.....Much of it done by Johnson and Truss. Interestingly I count 25 women in the shot and 18 men. That rebalance is one of the great advances of this parliament and something that hints the country might be moving forward on several fronts
Why are people with different genitals a "great advance"? It is neither an advance nor a retreat in itself. What we need are the best people, regardless of their gender.
Certainly more agreeable to watch on tv clips of the place.
It won't and if he gets through COVID relatively unscathed at over 80 he can use that to boost his health status claims
Didn't think of that, but that's a good point too.
I think he is too big at 2.6 now for the nomination, we basically have heard via social media that he's told Pelosi where to go.
I fear that you're right. There's too much of a temptation to assume that the Democrats are somehow collectively capable of taking the blindingly obvious course necessary to stay in the game and factor that in to the odds, and I think the 2.6 reflects that.
The problem is that there is no mechanism to force him to go if he doesn’t want to. He can just say “nah, I’m staying in” and there is absolutely nothing anyone can do about it. Even if the whole Democratic establishment turns on him and tells him it’s a bad idea.
I still think there’s a chance they do get him to bow out (based on current media reports), but it is going to be a close run thing and the longer he clings on the more unedifying and difficult it becomes to avoid political damage. The best way would have been for a period of reflection after the debate followed by a calm handover. As it is he’s being dragged out kicking and screaming, and it’s not very edifying.
Yes. And the Democratic Party has rather elaborate rules to prevent things being done in "smoke filled rooms".
Then there is donor/money issue.
And the certainty that if something is done, legal challenges will follow. Complete with a MAGA judge freezing funds "until the matter is resolved" probably.
47% voted for Tories or Brexit Party in 2019 in Britain. In 2017 the figure was 45.4% (with UKIP instead of Brexit).
That was before Brexit was officially recognised to be rubbish. In my opinion it's destroyed both Reform and the Tories chances of redemption within the next several decades if at all.
Another reason to ditch the monarchy, it subverts democracy/the will of the people.
Sir Keir Starmer might be forced to keep two hereditary peers because of their links to the King.
The Prime Minister has pledged to remove hereditary peers from the House of Lords by making all those aged 80 and above step down.
The House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill will remove their right to sit and vote in Parliament’s upper chamber after officials criticised the “outdated and indefensible” presence of those who were there solely by right of birth.
It is considered the first step in Sir Keir’s efforts to modernise the Lords and make it “fit for the 21st century”.
However, of the 92 remaining hereditary peers, the roles of the Earl Marshal and the Lord Great Chamberlain are likely to be exempt because of the constitutional role they play on state occasions, sources admitted.
The Earl Marshal is a hereditary office that requires him to organise major ceremonial occasions.
Apparently, according to the BBC, there's a thing called the "Better Buses Bill" in the King's Speech.
Boris would be proud.
That one interests me.
Currently there's a Gadarene Rush to get electric buses in, but wheelchair space requirements are still stuck in the 1990s, and they are *always* - like everything else - done to the absolute minimum.
So a lot won't fit, and some only have one space (so send your partner on the next bus an hour later), and we just wired a lot of this in for another 25 years.
First Bus: A spokesperson for First York said: “The bus design we selected from the manufacturer meets all disability access requirements. The position of the poles has also been modified after consultation with disability groups.
A few months back I helped a man in a wheelchair off a bus on the way back from Cambridge. He was in the wheelchair space, but the driver and I had to manhandle the man and chair around a pole in order to get him out. It was inconvenient, wasted time and perhaps most importantly, not very dignified for the man.
It made me wonder whether the bus designers had actually tried their disabled provision space with a wide range of disabled people. (On the other hand, ISTR the bus had lowering suspension that enabled level entry. Might have that mixed up with another bus though.)
If you want me to I can bore for England on this one.
For buses they are defined around a thing called the "Reference Wheelchair", which is based on mobility aids from the 1990s I think. Here is more recent Govt research with data tables about how many won't fit (a lot) from 2021/2, but meanwhile all the buses are being replaced and it has not been put in place. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/reference-wheelchair-standard-and-transport-design
The transit companies including rail usually like to work to the utter, utter legal minimum - just like LHAs building cycle facilities with no powerful local lobby groups, paint the lane, share the existing footpath and tick the box. The difference is between viewing something as a cost to be minimised or an investment to provide a full service. I'm watching on this one because fleet replacement time is the efficient time to do changes, but given the mentality requires some regulation - which they did not do under the last Govt.
