Police are to take the lead in investigations into some of the allegations about bets placed by politicians on the general election.
Industry regulator the Gambling Commission will continue to lead inquiries into cases "where the alleged offending is limited to breaches of the Gambling Act only", a Metropolitan Police spokesperson told the BBC.
But detectives would be in charge of "a small number of cases" where other offences might also be involved, such as misconduct in public office, the spokesperson added.
BBC Newsnight understands that as many as 15 Conservative Party candidates and officials are being scrutinised by the commission.
Campaign is now all over. Glastonbury until Sunday, then footy...
Morning
Glasto - yay!
Cricket and tennis for me today. The men’s T20 Semi-final England v India, although I’ve gone off it a bit after the ‘throw the first punch’ comment - horrible language by the coach. And ladies tennis from Eastbourne with the Brits going very well.
"A promise we can keep, and a promise you can afford."
I have not heard this soundbite before. Is it new?
He said it a lot. So if it isn’t an agreed soundbite, then Streeting is keen on it and doubling down.
It feels reminiscent of a provincial supermarket / butchers slogan from the eighties. Not bad in itself. But a bit “not the worst sausages, not the best sausages, but the ones you can afford.”
With Labour we just have to hope for some over-delivery, because they’ve certainly got the under-promising nailed.
This is one of a few reasons why I think Labour are almost certain to win in 2028/9.
Unlike previous examples of a sea-change they are not promising anything very much. Their pitch is change but the message is mostly about stability.
‘Things can only get better’ would be even more apt for 2024 than 1997.
Police are to take the lead in investigations into some of the allegations about bets placed by politicians on the general election.
Industry regulator the Gambling Commission will continue to lead inquiries into cases "where the alleged offending is limited to breaches of the Gambling Act only", a Metropolitan Police spokesperson told the BBC.
But detectives would be in charge of "a small number of cases" where other offences might also be involved, such as misconduct in public office, the spokesperson added.
BBC Newsnight understands that as many as 15 Conservative Party candidates and officials are being scrutinised by the commission.
It still is not clear whether any of these bets constitutes an offence under the Gambling Act or are just politically stupid.
I suspect most won't. It will be lots of small bets based upon rumour mill or difficult to prove that it wasn't. I think at the moment anybody who had a bet around the time of the announcement and vaguely connected to government / police protecting them is getting pinged.
There of course a couple of cases announced so far which it looks very iffy. Now again if that is criminal rather than amoral, have to wait and see.
If only anyone cared what the Sun thought anymore....
Indeed.
I think one thing that’s very noticeable this time is that the newspapers appear to be having no effect on voting intentions. Despite weeks of Daily Mail / Sun / Telegraph / Express / even Times attacks on Starmer nothing seems to shift the polls. They then seem to become even more strident, desperate even.
2024 is the General Election when the printed press died.
If it’s being played out anywhere it’s on social media.
If only anyone cared what the Sun thought anymore....
Indeed.
I think one thing that’s very noticeable this time is that the newspapers appear to be having no effect on voting intentions. Despite weeks of Daily Mail / Sun / Telegraph / Express / even Times attacks on Starmer nothing seems to shift the polls. They then seem to become even more strident, desperate even.
2024 is the General Election when the printed press died.
If it’s being played out anywhere it’s on social media.
I don’t think this is a good thing. Social media isn’t a place where sensible debate happens. But the printed press have themselves to blame for being far too partisan and strident. They have increasingly succumbed to social media levels of argument without the medium or skills to compete.
Campaign is now all over. Glastonbury until Sunday, then footy...
Morning
Glasto - yay!
Cricket and tennis for me today. The men’s T20 Semi-final England v India, although I’ve gone off it a bit after the ‘throw the first punch’ comment - horrible language by the coach. And ladies tennis from Eastbourne with the Brits going very well.
Starmers goal was for the debates to not influence the polls, and he does seem to have navigated that.
"A promise we can keep, and a promise you can afford."
I have not heard this soundbite before. Is it new?
He said it a lot. So if it isn’t an agreed soundbite, then Streeting is keen on it and doubling down.
It feels reminiscent of a provincial supermarket / butchers slogan from the eighties. Not bad in itself. But a bit “not the worst sausages, not the best sausages, but the ones you can afford.”
With Labour we just have to hope for some over-delivery, because they’ve certainly got the under-promising nailed.
This is one of a few reasons why I think Labour are almost certain to win in 2028/9.
Unlike previous examples of a sea-change they are not promising anything very much. Their pitch is change but the message is mostly about stability.
‘Things can only get better’ would be even more apt for 2024 than 1997.
In 1997 Labour didn't promise much either. I have an original pledge card with Prescotts signature on it somewhere.
Still time for Farage to give up jet out to Barbados to chill out. I doubt that. He will fight to the end!, Then Jet out to Antigua next Friday. Resign while he is drinking a Mojito with a bowl.of nachos with extra hot chilli sauce. Tears in my his eyes from the burning. I love my country........... Come on Nige. Haven't you got something more original?
A really good piece with important journalistic points.
I’m sorry that @boulay was irate that a journalist could be so lazily critical of a leading politician but it’s a very good analysis of why Sunak was unsuitable to be PM.
It ought to be a salutary lesson for all parties and, indeed, all positions of leadership. Promotion without being tested through fire often leads to disastrous appointments. In the case of Sunak everything came far too easy. No one tested him politically until 2022 when he lost to Liz Truss. That’s right. He lost to the worst ever British PM who herself was beaten by a lettuce. Okay, the last bit is tabloidy, but the point is that everything fell into Sunak’s lap and no one actually tested him to see if he was any good under political pressure.
Fine as Chancellor. Useless as a PM.
What’s that line from Jurassic Park?
‘It didn't require any discipline to attain it. You read what others had done and you took the next step. You didn't earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don't take any responsibility for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could ...'
A leader of a political party and especially a Prime Minister first needs to be tested in the crucible of political fire.
If only anyone cared what the Sun thought anymore....
Indeed.
I think one thing that’s very noticeable this time is that the newspapers appear to be having no effect on voting intentions. Despite weeks of Daily Mail / Sun / Telegraph / Express / even Times attacks on Starmer nothing seems to shift the polls. They then seem to become even more strident, desperate even.
2024 is the General Election when the printed press died.
If it’s being played out anywhere it’s on social media.
On that subject, I have had a targeted Facebook ad from the Tories this morning, and can report that they are trying to frighten me with (1) the idea that scary Labour will bring ULEZ to town - though given that this is a very small town and that I don't have a car, this seems neither plausible nor relevant - and (2) all the other things that the nefarious Starmer could do with his supermajority. I didn't watch the "debate" yesterday but I'm assuming that the supermajority was mentioned at some point...?
Anyhow, horrid taxes and the supermajority, these are evidently the attack lines that the Tories are trying to push. Whether it will make any difference is questionable. One week to go, and that's liable to be taken up by people enjoying good weather (we are promised three whole days that will be neither October nor a furnace, hallelujah!) and football. Basically, unless most of those codgers who have strop flounced off to Reform do a U-turn in the polling booth and come home to the old traditional Nasty Party, they're done for.
Police are to take the lead in investigations into some of the allegations about bets placed by politicians on the general election.
Industry regulator the Gambling Commission will continue to lead inquiries into cases "where the alleged offending is limited to breaches of the Gambling Act only", a Metropolitan Police spokesperson told the BBC.
But detectives would be in charge of "a small number of cases" where other offences might also be involved, such as misconduct in public office, the spokesperson added.
BBC Newsnight understands that as many as 15 Conservative Party candidates and officials are being scrutinised by the commission.
If only anyone cared what the Sun thought anymore....
Indeed.
I think one thing that’s very noticeable this time is that the newspapers appear to be having no effect on voting intentions. Despite weeks of Daily Mail / Sun / Telegraph / Express / even Times attacks on Starmer nothing seems to shift the polls. They then seem to become even more strident, desperate even.
2024 is the General Election when the printed press died.
If it’s being played out anywhere it’s on social media.
On that subject, I have had a targeted Facebook ad from the Tories this morning, and can report that they are trying to frighten me with (1) the idea that scary Labour will bring ULEZ to town - though given that this is a very small town and that I don't have a car, this seems neither plausible nor relevant - and (2) all the other things that the nefarious Starmer could do with his supermajority. I didn't watch the "debate" yesterday but I'm assuming that the supermajority was mentioned at some point...?
Anyhow, horrid taxes and the supermajority, these are evidently the attack lines that the Tories are trying to push. Whether it will make any difference is questionable. One week to go, and that's liable to be taken up by people enjoying good weather (we are promised three whole days that will be neither October nor a furnace, hallelujah!) and football. Basically, unless most of those codgers who have strop flounced off to Reform do a U-turn in the polling booth and come home to the old traditional Nasty Party, they're done for.
It will not be The Sun or The Scum what did it this time.
Nope. It said that Labour would increase their majority.
Not only do they not currently have a majority to increase, but it’s unlikey they’re move further forward at the next election either - so Simon’s piece is unlikely to come true for at least another couple of decades.
"A promise we can keep, and a promise you can afford."
I have not heard this soundbite before. Is it new?
He said it a lot. So if it isn’t an agreed soundbite, then Streeting is keen on it and doubling down.
It feels reminiscent of a provincial supermarket / butchers slogan from the eighties. Not bad in itself. But a bit “not the worst sausages, not the best sausages, but the ones you can afford.”
With Labour we just have to hope for some over-delivery, because they’ve certainly got the under-promising nailed.
This is one of a few reasons why I think Labour are almost certain to win in 2028/9.
Unlike previous examples of a sea-change they are not promising anything very much. Their pitch is change but the message is mostly about stability.
‘Things can only get better’ would be even more apt for 2024 than 1997.
In 1997 Labour didn't promise much either. I have an original pledge card with Prescotts signature on it somewhere.
I think you are wrong to say Labour didn't promise much in 1997. The pledge card was simple, but there were big things in the manifesto. Minimum wage was a huge policy, then we had working tax credits, much wider use of PFI to build loads of schools and hospitals, ASBOS, devolution, etc. At the time they were big new policy directions. Was Sure Start in the manifesto? There was the big windfall tax on energy companies that I think went to paying for it.
