in the Premier League'
I hear on the twitter that the plan is that they wait until Modi is stepping down then Mrs Rishi goes for top job in India. Like a Bill and Hilary deal.
Lacks creativity even for a Russian Twitter troll imo. And Hillary Clinton was a US Senator before her first presidential tilt.
Had this national service been in force when I was 18 my career would never have got off the ground. I'd gone to Vogue House seeing if they were looking for assistants and they said they weren't but gave me the name of a well known photographer who shared a studio on Kings Road.
She was a New Yorker nutty as a fruitcake and gave me the job on the spot. If this bonkers Tory plan had been around then instead of shooting for Vogue I'd probably be bombing Gaza
You never know Roger, after a stint in the Artists Rifles in Borneo you might have become the British Robert Capa.
Was there anything more utterly British than using turning the Artists Rifles onto a special forces unit?
I think I would be more terrified of a unit of David Nivens than a unit of Johnny Mercers. You would be disarmed by charm then killed with a vicious barb.
The Conservative Party will outperform expectations on 4 July, and will get more than 200 seats. The LibDems will more than double their seat count, and will do rather better in terms of vote share than the current polls predict, but will miss out on a dozen seats by small margins. The SNP will hold on to their number two spot, getting around 30 seats. And Labour will manage an inverse of 2019, achieving a majority of around 80.
You heard it here first.
How do you come to this conclusion?
Simples:
(a) Sea changes don't happen very often. A reversion to the mean is much more likely than a new paradigm. Not impossible, of course, but (like recessions) they are predicted far more often than they actually happen.
(b) The LibDems often flatter to deceive, and it's hard to get 30+ seats on a low teens vote share. Not impossible (see the LD performance in Scotland for a clear demonstration of extremely efficient vote), but unlikely.
(c) Campaign gaffs and the like don't usually make that much difference. See Pussygate, etc.
(d) The Reform vote (see council elections / byelections / etc) doesn't actually seem to actually, you know, vote. And I think that in close races, there is plenty of opportunity for them to be squeezed. Which Reform voter wants to let in a LibDem?
(e) The Labour vote is usually overstated somewhat by the polls. (See London)
I wonder where LDs will end up on polling day.
I think they were 16-17% in 1997, and notched up from 10-12% at the start of the campaign.
@joerichlaw CCHQ has been frantically calling up some strange people to fill ‘shortlists’ for these seats. A friend of mine, who is already selected as a LibDem Parliamentary candidate, got a call. Really odd - especially when they are blocking so many @Conservatives from standing.
I expect some in this CCHQ would probably prefer a LD parliamentary candidate to a Boris supporting Conservative
I quite like Sunak’s idea that national service will foster a sense of community and belonging.
He’s probably right, but it will take decades for that feeling to filter down the generations. Probably fifty years or more.
It's not a terrible idea to have. I don't think it would have gone down super well, but if it had been announced in a speech with that as the theme, maybe it would not have immediately provoked so many visceral reactions about fining or imprisoning young people who don't want to be drafted.
It's also not going to be well received from a government that has made life so much worse for young people and insults them at every opportunity.
Fostering a sense of community works both ways. The government and the reactionary Boomers it panders to show no respect or sense of community towards the young - denying them housing, rights, and opportunities. And then turn round and complain when they're not grateful their lives have been made worse.
If the government wants to foster a sense of community and belonging, it should start at home - rather than imposing on young people, who let's not forget, gave up 2 years of their youth to protect the elderly. Who if they are those supporting this look evermore ungrateful, selfish, and completely out-of-touch with the lives of the young.
Many of whom are having to work harder than ever to pay for education, housing, and so on, as wages go less far and have far greater costs, than was the case for their parents or grandparents.
After the election, the Conservative Party is going to have to face this reality
I know it will be both painful and difficult - most current Conservative voters don't want to rejoin - but it is very clear how public opinion is going to evolve given this demographic skew
Ask them about rejoin with the Euro and even with younger voters there is much less enthusiasm for rejoin
Since contactless became mainstream, the amount of people carrying cash has collapsed. I think the unit of a account is not a serious issue in the post cash world.
@Steven_Swinford Rishi Sunak tells @Peston he is committed to staying in the UK for 'years to come' after Lord Goldsmith claims that he will 'disappear off to California' if Tories lose election
'It's just simply not true. This is my home. My team just got promoted back in the Premiership and I hope to be watching them for years to come in the Premier League'
Ahh, that's what they are going to do with the gasholders they just demolished outside St.Mary's Stadium. Build a helipad for Rishi.
@Steven_Swinford Rishi Sunak tells @Peston he is committed to staying in the UK for 'years to come' after Lord Goldsmith claims that he will 'disappear off to California' if Tories lose election
'It's just simply not true. This is my home. My team just got promoted back in the Premiership and I hope to be watching them for years to come in the Premier League'
I hear on the twitter that the plan is that they wait until Modi is stepping down then Mrs Rishi goes for top job in India. Like a Bill and Hilary deal.
Lacks creativity even for a Russian troll imo. And Hillary Clinton was a US Senator before her first presidential tilt.
I’m a Russian troll? I’m an arse but definitely not a Russian troll.
After the election, the Conservative Party is going to have to face this reality
I know it will be both painful and difficult - most current Conservative voters don't want to rejoin - but it is very clear how public opinion is going to evolve given this demographic skew
Incredible figures. Starmer's going to be forced to rejoin. As someone said yesterday 'how can a government who are responsible for taking away the opportunity to work and live in 28 countries dare to speak about giving 18 year olds opportunities by getting them to spend a year in uniform'
Today's teens drink less, smoke less, take fewer drugs, commit fewer crimes and get pregnant less than their parents or grandparents. What problem are the Tories trying to solve?
Maybe a stint of national service is calculated to turn the kids to drink and fags which will boost treasury coffers with the VAT and boost the drunken pregnancies boosting the birth rate. Sounds perfectly sensible.
I seem to recall one or two girls I knew discovering they were pregnant after their boyfriends National Service embarkation leave. 18 months later, when the lad came home from Singapore……… Of course, if the chap was being posted to Germany he might get a long weekend to get married.
Also, if the new National Service is going to apply to girls as well as boys things could get quite complicated.
I would have thought that it would be impossible to restrict it to men, even if they wanted to!
They'll have to have a system of exemptions - including for pregnancy, and for people with caring responsibilities.
But what about illness and disability? Will there be a system of assessments, reviews, and appeals like there is for PIP?
Also for apprentices and the like, as already remarked on here.
No conscientious objection, though: just don't tick the squaddy box.
[Still wondering at the apparent mismatch between a paid year as a plastic officer and 24 weekends doing what will in some cases look remarkably similar to a court sentence of community service. Which compares rather adversely with actual sentences passed on actual MPs for doing actual crimes.)
Surely the military option wouldn’t be as officers, more like CCF and then used to do guard duties to free up other soldiers with anyone showing promise sent on courses which are worthwhile and might make them consider switching to Sandhurst.
A bit of basic infantry training and you can replace the RAF regiment on the cheap.
Well, if Tory ministers go out and talk about a year's commission, who are we to accuse them of lying or not knowing the meaning of the words they use?
Your attempt at making sense of it - I do sympathise - sounds a bit like the old Junior Leaders' Regiments - but those were for 15 yo or so. At 18 you don't want to faff around but get stuck into the serious business.
Perhaps the idea is rather more basic: to give the little dears the choice of a year's NS bored out of one's mind as a squaddy with a pick handle outside the depot at Catterick, or trying for orficer selection and a short service commission.
After the election, the Conservative Party is going to have to face this reality
I know it will be both painful and difficult - most current Conservative voters don't want to rejoin - but it is very clear how public opinion is going to evolve given this demographic skew
Incredible figures. Starmer's going to be forced to rejoin. As someone said yesterday 'how can a government who are responsible for taking away the opportunity to work and live in 28 countries dare to speak about giving 18 year olds opportunities by getting them to spend a year in uniform'
How many of those 18 year olds speak the foreign languages that they would require to work and live in those 28 countries?
There's a reason the Anglosphere was, and remains the overwhelming choice of emigrants from the U.K. - more in Australia alone than in continental Europe.
After the election, the Conservative Party is going to have to face this reality
I know it will be both painful and difficult - most current Conservative voters don't want to rejoin - but it is very clear how public opinion is going to evolve given this demographic skew
Ask them about rejoin with the Euro and even with younger voters there is much less enthusiasm for rejoin
Since contactless became mainstream, the amount of people carrying cash has collapsed. I think the unit of a account is not a serious issue in the post cash world.
It's not really about what's in your wallet, is it? It's about having control of your own currency, and not being in the sort of shit Italy and Greece are in.
The Conservative Party will outperform expectations on 4 July, and will get more than 200 seats. The LibDems will more than double their seat count, and will do rather better in terms of vote share than the current polls predict, but will miss out on a dozen seats by small margins. The SNP will hold on to their number two spot, getting around 30 seats. And Labour will manage an inverse of 2019, achieving a majority of around 80.
You heard it here first.
How do you come to this conclusion?
Simples:
(a) Sea changes don't happen very often. A reversion to the mean is much more likely than a new paradigm. Not impossible, of course, but (like recessions) they are predicted far more often than they actually happen.
(b) The LibDems often flatter to deceive, and it's hard to get 30+ seats on a low teens vote share. Not impossible (see the LD performance in Scotland for a clear demonstration of extremely efficient vote), but unlikely.
