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The Sicilian Solution – politicalbetting.com
The Sicilian Solution – politicalbetting.com
The Post Office Scandal – Where Now?
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The Sicilian Solution – politicalbetting.com
The Post Office Scandal – Where Now?
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I found myself in disagreement with this paragraph.
But only because you forgot to mention education...
In some ways it's a blessing Mrs P. and I have no children, grandchildren etc. when I think of the prospect today's children are facing.
(Then again - I bet every generation has had similar thoughts at times, so cheer up BenPointer!)
That's not good for anybody.
The parties are again peddling dishonest prospectuses ahead of the next election.
They know it; much of electorate knows it; and yet they're terrified to discuss what actually addressing our problems is likely to mean, in case it loses them votes at the margin.
Brexit, again, is the poster child for that.
A decade long distraction from anything practical, which has delivered nothing.
So we have a political class which almost no one trusts, and a criminal justice system which threatens to head the same way.
Plus my father was convinced getting Sky would impact my grades.
Fortunately we got Sky when I aced my GCSEs.
Add to that the absolute revolving door of public officials, particularly in government and nobody is in place long enough to find the problems even if the witch hunt culture inclined them to look or admit if they actually found anything. Yes, the situation in public life is outrageous but it doesn’t exist in isolation and we need to realise that.
Poor investment in UK regional cities curbed economic growth, report finds
Standards of living lag behind G7 countries US, France and Germany, as 50th summit approaches
https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/jun/12/poor-investment-in-uk-regional-cities-curbed-economic-growth-report-finds
And I keep saying so.
Tx for the header both.
In 1956, only 36% of households had a TV at all. That means a large proportion of boomers did not grow up with one in the house.
TV access as a child only became ubiquitous from Gen X onwards. Sunak has managed to sound out of touch to his only remaining voting cohort.
Media: untrusted, massively
"Experts": untrusted, it is all politicised after Brexit (from either angle)
Science: untrusted that's why Lab Leak was such a horrific own goal, why listen to "the science" ever again?
And it is all going to get WORSE as we drown in a morass of highly plausible fake news and hoax videos
Who do people trust now? Their friends, or what they see on Facebook and TikTok
The post-truth, post-trust society; I fear it really could get messy
Give a large cadre of students the chance to get a degree that fast tracks them to the civil service or local government where they have been taught about what makes a country tick, what all the parts do, where tax revenue is made and how. Teach them about the benefits system and the justice system so they understand how it “works” and then they can properly think constructively about how it might be improved.
It can then be a badge where, when they are standing for election, they can show they actually have been taught about what they intend to do, a sort of electoral British Kite Mark.
One thing that isn't appreciated enough is that sexual assault is very traumatic and genuine victims can give contradictory answers because of that.
With most perpetrators known to the victim it requires a lot of digging into to the past behaviours.
Very few lawyers want to do this (because they lack the skillset), which is why I admire DavidL so much in the work he does in this field.
Perhaps that is why Macron scrapped the ENA
Whenever I've flicked through someone's sky when I've been at their house it always seems to be gazillions of channels of garbage. Even the history channels - and I love history - are rubbish.
I can understand why we have the licence fee, because it funds the BBC and everything it does including radio, etc, etc, and I'm happy to pay for it and not have to watch adverts. I know many aren't fans of the BBC and the 'tax', but I am, despite it not being perfect by any means. We don't appreciate how lucky we are to have it, IMHO.
I understand why the commercial channels have adverts - that's the price to pay of watching it 'free'.
But I could never understand why people had to pay for sky, yet still had to wade through tons of adverts. Why would you pay to watch advertising?
No productivity increases = stagnation
The last 300 years make that clear.
Now tell us how to increase productivity.
You can start with telling us how to increase public sector productivity.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/06/12/nigel-farage-man-charged-objects-thrown/
Only joking.
There were problems with the ENA in that it was quite socially rarefied and had the same domination as Oxbridge in the UK whereas I would want the British one to be a degree course, rather than a place, on offer at multiple universities around the UK to increase the breadth of applicants and product.
If it was solely in London like ENA in Paris then the cost of being a student in London would put off a lot of people whereas if it was on offer in universities in all the main Cities and big towns, and maybe it’s own blind entrance exam, then it could work.
On governance of public institutions more generally, I am not sure what to suggest.