Very good. The single biggest advantage of leaving the EU, which quietly goes unnoticed by most, is no longer being involved in their constant efforts to regulate further. The advantages in services and developing technologies that this gives the UK are vast, when compared to the regulation the EU is passing in these areas, the majority of which seems very poorly designed and aimed squarely at extracting money from large American companies operating in these sectors.
Christ we're going to get a royal commision and a betting crackdown aren't we? No flutters for Politically Exposed Persons...
We won't need that, every future leader of a mainstream party is going to tell their own MPs not to bet on politics, as anything else would be, well a bit of a gamble.
Very good. The single biggest advantage of leaving the EU, which quietly goes unnoticed by most, is no longer being involved in their constant efforts to regulate further. The advantages in services and developing technologies that this gives the UK are vast, when compared to the regulation the EU is passing in these areas, the majority of which seems very poorly designed and aimed squarely at extracting money from large American companies operating in these sectors.
Very good. The single biggest advantage of leaving the EU, which quietly goes unnoticed by most, is no longer being involved in their constant efforts to regulate further. The advantages in services and developing technologies that this gives the UK are vast, when compared to the regulation the EU is passing in these areas, the majority of which seems very poorly designed and aimed squarely at extracting money from large American companies operating in these sectors.
"A promise we can keep, and a promise you can afford."
I have not heard this soundbite before. Is it new?
He said it a lot. So if it isn’t an agreed soundbite, then Streeting is keen on it and doubling down.
It feels reminiscent of a provincial supermarket / butchers slogan from the eighties. Not bad in itself. But a bit “not the worst sausages, not the best sausages, but the ones you can afford.”
With Labour we just have to hope for some over-delivery, because they’ve certainly got the under-promising nailed.
This is one of a few reasons why I think Labour are almost certain to win in 2028/9.
Unlike previous examples of a sea-change they are not promising anything very much. Their pitch is change but the message is mostly about stability.
‘Things can only get better’ would be even more apt for 2024 than 1997.
In 1997 Labour didn't promise much either. I have an original pledge card with Prescotts signature on it somewhere.
I think you are wrong to say Labour didn't promise much in 1997. The pledge card was simple, but there were big things in the manifesto. Minimum wage was a huge policy, then we had working tax credits, much wider use of PFI to build loads of schools and hospitals, ASBOS, devolution, etc. At the time they were big new policy directions. Was Sure Start in the manifesto? There was the big windfall tax on energy companies that I think went to paying for it.
"Readers added context they thought people might want to know The Conservative Government have been in power since 2010 and have raised overall taxes to their highest level since 1948."
Doesn't mean readers don't want to know a Labour Government that will take power in 2024 will raise them further to their highest level since 1713.
Great days, Window Tax in full swing. Hearth Tax departed but a happy memory for all those grateful taxpayers. Income Tax, that temporary expedient, 100 years away.
Have another think about it.
You're the one who has to live with your decision.
How is your plan to move abroad going?
Wife sceptical, parents don't want me to go.
I couldn't fuck off hard or fast enough given the choice. Which, I'm sure you'd welcome.
I'd probably go for the Canadian paradise. Probably Alberta.
Interesting! I love Alberta. And BC is gorgeous too.
However … although I thought about doing the same thing I felt that it might be really rather boring after a while. It’s beautiful and the Canadians out west are the loveliest people I know on earth but, for me, it would become stultifying. And whilst I love skiing, those winters are long and cold, without even getting the Northern Lights in compensation.
Vancouver might be a different story though. That would tempt me. And it’s not too far time-wise to the UK because of the Great Circle Route.
Police are to take the lead in investigations into some of the allegations about bets placed by politicians on the general election.
Industry regulator the Gambling Commission will continue to lead inquiries into cases "where the alleged offending is limited to breaches of the Gambling Act only", a Metropolitan Police spokesperson told the BBC.
But detectives would be in charge of "a small number of cases" where other offences might also be involved, such as misconduct in public office, the spokesperson added.
BBC Newsnight understands that as many as 15 Conservative Party candidates and officials are being scrutinised by the commission.
It still is not clear whether any of these bets constitutes an offence under the Gambling Act or are just politically stupid.
This is a totally bonkers story to anyone who knows anything about betting, which has been inexplicably kept in the news throughout the campaign by the GC and Met Police, quite possibly in breach of civil service impartiality rules.
If someone placed a bet on a certain date, and was subsequently in the room where the date was decided and pushing for the date on which he had bet, then that’s possibly an offence. Ditto with the police officer in Downing St, who isn’t supposed to be listening to anything that’s not the security of the ministers he’s charged with protecting. The rest of them, there’s really no story at all.
In comparison to 1997, Labour big radical new policy ideas are reheat ASBOS, reheat PFI, reheat Help to Buy, all with just different labels. Its like they asked ChatGPT for policies. The Tories asked Google Gemini for theirs.
In comparison to 1997, Labour big radical new policy ideas are reheat ASBOS, reheat PFI, reheat Help to Buy, all with just different labels. Its like they asked ChatGPT for policies.
But this is my point.
They are promising so little in 2024 that ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ really might apply this time.
If you win a landslide on very low expectation then you have every chance of surprising on the upside.
In comparison to 1997, Labour big radical new policy ideas are reheat ASBOS, reheat PFI, reheat Help to Buy, all with just different labels. Its like they asked ChatGPT for policies. The Tories asked Google Gemini for theirs.
"A promise we can keep, and a promise you can afford."
I have not heard this soundbite before. Is it new?
He said it a lot. So if it isn’t an agreed soundbite, then Streeting is keen on it and doubling down.
It feels reminiscent of a provincial supermarket / butchers slogan from the eighties. Not bad in itself. But a bit “not the worst sausages, not the best sausages, but the ones you can afford.”
With Labour we just have to hope for some over-delivery, because they’ve certainly got the under-promising nailed.
This is one of a few reasons why I think Labour are almost certain to win in 2028/9.
Unlike previous examples of a sea-change they are not promising anything very much. Their pitch is change but the message is mostly about stability.
‘Things can only get better’ would be even more apt for 2024 than 1997.
In 1997 Labour didn't promise much either. I have an original pledge card with Prescotts signature on it somewhere.
I think you are wrong to say Labour didn't promise much in 1997. The pledge card was simple, but there were big things in the manifesto. Minimum wage was a huge policy, then we had working tax credits, much wider use of PFI to build loads of schools and hospitals, ASBOS, devolution, etc. At the time they were big new policy directions. Was Sure Start in the manifesto? There was the big windfall tax on energy companies that I think went to paying for it.
Police are to take the lead in investigations into some of the allegations about bets placed by politicians on the general election.
Industry regulator the Gambling Commission will continue to lead inquiries into cases "where the alleged offending is limited to breaches of the Gambling Act only", a Metropolitan Police spokesperson told the BBC.
But detectives would be in charge of "a small number of cases" where other offences might also be involved, such as misconduct in public office, the spokesperson added.
BBC Newsnight understands that as many as 15 Conservative Party candidates and officials are being scrutinised by the commission.
It still is not clear whether any of these bets constitutes an offence under the Gambling Act or are just politically stupid.
This is a totally bonkers story to anyone who knows anything about betting, which has been inexplicably kept in the news throughout the campaign by the GC and Met Police, quite possibly in breach of civil service impartiality rules.
If someone placed a bet on a certain date, and was subsequently in the room where the date was decided and pushing for the date on which he had bet, then that’s possibly an offence. Ditto with the police officer in Downing St, who isn’t supposed to be listening to anything that’s not the security of the ministers he’s charged with protecting. The rest of them, there’s really no story at all.
Betting on yourself to lose and then deliberately doing so would be in the same class as Asif spot fixing in the cricket which went custodial. The difficulty is how can we tell if the Tories are deliberately doing so or just desperately incompetent? Its a toughie.
Anecdote alert - Castle Point, one of the safest Conservative seats. My mum who never voted before the Brexit referendum and hasn't voted since will be voting Reform, as will all her 70/80yo friends. The Tories have been wiped off the local council recently which now consists entirely of Independents. Could there be an upset here? I doubt it somehow but one to watch.
Anecdote alert - Castle Point, one of the safest Conservative seats. My mum who never voted before the Brexit referendum and hasn't voted since will be voting Reform, as will all her 70/80yo friends. The Tories have been wiped off the local council recently which now consists entirely of Independents. Could there be an upset here? I doubt it somehow but one to watch.
Just one thing for @Casino_Royale and other tories who might be sinking into a bit of a funk over the likely Labour win.
1997 was my first vote and I can remember this kind of sentiment from tories in the run up to polling day.
And then they awoke on Friday 2nd May and the sun still rose in the east and set in the west. In the days that followed it surprisingly continued to follow this pattern. The world carried on turning and people got on with their lives.
Just one thing for @Casino_Royale and other tories who might be sinking into a bit of a funk over the likely Labour win.
1997 was my first vote and I can remember this kind of sentiment from tories in the run up to polling day.
And then they awoke on Friday 2nd May and the sun still rose in the east and set in the west. In the days that followed it surprisingly continued to follow this pattern. The world carried on turning and people got on with their lives.
Just one thing for @Casino_Royale and other tories who might be sinking into a bit of a funk over the likely Labour win.
1997 was my first vote and I can remember this kind of sentiment from tories in the run up to polling day.
And then they awoke on Friday 2nd May and the sun still rose in the east and set in the west. In the days that followed it surprisingly continued to follow this pattern. The world carried on turning and people got on with their lives.
The weekend after the 1997 GE, I saw a friend who was so left-wing he made Dennis Skinner look like Margaret Thatcher. I congratulated him on Labour's win.
His response was: "We didn't win, the Tories did."
There’s certainly going to be a CCHQ social media blitzkrieg over the next week
They need to do a lot better than the tax x 200 times tweet last night though which looked like it was ‘produced’ by a 5 yr old.
I think that’s the problem. If you’re going to do social media you’ve got to be right at your game. What I’ve seen from the tories so far has been embarrassingly amateur.
Just one thing for @Casino_Royale and other tories who might be sinking into a bit of a funk over the likely Labour win.
1997 was my first vote and I can remember this kind of sentiment from tories in the run up to polling day.