(c) Campaign gaffs and the like don't usually make that much difference. See Pussygate, etc.
(d) The Reform vote (see council elections / byelections / etc) doesn't actually seem to actually, you know, vote. And I think that in close races, there is plenty of opportunity for them to be squeezed. Which Reform voter wants to let in a LibDem?
(e) The Labour vote is usually overstated somewhat by the polls. (See London)
To do OK the Tories only (!) need a third of the ex-Tory Reform preference and a third of the ex-Tory DK preference to vote Tory in July and they get to 33-35% of the vote.
38% of 2019 Tory voters are either for Reform or DK (last YouGov poll data). That's millions of votes up for grabs. Hence National Service, restart slave trade, hanging for sheep stealing or whatever is up next. The One Nation Tories are lost for this time round. (Good).
After the election, the Conservative Party is going to have to face this reality
I know it will be both painful and difficult - most current Conservative voters don't want to rejoin - but it is very clear how public opinion is going to evolve given this demographic skew
How did the Boomers vote in 1975?
Probably about 75% to 25% in favour of joining the EEC.
60% to stay in, the lowest percentage of any age group according to this:
I quite like Sunak’s idea that national service will foster a sense of community and belonging.
He’s probably right, but it will take decades for that feeling to filter down the generations. Probably fifty years or more.
It's not a terrible idea to have. I don't think it would have gone down super well, but if it had been announced in a speech with that as the theme, maybe it would not have immediately provoked so many visceral reactions about fining or imprisoning young people who don't want to be drafted.
It's also not going to be well received from a government that has made life so much worse for young people and insults them at every opportunity.
Fostering a sense of community works both ways. The government and the reactionary Boomers it panders to show no respect or sense of community towards the young - denying them housing, rights, and opportunities. And then turn round and complain when they're not grateful their lives have been made worse.
If the government wants to foster a sense of community and belonging, it should start at home - rather than imposing on young people, who let's not forget, gave up 2 years of their youth to protect the elderly. Who if they are those supporting this look evermore ungrateful, selfish, and completely out-of-touch with the lives of the young.
Many of whom are having to work harder than ever to pay for education, housing, and so on, as wages go less far and have far greater costs, than was the case for their parents or grandparents.
90% of their grandparents never even went to university so fees were not an issue. Most of their great grandparents rented their entire lives and never owned a property and some of the males fought and died in a world war. Inflation was higher than it is now in the 1970s.
Their parents also didn't inherit anywhere near as much as they will today
I quite like Sunak’s idea that national service will foster a sense of community and belonging.
He’s probably right, but it will take decades for that feeling to filter down the generations. Probably fifty years or more.
It's not a terrible idea to have. I don't think it would have gone down super well, but if it had been announced in a speech with that as the theme, maybe it would not have immediately provoked so many visceral reactions about fining or imprisoning young people who don't want to be drafted.
It's also not going to be well received from a government that has made life so much worse for young people and insults them at every opportunity.
Fostering a sense of community works both ways. The government and the reactionary Boomers it panders to show no respect or sense of community towards the young - denying them housing, rights, and opportunities. And then turn round and complain when they're not grateful their lives have been made worse.
If the government wants to foster a sense of community and belonging, it should start at home - rather than imposing on young people, who let's not forget, gave up 2 years of their youth to protect the elderly. Who if they are those supporting this look evermore ungrateful, selfish, and completely out-of-touch with the lives of the young.
Many of whom are having to work harder than ever to pay for education, housing, and so on, as wages go less far and have far greater costs, than was the case for their parents or grandparents.
The Conservative Party will outperform expectations on 4 July, and will get more than 200 seats. The LibDems will more than double their seat count, and will do rather better in terms of vote share than the current polls predict, but will miss out on a dozen seats by small margins. The SNP will hold on to their number two spot, getting around 30 seats. And Labour will manage an inverse of 2019, achieving a majority of around 80.
You heard it here first.
How do you come to this conclusion?
Simples:
(a) Sea changes don't happen very often. A reversion to the mean is much more likely than a new paradigm. Not impossible, of course, but (like recessions) they are predicted far more often than they actually happen.
(b) The LibDems often flatter to deceive, and it's hard to get 30+ seats on a low teens vote share. Not impossible (see the LD performance in Scotland for a clear demonstration of extremely efficient vote), but unlikely.
(c) Campaign gaffs and the like don't usually make that much difference. See Pussygate, etc.
(d) The Reform vote (see council elections / byelections / etc) doesn't actually seem to actually, you know, vote. And I think that in close races, there is plenty of opportunity for them to be squeezed. Which Reform voter wants to let in a LibDem?
(e) The Labour vote is usually overstated somewhat by the polls. (See London)
I wonder where LDs will end up on polling day.
I think they were 16-17% in 1997, and notched up from 10-12% at the start of the campaign.
More to the point, if they tick up who ticks down in tandem
After the election, the Conservative Party is going to have to face this reality
I know it will be both painful and difficult - most current Conservative voters don't want to rejoin - but it is very clear how public opinion is going to evolve given this demographic skew
Ask them about rejoin with the Euro and even with younger voters there is much less enthusiasm for rejoin
Since contactless became mainstream, the amount of people carrying cash has collapsed. I think the unit of a account is not a serious issue in the post cash world.
That argument trivialises the economic considerations and could equally be turned around to say that the Euro has lost its raison d'être.
Today's teens drink less, smoke less, take fewer drugs, commit fewer crimes and get pregnant less than their parents or grandparents. What problem are the Tories trying to solve?
Maybe a stint of national service is calculated to turn the kids to drink and fags which will boost treasury coffers with the VAT and boost the drunken pregnancies boosting the birth rate. Sounds perfectly sensible.
I seem to recall one or two girls I knew discovering they were pregnant after their boyfriends National Service embarkation leave. 18 months later, when the lad came home from Singapore……… Of course, if the chap was being posted to Germany he might get a long weekend to get married.
Also, if the new National Service is going to apply to girls as well as boys things could get quite complicated.
I would have thought that it would be impossible to restrict it to men, even if they wanted to!
They'll have to have a system of exemptions - including for pregnancy, and for people with caring responsibilities.
But what about illness and disability? Will there be a system of assessments, reviews, and appeals like there is for PIP?
Also for apprentices and the like, as already remarked on here.
No conscientious objection, though: just don't tick the squaddy box.
[Still wondering at the apparent mismatch between a paid year as a plastic officer and 24 weekends doing what will in some cases look remarkably similar to a court sentence of community service. Which compares rather adversely with actual sentences passed on actual MPs for doing actual crimes.)
Surely the military option wouldn’t be as officers, more like CCF and then used to do guard duties to free up other soldiers with anyone showing promise sent on courses which are worthwhile and might make them consider switching to Sandhurst.
A bit of basic infantry training and you can replace the RAF regiment on the cheap.
Walking round airfields in Norfolk, in winter, with a pick-axe handle for a rifle, as a friend of mine did for two lots of three months of his two years.
After the election, the Conservative Party is going to have to face this reality
I know it will be both painful and difficult - most current Conservative voters don't want to rejoin - but it is very clear how public opinion is going to evolve given this demographic skew
How did the Boomers vote in 1975?
Probably about 75% to 25% in favour of joining the EEC.
Nobody besides MPs and Lords voted in favour of joining the EEC.
What I like about PB is that when you make a minor error someone always lets you know. 😊
The Conservative Party will outperform expectations on 4 July, and will get more than 200 seats. The LibDems will more than double their seat count, and will do rather better in terms of vote share than the current polls predict, but will miss out on a dozen seats by small margins. The SNP will hold on to their number two spot, getting around 30 seats. And Labour will manage an inverse of 2019, achieving a majority of around 80.
You heard it here first.
How do you come to this conclusion?
Simples:
(a) Sea changes don't happen very often. A reversion to the mean is much more likely than a new paradigm. Not impossible, of course, but (like recessions) they are predicted far more often than they actually happen.
(b) The LibDems often flatter to deceive, and it's hard to get 30+ seats on a low teens vote share. Not impossible (see the LD performance in Scotland for a clear demonstration of extremely efficient vote), but unlikely.
(c) Campaign gaffs and the like don't usually make that much difference. See Pussygate, etc.
(d) The Reform vote (see council elections / byelections / etc) doesn't actually seem to actually, you know, vote. And I think that in close races, there is plenty of opportunity for them to be squeezed. Which Reform voter wants to let in a LibDem?
(e) The Labour vote is usually overstated somewhat by the polls. (See London)
I wonder where LDs will end up on polling day.
I think they were 16-17% in 1997, and notched up from 10-12% at the start of the campaign.
My guess is they will poll more or less where the polling currently places them. I’ll guess the same or lower in % and absolute terms than 2019, but significantly better efficiency and therefore more seats. I think I predicted 27.
I quite like Sunak’s idea that national service will foster a sense of community and belonging.
He’s probably right, but it will take decades for that feeling to filter down the generations. Probably fifty years or more.
It's not a terrible idea to have. I don't think it would have gone down super well, but if it had been announced in a speech with that as the theme, maybe it would not have immediately provoked so many visceral reactions about fining or imprisoning young people who don't want to be drafted.
It's also not going to be well received from a government that has made life so much worse for young people and insults them at every opportunity.
Fostering a sense of community works both ways. The government and the reactionary Boomers it panders to show no respect or sense of community towards the young - denying them housing, rights, and opportunities. And then turn round and complain when they're not grateful their lives have been made worse.