Even to gain a priority right to occupy a wheelchair space took a legal action at Supreme Court level. And companies have fought it off enough that drivers have to little more than ask nicely. Karen refuses to move her pushchair, the driver won't take action, and the wheelchair user is left at the bus stop - happens quite regularly. Then what happens is that the wheelchair user gives up on public transport and stays at home. The problem is that if a service cannot be relied upon, then a vulnerable person can be dumped - which is not an acceptable risk. Some things could help, such as better bus services - but they aren't a fix.
What is the driver meant to do if Karen won't move?
If he so much as raises his voice to her she will be shrieking harrasment and assault (and racism if she can pull that one) with the whole thing filmed by other passengers and reported to the authorities and youtube.
The days when a bus driver could grab a passenger by the scruff of the neck and eject them are long over.
What is the driver to do if Karen has not a baby but her own wheelchair?
ETA or if Karen is a whole crowd of standing passengers because this is the rush hour?
Limits to numbers standing, anyway. And some of them get out of the way temporarily if need be.
Get out the way by getting off the bus, you mean? Make half a dozen people get off and wait for the next bus, where they can pay a second fare?
Which is rather more commercially ruinous than shrugging your shoulders and saying sorry, they won't move.
As Peter Hitchens says, Utopia is a castle you can never quite be reached but can only be approached by trying to cross a moat filled with blood.
Occasionally I wonder if the integration pendulum has swung so far as to make life worse for wheelchair users, and if it might be better to expand something like London's Dial-a-ride scheme, with door-to-door transport on request. Obviously this can co-exist with wheelchair spaces on buses.
I think the problem is that it is approached from "we must regulate to stop wicked people duscriminating rather than, how can we best help these people to get where they want to go.
I can't help think that entitling people with disabilities that necessitate a wheelchair to a pass granting them subsidised taxi fares so that they pay no more than they would travelling by public transport would be a rather more economic and dignified solution.
And a far better reason to spend public money on taxis than ferrying badly behaved brats whos parents have managed to get an ADHD diagnosis to school.
Your ignorance of the issues of SEND appears to be almost perfect.
It is the issues of send diagnosis farming to get more benefits that is the problem, which has become a major problem since the two child UC/TC limit (with exemption from two child for disability plus about £3k child disability element of TC/UC)
Often those with genuine SEND conditions have a dreadful time trying to get diagnosis or assistance because they are honest and don't know how to or want to play the system, and there are so many who do play the system with subjective "disorders" that councils are overwhelmed and crack down on who they can.
It won't and if he gets through COVID relatively unscathed at over 80 he can use that to boost his health status claims
Didn't think of that, but that's a good point too.
I think he is too big at 2.6 now for the nomination, we basically have heard via social media that he's told Pelosi where to go.
I fear that you're right. There's too much of a temptation to assume that the Democrats are somehow collectively capable of taking the blindingly obvious course necessary to stay in the game and factor that in to the odds, and I think the 2.6 reflects that.
The problem is that there is no mechanism to force him to go if he doesn’t want to. He can just say “nah, I’m staying in” and there is absolutely nothing anyone can do about it. Even if the whole Democratic establishment turns on him and tells him it’s a bad idea.
I still think there’s a chance they do get him to bow out (based on current media reports), but it is going to be a close run thing and the longer he clings on the more unedifying and difficult it becomes to avoid political damage. The best way would have been for a period of reflection after the debate followed by a calm handover. As it is he’s being dragged out kicking and screaming, and it’s not very edifying.
There is a mechanism, in the constitution. The 25th Amendment, Article 4.
The problem is it requires Kamala to wield the knife herself, and the Cabinet to agree with her. No hiding spot to let someone else do it.
47% voted for Tories or Brexit Party in 2019 in Britain. In 2017 the figure was 45.4% (with UKIP instead of Brexit).
That was before Brexit was officially recognised to be rubbish. In my opinion it's destroyed both Reform and the Tories chances of redemption within the next several decades if at all.
47% voted for Tories or Brexit Party in 2019 in Britain. In 2017 the figure was 45.4% (with UKIP instead of Brexit).
That was before Brexit was officially recognised to be rubbish. In my opinion it's destroyed both Reform and the Tories chances of redemption within the next several decades if at all.
Tory govt nailed on 2029
Reform Tory coalition at best, if Reform will entertain it.
I think post 2029 will be a Tory - Labour coalition with a small majority thay relies on Libdem confidence and supply to get things through.
Yes, yes, it's all politics and aren't the Liberal Democrats nasty and unscrupulous?
Seriously?
Ed Davey and the LDs played a system they neither like nor want nor does them any favours for maximum advantage and all we now hear is moaning from the "losers" including an activist for a Party which won over 400 seats.