And then they awoke on Friday 2nd May and the sun still rose in the east and set in the west. In the days that followed it surprisingly continued to follow this pattern. The world carried on turning and people got on with their lives.
The weekend after the 1997 GE, I saw a friend who was so left-wing he made Dennis Skinner look like Margaret Thatcher. I congratulated him on Labour's win.
His response was: "We didn't win, the Tories did."
"Readers added context they thought people might want to know The Conservative Government have been in power since 2010 and have raised overall taxes to their highest level since 1948."
Doesn't mean readers don't want to know a Labour Government that will take power in 2024 will raise them further to their highest level since 1713.
Great days, Window Tax in full swing. Hearth Tax departed but a happy memory for all those grateful taxpayers. Income Tax, that temporary expedient, 100 years away.
Have another think about it.
You're the one who has to live with your decision.
How is your plan to move abroad going?
Wife sceptical, parents don't want me to go.
I couldn't fuck off hard or fast enough given the choice. Which, I'm sure you'd welcome.
I'd probably go for the Canadian paradise. Probably Alberta.
Interesting! I love Alberta. And BC is gorgeous too.
However … although I thought about doing the same thing I felt that it might be really rather boring after a while. It’s beautiful and the Canadians out west are the loveliest people I know on earth but, for me, it would become stultifying. And whilst I love skiing, those winters are long and cold, without even getting the Northern Lights in compensation.
Vancouver might be a different story though. That would tempt me. And it’s not too far time-wise to the UK because of the Great Circle Route.
The most damning question last night was from the young graduate who asked what the leaders would do to keep people like her from emigrating. The banality of the answers was pathetic from both. No vision.
One of my sons is in Australia at the moment, the other is going to Canada in the autumn. Much as I would miss them, they would be better off staying away. The Tories have trashed the country so thoroughly that the next decade is going to be grimmer than the last.
It's Africa dreams for me. Streeting's vision leaves me cold.
Just one thing for @Casino_Royale and other tories who might be sinking into a bit of a funk over the likely Labour win.
1997 was my first vote and I can remember this kind of sentiment from tories in the run up to polling day.
And then they awoke on Friday 2nd May and the sun still rose in the east and set in the west. In the days that followed it surprisingly continued to follow this pattern. The world carried on turning and people got on with their lives.
The weekend after the 1997 GE, I saw a friend who was so left-wing he made Dennis Skinner look like Margaret Thatcher. I congratulated him on Labour's win.
His response was: "We didn't win, the Tories did."
The potentially inconvenient part is where Lord Cameron confirms to the man he thinks is the former Ukrainian president, that Labour will also be fully behind Ukraine, contrary to what Rishi and Kemi suggested.
Just one thing for @Casino_Royale and other tories who might be sinking into a bit of a funk over the likely Labour win.
1997 was my first vote and I can remember this kind of sentiment from tories in the run up to polling day.
And then they awoke on Friday 2nd May and the sun still rose in the east and set in the west. In the days that followed it surprisingly continued to follow this pattern. The world carried on turning and people got on with their lives.
The weekend after the 1997 GE, I saw a friend who was so left-wing he made Dennis Skinner look like Margaret Thatcher. I congratulated him on Labour's win.
His response was: "We didn't win, the Tories did."
Just one thing for @Casino_Royale and other tories who might be sinking into a bit of a funk over the likely Labour win.
1997 was my first vote and I can remember this kind of sentiment from tories in the run up to polling day.
And then they awoke on Friday 2nd May and the sun still rose in the east and set in the west. In the days that followed it surprisingly continued to follow this pattern. The world carried on turning and people got on with their lives.
The weekend after the 1997 GE, I saw a friend who was so left-wing he made Dennis Skinner look like Margaret Thatcher. I congratulated him on Labour's win.
His response was: "We didn't win, the Tories did."
I didn't know you were mates with Jezza Corbyn.
He was from northeast Derbyshire (I think also @bigjohnowls 's home turf?), and hated Thatcher with a massive passion. Yet despite our political differences, we got on very well. Perhaps because we both decided that we wanted the same thing: a better country; we just disagreed on how to get there.
From memory, he had a litmus test for Blair's new government: he had been complaining for years that the Tories under Thatcher and Major had altered the way unemployment figures were calculated to 'hide' unemployed people. He said one of the first things Labour should do was change the methodology back to how it was.
"Readers added context they thought people might want to know The Conservative Government have been in power since 2010 and have raised overall taxes to their highest level since 1948."
Doesn't mean readers don't want to know a Labour Government that will take power in 2024 will raise them further to their highest level since 1713.
Great days, Window Tax in full swing. Hearth Tax departed but a happy memory for all those grateful taxpayers. Income Tax, that temporary expedient, 100 years away.
Have another think about it.
You're the one who has to live with your decision.
How is your plan to move abroad going?
Wife sceptical, parents don't want me to go.
I couldn't fuck off hard or fast enough given the choice. Which, I'm sure you'd welcome.
I'd probably go for the Canadian paradise. Probably Alberta.
Interesting! I love Alberta. And BC is gorgeous too.
However … although I thought about doing the same thing I felt that it might be really rather boring after a while. It’s beautiful and the Canadians out west are the loveliest people I know on earth but, for me, it would become stultifying. And whilst I love skiing, those winters are long and cold, without even getting the Northern Lights in compensation.
Vancouver might be a different story though. That would tempt me. And it’s not too far time-wise to the UK because of the Great Circle Route.
The most damning question last night was from the young graduate who asked what the leaders would do to keep people like her from emigrating. The banality of the answers was pathetic from both. No vision.
One of my sons is in Australia at the moment, the other is going to Canada in the autumn. Much as I would miss them, they would be better off staying away. The Tories have trashed the country so thoroughly that the next decade is going to be grimmer than the last.
It's Africa dreams for me. Streeting's vision leaves me cold.
I mentioned this several time that while all the focus has been on the large numbers of people coming to the UK, far less focus on the large numbers leaving. High net worth have been going, number of millionaires in the UK is down (despite all the inflation), lots of business owners have gone to places like Dubai, there has been some silent brain and capital drain already.
What's wrong with Streeting. He seems one of the more capable and less ideological incoming ministers.
Police are to take the lead in investigations into some of the allegations about bets placed by politicians on the general election.
Industry regulator the Gambling Commission will continue to lead inquiries into cases "where the alleged offending is limited to breaches of the Gambling Act only", a Metropolitan Police spokesperson told the BBC.
But detectives would be in charge of "a small number of cases" where other offences might also be involved, such as misconduct in public office, the spokesperson added.
BBC Newsnight understands that as many as 15 Conservative Party candidates and officials are being scrutinised by the commission.
It still is not clear whether any of these bets constitutes an offence under the Gambling Act or are just politically stupid.
This is a totally bonkers story to anyone who knows anything about betting, which has been inexplicably kept in the news throughout the campaign by the GC and Met Police, quite possibly in breach of civil service impartiality rules.
If someone placed a bet on a certain date, and was subsequently in the room where the date was decided and pushing for the date on which he had bet, then that’s possibly an offence. Ditto with the police officer in Downing St, who isn’t supposed to be listening to anything that’s not the security of the ministers he’s charged with protecting. The rest of them, there’s really no story at all.
Betting on yourself to lose and then deliberately doing so would be in the same class as Asif spot fixing in the cricket which went custodial. The difficulty is how can we tell if the Tories are deliberately doing so or just desperately incompetent? Its a toughie.
You can fail to campaign or be an idiot on the doorstep, but you can't control what voters do in the privacy of the voting booth- in the same way that players can directly fumble the ball - so it's not quite the same thing.
Just one thing for @Casino_Royale and other tories who might be sinking into a bit of a funk over the likely Labour win.
1997 was my first vote and I can remember this kind of sentiment from tories in the run up to polling day.
And then they awoke on Friday 2nd May and the sun still rose in the east and set in the west. In the days that followed it surprisingly continued to follow this pattern. The world carried on turning and people got on with their lives.
The weekend after the 1997 GE, I saw a friend who was so left-wing he made Dennis Skinner look like Margaret Thatcher. I congratulated him on Labour's win.
His response was: "We didn't win, the Tories did."
I didn't know you were mates with Jezza Corbyn.
He was from northeast Derbyshire (I think also @bigjohnowls 's home turf?), and hated Thatcher with a massive passion. Yet despite our political differences, we got on very well. Perhaps because we both decided that we wanted the same thing: a better country; we just disagreed on how to get there.
From memory, he had a litmus test for Blair's new government: he had been complaining for years that the Tories under Thatcher and Major had altered the way unemployment figures were calculated to 'hide' unemployed people. He said one of the first things Labour should do was change the methodology back to how it was.
I don't think they did change it back, did they?
This is one reason we have the rather odd situation of full employment and vast numbers of economically inactive (unemployed) people who are not counted as part of the workforce, and who the government is hoping to tempt back.
There’s certainly going to be a CCHQ social media blitzkrieg over the next week
They need to do a lot better than the tax x 200 times tweet last night though which looked like it was ‘produced’ by a 5 yr old.
I think that’s the problem. If you’re going to do social media you’ve got to be right at your game. What I’ve seen from the tories so far has been embarrassingly amateur.
The Tories will be running this Conservative Party PPB from the early Eighties again shortly.
Saw this little nugget in the latest Ashcroft poll:
In the event of a Labour victory, voters were slightly more likely to think the Conservatives would provide the most effective opposition (24 per cent) than Reform UK (21 per cent). 2019 Tories were fractionally more likely to think Reform would do the better job (36 per cent) than the Conservative Party (35 per cent). Nearly one in five voters overall (18 per cent) thought there would be no effective opposition.
"Readers added context they thought people might want to know The Conservative Government have been in power since 2010 and have raised overall taxes to their highest level since 1948."
Doesn't mean readers don't want to know a Labour Government that will take power in 2024 will raise them further to their highest level since 1713.
Great days, Window Tax in full swing. Hearth Tax departed but a happy memory for all those grateful taxpayers. Income Tax, that temporary expedient, 100 years away.
Have another think about it.
You're the one who has to live with your decision.
How is your plan to move abroad going?
Wife sceptical, parents don't want me to go.