If the government wants to foster a sense of community and belonging, it should start at home - rather than imposing on young people, who let's not forget, gave up 2 years of their youth to protect the elderly. Who if they are those supporting this look evermore ungrateful, selfish, and completely out-of-touch with the lives of the young.
Many of whom are having to work harder than ever to pay for education, housing, and so on, as wages go less far and have far greater costs, than was the case for their parents or grandparents.
This Government and its remaining voters hate young people and shaft them at every turn. The problem is this hatred is not only going to stop any of them ever voting Tory in the future, it's now putting off people older than them too.
Today's teens drink less, smoke less, take fewer drugs, commit fewer crimes and get pregnant less than their parents or grandparents. What problem are the Tories trying to solve?
Maybe a stint of national service is calculated to turn the kids to drink and fags which will boost treasury coffers with the VAT and boost the drunken pregnancies boosting the birth rate. Sounds perfectly sensible.
I seem to recall one or two girls I knew discovering they were pregnant after their boyfriends National Service embarkation leave. 18 months later, when the lad came home from Singapore……… Of course, if the chap was being posted to Germany he might get a long weekend to get married.
Also, if the new National Service is going to apply to girls as well as boys things could get quite complicated.
I would have thought that it would be impossible to restrict it to men, even if they wanted to!
They'll have to have a system of exemptions - including for pregnancy, and for people with caring responsibilities.
But what about illness and disability? Will there be a system of assessments, reviews, and appeals like there is for PIP?
What about footballers? Will Man United have to negotiate a tricky away tie at Newcastle without their wunderkind who is litter picking outside the Trafford Centre?
Sunak has refused to distance himself from his campaign's attacks on Starmer's age. Tory sources have been calling Starmer "sleepy Keir" and "Sir Sleepy."
PM refused multiple chances to dis-endorse the attacks, but added he was "not familiar with his sleeping patterns"
its surprising how few people actually know how to do it , its because you never think you will be daft enough to have to do it so never invest 10 minutes knowing how to - What happens instead if that people panic ,look up help and mess it up
@Steven_Swinford Rishi Sunak tells @Peston he is committed to staying in the UK for 'years to come' after Lord Goldsmith claims that he will 'disappear off to California' if Tories lose election
'It's just simply not true. This is my home. My team just got promoted back in the Premiership and I hope to be watching them for years to come in the Premier League'
I hear on the twitter that the plan is that they wait until Modi is stepping down then Mrs Rishi goes for top job in India. Like a Bill and Hilary deal.
Though given their electoral record the Sunaks might even end up restoring Congress and the Gandhis to power in India
Today's teens drink less, smoke less, take fewer drugs, commit fewer crimes and get pregnant less than their parents or grandparents. What problem are the Tories trying to solve?
Maybe a stint of national service is calculated to turn the kids to drink and fags which will boost treasury coffers with the VAT and boost the drunken pregnancies boosting the birth rate. Sounds perfectly sensible.
I seem to recall one or two girls I knew discovering they were pregnant after their boyfriends National Service embarkation leave. 18 months later, when the lad came home from Singapore……… Of course, if the chap was being posted to Germany he might get a long weekend to get married.
Also, if the new National Service is going to apply to girls as well as boys things could get quite complicated.
I would have thought that it would be impossible to restrict it to men, even if they wanted to!
They'll have to have a system of exemptions - including for pregnancy, and for people with caring responsibilities.
But what about illness and disability? Will there be a system of assessments, reviews, and appeals like there is for PIP?
What about footballers? Will Man United have to negotiate a tricky away tie at Newcastle without their wunderkind who is litter picking outside the Trafford Centre?
And think of the bad PR for those who get a fiddle. Like Rangers did during WW1 - not that it did Hearts much good when their team went over the top ...
After the election, the Conservative Party is going to have to face this reality
I know it will be both painful and difficult - most current Conservative voters don't want to rejoin - but it is very clear how public opinion is going to evolve given this demographic skew
Incredible figures. Starmer's going to be forced to rejoin. As someone said yesterday 'how can a government who are responsible for taking away the opportunity to work and live in 28 countries dare to speak about giving 18 year olds opportunities by getting them to spend a year in uniform'
How many of those 18 year olds speak the foreign languages that they would require to work and live in those 28 countries?
There's a reason the Anglosphere was, and remains the overwhelming choice of emigrants from the U.K. - more in Australia alone than in continental Europe.
The crazy thing is that if you have skills that countries need and want you can move and work there if someone wants to employ you - I moved to Switzerland, clearly not an EU country - because some fools wanted me.
If you are a doctor or a brilliant scientist then you will get the opportunities but why should people think they have an automatic right to walk into another country to work when that country also has young people of their own who want those jobs?
It’s as if there are millions of young people in the UK imagining that they are automatically better than those already in Germany, France etc and they are crying out to employ kids from the UK because they don’t have any intelligent, well educated, native speakers with other languages, of their own.
After the election, the Conservative Party is going to have to face this reality
I know it will be both painful and difficult - most current Conservative voters don't want to rejoin - but it is very clear how public opinion is going to evolve given this demographic skew
Ask them about rejoin with the Euro and even with younger voters there is much less enthusiasm for rejoin
Since contactless became mainstream, the amount of people carrying cash has collapsed. I think the unit of a account is not a serious issue in the post cash world.
It's not really about what's in your wallet, is it? It's about having control of your own currency, and not being in the sort of shit Italy and Greece are in.
Yes, currency is about having your own central bank, without France, Italy and Germany telling you what to do. It is essential to actually being an independent state. It has no relation to the convenient ways in which people do small drug trades, on course betting and weekend plumbing off books. And children in sweet shops.
But only because it was never ultimately sent in the first place.
Google gives you an option to unsend an email for a couple of seconds after you send it, which effectively means it waits a few seconds giving you an option to unsend it in which case it doesn't actually send it.
Had this national service been in force when I was 18 my career would never have got off the ground. I'd gone to Vogue House seeing if they were looking for assistants and they said they weren't but gave me the name of a well known photographer who shared a studio on Kings Road.
She was a New Yorker nutty as a fruitcake and gave me the job on the spot. If this bonkers Tory plan had been around then instead of shooting for Vogue I'd probably be bombing Gaza
You never know Roger, after a stint in the Artists Rifles in Borneo you might have become the British Robert Capa.
Was there anything more utterly British than using turning the Artists Rifles onto a special forces unit?
On the basis of Bravo Two Zero and that pop video Rogue Heroes guff, the ‘Artists’ element was excised pretty early on. Mind you there seems a revival of fiction writing in recent SAS official action reports in Afghanistan.
After the election, the Conservative Party is going to have to face this reality
I know it will be both painful and difficult - most current Conservative voters don't want to rejoin - but it is very clear how public opinion is going to evolve given this demographic skew
Ask them about rejoin with the Euro and even with younger voters there is much less enthusiasm for rejoin
Since contactless became mainstream, the amount of people carrying cash has collapsed. I think the unit of a account is not a serious issue in the post cash world.
That argument trivialises the economic considerations and could equally be turned around to say that the Euro has lost its raison d'être.
Always nice to see the latest modern equivalent of 'Fog in Channel - Continent Cut off.'
Sunak has refused to distance himself from his campaign's attacks on Starmer's age. Tory sources have been calling Starmer "sleepy Keir" and "Sir Sleepy."
PM refused multiple chances to dis-endorse the attacks, but added he was "not familiar with his sleeping patterns"
After the election, the Conservative Party is going to have to face this reality
I know it will be both painful and difficult - most current Conservative voters don't want to rejoin - but it is very clear how public opinion is going to evolve given this demographic skew
How did the Boomers vote in 1975?
Probably about 75% to 25% in favour of joining the EEC.
60% to stay in, the lowest percentage of any age group according to this:
Not really. Older voters in 1975 got the point of EEC as a reaction to the horrors of World War Two. There was a similar effect in 2016- the very oldest voters were remainier than the boomers.
After the election, the Conservative Party is going to have to face this reality
I know it will be both painful and difficult - most current Conservative voters don't want to rejoin - but it is very clear how public opinion is going to evolve given this demographic skew
Ask them about rejoin with the Euro and even with younger voters there is much less enthusiasm for rejoin
Since contactless became mainstream, the amount of people carrying cash has collapsed. I think the unit of a account is not a serious issue in the post cash world.
Who gives a shit about cash?
Controlling interest rates, your own currency and so much more on the other hand matters tremendously.
The Conservative Party will outperform expectations on 4 July, and will get more than 200 seats. The LibDems will more than double their seat count, and will do rather better in terms of vote share than the current polls predict, but will miss out on a dozen seats by small margins. The SNP will hold on to their number two spot, getting around 30 seats. And Labour will manage an inverse of 2019, achieving a majority of around 80.
You heard it here first.
How do you come to this conclusion?
Simples:
(a) Sea changes don't happen very often. A reversion to the mean is much more likely than a new paradigm. Not impossible, of course, but (like recessions) they are predicted far more often than they actually happen.
(b) The LibDems often flatter to deceive, and it's hard to get 30+ seats on a low teens vote share. Not impossible (see the LD performance in Scotland for a clear demonstration of extremely efficient vote), but unlikely.
(c) Campaign gaffs and the like don't usually make that much difference. See Pussygate, etc.