Labour has occasionally "talked" about change to the electoral system - usually when they've been on the wrong end of an election defeat. We may now hear the Conservatives begin to "think aloud" about PR. Neither is sincere - the duopoly has survived fairly comfortably - 58% of the vote has got the two parties 84% of the seats in England, Scotland and Wales so the current system works fine for both Conservative and Labour and for that reason alone there'll be no change until one or both of them is decisively defeated.
Farage and Davey can shout into the dark calling for PR but it will get them nowhere.
As for the "let's add Reform and the Conservatives and call it a single bloc" - that was widely derided on here months ago by the more thoughtful commentators and analysts. There was never any polling evidence of a direct transfer - at most a third of Reform voters would support a Conservative in the absence of a Reform candidate.
The Conservatives lost votes to Reform, to Labour and in some places to the Liberal Democrats and the Greens and also suffered considerable abstention (as did Labour). Until we get more definitive research on what happened to the Conservative vote and why 47% of the 2019 vote disappeared, we're speculating. We can all have our pet theories and I suspect the answer will vary from region to region and even from seat to seat.
I wouldn't disagree with anything you've written here but...
Doing a ton of analysis I am sure is valuable and will yield some insights, but really - what is it really going to reveal? Some small tweak of messaging around housing or the environment or immigration that would bring back a few voters? They were just unpopular and the electorate were determined to give them a punishement beating.
And over-analysis always runs the risk that you end up fighting the last war.
Politics is often about momentum (the Tories have none) and a big idea over the longer term (the Tories have to find one). If I was running this (I wouldn't want to) then merging with Reform (aka "New Tory" or Conservative+) has the potential to deliver momentum (but not without risk).
In terms of the big idea, if we can all agree that the Empire 2.0 project is dead, then we have to decide who to hitch our wagon to.
I'd look to get back into the EU but that's not going to wash with Conservative+
So that leaves the US, and specifically Trump and Project 2025. The Project 2025 stuff leaves me utterly cold (Project Handmaid might be a better title) and I would fight it tooth and nail, but for Conservative+ and US-backing some sort of 'Project 2029' might yield strong results:
- return to family values and what the US calls under the Orwellian phrase 'headship' (strong male head of the family, women very much in supporting/child-rearing role) - massive bonfire of eco-laws - pun very much intended - DoJ under direct parliamentary control - a version of unitary executive theory to attenuate the 'enemies of the people' judges - extreme anti-immigration (read John Lanchester's 'The Wall' for ideas on how a Net Zero Immigration policy would have to work)
You get the idea.
Just typing all this makes me feel extremely queasy. It's a dystopian wishlist. But there must be conversations like this going on, Truss and JRM have the time and contacts to work in the background to make it happen.
Be interested to get others' opinions. I hope everyone else is as queasy as I am reading this...
It won't and if he gets through COVID relatively unscathed at over 80 he can use that to boost his health status claims
Didn't think of that, but that's a good point too.
I think he is too big at 2.6 now for the nomination, we basically have heard via social media that he's told Pelosi where to go.
I fear that you're right. There's too much of a temptation to assume that the Democrats are somehow collectively capable of taking the blindingly obvious course necessary to stay in the game and factor that in to the odds, and I think the 2.6 reflects that.
The problem is that there is no mechanism to force him to go if he doesn’t want to. He can just say “nah, I’m staying in” and there is absolutely nothing anyone can do about it. Even if the whole Democratic establishment turns on him and tells him it’s a bad idea.
I still think there’s a chance they do get him to bow out (based on current media reports), but it is going to be a close run thing and the longer he clings on the more unedifying and difficult it becomes to avoid political damage. The best way would have been for a period of reflection after the debate followed by a calm handover. As it is he’s being dragged out kicking and screaming, and it’s not very edifying.
But surely it doesn't matter - he is the Democratic Party's nominee, not the king of the party. If the party wants to create a mechanism to free his delegates and push him off the ballot - they can make that. He can always participate in it and see if he wins.
I also agree with the people arguing about using the 25th - but I think that would sink Kamala as a future unity candidate because the Biden team will destroy her future.
Amused to see Starmer is meeting European leaders at Blenheim Palace. The War of the Spanish Succession was of course a great example of European cooperation... but I am not sure what Macron will make of it
One of Dave's best acts as Foreign Secretary was to choose Blenheim Palace as the location.
Any party that decides to change the Eurostar terminus from St. Pancras back to Waterloo station will win my vote for life.