I couldn't fuck off hard or fast enough given the choice. Which, I'm sure you'd welcome.
I'd probably go for the Canadian paradise. Probably Alberta.
Interesting! I love Alberta. And BC is gorgeous too.
However … although I thought about doing the same thing I felt that it might be really rather boring after a while. It’s beautiful and the Canadians out west are the loveliest people I know on earth but, for me, it would become stultifying. And whilst I love skiing, those winters are long and cold, without even getting the Northern Lights in compensation.
Vancouver might be a different story though. That would tempt me. And it’s not too far time-wise to the UK because of the Great Circle Route.
The most damning question last night was from the young graduate who asked what the leaders would do to keep people like her from emigrating. The banality of the answers was pathetic from both. No vision.
One of my sons is in Australia at the moment, the other is going to Canada in the autumn. Much as I would miss them, they would be better off staying away. The Tories have trashed the country so thoroughly that the next decade is going to be grimmer than the last.
It's Africa dreams for me. Streeting's vision leaves me cold.
Idiot.
It's the prospect of Labour and their socialism that's driving people away.
Saw this little nugget in the latest Ashcroft poll:
In the event of a Labour victory, voters were slightly more likely to think the Conservatives would provide the most effective opposition (24 per cent) than Reform UK (21 per cent). 2019 Tories were fractionally more likely to think Reform would do the better job (36 per cent) than the Conservative Party (35 per cent). Nearly one in five voters overall (18 per cent) thought there would be no effective opposition.
Vote reform and there will no effective opposition.
Just one thing for @Casino_Royale and other tories who might be sinking into a bit of a funk over the likely Labour win.
1997 was my first vote and I can remember this kind of sentiment from tories in the run up to polling day.
And then they awoke on Friday 2nd May and the sun still rose in the east and set in the west. In the days that followed it surprisingly continued to follow this pattern. The world carried on turning and people got on with their lives.
The weekend after the 1997 GE, I saw a friend who was so left-wing he made Dennis Skinner look like Margaret Thatcher. I congratulated him on Labour's win.
His response was: "We didn't win, the Tories did."
I didn't know you were mates with Jezza Corbyn.
He was from northeast Derbyshire (I think also @bigjohnowls 's home turf?), and hated Thatcher with a massive passion. Yet despite our political differences, we got on very well. Perhaps because we both decided that we wanted the same thing: a better country; we just disagreed on how to get there.
From memory, he had a litmus test for Blair's new government: he had been complaining for years that the Tories under Thatcher and Major had altered the way unemployment figures were calculated to 'hide' unemployed people. He said one of the first things Labour should do was change the methodology back to how it was.
I don't think they did change it back, did they?
This is one reason we have the rather odd situation of full employment and vast numbers of economically inactive (unemployed) people who are not counted as part of the workforce, and who the government is hoping to tempt back.
I think a difference now appears to be that people themselves are finding ways to be economically inactive / state they aren't in mentally fit state to work. It isn't about the government as such looking to get people off the books to meet a target so they can make a big play of meeting it, rather people are getting themselves off the books rather than claim unemployment.
The size of the issue wasn't even really realised until Fraser Nelson made a big thing about it and initially everybody said he was wrong, it couldn't possibly be that large, he had double / triple counted. He said he had to make estimates in some cases there just weren't figures. In fact, he wasn't really far off. But the government themselves didn't seem to even realise the numbers were this large.
Anecdote alert - Castle Point, one of the safest Conservative seats. My mum who never voted before the Brexit referendum and hasn't voted since will be voting Reform, as will all her 70/80yo friends. The Tories have been wiped off the local council recently which now consists entirely of Independents. Could there be an upset here? I doubt it somehow but one to watch.
"Readers added context they thought people might want to know The Conservative Government have been in power since 2010 and have raised overall taxes to their highest level since 1948."
Doesn't mean readers don't want to know a Labour Government that will take power in 2024 will raise them further to their highest level since 1713.
Great days, Window Tax in full swing. Hearth Tax departed but a happy memory for all those grateful taxpayers. Income Tax, that temporary expedient, 100 years away.
Have another think about it.
You're the one who has to live with your decision.
How is your plan to move abroad going?
Wife sceptical, parents don't want me to go.
I couldn't fuck off hard or fast enough given the choice. Which, I'm sure you'd welcome.
I'd probably go for the Canadian paradise. Probably Alberta.
Interesting! I love Alberta. And BC is gorgeous too.
However … although I thought about doing the same thing I felt that it might be really rather boring after a while. It’s beautiful and the Canadians out west are the loveliest people I know on earth but, for me, it would become stultifying. And whilst I love skiing, those winters are long and cold, without even getting the Northern Lights in compensation.
Vancouver might be a different story though. That would tempt me. And it’s not too far time-wise to the UK because of the Great Circle Route.
The most damning question last night was from the young graduate who asked what the leaders would do to keep people like her from emigrating. The banality of the answers was pathetic from both. No vision.
One of my sons is in Australia at the moment, the other is going to Canada in the autumn. Much as I would miss them, they would be better off staying away. The Tories have trashed the country so thoroughly that the next decade is going to be grimmer than the last.
It's Africa dreams for me. Streeting's vision leaves me cold.
Idiot.
It's the prospect of Labour and their socialism that's driving people away.
My wife’s just back from a work trip to Calgary, Alberta, and said it’s one of the most boring places she’s ever been. There’s nothing to do except mountain walks and ski-ing, which is fine for a couple of weekends but no more, and it’s barely above freezing even in June! The ‘city’ is about three blocks square, surrounded by suburbia.
"Readers added context they thought people might want to know The Conservative Government have been in power since 2010 and have raised overall taxes to their highest level since 1948."
Doesn't mean readers don't want to know a Labour Government that will take power in 2024 will raise them further to their highest level since 1713.
Great days, Window Tax in full swing. Hearth Tax departed but a happy memory for all those grateful taxpayers. Income Tax, that temporary expedient, 100 years away.
Have another think about it.
You're the one who has to live with your decision.
How is your plan to move abroad going?
Wife sceptical, parents don't want me to go.
I couldn't fuck off hard or fast enough given the choice. Which, I'm sure you'd welcome.
I'd probably go for the Canadian paradise. Probably Alberta.
Interesting! I love Alberta. And BC is gorgeous too.
However … although I thought about doing the same thing I felt that it might be really rather boring after a while. It’s beautiful and the Canadians out west are the loveliest people I know on earth but, for me, it would become stultifying. And whilst I love skiing, those winters are long and cold, without even getting the Northern Lights in compensation.
Vancouver might be a different story though. That would tempt me. And it’s not too far time-wise to the UK because of the Great Circle Route.
The most damning question last night was from the young graduate who asked what the leaders would do to keep people like her from emigrating. The banality of the answers was pathetic from both. No vision.
One of my sons is in Australia at the moment, the other is going to Canada in the autumn. Much as I would miss them, they would be better off staying away. The Tories have trashed the country so thoroughly that the next decade is going to be grimmer than the last.
It's Africa dreams for me. Streeting's vision leaves me cold.
Idiot.
It's the prospect of Labour and their socialism that's driving people away.
My wife’s just back from a work trip to Calgary, Alberta, and said it’s one of the most boring places she’s ever been. There’s nothing to do except mountain walks and ski-ing, which is fine for a couple of weekends but no more, and it’s barely above freezing even in June! The ‘city’ is about three blocks square, surrounded by suburbia.
There is a reason something like 90% of the Canadian population live in 3 cities....if she thought Calgary was bad, go to Winnipeg or Ottawa.
I say this as a big fan of Canada, but those inland cities are crap. Edmonton, Winnipeg, Ottawa, Calgary.
"Readers added context they thought people might want to know The Conservative Government have been in power since 2010 and have raised overall taxes to their highest level since 1948."
Doesn't mean readers don't want to know a Labour Government that will take power in 2024 will raise them further to their highest level since 1713.
Great days, Window Tax in full swing. Hearth Tax departed but a happy memory for all those grateful taxpayers. Income Tax, that temporary expedient, 100 years away.
Have another think about it.
You're the one who has to live with your decision.
How is your plan to move abroad going?
Wife sceptical, parents don't want me to go.
I couldn't fuck off hard or fast enough given the choice. Which, I'm sure you'd welcome.
I'd probably go for the Canadian paradise. Probably Alberta.
Interesting! I love Alberta. And BC is gorgeous too.
However … although I thought about doing the same thing I felt that it might be really rather boring after a while. It’s beautiful and the Canadians out west are the loveliest people I know on earth but, for me, it would become stultifying. And whilst I love skiing, those winters are long and cold, without even getting the Northern Lights in compensation.
Vancouver might be a different story though. That would tempt me. And it’s not too far time-wise to the UK because of the Great Circle Route.
The most damning question last night was from the young graduate who asked what the leaders would do to keep people like her from emigrating. The banality of the answers was pathetic from both. No vision.
One of my sons is in Australia at the moment, the other is going to Canada in the autumn. Much as I would miss them, they would be better off staying away. The Tories have trashed the country so thoroughly that the next decade is going to be grimmer than the last.
It's Africa dreams for me. Streeting's vision leaves me cold.
Idiot.
It's the prospect of Labour and their socialism that's driving people away.
My wife’s just back from a work trip to Calgary, Alberta, and said it’s one of the most boring places she’s ever been. There’s nothing to do except mountain walks and ski-ing, which is fine for a couple of weekends but no more, and it’s barely above freezing even in June! The ‘city’ is about three blocks square, surrounded by suburbia.
There is a reason something like 90% of the Canadian population live in 3 cities....if she thought Calgary was bad, go to Winnipeg or Ottawa.
Alberta has a lot of Oil. Hopefully nobody invades to get it.
"Readers added context they thought people might want to know The Conservative Government have been in power since 2010 and have raised overall taxes to their highest level since 1948."
Doesn't mean readers don't want to know a Labour Government that will take power in 2024 will raise them further to their highest level since 1713.
Great days, Window Tax in full swing. Hearth Tax departed but a happy memory for all those grateful taxpayers. Income Tax, that temporary expedient, 100 years away.
Have another think about it.
You're the one who has to live with your decision.
How is your plan to move abroad going?