(d) The Reform vote (see council elections / byelections / etc) doesn't actually seem to actually, you know, vote. And I think that in close races, there is plenty of opportunity for them to be squeezed. Which Reform voter wants to let in a LibDem?
(e) The Labour vote is usually overstated somewhat by the polls. (See London)
This is close to what I predicted the other day tbf, though I am a little more bullish on LDs and bearish on SNP. Also think Labour’s (working) majority may be slightly slimmer.
The Conservative Party will outperform expectations on 4 July, and will get more than 200 seats. The LibDems will more than double their seat count, and will do rather better in terms of vote share than the current polls predict, but will miss out on a dozen seats by small margins. The SNP will hold on to their number two spot, getting around 30 seats. And Labour will manage an inverse of 2019, achieving a majority of around 80.
You heard it here first.
How do you come to this conclusion?
Simples:
(a) Sea changes don't happen very often. A reversion to the mean is much more likely than a new paradigm. Not impossible, of course, but (like recessions) they are predicted far more often than they actually happen.
(b) The LibDems often flatter to deceive, and it's hard to get 30+ seats on a low teens vote share. Not impossible (see the LD performance in Scotland for a clear demonstration of extremely efficient vote), but unlikely.
(c) Campaign gaffs and the like don't usually make that much difference. See Pussygate, etc.
(d) The Reform vote (see council elections / byelections / etc) doesn't actually seem to actually, you know, vote. And I think that in close races, there is plenty of opportunity for them to be squeezed. Which Reform voter wants to let in a LibDem?
(e) The Labour vote is usually overstated somewhat by the polls. (See London)
I wonder where LDs will end up on polling day.
I think they were 16-17% in 1997, and notched up from 10-12% at the start of the campaign.
More to the point, if they tick up who ticks down in tandem
The Conservative Party will outperform expectations on 4 July, and will get more than 200 seats. The LibDems will more than double their seat count, and will do rather better in terms of vote share than the current polls predict, but will miss out on a dozen seats by small margins. The SNP will hold on to their number two spot, getting around 30 seats. And Labour will manage an inverse of 2019, achieving a majority of around 80.
You heard it here first.
How do you come to this conclusion?
Simples:
(a) Sea changes don't happen very often. A reversion to the mean is much more likely than a new paradigm. Not impossible, of course, but (like recessions) they are predicted far more often than they actually happen.
(b) The LibDems often flatter to deceive, and it's hard to get 30+ seats on a low teens vote share. Not impossible (see the LD performance in Scotland for a clear demonstration of extremely efficient vote), but unlikely.
(c) Campaign gaffs and the like don't usually make that much difference. See Pussygate, etc.
(d) The Reform vote (see council elections / byelections / etc) doesn't actually seem to actually, you know, vote. And I think that in close races, there is plenty of opportunity for them to be squeezed. Which Reform voter wants to let in a LibDem?
(e) The Labour vote is usually overstated somewhat by the polls. (See London)
I wonder where LDs will end up on polling day.
I think they were 16-17% in 1997, and notched up from 10-12% at the start of the campaign.
More to the point, if they tick up who ticks down in tandem
Labour. Where LDs are the main challenger to defeat the Tories, that's where the votes will go.
It’s the 90s all over again, massive Labour majority, Manchester Utd winning trophies, Loaded with Liz Hurley in the cover. I’m just looking forward to seeing Blur and Oasis doing their national service.
After the election, the Conservative Party is going to have to face this reality
I know it will be both painful and difficult - most current Conservative voters don't want to rejoin - but it is very clear how public opinion is going to evolve given this demographic skew
Ask them about rejoin with the Euro and even with younger voters there is much less enthusiasm for rejoin
Since contactless became mainstream, the amount of people carrying cash has collapsed. I think the unit of a account is not a serious issue in the post cash world.
After the election, the Conservative Party is going to have to face this reality
I know it will be both painful and difficult - most current Conservative voters don't want to rejoin - but it is very clear how public opinion is going to evolve given this demographic skew
Ask them about rejoin with the Euro and even with younger voters there is much less enthusiasm for rejoin
Since contactless became mainstream, the amount of people carrying cash has collapsed. I think the unit of a account is not a serious issue in the post cash world.
The journos are going to tucker themselves out before manifestos launch at this rate. Its too full on. Redfield appear not to have bothered this week.
They had a British journalist talking about the election campaign on RTË radio this lunchtime and he couldn't stop laughing when asked if the Tories had any chance at all, or about the National Service policy.
I do get the impression that journalists are completely failing to establish any professional detachment when reporting on the election. They need to get out there and talk to some real people, rather than sharing memes with each other on twitter.
There are aspects of modern elections that are very difficult to report on in the traditional way. In particular two things.
There are no real ideological issues to discuss between the overall vision of the two parties that can win - all are committed to: defence, NATO, welfare state, free education to 18, pensions, capitalism, NHS, growth and making things work better by magic. Nothing to see to separate them except window dressing.
And second, neither Lab nor Con are addressing tax, spend, debt, deficit, social care, post-Brexit settlement, climate change etc in any way which marks either a mutual differentiation or a fruitful alternative to discuss. They have worked out how to close them down.
So what is left for journalism to do? Discussion of polling is more than sufficient already.
Sadly I think that analysis is correct. Having meaningful disagreements and debates on public policy is too risky. You might upset someone.
I don't blame them; that someone you might upset is the voter. After 1992, 2010, 2015 and 2017 the lesson is beginning to get home. Journalists should do better at both interviewing and reporting on the meaning of the gaps.
The Conservative Party will outperform expectations on 4 July, and will get more than 200 seats. The LibDems will more than double their seat count, and will do rather better in terms of vote share than the current polls predict, but will miss out on a dozen seats by small margins. The SNP will hold on to their number two spot, getting around 30 seats. And Labour will manage an inverse of 2019, achieving a majority of around 80.
You heard it here first.
How do you come to this conclusion?
Simples:
(a) Sea changes don't happen very often. A reversion to the mean is much more likely than a new paradigm. Not impossible, of course, but (like recessions) they are predicted far more often than they actually happen.
(b) The LibDems often flatter to deceive, and it's hard to get 30+ seats on a low teens vote share. Not impossible (see the LD performance in Scotland for a clear demonstration of extremely efficient vote), but unlikely.
(c) Campaign gaffs and the like don't usually make that much difference. See Pussygate, etc.
(d) The Reform vote (see council elections / byelections / etc) doesn't actually seem to actually, you know, vote. And I think that in close races, there is plenty of opportunity for them to be squeezed. Which Reform voter wants to let in a LibDem?
(e) The Labour vote is usually overstated somewhat by the polls. (See London)
To do OK the Tories only (!) need a third of the ex-Tory Reform preference and a third of the ex-Tory DK preference to vote Tory in July and they get to 33-35% of the vote.
38% of 2019 Tory voters are either for Reform or DK (last YouGov poll data). That's millions of votes up for grabs. Hence National Service, restart slave trade, hanging for sheep stealing or whatever is up next. The One Nation Tories are lost for this time round. (Good).
Actually on current polls the Tories are holding more of their 2019 voters who voted Remain than Leave. The only net gains Rishi has made since 2019 have been from One Nation Tories who went LD while Boris and Truss were in charge while he has leaked like a sieve to Labour and Reform
Ex colleague of mine told me as a junior consultant he once sent sensitive details of a merger to entire office by accident - everyone had to sign some legal docs in a rush because of him.
Anyone else got horror stories they care to share?
Ex colleague of mine told me as a junior consultant he once sent sensitive details of a merger to entire office by accident - everyone had to sign some legal docs in a rush because of him.
Anyone else got horror stories they care to share?
There but for the grace of God; the closest I’ve got is posting vaguely banterish between-friends stuff in more professional channels (e.g. on Teams/Whatsapp) but tbh the easiest thing there is just immediately front out with a ‘whoops, that wasn’t for here!’.
I feel terrible when I see it happen. Well, terrible, seasoned with a couple of turns of the revelling-in-chaotic-malice mill.
The Conservative Party will outperform expectations on 4 July, and will get more than 200 seats. The LibDems will more than double their seat count, and will do rather better in terms of vote share than the current polls predict, but will miss out on a dozen seats by small margins. The SNP will hold on to their number two spot, getting around 30 seats. And Labour will manage an inverse of 2019, achieving a majority of around 80.
You heard it here first.
You could be right Robert. History would support your kind of assessment.
However, I don’t think it’s based on reading the room. (At the moment.)
I quite like Sunak’s idea that national service will foster a sense of community and belonging.
He’s probably right, but it will take decades for that feeling to filter down the generations. Probably fifty years or more.
It's not a terrible idea to have. I don't think it would have gone down super well, but if it had been announced in a speech with that as the theme, maybe it would not have immediately provoked so many visceral reactions about fining or imprisoning young people who don't want to be drafted.
It's also not going to be well received from a government that has made life so much worse for young people and insults them at every opportunity.
Fostering a sense of community works both ways. The government and the reactionary Boomers it panders to show no respect or sense of community towards the young - denying them housing, rights, and opportunities. And then turn round and complain when they're not grateful their lives have been made worse.
If the government wants to foster a sense of community and belonging, it should start at home - rather than imposing on young people, who let's not forget, gave up 2 years of their youth to protect the elderly. Who if they are those supporting this look evermore ungrateful, selfish, and completely out-of-touch with the lives of the young.