Bugger that last for a game of commuters on the Tube. It's bad enough not having direct connections with Eurostar from the north *in the same station* without having that added as well.
I say that as somebody who is from Sheffield and uses St Pancras a lot.
Plus, hang on, you use the Tube? You utter peasant, use Uber Luxury, that's the way to travel in London.
I went from St Pancras to Nottingham yesterday. It’s a strange experience, travelling via our most glamorous railway terminal to some of the least glamorous destinations in the country.
The mobile reception on the East Midlands mainline is shit too.
The long journey also gave me the opportunity to read the Economist for the first time in ages. I’d forgotten what a weirdly patronising and self-conscious title it is. It’s like what EdExcel would publish if they did a “magazine” to help A Level students with their Politics and Economics. The tone throughout is “educational”.
Once you realise that it’s written mostly by a bunch of twentysomething arts graduates with a very tight style guide, it all starts to make sense.
It's also rather good; better than any other British newspaper. Yes, it's not perfect, but that still leaves plenty of room to be better than the others.
And it's coverage of science (a couple of key stories each week, snappily told) is about the best in the mainstream media. Way better than New Scientist, which has fallen a long way in its desire to be popular and relevant.
Sometimes, the non-specialist writer with the discipline of a tight style guide is what you need.
(Having just realised that I haven't seen Horizon for a while, the BBC don't seem to have made new episodes for a couple of years now. What the heck is that about?)
A little over a decade ago, I met a New Scientist journalist on a Scottish hill. We chatted for a while; and I said I used to religiously read it, but I did not any more. When he asked why, I said it had dumbed down too much, and gone too sensational. He sighed and agreed, then gave a pleasant rant about the publication...
A neighbour used to work at the Economist. Identical views on the changes there....
You should see what has happened to the IET magazine since the IEE merged with some other institution and became IET.
47% voted for Tories or Brexit Party in 2019 in Britain. In 2017 the figure was 45.4% (with UKIP instead of Brexit).
That was before Brexit was officially recognised to be rubbish. In my opinion it's destroyed both Reform and the Tories chances of redemption within the next several decades if at all.
Tory govt nailed on 2029
Reform Tory coalition at best, if Reform will entertain it.
I think post 2029 will be a Tory - Labour coalition with a small majority thay relies on Libdem confidence and supply to get things through.
I'm not sure the voting public are ready to accept (or will accept) German-style Grand Coalitions.
47% voted for Tories or Brexit Party in 2019 in Britain. In 2017 the figure was 45.4% (with UKIP instead of Brexit).
That was before Brexit was officially recognised to be rubbish. In my opinion it's destroyed both Reform and the Tories chances of redemption within the next several decades if at all.
Tory govt nailed on 2029
Reform Tory coalition at best, if Reform will entertain it.
I think post 2029 will be a Tory - Labour coalition with a small majority thay relies on Libdem confidence and supply to get things through.
2029 will be a fun election with lots of connotations .Labour will have a landslide loss but could still be the government. The Tories need to come to their senses if they are to displace them and try having some small state policies for a change rather than the Dave and Boris big state pig out
.....Much of it done by Johnson and Truss. Interestingly I count 25 women in the shot and 18 men. That rebalance is one of the great advances of this parliament and something that hints the country might be moving forward on several fronts
Why are people with different genitals a "great advance"? It is neither an advance nor a retreat in itself. What we need are the best people, regardless of their gender.
Surely the more representative it is of the people it represents the better. Margaret Thatcher had one woman in her cabinet. Were there no women with the ability of men to hold one of the other 23 positions?
47% voted for Tories or Brexit Party in 2019 in Britain. In 2017 the figure was 45.4% (with UKIP instead of Brexit).
That was before Brexit was officially recognised to be rubbish. In my opinion it's destroyed both Reform and the Tories chances of redemption within the next several decades if at all.
Tory govt nailed on 2029
Reform Tory coalition at best, if Reform will entertain it.
I think post 2029 will be a Tory - Labour coalition with a small majority thay relies on Libdem confidence and supply to get things through.
I'm not sure the voting public are ready to accept (or will accept) German-style Grand Coalitions.
If the result means that a Labour - Tory coalition is the only viable way of forming a government, they may have to.
It won't and if he gets through COVID relatively unscathed at over 80 he can use that to boost his health status claims
Didn't think of that, but that's a good point too.
I think he is too big at 2.6 now for the nomination, we basically have heard via social media that he's told Pelosi where to go.
I fear that you're right. There's too much of a temptation to assume that the Democrats are somehow collectively capable of taking the blindingly obvious course necessary to stay in the game and factor that in to the odds, and I think the 2.6 reflects that.