Wife sceptical, parents don't want me to go.
I couldn't fuck off hard or fast enough given the choice. Which, I'm sure you'd welcome.
I'd probably go for the Canadian paradise. Probably Alberta.
Interesting! I love Alberta. And BC is gorgeous too.
However … although I thought about doing the same thing I felt that it might be really rather boring after a while. It’s beautiful and the Canadians out west are the loveliest people I know on earth but, for me, it would become stultifying. And whilst I love skiing, those winters are long and cold, without even getting the Northern Lights in compensation.
Vancouver might be a different story though. That would tempt me. And it’s not too far time-wise to the UK because of the Great Circle Route.
The most damning question last night was from the young graduate who asked what the leaders would do to keep people like her from emigrating. The banality of the answers was pathetic from both. No vision.
One of my sons is in Australia at the moment, the other is going to Canada in the autumn. Much as I would miss them, they would be better off staying away. The Tories have trashed the country so thoroughly that the next decade is going to be grimmer than the last.
It's Africa dreams for me. Streeting's vision leaves me cold.
Idiot.
It's the prospect of Labour and their socialism that's driving people away.
My wife’s just back from a work trip to Calgary, Alberta, and said it’s one of the most boring places she’s ever been. There’s nothing to do except mountain walks and ski-ing, which is fine for a couple of weekends but no more, and it’s barely above freezing even in June! The ‘city’ is about three blocks square, surrounded by suburbia.
I spent two weeks on holiday in Calgary in July and, personally, loved it.
The winters are very cold, but they're dry- and the whole city is set up to operate indoors - so I'm not sure it'd be as morose as here.
"Readers added context they thought people might want to know The Conservative Government have been in power since 2010 and have raised overall taxes to their highest level since 1948."
Doesn't mean readers don't want to know a Labour Government that will take power in 2024 will raise them further to their highest level since 1713.
Great days, Window Tax in full swing. Hearth Tax departed but a happy memory for all those grateful taxpayers. Income Tax, that temporary expedient, 100 years away.
Have another think about it.
You're the one who has to live with your decision.
How is your plan to move abroad going?
Wife sceptical, parents don't want me to go.
I couldn't fuck off hard or fast enough given the choice. Which, I'm sure you'd welcome.
I'd probably go for the Canadian paradise. Probably Alberta.
Interesting! I love Alberta. And BC is gorgeous too.
However … although I thought about doing the same thing I felt that it might be really rather boring after a while. It’s beautiful and the Canadians out west are the loveliest people I know on earth but, for me, it would become stultifying. And whilst I love skiing, those winters are long and cold, without even getting the Northern Lights in compensation.
Vancouver might be a different story though. That would tempt me. And it’s not too far time-wise to the UK because of the Great Circle Route.
The most damning question last night was from the young graduate who asked what the leaders would do to keep people like her from emigrating. The banality of the answers was pathetic from both. No vision.
One of my sons is in Australia at the moment, the other is going to Canada in the autumn. Much as I would miss them, they would be better off staying away. The Tories have trashed the country so thoroughly that the next decade is going to be grimmer than the last.
It's Africa dreams for me. Streeting's vision leaves me cold.
Idiot.
It's the prospect of Labour and their socialism that's driving people away.
The only thing worse than Starmer getting elected is Sunak getting re-elected.
Grim austerity and threadbare public services combined with high taxes either way. It will be good to see the Culture War posturing gone, but we will have Streetings smarmy face to put up with instead.
Atkins is useless at Health, but at least she doesn't pretend to care, neither does she insult me.
"Readers added context they thought people might want to know The Conservative Government have been in power since 2010 and have raised overall taxes to their highest level since 1948."
Doesn't mean readers don't want to know a Labour Government that will take power in 2024 will raise them further to their highest level since 1713.
Great days, Window Tax in full swing. Hearth Tax departed but a happy memory for all those grateful taxpayers. Income Tax, that temporary expedient, 100 years away.
Have another think about it.
You're the one who has to live with your decision.
How is your plan to move abroad going?
Wife sceptical, parents don't want me to go.
I couldn't fuck off hard or fast enough given the choice. Which, I'm sure you'd welcome.
I'd probably go for the Canadian paradise. Probably Alberta.
Interesting! I love Alberta. And BC is gorgeous too.
However … although I thought about doing the same thing I felt that it might be really rather boring after a while. It’s beautiful and the Canadians out west are the loveliest people I know on earth but, for me, it would become stultifying. And whilst I love skiing, those winters are long and cold, without even getting the Northern Lights in compensation.
Vancouver might be a different story though. That would tempt me. And it’s not too far time-wise to the UK because of the Great Circle Route.
The most damning question last night was from the young graduate who asked what the leaders would do to keep people like her from emigrating. The banality of the answers was pathetic from both. No vision.
One of my sons is in Australia at the moment, the other is going to Canada in the autumn. Much as I would miss them, they would be better off staying away. The Tories have trashed the country so thoroughly that the next decade is going to be grimmer than the last.
It's Africa dreams for me. Streeting's vision leaves me cold.
Idiot.
It's the prospect of Labour and their socialism that's driving people away.
My wife’s just back from a work trip to Calgary, Alberta, and said it’s one of the most boring places she’s ever been. There’s nothing to do except mountain walks and ski-ing, which is fine for a couple of weekends but no more, and it’s barely above freezing even in June! The ‘city’ is about three blocks square, surrounded by suburbia.
That doesn't sound right about June. We were there July last year and it was 30C.
It swings from lower cold temperatures, to higher warm ones, across the year so will be below freezing much of the year. But you get used to it and it's a much drier cold/heat than here due to the much lower humidity which means you don't feel the cold as much.
We have family in Alberta and if we were to emigrate, which we're not considering, it's somewhere I'd be happy to go.
"Readers added context they thought people might want to know The Conservative Government have been in power since 2010 and have raised overall taxes to their highest level since 1948."
Doesn't mean readers don't want to know a Labour Government that will take power in 2024 will raise them further to their highest level since 1713.
Great days, Window Tax in full swing. Hearth Tax departed but a happy memory for all those grateful taxpayers. Income Tax, that temporary expedient, 100 years away.
Have another think about it.
You're the one who has to live with your decision.
How is your plan to move abroad going?
Wife sceptical, parents don't want me to go.
I couldn't fuck off hard or fast enough given the choice. Which, I'm sure you'd welcome.
I'd probably go for the Canadian paradise. Probably Alberta.
Interesting! I love Alberta. And BC is gorgeous too.
However … although I thought about doing the same thing I felt that it might be really rather boring after a while. It’s beautiful and the Canadians out west are the loveliest people I know on earth but, for me, it would become stultifying. And whilst I love skiing, those winters are long and cold, without even getting the Northern Lights in compensation.
Vancouver might be a different story though. That would tempt me. And it’s not too far time-wise to the UK because of the Great Circle Route.
The most damning question last night was from the young graduate who asked what the leaders would do to keep people like her from emigrating. The banality of the answers was pathetic from both. No vision.
One of my sons is in Australia at the moment, the other is going to Canada in the autumn. Much as I would miss them, they would be better off staying away. The Tories have trashed the country so thoroughly that the next decade is going to be grimmer than the last.
It's Africa dreams for me. Streeting's vision leaves me cold.
Idiot.
It's the prospect of Labour and their socialism that's driving people away.
My wife’s just back from a work trip to Calgary, Alberta, and said it’s one of the most boring places she’s ever been. There’s nothing to do except mountain walks and ski-ing, which is fine for a couple of weekends but no more, and it’s barely above freezing even in June! The ‘city’ is about three blocks square, surrounded by suburbia.
There is a reason something like 90% of the Canadian population live in 3 cities....if she thought Calgary was bad, go to Winnipeg or Ottawa.
Alberta has a lot of Oil. Hopefully nobody invades to get it.
Winni. Freezing winters and boiling hot summers. It is like a ghost town. The capital. Goverment officials and admin people. No thanks.
"Readers added context they thought people might want to know The Conservative Government have been in power since 2010 and have raised overall taxes to their highest level since 1948."
Doesn't mean readers don't want to know a Labour Government that will take power in 2024 will raise them further to their highest level since 1713.
Great days, Window Tax in full swing. Hearth Tax departed but a happy memory for all those grateful taxpayers. Income Tax, that temporary expedient, 100 years away.
Have another think about it.
You're the one who has to live with your decision.
How is your plan to move abroad going?
Wife sceptical, parents don't want me to go.
I couldn't fuck off hard or fast enough given the choice. Which, I'm sure you'd welcome.
I'd probably go for the Canadian paradise. Probably Alberta.
Interesting! I love Alberta. And BC is gorgeous too.
However … although I thought about doing the same thing I felt that it might be really rather boring after a while. It’s beautiful and the Canadians out west are the loveliest people I know on earth but, for me, it would become stultifying. And whilst I love skiing, those winters are long and cold, without even getting the Northern Lights in compensation.
Vancouver might be a different story though. That would tempt me. And it’s not too far time-wise to the UK because of the Great Circle Route.
The most damning question last night was from the young graduate who asked what the leaders would do to keep people like her from emigrating. The banality of the answers was pathetic from both. No vision.
One of my sons is in Australia at the moment, the other is going to Canada in the autumn. Much as I would miss them, they would be better off staying away. The Tories have trashed the country so thoroughly that the next decade is going to be grimmer than the last.
It's Africa dreams for me. Streeting's vision leaves me cold.
Idiot.
It's the prospect of Labour and their socialism that's driving people away.
My wife’s just back from a work trip to Calgary, Alberta, and said it’s one of the most boring places she’s ever been. There’s nothing to do except mountain walks and ski-ing, which is fine for a couple of weekends but no more, and it’s barely above freezing even in June! The ‘city’ is about three blocks square, surrounded by suburbia.
There is a reason something like 90% of the Canadian population live in 3 cities....if she thought Calgary was bad, go to Winnipeg or Ottawa.
Alberta has a lot of Oil. Hopefully nobody invades to get it.
Just one thing for @Casino_Royale and other tories who might be sinking into a bit of a funk over the likely Labour win.
1997 was my first vote and I can remember this kind of sentiment from tories in the run up to polling day.