Many of whom are having to work harder than ever to pay for education, housing, and so on, as wages go less far and have far greater costs, than was the case for their parents or grandparents.
90% of their grandparents never even went to university so fees were not an issue. Most of their great grandparents rented their entire lives and never owned a property and some of the males fought and died in a world war. Inflation was higher than it is now in the 1970s.
Their parents also didn't inherit anywhere near as much as they will today
Some will inherit - many won't - likely the next big dividing line, as the generational one is now. Either because their parents have no assets or they have to use their parents assets to help pay for care in old age they themselves can't afford.
It's not those who fought and died in the war/rented all their lives and experienced the hardships though who have imposed a worse future on the young out of their own selfishness. They left a much better legacy to their children than those reaching old age now.
I know some of them think they fought in the war, or act like they do. But they grew up in the 60s, had all the opportunities of EU/EEC membership then took it away from their kids/grandkids. Bought property cheaply then grew wealth in part thanks to blocking development. Insisted on low taxes for themselves, that now are higher to pay for their dotage.
Yes, had high inflation at points, and recessions - no one is saying it was paradise - but not the longest period without real-term wage growth in recorded history. At a time when property prices, the single most important thing for obtaining financial security, soared out of reach. Going into FE leaves you with an additional tax rate.
Now, it's easy to say "well that's life" - there are always crap aspects - to some extent that's true. Demographics was always going to squeeze today's youth.
But then you can't go round saying "young people have it to easy, what they need is 25 days unpaid work a year or to join the army" without getting absolutely laughed out of town by those who know they will on average, have to work harder than their parents to get comforts they took for granted.
You have to treat them with respect, rather than the contempt the Tories and some of the selfish generation do.
It’s the 90s all over again, massive Labour majority, Manchester Utd winning trophies, Loaded with Liz Hurley in the cover. I’m just looking forward to seeing Blur and Oasis doing their national service.
Ex colleague of mine told me as a junior consultant he once sent sensitive details of a merger to entire office by accident - everyone had to sign some legal docs in a rush because of him.
Anyone else got horror stories they care to share?
When the pay of everyone in the company was sent out as an attachment. Those of us on a POP3/SMTP setup got to see it as the recall did not work.
Also - and not a recall issue - at another place HR sent out a list of project codewords, including the status. Which told a few people their project was to be canned as it was in the 'cancelled' section...
The Conservative Party will outperform expectations on 4 July, and will get more than 200 seats. The LibDems will more than double their seat count, and will do rather better in terms of vote share than the current polls predict, but will miss out on a dozen seats by small margins. The SNP will hold on to their number two spot, getting around 30 seats. And Labour will manage an inverse of 2019, achieving a majority of around 80.
You heard it here first.
You could be right Robert. History would support your kind of assessment.
However, I don’t think it’s based on reading the room. (At the moment.)
Sunak will implode and the party with him. I'm predicting Where He Will Live If He Loses will become a big issue - ironically, because who gives a toss? But it is an easy attack line especially after Akshata's non dom wriggles. And the I want to stay here to support my team line is phony even for him.
The Conservative Party will outperform expectations on 4 July, and will get more than 200 seats. The LibDems will more than double their seat count, and will do rather better in terms of vote share than the current polls predict, but will miss out on a dozen seats by small margins. The SNP will hold on to their number two spot, getting around 30 seats. And Labour will manage an inverse of 2019, achieving a majority of around 80.
You heard it here first.
How do you come to this conclusion?
Simples:
(a) Sea changes don't happen very often. A reversion to the mean is much more likely than a new paradigm. Not impossible, of course, but (like recessions) they are predicted far more often than they actually happen.
(b) The LibDems often flatter to deceive, and it's hard to get 30+ seats on a low teens vote share. Not impossible (see the LD performance in Scotland for a clear demonstration of extremely efficient vote), but unlikely.
(c) Campaign gaffs and the like don't usually make that much difference. See Pussygate, etc.
(d) The Reform vote (see council elections / byelections / etc) doesn't actually seem to actually, you know, vote. And I think that in close races, there is plenty of opportunity for them to be squeezed. Which Reform voter wants to let in a LibDem?
(e) The Labour vote is usually overstated somewhat by the polls. (See London)
I wonder where LDs will end up on polling day.
I think they were 16-17% in 1997, and notched up from 10-12% at the start of the campaign.
My guess is they will poll more or less where the polling currently places them. I’ll guess the same or lower in % and absolute terms than 2019, but significantly better efficiency and therefore more seats. I think I predicted 27.
I'm not so sure actually, which is one reason I bailed out the spreads.
This is the first time for years the LDs have had a total Tory collapse to go at with chances for lots of tactical voting.
I don't think they'll do amazingly in the SW, but they could overperform significantly in the south-east.
After the election, the Conservative Party is going to have to face this reality
I know it will be both painful and difficult - most current Conservative voters don't want to rejoin - but it is very clear how public opinion is going to evolve given this demographic skew
Looks just like support for Independence in Scotland, only old farts and wasters against now.
I did wonder with the new generation of men, whether lads' mags would re-appear.
This is the last gasp of the reactionary right.
Before the rest of the country moves on. Deporting boat people to Rwanda will be one of those things we look back on and wonder what they were taking. Trans rights will most certainly come back onto the agenda and with a huge majority there won’t be a lot to stop it, but it will be in the context of people generally chilling out and ceasing to judge those who want to identify how the fuck they want. And as for beating up the disabled … well ...
@joerichlaw CCHQ has been frantically calling up some strange people to fill ‘shortlists’ for these seats. A friend of mine, who is already selected as a LibDem Parliamentary candidate, got a call. Really odd - especially when they are blocking so many @Conservatives from standing.
I expect some in this CCHQ would probably prefer a LD parliamentary candidate to a Boris supporting Conservative
The whole filthy CCHQ organisation needs to be sacked and start again.
Had this national service been in force when I was 18 my career would never have got off the ground. I'd gone to Vogue House seeing if they were looking for assistants and they said they weren't but gave me the name of a well known photographer who shared a studio on Kings Road.
She was a New Yorker nutty as a fruitcake and gave me the job on the spot. If this bonkers Tory plan had been around then instead of shooting for Vogue I'd probably be bombing Gaza
You never know Roger, after a stint in the Artists Rifles in Borneo you might have become the British Robert Capa.
Different skillset. You had to be brave to be Robert Capa
Although arguably he didn’t do well on D-Day. I saw a convincing argument that his story of his shots being damaged in processing doesn’t add up. It seems likely he got into a bit of a funk, took a few shots then got out as fast as he could.
Now he didn’t need to be there, and undoubtedly it was brave to go, but his legend is perhaps overstated.
I did wonder with the new generation of men, whether lads' mags would re-appear.
This is the last gasp of the reactionary right.
Before the rest of the country moves on. Deporting boat people to Rwanda will be one of those things we look back on and wonder what they were taking. Trans rights will most certainly come back onto the agenda and with a huge majority there won’t be a lot to stop it, but it will be in the context of people generally chilling out and ceasing to judge those who want to identify how the fuck they want. And as for beating up the disabled … well ...
Do you think the journalists and associated staff on Loaded are/were travellers with the Reactionary Right? If so it would appear you never picked up a copy.
In search of signs of election activity, I've wandered around pretty much every shopping area and main street in the both the eastern (yesterday) and western (this afternoon) legs of the Islington North constituency and can report... nothing.
No leaflets, no posters, no presence on the streets, no sign of any canvassing activity.
I realise that the campaign hasn't officially started yet, but I would have thought that Corbyn would have wanted to take advantage of the bank holiday - getting a load of volunteers in to make their presence felt, offering social proof that "everyone's going to vote Corbyn", and cementing expectations of a win right from the start.
My expectation for this seat was that Corbyn would run a noisy by-election style campaign, and that the big question was whether Labour would be able to do anything to match it. But what if that doesn't happen, and things remain muted on both sides? Well, in that case, I think it would likely result in a narrow Labour win.
I don't suppose it'll turn out like that, though - Corbyn has always been an effective campaigner, so I still expect things to get off the ground sooner rather than later....
One possible immediate problem for Corbyn is that those who'd be his usual campaign team in the constituency, and his most enthusiastic wider group of supporters, Momentum, can't do without losing their Labour membership.
In time he'll get round that - as there's a whole infrastructure of organisations outside Labour on the far left, including his own 'P&J Project'. But it might take a bit of time to work things out, decide who's doing what, sign off and print literature. Work out who's prepared to jump ship and back you, who is to be trusted with important roles. And so on.
Sunak calling the election as a surprise one may have caught them a bit on the hop as may have thought they had plenty of time to plan all this over the summer if was held in autumn.
Corbyn did at least have a website ready to go - and I found the 'volunteer' page interesting. They're looking for people with "Data Analysis in Python" and "Machine Learning" skills.
That definitely sounds like they were planning to start building a team over the summer, ahead of an autumn election. Certainly, I don't see any value in trying to build a data science team in the five weeks before an election!
So it does seem like they've been caught out quite badly by the election announcement, and I wonder if it might affect their prospects. Mind you, Labour aren't doing any better - their candidate's website went private when he was shortlisted, and still hasn't been updated!
In search of signs of election activity, I've wandered around pretty much every shopping area and main street in the both the eastern (yesterday) and western (this afternoon) legs of the Islington North constituency and can report... nothing.
No leaflets, no posters, no presence on the streets, no sign of any canvassing activity.