The most obvious thing is to suggest that change can only come following leadership from the top. We would need our politicians to show a clear example of choosing to do something that is difficult and right, rather than easier and in their self-interest. When government is run on the principle of escaping scrutiny, of finding spin lines to talk away failure, of never admitting to a mistake if it can be avoided, then it is no surprise that the leadership of other institutions follow suit.
Any government inevitably makes lots of mistakes. Everyone inevitably makes lots of mistakes. I don't expect us to become better at admitting them, but I think if we did so it would improve things.
Also, when we first got a colour TV, it was a bit of a downer when half the programmes being broadcast were in black and white.
Another also, I would be up early on a Sunday morning watching Open University broadcasts, as that is all there was to watch. That and Nai Zindagi Naya Jeevan, which I found even harder to follow than the degree-level physics!
- Simplification (removing stupid ideologically-driven red tape like: the switching overheads of an artificial retail energy market, rail franchising, etc; customs controls with our biggest trading partner; voter id ffs!; planning NIMBYism rules; I could go on...)
In fairness, “we had a landslide majority and look what happened next” is actually a pretty compelling argument
38 29 10 10 7
Something like that
Who later came up with the formulation that the lies told by the spin doctors were state secrets and people should be arrested for leaking them.
That Gus O'Donnell?
They delivered the wrong one by mistake, and so we had CEEFAX, for a whole week until the rental company figured out the mistake
The Guardian's suggestion that regional cities are underachieving so invest more might well be a case of throwing good money after bad.
The Guardian also babbles about the 'economic imbalance between the south-east of England and other parts of the UK'.
Well the chief economic imbalance is that in the south-east of England people cannot afford to buy homes and in the rest of the UK it is much easier.
I'm not sure that 'levelling up' the rest of the country to London house prices benefits anyone apart from the rich and rentiers.
Part of the reason the NHS is under "pressure" is because so many illnesses and diseases are now fixable. Unlike other sectors, technological advances in health lead to an escalation in costs - pacemakers, statins, Libre (diabetes tech) all improve or extend people's lives, but cost lots of money to deliver.
The only kind of public sector productivity gains you could get that save money are early interventions on obesity, dementia, cancer. Even if such policies are implemented, those savings are never transferred back to the Treasury, instead being used to help with other health issues.
Both of these problems are a good thing, if your objective is to improve the welfare of the British people. Frankly I'm getting a bit frustrated with all these grand, witless statements about how to fix Britain. "Improve productivity", "Abolish quangos", "Burn red tape", "NIMBYism" - it's all a load of facile nonsense.
They haven't lived until they've watched a football match on CEEFAX.
Full quote from shadow Chancellor:
“Rishi Sunak claims we have turned a corner, but the economy has stalled and there is no growth.
“These figures expose the damage done after fourteen years of Conservative chaos. We are now in the third week of this general election campaign and in that time the Labour Party has set out its plan to grow the economy by bringing back stability, unlocking private sector investment and reforming our planning system.
“All the Conservatives are offering is more of the same, with a desperate wish list of unfunded spending promises that will mean £4,800 more on people’s mortgages. Rishi Sunak’s plan is a recipe for five more years of Tory chaos.
“It’s time for change. The election on 4 July is a chance to vote Labour so we can end the chaos, turn the page and rebuild our economy.”
@faisalislam
LibDem Treasury spokesperson Sarah Olney full quote:
"As Rishi Sunak's time as Prime Minister peters out, so does the UK's economic growth," she said.
"The Conservatives have utterly failed to deliver the growth they repeatedly promised, instead presiding over stagnation and economic misery for hardworking families across the country.
"The Conservatives' manifesto shows they simply lack the ambition and vision to get the economy moving again.
"It's clear for voters across the country that the only way to make it happen is to vote them out of office on July 4."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_W2BfoV5DUY&t=2340s
NEW: Jeremy Hunt says he’s within 1,500 votes of losing his seat — he’d be the first chancellor in modern history to do so. Top @Joe_Mayes report from the campaign trail >>
https://x.com/Joe_Mayes/status/1800795570904395980
The idea of children's shows being on at any time (in set daytime hours of course) rather than a limited window was quite groundbreaking.
As children, we loved when our parents got Sky meaning we got access to Cartoon Network and popular shows such as The Simpsons.
One thing that strikes me is, given how emblematic this is of recent decline, why Starmer isn't making more of this. I can understand Davey keeping quiet and of course Labour is also implicated, but probably not the current team. Or are there senior labour figures also embroiled in this?