And then they awoke on Friday 2nd May and the sun still rose in the east and set in the west. In the days that followed it surprisingly continued to follow this pattern. The world carried on turning and people got on with their lives.
The weekend after the 1997 GE, I saw a friend who was so left-wing he made Dennis Skinner look like Margaret Thatcher. I congratulated him on Labour's win.
His response was: "We didn't win, the Tories did."
I didn't know you were mates with Jezza Corbyn.
He was from northeast Derbyshire (I think also @bigjohnowls 's home turf?), and hated Thatcher with a massive passion. Yet despite our political differences, we got on very well. Perhaps because we both decided that we wanted the same thing: a better country; we just disagreed on how to get there.
From memory, he had a litmus test for Blair's new government: he had been complaining for years that the Tories under Thatcher and Major had altered the way unemployment figures were calculated to 'hide' unemployed people. He said one of the first things Labour should do was change the methodology back to how it was.
I don't think they did change it back, did they?
This is one reason we have the rather odd situation of full employment and vast numbers of economically inactive (unemployed) people who are not counted as part of the workforce, and who the government is hoping to tempt back.
I think a difference now appears to be that people themselves are finding ways to be economically inactive / state they aren't in mentally fit state to work. It isn't about the government as such looking to get people off the books to meet a target so they can make a big play of meeting it, rather people are getting themselves off the books rather than claim unemployment.
The size of the issue wasn't even really realised until Fraser Nelson made a big thing about it and initially everybody said he was wrong, it couldn't possibly be that large, he had double / triple counted. He said he had to make estimates in some cases there just weren't figures. In fact, he wasn't really far off. But the government themselves didn't seem to even realise the numbers were this large.
I can shock myself on the very rare occasion I have a morning off and go around my town and see how many people are just lounging around in coffee shops, bars and pubs.
And, yes, you can tell they're not working. Definitely.
If you want a really boring trip. Drive Calgary to Winnipeg. 1500km of nothing. After a few 100km, they don't even grow crops, no lakes, no mountains, its just "the browns".
Just one thing for @Casino_Royale and other tories who might be sinking into a bit of a funk over the likely Labour win.
1997 was my first vote and I can remember this kind of sentiment from tories in the run up to polling day.
And then they awoke on Friday 2nd May and the sun still rose in the east and set in the west. In the days that followed it surprisingly continued to follow this pattern. The world carried on turning and people got on with their lives.
The weekend after the 1997 GE, I saw a friend who was so left-wing he made Dennis Skinner look like Margaret Thatcher. I congratulated him on Labour's win.
His response was: "We didn't win, the Tories did."
I didn't know you were mates with Jezza Corbyn.
He was from northeast Derbyshire (I think also @bigjohnowls 's home turf?), and hated Thatcher with a massive passion. Yet despite our political differences, we got on very well. Perhaps because we both decided that we wanted the same thing: a better country; we just disagreed on how to get there.
From memory, he had a litmus test for Blair's new government: he had been complaining for years that the Tories under Thatcher and Major had altered the way unemployment figures were calculated to 'hide' unemployed people. He said one of the first things Labour should do was change the methodology back to how it was.
I don't think they did change it back, did they?
This is one reason we have the rather odd situation of full employment and vast numbers of economically inactive (unemployed) people who are not counted as part of the workforce, and who the government is hoping to tempt back.
I think a difference now appears to be that people themselves are finding ways to be economically inactive / state they aren't in mentally fit state to work. It isn't about the government as such looking to get people off the books to meet a target so they can make a big play of meeting it, rather people are getting themselves off the books rather than claim unemployment.
The size of the issue wasn't even really realised until Fraser Nelson made a big thing about it and initially everybody said he was wrong, it couldn't possibly be that large, he had double / triple counted. He said he had to make estimates in some cases there just weren't figures. In fact, he wasn't really far off. But the government themselves didn't seem to even realise the numbers were this large.
As previously posted, I am part of this problem since being made redundant because I do not want to jump through the Jobcentre's hoops in return for no money owing to savings.
Anecdote alert - Castle Point, one of the safest Conservative seats. My mum who never voted before the Brexit referendum and hasn't voted since will be voting Reform, as will all her 70/80yo friends. The Tories have been wiped off the local council recently which now consists entirely of Independents. Could there be an upset here? I doubt it somehow but one to watch.
I can see it being close.
If Reform win half a dozen seats, surely Castle Point would be one of them?
"Readers added context they thought people might want to know The Conservative Government have been in power since 2010 and have raised overall taxes to their highest level since 1948."
Doesn't mean readers don't want to know a Labour Government that will take power in 2024 will raise them further to their highest level since 1713.
Great days, Window Tax in full swing. Hearth Tax departed but a happy memory for all those grateful taxpayers. Income Tax, that temporary expedient, 100 years away.
Have another think about it.
You're the one who has to live with your decision.
How is your plan to move abroad going?
Wife sceptical, parents don't want me to go.
I couldn't fuck off hard or fast enough given the choice. Which, I'm sure you'd welcome.
I'd probably go for the Canadian paradise. Probably Alberta.
Interesting! I love Alberta. And BC is gorgeous too.
However … although I thought about doing the same thing I felt that it might be really rather boring after a while. It’s beautiful and the Canadians out west are the loveliest people I know on earth but, for me, it would become stultifying. And whilst I love skiing, those winters are long and cold, without even getting the Northern Lights in compensation.
Vancouver might be a different story though. That would tempt me. And it’s not too far time-wise to the UK because of the Great Circle Route.
The most damning question last night was from the young graduate who asked what the leaders would do to keep people like her from emigrating. The banality of the answers was pathetic from both. No vision.
One of my sons is in Australia at the moment, the other is going to Canada in the autumn. Much as I would miss them, they would be better off staying away. The Tories have trashed the country so thoroughly that the next decade is going to be grimmer than the last.
It's Africa dreams for me. Streeting's vision leaves me cold.
Idiot.
It's the prospect of Labour and their socialism that's driving people away.
My wife’s just back from a work trip to Calgary, Alberta, and said it’s one of the most boring places she’s ever been. There’s nothing to do except mountain walks and ski-ing, which is fine for a couple of weekends but no more, and it’s barely above freezing even in June! The ‘city’ is about three blocks square, surrounded by suburbia.
That doesn't sound right about June. We were there July last year and it was 30C.
It swings from lower cold temperatures, to higher warm ones, across the year so will be below freezing much of the year. But you get used to it and it's a much drier cold/heat than here due to the much lower humidity which means you don't feel the cold as much.
We have family in Alberta and if we were to emigrate, which we're not considering, it's somewhere I'd be happy to go.
This week it’s mid single digits overnight, and less than 20 maximum. Two weeks ago was 2-3 in the mornings and 10-12 during the day.
If you want a really boring trip. Drive Calgary to Winnipeg. 1500km of nothing. After a few 100km, they don't even grow crops, no lakes, no mountains, its just "the browns".
If you want a really boring trip. Drive Calgary to Winnipeg. 1500km of nothing. After a few 100km, they don't even grow crops, no lakes, no mountains, its just "the browns".
Canada is like Russia or Australia in that regard - it’s an absolutely massive place where you can drive for a couple of days and see precisely nothing!
"Readers added context they thought people might want to know The Conservative Government have been in power since 2010 and have raised overall taxes to their highest level since 1948."
Doesn't mean readers don't want to know a Labour Government that will take power in 2024 will raise them further to their highest level since 1713.
Great days, Window Tax in full swing. Hearth Tax departed but a happy memory for all those grateful taxpayers. Income Tax, that temporary expedient, 100 years away.
Have another think about it.
You're the one who has to live with your decision.
How is your plan to move abroad going?
Wife sceptical, parents don't want me to go.
I couldn't fuck off hard or fast enough given the choice. Which, I'm sure you'd welcome.
I'd probably go for the Canadian paradise. Probably Alberta.
Interesting! I love Alberta. And BC is gorgeous too.
However … although I thought about doing the same thing I felt that it might be really rather boring after a while. It’s beautiful and the Canadians out west are the loveliest people I know on earth but, for me, it would become stultifying. And whilst I love skiing, those winters are long and cold, without even getting the Northern Lights in compensation.
Vancouver might be a different story though. That would tempt me. And it’s not too far time-wise to the UK because of the Great Circle Route.
The most damning question last night was from the young graduate who asked what the leaders would do to keep people like her from emigrating. The banality of the answers was pathetic from both. No vision.
One of my sons is in Australia at the moment, the other is going to Canada in the autumn. Much as I would miss them, they would be better off staying away. The Tories have trashed the country so thoroughly that the next decade is going to be grimmer than the last.
It's Africa dreams for me. Streeting's vision leaves me cold.
Idiot.
It's the prospect of Labour and their socialism that's driving people away.
The only thing worse than Starmer getting elected is Sunak getting re-elected.
Grim austerity and threadbare public services combined with high taxes either way. It will be good to see the Culture War posturing gone, but we will have Streetings smarmy face to put up with instead.
Atkins is useless at Health, but at least she doesn't pretend to care, neither does she insult me.
Er, no.
Sunak getting re-elected is much better than Starmer getting elected.
If you want a really boring trip. Drive Calgary to Winnipeg. 1500km of nothing. After a few 100km, they don't even grow crops, no lakes, no mountains, its just "the browns".
Canada is like Russia or Australia in that regard - it’s an absolutely massive place where you can drive for a couple of days and see precisely nothing!
I have driven Canada basically coast to coast....twice.....I think I am a bit mad.
"Readers added context they thought people might want to know The Conservative Government have been in power since 2010 and have raised overall taxes to their highest level since 1948."
Doesn't mean readers don't want to know a Labour Government that will take power in 2024 will raise them further to their highest level since 1713.
Great days, Window Tax in full swing. Hearth Tax departed but a happy memory for all those grateful taxpayers. Income Tax, that temporary expedient, 100 years away.
Have another think about it.
You're the one who has to live with your decision.
How is your plan to move abroad going?
Wife sceptical, parents don't want me to go.
I couldn't fuck off hard or fast enough given the choice. Which, I'm sure you'd welcome.
I'd probably go for the Canadian paradise. Probably Alberta.
Interesting! I love Alberta. And BC is gorgeous too.