I realise that the campaign hasn't officially started yet, but I would have thought that Corbyn would have wanted to take advantage of the bank holiday - getting a load of volunteers in to make their presence felt, offering social proof that "everyone's going to vote Corbyn", and cementing expectations of a win right from the start.
My expectation for this seat was that Corbyn would run a noisy by-election style campaign, and that the big question was whether Labour would be able to do anything to match it. But what if that doesn't happen, and things remain muted on both sides? Well, in that case, I think it would likely result in a narrow Labour win.
I don't suppose it'll turn out like that, though - Corbyn has always been an effective campaigner, so I still expect things to get off the ground sooner rather than later....
Corbyn is now 75 years old. Maybe he’s just had enough and like Sunak is just going through the motions.
The Conservative Party will outperform expectations on 4 July, and will get more than 200 seats. The LibDems will more than double their seat count, and will do rather better in terms of vote share than the current polls predict, but will miss out on a dozen seats by small margins. The SNP will hold on to their number two spot, getting around 30 seats. And Labour will manage an inverse of 2019, achieving a majority of around 80.
You heard it here first.
How do you come to this conclusion?
Simples:
(a) Sea changes don't happen very often. A reversion to the mean is much more likely than a new paradigm. Not impossible, of course, but (like recessions) they are predicted far more often than they actually happen.
(b) The LibDems often flatter to deceive, and it's hard to get 30+ seats on a low teens vote share. Not impossible (see the LD performance in Scotland for a clear demonstration of extremely efficient vote), but unlikely.
(c) Campaign gaffs and the like don't usually make that much difference. See Pussygate, etc.
(d) The Reform vote (see council elections / byelections / etc) doesn't actually seem to actually, you know, vote. And I think that in close races, there is plenty of opportunity for them to be squeezed. Which Reform voter wants to let in a LibDem?
(e) The Labour vote is usually overstated somewhat by the polls. (See London)
I would tend to go along with most of that except I am betting on the Tories not reaching 30% this time.
In all my years of GEs I have never known such antipathy to the Tories. I know plenty of people who generally vote Tory and I cannot think of one that intends to do so this time. Not all going Labour by any means, some Lib Dem, Reform, Not Voting etc but all are resolutely certain they will not be voting Conservative.
No great enthusiasm for Starmer as there was for Blair but the hatred of Sunak/Truss/Johnson is way greater than it was for Major. Low turnout, Tories on 26-28%. Johnson would have got them to about 32-35% IMO.
Ex colleague of mine told me as a junior consultant he once sent sensitive details of a merger to entire office by accident - everyone had to sign some legal docs in a rush because of him.
Anyone else got horror stories they care to share?
When the pay of everyone in the company was sent out as an attachment. Those of us on a POP3/SMTP setup got to see it as the recall did not work.
Also - and not a recall issue - at another place HR sent out a list of project codewords, including the status. Which told a few people their project was to be canned as it was in the 'cancelled' section...
For me, a particular highlight was a senior manager announcing a subordinate's "decision to move on" over email, accidentally sending the entire office the email chain leading up to that "decision" which was basically "please don't fire me, I'm broke, I have a family to feed, and the stress of working at this place has given me mental health problems".
My hunch is the Tories will win a minimum of 30% and 200 seats. The only problem is there's no sign of them moving towards 30% in the opinion polls at the moment.
"In the UK, renewables are subsidised by three different schemes. Feed-in-Tariffs fund mostly solar power. The latest report for 2022-23 shows the average total payment was >£190/MWh, about 3X the current cost of gas-fired power."
So though we're continually being told that renewables, especially wind, have become cheaper than gas, we're actually paying 3 times the amount for renewable energy than we are for gas, and that includes carbon payments.
This will go up even more when the higher guaranteed price that the Government had to dangle in-front of wind providers to get them to actually bid in the most recent round of auctions feeds into the system. If wind is so cheap, why did we need to increase the price paid by 70%?
I did wonder with the new generation of men, whether lads' mags would re-appear.
This is the last gasp of the reactionary right.
Before the rest of the country moves on. Deporting boat people to Rwanda will be one of those things we look back on and wonder what they were taking. Trans rights will most certainly come back onto the agenda and with a huge majority there won’t be a lot to stop it, but it will be in the context of people generally chilling out and ceasing to judge those who want to identify how the fuck they want. And as for beating up the disabled … well ...
Do you think the journalists and associated staff on Loaded are/were travellers with the Reactionary Right? If so it would appear you never picked up a copy.
Tbh I wouldn’t be suprised if (like Gavin Macinnes in the 2000s with Vice, only less so) some of the writers from that era did drift to the edgelord populist right.
My hunch is the Tories will win a minimum of 30% and 200 seats. The only problem is there's no sign of them moving towards 30% in the opinion polls at the moment.
My hunch is the Tories will win a minimum of 30% and 200 seats. The only problem is there's no sign of them moving towards 30% in the opinion polls at the moment.
Unlikely that any pattern will be discernable until this time next week
In search of signs of election activity, I've wandered around pretty much every shopping area and main street in the both the eastern (yesterday) and western (this afternoon) legs of the Islington North constituency and can report... nothing.
No leaflets, no posters, no presence on the streets, no sign of any canvassing activity.
I realise that the campaign hasn't officially started yet, but I would have thought that Corbyn would have wanted to take advantage of the bank holiday - getting a load of volunteers in to make their presence felt, offering social proof that "everyone's going to vote Corbyn", and cementing expectations of a win right from the start.
My expectation for this seat was that Corbyn would run a noisy by-election style campaign, and that the big question was whether Labour would be able to do anything to match it. But what if that doesn't happen, and things remain muted on both sides? Well, in that case, I think it would likely result in a narrow Labour win.
I don't suppose it'll turn out like that, though - Corbyn has always been an effective campaigner, so I still expect things to get off the ground sooner rather than later....
Corbyn is now 75 years old. Maybe he’s just had enough and like Sunak is just going through the motions.
Same could be said of the average tory and reform member.. they are old.... the whole right has no demographic future.... also it is spent as a political movement. All its energies gone. The age of the millenial is upon us. They will dominate for the next 30 years.
I did wonder with the new generation of men, whether lads' mags would re-appear.
This is the last gasp of the reactionary right.
Before the rest of the country moves on. Deporting boat people to Rwanda will be one of those things we look back on and wonder what they were taking. Trans rights will most certainly come back onto the agenda and with a huge majority there won’t be a lot to stop it, but it will be in the context of people generally chilling out and ceasing to judge those who want to identify how the fuck they want. And as for beating up the disabled … well ...
Do you think the journalists and associated staff on Loaded are/were travellers with the Reactionary Right? If so it would appear you never picked up a copy.
Tbh I wouldn’t be suprised if (like Gavin Macinnes in the 2000s with Vice, only less so) some of the writers from that era did drift to the edgelord populist right.
They were perfectly of their time - Blairite. Socially liberal and extremely comfortable with people being rich. Some of the attitudes to women were “old fashioned” but to even vaguely think they were “reactionary right” is bonkers. They were standard bearers for social mobility in that their heroes weren’t the old money, old hierarchies but musicians, models, tv personalities, entrepreneurs, geezers, footballers.
I did wonder with the new generation of men, whether lads' mags would re-appear.
This is the last gasp of the reactionary right.
Before the rest of the country moves on. Deporting boat people to Rwanda will be one of those things we look back on and wonder what they were taking. Trans rights will most certainly come back onto the agenda and with a huge majority there won’t be a lot to stop it, but it will be in the context of people generally chilling out and ceasing to judge those who want to identify how the fuck they want. And as for beating up the disabled … well ...
Do you think the journalists and associated staff on Loaded are/were travellers with the Reactionary Right? If so it would appear you never picked up a copy.
Tbh I wouldn’t be suprised if (like Gavin Macinnes in the 2000s with Vice, only less so) some of the writers from that era did drift to the edgelord populist right.
Martin Daubney went from Loaded/FHM to being a Brexit MEP then jumped to Reclaim.
In search of signs of election activity, I've wandered around pretty much every shopping area and main street in the both the eastern (yesterday) and western (this afternoon) legs of the Islington North constituency and can report... nothing.
No leaflets, no posters, no presence on the streets, no sign of any canvassing activity.
I realise that the campaign hasn't officially started yet, but I would have thought that Corbyn would have wanted to take advantage of the bank holiday - getting a load of volunteers in to make their presence felt, offering social proof that "everyone's going to vote Corbyn", and cementing expectations of a win right from the start.
My expectation for this seat was that Corbyn would run a noisy by-election style campaign, and that the big question was whether Labour would be able to do anything to match it. But what if that doesn't happen, and things remain muted on both sides? Well, in that case, I think it would likely result in a narrow Labour win.
I don't suppose it'll turn out like that, though - Corbyn has always been an effective campaigner, so I still expect things to get off the ground sooner rather than later....
One possible immediate problem for Corbyn is that those who'd be his usual campaign team in the constituency, and his most enthusiastic wider group of supporters, Momentum, can't do without losing their Labour membership.
In time he'll get round that - as there's a whole infrastructure of organisations outside Labour on the far left, including his own 'P&J Project'. But it might take a bit of time to work things out, decide who's doing what, sign off and print literature. Work out who's prepared to jump ship and back you, who is to be trusted with important roles. And so on.
Sunak calling the election as a surprise one may have caught them a bit on the hop as may have thought they had plenty of time to plan all this over the summer if was held in autumn.