It's a sad state of affairs if a scandal goes on long enough to implicate all major parties that none will then run with it.
There's been a change in Tory messaging
The line on the morning round and across interviews from ministers now is "don't give Starmer a blank cheque" by handing Labour a "super-majority"
Tories now seemingly openly fighting to be a strong opposition force rather than winning
Just about every sector in France is protected by either regulatory or qualification barriers to entry. It's as true with plumbers or carpenters or waiters as it is with politicians or CEOs, and is also true of products (think wine appellations).
The aim is quality assurance, and it's certainly true the skilled tradesmen in France have much more formal training and are more closely regulated than their counterparts in the UK. It's much harder to be a cowboy, unless you operate in the grey economy.
That can be positive for the customer but it also brings problems: lack of choice and competition, idees fixes, producer-centric attitudes. A sort of 2-tier system where anyone not formally qualified is seen as little more than a petit bricoleur. All the result of a system that creates regulatory oligopoly.
The Anglo Saxon approach is more free-market and unregulated. But of course unregulated systems create monopolies and oligopolies too through force of money. Hence we get Oxbridge and the Ivy League. Informal closed shops rather than formal ones. But still easier to break into than the French official closed shops.
At least when the minstrels brought plague to the village, only half of my siblings were wiped out.
Here’s my latest office-cum-balcony. You can just see the Black Sea and the port of Odessa through the trees. It’s really quite idyllic, apart from the brutal nightly air attacks
You should fly over and escape the British weather, stop staring at bollards in drizzly Dundee
In that London for the day. Look: warm and blue skies! Also look: The ugliness of London's most important station is incomprehensible!
The reality is that we've been living wildly above our means for ages, and that we're now trapped under a mountain of debt created by this; after all the tax rises this Parliament, we're quite close to running a primary surplus, but the debt payments are crippling. There is very little scope to increase the tax take further, although there is scope to rebalance the tax system to be less logical.
It's a mess, the only possible long-term solution is cutting government tax and spending to get growth back, but that is going to involve slaying some very sacred cows.
What a surprise.
The government spends £1.25 TRILLION quid this year and we're told we have 'Broken Britain'.
But if it spends a few million more we'll get the New Jerusalem.
I'll quote what you said about the effects of cutting employers national insurance:
get swallowed up with inefficiencies in the longer term.
Its much more likely you'll have that effect on any 'investment' to improve public sector efficiency.
Now we have every session of the whole weekend shown live, plus about six hours of magazine shows and another six hours of support races.
No F1 this weekend, so will be watching the 24h from Le Mans instead.
Does anyone watch anything live on TV any more, apart from sports and the occasional political debate?
I know they plan to tear it down for HS2 but it was ugly from the get-go
But it is good to see nice weather in the Smoke, friends back home are telling me they’ve put the heating on. In June
PS Euston is not the most important station, I don’t think. That’s surely waterloo by sheer numbers or Kings X/St Panc because of the combo of so many lines including Eurostar
As ever the media are starting to overreach with criticism and the whiff of pile on appears. How the public react to that depends on how far they push it. Brown's handwriting is the guide here, attacking the guy as some sort of monster when he was just naff. Same risk.
A landslide majority for Starmer Labour will almost certainly see taxes increase and gradually increase spending then further too
I will not be party to such a thing.
Also I cannot have a criminal record with my job.
PLUS
Thanks to a friend who works for Sky I get the friends and family discount so I get Sky Q and three mini boxes, all the channels including Sports, Cinema, Netflix, TNT Sports for £26.50 a month.
DO NOT bite anyone's hand off.
the French system, regulate
the cowboys out of existence. Plus also then add on jail anybody who has ever made or advised a wrong call in any organisation
Live TV only happens for sport in this household (and the bit of breaking news).
My kids think I am lying to them when I tell them when I was their age there were about 12 league games shown live per season.
They should always be mentioned when these 'other places need to be more like London' stories appear.
As top the rest you lost me at 'reforms to local government'.
What ANOTHER reform to local government.
I'd suggest that perhaps one of the problems is that we never stop implementing reforms in local government and public services leading to disruption caused by too much change.
Solidarity with the Firestick Robin Hoods.
Because of course you would, the place is absolutely stunning as opposed to the concrete monstrosities that pass for stations on either side of it.
It is a problem, and it transcends party politics. Tough one for succeeding generations, I agree.