However … although I thought about doing the same thing I felt that it might be really rather boring after a while. It’s beautiful and the Canadians out west are the loveliest people I know on earth but, for me, it would become stultifying. And whilst I love skiing, those winters are long and cold, without even getting the Northern Lights in compensation.
Vancouver might be a different story though. That would tempt me. And it’s not too far time-wise to the UK because of the Great Circle Route.
The most damning question last night was from the young graduate who asked what the leaders would do to keep people like her from emigrating. The banality of the answers was pathetic from both. No vision.
One of my sons is in Australia at the moment, the other is going to Canada in the autumn. Much as I would miss them, they would be better off staying away. The Tories have trashed the country so thoroughly that the next decade is going to be grimmer than the last.
It's Africa dreams for me. Streeting's vision leaves me cold.
Idiot.
It's the prospect of Labour and their socialism that's driving people away.
My wife’s just back from a work trip to Calgary, Alberta, and said it’s one of the most boring places she’s ever been. There’s nothing to do except mountain walks and ski-ing, which is fine for a couple of weekends but no more, and it’s barely above freezing even in June! The ‘city’ is about three blocks square, surrounded by suburbia.
That doesn't sound right about June. We were there July last year and it was 30C.
It swings from lower cold temperatures, to higher warm ones, across the year so will be below freezing much of the year. But you get used to it and it's a much drier cold/heat than here due to the much lower humidity which means you don't feel the cold as much.
We have family in Alberta and if we were to emigrate, which we're not considering, it's somewhere I'd be happy to go.
This week it’s mid single digits overnight, and less than 20 maximum. Two weeks ago was 2-3 in the mornings and 10-12 during the day.
Surely made her nostalgic for home. There's a lot of Ukranians on the Canadian prairie. Same climate and landscape as the old country, without the brutal cossacks/Stalinists/SMO etc.
"Readers added context they thought people might want to know The Conservative Government have been in power since 2010 and have raised overall taxes to their highest level since 1948."
Doesn't mean readers don't want to know a Labour Government that will take power in 2024 will raise them further to their highest level since 1713.
Great days, Window Tax in full swing. Hearth Tax departed but a happy memory for all those grateful taxpayers. Income Tax, that temporary expedient, 100 years away.
Have another think about it.
You're the one who has to live with your decision.
How is your plan to move abroad going?
Wife sceptical, parents don't want me to go.
I couldn't fuck off hard or fast enough given the choice. Which, I'm sure you'd welcome.
I'd probably go for the Canadian paradise. Probably Alberta.
Interesting! I love Alberta. And BC is gorgeous too.
However … although I thought about doing the same thing I felt that it might be really rather boring after a while. It’s beautiful and the Canadians out west are the loveliest people I know on earth but, for me, it would become stultifying. And whilst I love skiing, those winters are long and cold, without even getting the Northern Lights in compensation.
Vancouver might be a different story though. That would tempt me. And it’s not too far time-wise to the UK because of the Great Circle Route.
The most damning question last night was from the young graduate who asked what the leaders would do to keep people like her from emigrating. The banality of the answers was pathetic from both. No vision.
One of my sons is in Australia at the moment, the other is going to Canada in the autumn. Much as I would miss them, they would be better off staying away. The Tories have trashed the country so thoroughly that the next decade is going to be grimmer than the last.
It's Africa dreams for me. Streeting's vision leaves me cold.
Idiot.
It's the prospect of Labour and their socialism that's driving people away.
My wife’s just back from a work trip to Calgary, Alberta, and said it’s one of the most boring places she’s ever been. There’s nothing to do except mountain walks and ski-ing, which is fine for a couple of weekends but no more, and it’s barely above freezing even in June! The ‘city’ is about three blocks square, surrounded by suburbia.
That doesn't sound right about June. We were there July last year and it was 30C.
It swings from lower cold temperatures, to higher warm ones, across the year so will be below freezing much of the year. But you get used to it and it's a much drier cold/heat than here due to the much lower humidity which means you don't feel the cold as much.
We have family in Alberta and if we were to emigrate, which we're not considering, it's somewhere I'd be happy to go.
This week it’s mid single digits overnight, and less than 20 maximum. Two weeks ago was 2-3 in the mornings and 10-12 during the day.
Maybe you're too used to the Sandpit compared to the UK but I wouldn't count highs of double digits to nearly 20 as barely above freezing!
There’s certainly going to be a CCHQ social media blitzkrieg over the next week
They need to do a lot better than the tax x 200 times tweet last night though which looked like it was ‘produced’ by a 5 yr old.
I think that’s the problem. If you’re going to do social media you’ve got to be right at your game. What I’ve seen from the tories so far has been embarrassingly amateur.
Also, you've got to have a degree of public trust to get the public to listen to you. One of the problems the Conservatives have right now is that they have trashed their own reputation so thoroughly that people start with an attitude of "where is the lie in this statement?"
That's pretty fatal if you're in the persuasion business.
"Readers added context they thought people might want to know The Conservative Government have been in power since 2010 and have raised overall taxes to their highest level since 1948."
Doesn't mean readers don't want to know a Labour Government that will take power in 2024 will raise them further to their highest level since 1713.
Great days, Window Tax in full swing. Hearth Tax departed but a happy memory for all those grateful taxpayers. Income Tax, that temporary expedient, 100 years away.
Have another think about it.
You're the one who has to live with your decision.
How is your plan to move abroad going?
Wife sceptical, parents don't want me to go.
I couldn't fuck off hard or fast enough given the choice. Which, I'm sure you'd welcome.
I'd probably go for the Canadian paradise. Probably Alberta.
Interesting! I love Alberta. And BC is gorgeous too.
However … although I thought about doing the same thing I felt that it might be really rather boring after a while. It’s beautiful and the Canadians out west are the loveliest people I know on earth but, for me, it would become stultifying. And whilst I love skiing, those winters are long and cold, without even getting the Northern Lights in compensation.
Vancouver might be a different story though. That would tempt me. And it’s not too far time-wise to the UK because of the Great Circle Route.
The most damning question last night was from the young graduate who asked what the leaders would do to keep people like her from emigrating. The banality of the answers was pathetic from both. No vision.
One of my sons is in Australia at the moment, the other is going to Canada in the autumn. Much as I would miss them, they would be better off staying away. The Tories have trashed the country so thoroughly that the next decade is going to be grimmer than the last.
It's Africa dreams for me. Streeting's vision leaves me cold.
Idiot.
It's the prospect of Labour and their socialism that's driving people away.
My wife’s just back from a work trip to Calgary, Alberta, and said it’s one of the most boring places she’s ever been. There’s nothing to do except mountain walks and ski-ing, which is fine for a couple of weekends but no more, and it’s barely above freezing even in June! The ‘city’ is about three blocks square, surrounded by suburbia.
That doesn't sound right about June. We were there July last year and it was 30C.
It swings from lower cold temperatures, to higher warm ones, across the year so will be below freezing much of the year. But you get used to it and it's a much drier cold/heat than here due to the much lower humidity which means you don't feel the cold as much.
We have family in Alberta and if we were to emigrate, which we're not considering, it's somewhere I'd be happy to go.
This week it’s mid single digits overnight, and less than 20 maximum. Two weeks ago was 2-3 in the mornings and 10-12 during the day.
Maybe you're too used to the Sandpit compared to the UK but I wouldn't count highs of double digits to nearly 20 as barely above freezing!
I imagine after living in the sand pit for enough time, anything less than "feels like burning in hell" during the summer months is deemed on the chilly side....
"Readers added context they thought people might want to know The Conservative Government have been in power since 2010 and have raised overall taxes to their highest level since 1948."
Doesn't mean readers don't want to know a Labour Government that will take power in 2024 will raise them further to their highest level since 1713.
Great days, Window Tax in full swing. Hearth Tax departed but a happy memory for all those grateful taxpayers. Income Tax, that temporary expedient, 100 years away.
Have another think about it.
You're the one who has to live with your decision.
How is your plan to move abroad going?
Wife sceptical, parents don't want me to go.
I couldn't fuck off hard or fast enough given the choice. Which, I'm sure you'd welcome.
I'd probably go for the Canadian paradise. Probably Alberta.
Interesting! I love Alberta. And BC is gorgeous too.
However … although I thought about doing the same thing I felt that it might be really rather boring after a while. It’s beautiful and the Canadians out west are the loveliest people I know on earth but, for me, it would become stultifying. And whilst I love skiing, those winters are long and cold, without even getting the Northern Lights in compensation.
Vancouver might be a different story though. That would tempt me. And it’s not too far time-wise to the UK because of the Great Circle Route.
The most damning question last night was from the young graduate who asked what the leaders would do to keep people like her from emigrating. The banality of the answers was pathetic from both. No vision.
One of my sons is in Australia at the moment, the other is going to Canada in the autumn. Much as I would miss them, they would be better off staying away. The Tories have trashed the country so thoroughly that the next decade is going to be grimmer than the last.
It's Africa dreams for me. Streeting's vision leaves me cold.
Idiot.
It's the prospect of Labour and their socialism that's driving people away.
My wife’s just back from a work trip to Calgary, Alberta, and said it’s one of the most boring places she’s ever been. There’s nothing to do except mountain walks and ski-ing, which is fine for a couple of weekends but no more, and it’s barely above freezing even in June! The ‘city’ is about three blocks square, surrounded by suburbia.
That doesn't sound right about June. We were there July last year and it was 30C.
It swings from lower cold temperatures, to higher warm ones, across the year so will be below freezing much of the year. But you get used to it and it's a much drier cold/heat than here due to the much lower humidity which means you don't feel the cold as much.
We have family in Alberta and if we were to emigrate, which we're not considering, it's somewhere I'd be happy to go.
This week it’s mid single digits overnight, and less than 20 maximum. Two weeks ago was 2-3 in the mornings and 10-12 during the day.
Surely made her nostalgic for home. There's a lot of Ukranians on the Canadian prairie. Same climate as the old country, without the brutal cossacks/Stalinists/SMO etc.
Ha ha true, but Ukraine gets hot in the summer (hotter than UK generally) and she wasn’t expecting to need her wooly coat in the mornings when walking 1km from her hotel to the office.