Corbyn did at least have a website ready to go - and I found the 'volunteer' page interesting. They're looking for people with "Data Analysis in Python" and "Machine Learning" skills.
That definitely sounds like they were planning to start building a team over the summer, ahead of an autumn election. Certainly, I don't see any value in trying to build a data science team in the five weeks before an election!
So it does seem like they've been caught out quite badly by the election announcement, and I wonder if it might affect their prospects. Mind you, Labour aren't doing any better - their candidate's website went private when he was shortlisted, and still hasn't been updated!
You'd have thought Labour want to assess their prospects. They'd obviously love to win but it's way down their agenda, and the worst case scenario for them is to be seen to make it a hugely important contest with huge resources poured in and lose.
With Corbyn an early favourite, as you say, the lower key the campaign the better, and to assess prospects. The last thing Labour want - almost win or lose - is to turn Corbyn's last stand into one of the stories of the election.
My hunch is the Tories will win a minimum of 30% and 200 seats. The only problem is there's no sign of them moving towards 30% in the opinion polls at the moment.
I don't see that happening.... I see the tory campaign collapsing completely. It will limp to July 4th at best. Sunak thought a 6 week campaign would reveal labour. It is going to expose the void at the heart of the party. Yet another rookie mistake. It doesn't take an Andy Marr to see they are flailing and totally disorganized without the stamina for a long fight.
Ex colleague of mine told me as a junior consultant he once sent sensitive details of a merger to entire office by accident - everyone had to sign some legal docs in a rush because of him.
Anyone else got horror stories they care to share?
When the pay of everyone in the company was sent out as an attachment. Those of us on a POP3/SMTP setup got to see it as the recall did not work.
Also - and not a recall issue - at another place HR sent out a list of project codewords, including the status. Which told a few people their project was to be canned as it was in the 'cancelled' section...
Back in the early 2000s a friend of mine tried to split up from her boyfriend by email. She believed the recall function did just that and sent a variety of different versions of said missive, thinking she had recalled the earlier drafts. He laughed at her in the restaurant where the breakup was finalised that evening, read each version back to her, before ordering desert. He was a cast iron heartless shit.
Someone buys the rights to Loaded and relaunches it every couple of years. It never works. I don't see any sign it'll work this time either, given that it doesn't appear to be anywhere on the first few pages of Google even when you search directly for "loaded".
It caught the zeitgeist at a particular moment in time. You can't bring that back.
I did wonder with the new generation of men, whether lads' mags would re-appear.
This is the last gasp of the reactionary right.
Before the rest of the country moves on. Deporting boat people to Rwanda will be one of those things we look back on and wonder what they were taking. Trans rights will most certainly come back onto the agenda and with a huge majority there won’t be a lot to stop it, but it will be in the context of people generally chilling out and ceasing to judge those who want to identify how the fuck they want. And as for beating up the disabled … well ...
Do you think the journalists and associated staff on Loaded are/were travellers with the Reactionary Right? If so it would appear you never picked up a copy.
Tbh I wouldn’t be suprised if (like Gavin Macinnes in the 2000s with Vice, only less so) some of the writers from that era did drift to the edgelord populist right.
Martin Daubney went from Loaded/FHM to being a Brexit MEP then jumped to Reclaim.
Wasn't a certain Spectator writer formerly of this parish also a writer for lads mags in the 90s?
Ex colleague of mine told me as a junior consultant he once sent sensitive details of a merger to entire office by accident - everyone had to sign some legal docs in a rush because of him.
Anyone else got horror stories they care to share?
When the pay of everyone in the company was sent out as an attachment. Those of us on a POP3/SMTP setup got to see it as the recall did not work.
Also - and not a recall issue - at another place HR sent out a list of project codewords, including the status. Which told a few people their project was to be canned as it was in the 'cancelled' section...
Back in the early 2000s a friend of mine tried to split up from her boyfriend by email. She believed the recall function did just that and sent a variety of different versions of said missive, thinking she had recalled the earlier drafts. He laughed at her in the restaurant where the breakup was finalised that evening, read each version back to her, before ordering desert. He was a cast iron heartless shit.
Nothing like an exit interview to help each party do things better in the future.
"In the UK, renewables are subsidised by three different schemes. Feed-in-Tariffs fund mostly solar power. The latest report for 2022-23 shows the average total payment was >£190/MWh, about 3X the current cost of gas-fired power."
So though we're continually being told that renewables, especially wind, have become cheaper than gas, we're actually paying 3 times the amount for renewable energy than we are for gas, and that includes carbon payments.
This will go up even more when the higher guaranteed price that the Government had to dangle in-front of wind providers to get them to actually bid in the most recent round of auctions feeds into the system. If wind is so cheap, why did we need to increase the price paid by 70%?
The subsidies relate to prior schemes that don't exist anymore, which were part of kickstarting the system. New energy investment doesn't get those subsidies and you know that so why do you pretend otherwise?
Someone buys the rights to Loaded and relaunches it every couple of years. It never works. I don't see any sign it'll work this time either, given that it doesn't appear to be anywhere on the first few pages of Google even when you search directly for "loaded".
It caught the zeitgeist at a particular moment in time. You can't bring that back.
Also their target audience is getting what loaded did for free via social media with things like LadBible, Buzzfeed, Bored Panda amongst others and they don’t need half dressed glamour models as the world is awash with porn on the internet so that market of teenage boys is redundant.
Someone buys the rights to Loaded and relaunches it every couple of years. It never works. I don't see any sign it'll work this time either, given that it doesn't appear to be anywhere on the first few pages of Google even when you search directly for "loaded".
It caught the zeitgeist at a particular moment in time. You can't bring that back.
It can only get better from here for the Tories. The media will want a new narrative in a few days. Still think a small Conservative majority is value.
Really - a deficit of 15-20 points which has been baked in for months, evidenced in by elections and local elections is somehow going to be turned into a 5-point Conservative lead in just five weeks.
How? Why do you think that? 1992 was 32 years ago and the polling was very different.
I really don't understand why you would say that.
Everyone laughed at me in re the Truss comeback. Guess what. She came back.
It can only get better from here for the Tories. The media will want a new narrative in a few days. Still think a small Conservative majority is value.
Really - a deficit of 15-20 points which has been baked in for months, evidenced in by elections and local elections is somehow going to be turned into a 5-point Conservative lead in just five weeks.
How? Why do you think that? 1992 was 32 years ago and the polling was very different.
I really don't understand why you would say that.
Everyone laughed at me in re the Truss comeback. Guess what. She came back.
I’m looking forward to her Loaded cover. They could move the title down so the “O” in Loaded is her necklace. “Hello boys, time to be Trussed” Will be the headline.
After the election, the Conservative Party is going to have to face this reality
I know it will be both painful and difficult - most current Conservative voters don't want to rejoin - but it is very clear how public opinion is going to evolve given this demographic skew
Ask them about rejoin with the Euro and even with younger voters there is much less enthusiasm for rejoin
Since contactless became mainstream, the amount of people carrying cash has collapsed. I think the unit of a account is not a serious issue in the post cash world.
It's not really about what's in your wallet, is it? It's about having control of your own currency, and not being in the sort of shit Italy and Greece are in.
The UK are not in teh shit then, where have you been last few years. How is it possible that some people still cannot grasp the clusterfcuk they have burdened the country with. There are none so blind as those that will not see, all those fake sovereignty turds have lost their sheen I am afraid.
In search of signs of election activity, I've wandered around pretty much every shopping area and main street in the both the eastern (yesterday) and western (this afternoon) legs of the Islington North constituency and can report... nothing.
No leaflets, no posters, no presence on the streets, no sign of any canvassing activity.
I realise that the campaign hasn't officially started yet, but I would have thought that Corbyn would have wanted to take advantage of the bank holiday - getting a load of volunteers in to make their presence felt, offering social proof that "everyone's going to vote Corbyn", and cementing expectations of a win right from the start.
My expectation for this seat was that Corbyn would run a noisy by-election style campaign, and that the big question was whether Labour would be able to do anything to match it. But what if that doesn't happen, and things remain muted on both sides? Well, in that case, I think it would likely result in a narrow Labour win.
I don't suppose it'll turn out like that, though - Corbyn has always been an effective campaigner, so I still expect things to get off the ground sooner rather than later....
Corbyn is now 75 years old. Maybe he’s just had enough and like Sunak is just going through the motions.
Big question in Islington North is could the Greens come through the middle, if the Labour vote is evenly split?
I did wonder with the new generation of men, whether lads' mags would re-appear.
This is the last gasp of the reactionary right.
Before the rest of the country moves on. Deporting boat people to Rwanda will be one of those things we look back on and wonder what they were taking. Trans rights will most certainly come back onto the agenda and with a huge majority there won’t be a lot to stop it, but it will be in the context of people generally chilling out and ceasing to judge those who want to identify how the fuck they want. And as for beating up the disabled … well ...
Any idiot trying to push Trans shit again will be out on their arse and deservedly so.
Comments
No conscientious objection, though: just don't tick the squaddy box.
[Still wondering at the apparent mismatch between a paid year as a plastic officer and 24 weekends doing what will in some cases look remarkably similar to a court sentence of community service. Which compares rather adversely with actual sentences passed on actual MPs for doing actual crimes.)