"Readers added context they thought people might want to know The Conservative Government have been in power since 2010 and have raised overall taxes to their highest level since 1948."
Doesn't mean readers don't want to know a Labour Government that will take power in 2024 will raise them further to their highest level since 1713.
Great days, Window Tax in full swing. Hearth Tax departed but a happy memory for all those grateful taxpayers. Income Tax, that temporary expedient, 100 years away.
Have another think about it.
You're the one who has to live with your decision.
How is your plan to move abroad going?
Wife sceptical, parents don't want me to go.
I couldn't fuck off hard or fast enough given the choice. Which, I'm sure you'd welcome.
I'd probably go for the Canadian paradise. Probably Alberta.
Interesting! I love Alberta. And BC is gorgeous too.
However … although I thought about doing the same thing I felt that it might be really rather boring after a while. It’s beautiful and the Canadians out west are the loveliest people I know on earth but, for me, it would become stultifying. And whilst I love skiing, those winters are long and cold, without even getting the Northern Lights in compensation.
Vancouver might be a different story though. That would tempt me. And it’s not too far time-wise to the UK because of the Great Circle Route.
The most damning question last night was from the young graduate who asked what the leaders would do to keep people like her from emigrating. The banality of the answers was pathetic from both. No vision.
One of my sons is in Australia at the moment, the other is going to Canada in the autumn. Much as I would miss them, they would be better off staying away. The Tories have trashed the country so thoroughly that the next decade is going to be grimmer than the last.
It's Africa dreams for me. Streeting's vision leaves me cold.
Idiot.
It's the prospect of Labour and their socialism that's driving people away.
My wife’s just back from a work trip to Calgary, Alberta, and said it’s one of the most boring places she’s ever been. There’s nothing to do except mountain walks and ski-ing, which is fine for a couple of weekends but no more, and it’s barely above freezing even in June! The ‘city’ is about three blocks square, surrounded by suburbia.
That doesn't sound right about June. We were there July last year and it was 30C.
It swings from lower cold temperatures, to higher warm ones, across the year so will be below freezing much of the year. But you get used to it and it's a much drier cold/heat than here due to the much lower humidity which means you don't feel the cold as much.
We have family in Alberta and if we were to emigrate, which we're not considering, it's somewhere I'd be happy to go.
This week it’s mid single digits overnight, and less than 20 maximum. Two weeks ago was 2-3 in the mornings and 10-12 during the day.
Maybe you're too used to the Sandpit compared to the UK but I wouldn't count highs of double digits to nearly 20 as barely above freezing!
I imagine after living in the sand pit for enough time, anything less than "feels like burning in hell" during the summer months is deemed on the chilly side....
That’s also definitely true. That said it’s a bit cold here today, only 38 at the moment at 10am, was well over 40 last weekend. Overnight lows over 30 as well as the humidity, which isn’t going away until about the end of September!
Comments
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jun/26/labour-not-putting-up-a-fight-against-farage-in-clacton
Is it that they want Con to win in Clacton? Does someone have a bet on?
Glasto - yay!
Cricket and tennis for me today. The men’s T20 Semi-final England v India, although I’ve gone off it a bit after the ‘throw the first punch’ comment - horrible language by the coach. And ladies tennis from Eastbourne with the Brits going very well.
Unlike previous examples of a sea-change they are not promising anything very much. Their pitch is change but the message is mostly about stability.
‘Things can only get better’ would be even more apt for 2024 than 1997.
There of course a couple of cases announced so far which it looks very iffy. Now again if that is criminal rather than amoral, have to wait and see.
I think one thing that’s very noticeable this time is that the newspapers appear to be having no effect on voting intentions. Despite weeks of Daily Mail / Sun / Telegraph / Express / even Times attacks on Starmer nothing seems to shift the polls. They then seem to become even more strident, desperate even.
2024 is the General Election when the printed press died.
If it’s being played out anywhere it’s on social media.
I’m sorry that @boulay was irate that a journalist could be so lazily critical of a leading politician but it’s a very good analysis of why Sunak was unsuitable to be PM.
It ought to be a salutary lesson for all parties and, indeed, all positions of leadership. Promotion without being tested through fire often leads to disastrous appointments. In the case of Sunak everything came far too easy. No one tested him politically until 2022 when he lost to Liz Truss. That’s right. He lost to the worst ever British PM who herself was beaten by a lettuce. Okay, the last bit is tabloidy, but the point is that everything fell into Sunak’s lap and no one actually tested him to see if he was any good under political pressure.
Fine as Chancellor. Useless as a PM.
What’s that line from Jurassic Park?
‘It didn't require any discipline to attain it. You read what others had done and you took the next step. You didn't earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don't take any responsibility for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could ...'
A leader of a political party and especially a Prime Minister first needs to be tested in the crucible of political fire.
Anyhow, horrid taxes and the supermajority, these are evidently the attack lines that the Tories are trying to push. Whether it will make any difference is questionable. One week to go, and that's liable to be taken up by people enjoying good weather (we are promised three whole days that will be neither October nor a furnace, hallelujah!) and football. Basically, unless most of those codgers who have strop flounced off to Reform do a U-turn in the polling booth and come home to the old traditional Nasty Party, they're done for.
Not only do they not currently have a majority to increase, but it’s unlikey they’re move further forward at the next election either - so Simon’s piece is unlikely to come true for at least another couple of decades.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edGFTEbZCHQ
However … although I thought about doing the same thing I felt that it might be really rather boring after a while. It’s beautiful and the Canadians out west are the loveliest people I know on earth but, for me, it would become stultifying. And whilst I love skiing, those winters are long and cold, without even getting the Northern Lights in compensation.
Vancouver might be a different story though. That would tempt me. And it’s not too far time-wise to the UK because of the Great Circle Route.
If someone placed a bet on a certain date, and was subsequently in the room where the date was decided and pushing for the date on which he had bet, then that’s possibly an offence. Ditto with the police officer in Downing St, who isn’t supposed to be listening to anything that’s not the security of the ministers he’s charged with protecting. The rest of them, there’s really no story at all.
They are promising so little in 2024 that ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ really might apply this time.
If you win a landslide on very low expectation then you have every chance of surprising on the upside.
Anyone have the viewing figures for it?
My mum who never voted before the Brexit referendum and hasn't voted since will be voting Reform, as will all her 70/80yo friends. The Tories have been wiped off the local council recently which now consists entirely of Independents. Could there be an upset here? I doubt it somehow but one to watch.
https://x.com/CCHQPress
1997 was my first vote and I can remember this kind of sentiment from tories in the run up to polling day.
And then they awoke on Friday 2nd May and the sun still rose in the east and set in the west. In the days that followed it surprisingly continued to follow this pattern. The world carried on turning and people got on with their lives.
His response was: "We didn't win, the Tories did."
They need to do a lot better than the tax x 200 times tweet last night though which looked like it was ‘produced’ by a 5 yr old.
I think that’s the problem. If you’re going to do social media you’ve got to be right at your game. What I’ve seen from the tories so far has been embarrassingly amateur.
One of my sons is in Australia at the moment, the other is going to Canada in the autumn. Much as I would miss them, they would be better off staying away. The Tories have trashed the country so thoroughly that the next decade is going to be grimmer than the last.
It's Africa dreams for me. Streeting's vision leaves me cold.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/fb-13571031/David-Cameron-hoax-call-Russian-pranksters-transcript.html
The potentially inconvenient part is where Lord Cameron confirms to the man he thinks is the former Ukrainian president, that Labour will also be fully behind Ukraine, contrary to what Rishi and Kemi suggested.
He was from northeast Derbyshire (I think also @bigjohnowls 's home turf?), and hated Thatcher with a massive passion. Yet despite our political differences, we got on very well. Perhaps because we both decided that we wanted the same thing: a better country; we just disagreed on how to get there.
From memory, he had a litmus test for Blair's new government: he had been complaining for years that the Tories under Thatcher and Major had altered the way unemployment figures were calculated to 'hide' unemployed people. He said one of the first things Labour should do was change the methodology back to how it was.
I don't think they did change it back, did they?
What's wrong with Streeting. He seems one of the more capable and less ideological incoming ministers.
https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/will-sunak-become-a-victim-of-desi-style-vote-bank-politics-13786616.html
https://youtu.be/uzPJSuAQnbE?feature=shared
In the event of a Labour victory, voters were slightly more likely to think the Conservatives would provide the most effective opposition (24 per cent) than Reform UK (21 per cent). 2019 Tories were fractionally more likely to think Reform would do the better job (36 per cent) than the Conservative Party (35 per cent). Nearly one in five voters overall (18 per cent) thought there would be no effective opposition.
It's the prospect of Labour and their socialism that's driving people away.
The size of the issue wasn't even really realised until Fraser Nelson made a big thing about it and initially everybody said he was wrong, it couldn't possibly be that large, he had double / triple counted. He said he had to make estimates in some cases there just weren't figures. In fact, he wasn't really far off. But the government themselves didn't seem to even realise the numbers were this large.
I say this as a big fan of Canada, but those inland cities are crap. Edmonton, Winnipeg, Ottawa, Calgary.
Have you learned nothing in all your years on this site?!
The winters are very cold, but they're dry- and the whole city is set up to operate indoors - so I'm not sure it'd be as morose as here.
Grim austerity and threadbare public services combined with high taxes either way. It will be good to see the Culture War posturing gone, but we will have Streetings smarmy face to put up with instead.
Atkins is useless at Health, but at least she doesn't pretend to care, neither does she insult me.
It swings from lower cold temperatures, to higher warm ones, across the year so will be below freezing much of the year. But you get used to it and it's a much drier cold/heat than here due to the much lower humidity which means you don't feel the cold as much.
We have family in Alberta and if we were to emigrate, which we're not considering, it's somewhere I'd be happy to go.
And, yes, you can tell they're not working. Definitely.
Exactly one week to go.
Or two months, if you are @Big_G_NorthWales @BartholomewRoberts or LauraK.
Tomorrow’s QT programme may end up causing more loss of support for Reform .
Sunak getting re-elected is much better than Starmer getting elected.
And that's exactly what I'm voting for.
That's pretty fatal if you're in the persuasion business.