(a) Sea changes don't happen very often. A reversion to the mean is much more likely than a new paradigm. Not impossible, of course, but (like recessions) they are predicted far more often than they actually happen.
(b) The LibDems often flatter to deceive, and it's hard to get 30+ seats on a low teens vote share. Not impossible (see the LD performance in Scotland for a clear demonstration of extremely efficient vote), but unlikely.
(c) Campaign gaffs and the like don't usually make that much difference. See Pussygate, etc.
(d) The Reform vote (see council elections / byelections / etc) doesn't actually seem to actually, you know, vote. And I think that in close races, there is plenty of opportunity for them to be squeezed. Which Reform voter wants to let in a LibDem?
(e) The Labour vote is usually overstated somewhat by the polls. (See London)
We’d been out all day, door knocking or, in my case, with a loudspeaker van.
We looked at each other….. this was about 8pm …… what do we do now?
And decided we couldn’t door-knock any more….. we didn’t really have canvass returns ….
and we couldn’t use the loudspeaker any more.
So we gave up and went our separate ways.
There are no real ideological issues to discuss between the overall vision of the two parties that can win - all are committed to: defence, NATO, welfare state, free education to 18, pensions, capitalism, NHS, growth and making things work better by magic. Nothing to see to separate them except window dressing.
And second, neither Lab nor Con are addressing tax, spend, debt, deficit, social care, post-Brexit settlement, climate change etc in any way which marks either a mutual differentiation or a fruitful alternative to discuss. They have worked out how to close them down.
So what is left for journalism to do? Discussion of polling is more than sufficient already.
A bit of basic infantry training and you can replace the RAF regiment on the cheap.
https://labour.org.uk/updates/press-releases/keir-starmer-speech-country-first-party-second/
I think they were 16-17% in 1997, and notched up from 10-12% at the start of the campaign.
Fostering a sense of community works both ways. The government and the reactionary Boomers it panders to show no respect or sense of community towards the young - denying them housing, rights, and opportunities. And then turn round and complain when they're not grateful their lives have been made worse.
If the government wants to foster a sense of community and belonging, it should start at home - rather than imposing on young people, who let's not forget, gave up 2 years of their youth to protect the elderly. Who if they are those supporting this look evermore ungrateful, selfish, and completely out-of-touch with the lives of the young.
Many of whom are having to work harder than ever to pay for education, housing, and so on, as wages go less far and have far greater costs, than was the case for their parents or grandparents.
Your attempt at making sense of it - I do sympathise - sounds a bit like the old Junior Leaders' Regiments - but those were for 15 yo or so. At 18 you don't want to faff around but get stuck into the serious business.
Perhaps the idea is rather more basic: to give the little dears the choice of a year's NS bored out of one's mind as a squaddy with a pick handle outside the depot at Catterick, or trying for orficer selection and a short service commission.
There's a reason the Anglosphere was, and remains the overwhelming choice of emigrants from the U.K. - more in Australia alone than in continental Europe.
38% of 2019 Tory voters are either for Reform or DK (last YouGov poll data). That's millions of votes up for grabs. Hence National Service, restart slave trade, hanging for sheep stealing or whatever is up next.
The One Nation Tories are lost for this time round. (Good).
Their parents also didn't inherit anywhere near as much as they will today
Met my Labour opponent! Nice guy, not from the constituency, doesn't sound like he is running a campaign.
British Museum gems for sale on eBay - how a theft was exposed
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpegg27g74do
And on telly tonight, 7pm BBC2.
Will Man United have to negotiate a tricky away tie at Newcastle without their wunderkind who is litter picking outside the Trafford Centre?
PM refused multiple chances to dis-endorse the attacks, but added he was "not familiar with his sleeping patterns"
https://x.com/Stefan_Boscia/status/1795136929672900854
What a weirdo.
If you are a doctor or a brilliant scientist then you will get the opportunities but why should people think they have an automatic right to walk into another country to work when that country also has young people of their own who want those jobs?
It’s as if there are millions of young people in the UK imagining that they are automatically better than those already in Germany, France etc and they are crying out to employ kids from the UK because they don’t have any intelligent, well educated, native speakers with other languages, of their own.
Controlling interest rates, your own currency and so much more on the other hand matters tremendously.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/loaded-magazine-returns-to-reassure-men-they-can-ogle-beautiful-women-dd7tz2d80
It will wash-out nationally.
Actually on current polls the Tories are holding more of their 2019 voters who voted Remain than Leave. The only net gains Rishi has made since 2019 have been from One Nation Tories who went LD while Boris and Truss were in charge while he has leaked like a sieve to Labour and Reform
Anyone else got horror stories they care to share?
I feel terrible when I see it happen. Well, terrible, seasoned with a couple of turns of the revelling-in-chaotic-malice mill.
However, I don’t think it’s based on reading the room. (At the moment.)
It's not those who fought and died in the war/rented all their lives and experienced the hardships though who have imposed a worse future on the young out of their own selfishness. They left a much better legacy to their children than those reaching old age now.
I know some of them think they fought in the war, or act like they do. But they grew up in the 60s, had all the opportunities of EU/EEC membership then took it away from their kids/grandkids. Bought property cheaply then grew wealth in part thanks to blocking development. Insisted on low taxes for themselves, that now are higher to pay for their dotage.
Yes, had high inflation at points, and recessions - no one is saying it was paradise - but not the longest period without real-term wage growth in recorded history. At a time when property prices, the single most important thing for obtaining financial security, soared out of reach. Going into FE leaves you with an additional tax rate.
Now, it's easy to say "well that's life" - there are always crap aspects - to some extent that's true. Demographics was always going to squeeze today's youth.
But then you can't go round saying "young people have it to easy, what they need is 25 days unpaid work a year or to join the army" without getting absolutely laughed out of town by those who know they will on average, have to work harder than their parents to get comforts they took for granted.
You have to treat them with respect, rather than the contempt the Tories and some of the selfish generation do.
Also - and not a recall issue - at another place HR sent out a list of project codewords, including the status. Which told a few people their project was to be canned as it was in the 'cancelled' section...
This is the first time for years the LDs have had a total Tory collapse to go at with chances for lots of tactical voting.
I don't think they'll do amazingly in the SW, but they could overperform significantly in the south-east.
Woking looks a good price for them.
Before the rest of the country moves on. Deporting boat people to Rwanda will be one of those things we look back on and wonder what they were taking. Trans rights will most certainly come back onto the agenda and with a huge majority there won’t be a lot to stop it, but it will be in the context of people generally chilling out and ceasing to judge those who want to identify how the fuck they want. And as for beating up the disabled … well ...
Now he didn’t need to be there, and undoubtedly it was brave to go, but his legend is perhaps overstated.
"......Since leaving the National Enquirer under a pitch-black cloud, Dylan [Howard] has been trying to launder his reputation with Empire Media: a company which bought up old, out-of-print titles...
...One such title here in the UK was the beloved Q Magazine...Sadly, Dylan has monumentally fucked it once again and ended up pulling the plug on the entire operation on Monday with no warning, leaving a team of distraught journalists out of a job...
...Curiously, Q was shuttered on the same day Loaded came back from the dead for a digital-only relaunch: featuring their original cover girl (Liz Hurley) and their original slogan (“For Men Who Should Know Better”)..."
That definitely sounds like they were planning to start building a team over the summer, ahead of an autumn election. Certainly, I don't see any value in trying to build a data science team in the five weeks before an election!
So it does seem like they've been caught out quite badly by the election announcement, and I wonder if it might affect their prospects. Mind you, Labour aren't doing any better - their candidate's website went private when he was shortlisted, and still hasn't been updated!
Maybe he’s just had enough and like Sunak is just going through the motions.
In all my years of GEs I have never known such antipathy to the Tories. I know plenty of people who generally vote Tory and I cannot think of one that intends to do so this time. Not all going Labour by any means, some Lib Dem, Reform, Not Voting etc but all are resolutely certain they will not be voting Conservative.
No great enthusiasm for Starmer as there was for Blair but the hatred of Sunak/Truss/Johnson is way greater than it was for Major. Low turnout, Tories on 26-28%. Johnson would have got them to about 32-35% IMO.
https://x.com/7Kiwi/status/1789201786340884797
"In the UK, renewables are subsidised by three different schemes. Feed-in-Tariffs fund mostly solar power. The latest report for 2022-23 shows the average total payment was >£190/MWh, about 3X the current cost of gas-fired power."
So though we're continually being told that renewables, especially wind, have become cheaper than gas, we're actually paying 3 times the amount for renewable energy than we are for gas, and that includes carbon payments.
This will go up even more when the higher guaranteed price that the Government had to dangle in-front of wind providers to get them to actually bid in the most recent round of auctions feeds into the system. If wind is so cheap, why did we need to increase the price paid by 70%?
One for @BartholomewRoberts to ponder.
Few us really think they'll get 10%+
With Corbyn an early favourite, as you say, the lower key the campaign the better, and to assess prospects. The last thing Labour want - almost win or lose - is to turn Corbyn's last stand into one of the stories of the election.
It caught the zeitgeist at a particular moment in time. You can't bring that back.
Astute recap of the original Loaded, its rise and fall: http://littleatoms.com/words/loaded-end-magazine-should-have-known-better
The subsidies relate to prior schemes that don't exist anymore, which were part of kickstarting the system. New energy investment doesn't get those subsidies and you know that so why do you pretend otherwise?
Having a USP of "a website where men can ogle women" isn't a particularly strong USP.