The problem is that there is no mechanism to force him to go if he doesn’t want to. He can just say “nah, I’m staying in” and there is absolutely nothing anyone can do about it. Even if the whole Democratic establishment turns on him and tells him it’s a bad idea.
I still think there’s a chance they do get him to bow out (based on current media reports), but it is going to be a close run thing and the longer he clings on the more unedifying and difficult it becomes to avoid political damage. The best way would have been for a period of reflection after the debate followed by a calm handover. As it is he’s being dragged out kicking and screaming, and it’s not very edifying.
But surely it doesn't matter - he is the Democratic Party's nominee, not the king of the party. If the party wants to create a mechanism to free his delegates and push him off the ballot - they can make that. He can always participate in it and see if he wins.
I also agree with the people arguing about using the 25th - but I think that would sink Kamala as a future unity candidate because the Biden team will destroy her future.
You raise an interesting point that I don’t know the answer to. I agree that the party should be able to change the rules, but the question I do have is that the US party system has a very weird interrelation with state and federal law, and instead of things we would expect to be dealt with in party constitutions some rules are actually codified into law.
E.g - I am sure that I have heard that pledged delegates are forbidden from voting for another candidate unless released, and that is a legal requirement not a persuasive or party based one.
My theory is that Reform are still taboo for many right wingers, but a merger with the Tories would detoxify them. It’s a tale as old as time.
So pronouncing that current toxicity means you can’t simply add up the bloc numbers is perhaps premature.
Thatcher managed to kill off the National Front and absorb their voters in 1979 simply by making an immigration pledge, and passing the 1981 British Nationality Act.
Practical politics. Today, they'd be told "we don't want any of your votes", and so they wouldn't get any of their votes.
Which is what Dave did in 2007 to 2010. Possibly with the Thatcher approach in mind.
Trouble is that something that worked for Thatcher became a millstone for the governments of Cameron and all his successors. Not sure why, but I suspect it's important.
Initial suspicions are either that immigration fears are dampened down massively when people feel better off or that squeezing immigration was just easier in the 1980s than the 2020s because of the shape of British demographics.
I think it's the latter.
It's very hard to make a highly globalised economy like ours, based on services, work without high levels of immigration, particularly since for low end services there are millions of jobs we all depend upon yet are low pay for long hours. People don't want to pay much more money for all those and, even if they did, it's not clear if many Brits would do the work anyway.
If we stopped it all immigration would certainly go "down" but social care, health, some universities, and many food supply chains would also go down.
What is the solution?
The other issue is that there are now low millions of people living in this country with strong connections back to their countries of origin, whether that is the subcontinent or many parts of Africa. They often want to bring spouses, parents and family members for education or otherwise. That base makes reducing immigration to 1980s levels almost impossible without taking the flack for splitting up families and cases that will generate considerable sympathy on an individual basis.
I think that we have to accept that the consequence of past immigration is more immigration in future and recalibrate our expectations accordingly.
Without immigration, we get a falling population and one that is increasingly old, frail and unable to work. If we really want to reduce immigration, we have to work very hard to:
(1) make emigration less of a compelling need in the first place. That means tackling the effects of severe climate change in many parts of the world, finding equitable solutions to regional conflicts and building the economies of countries in Africa and much of Asia.
(2) finding ways to incentivise more women in the UK to have babies.
In other words, we have to do a lot of incredibly difficult, expensive and time-consuming things. It's the work of decades. And that's only if there is the will to do it in the first place, which there very clearly isn't.
3) Mechanisation.
But that would mean Britain would have to stop spending on property and start spending on productive capital.
.....Much of it done by Johnson and Truss. Interestingly I count 25 women in the shot and 18 men. That rebalance is one of the great advances of this parliament and something that hints the country might be moving forward on several fronts
Why are people with different genitals a "great advance"? It is neither an advance nor a retreat in itself. What we need are the best people, regardless of their gender.
A roughly even distribution is an indicator that you may indeed be getting the best people. Assuming that talent is equally spread across the genders, then a group that consisted mainly of one gender would be very unlikely to have the best available talent. Statistics and logic, innit?
Or you may be getting a random or representative sample or the most X for any X not gender or race linked - the greediest, most stupid etc.
.....Much of it done by Johnson and Truss. Interestingly I count 25 women in the shot and 18 men. That rebalance is one of the great advances of this parliament and something that hints the country might be moving forward on several fronts
Why are people with different genitals a "great advance"? It is neither an advance nor a retreat in itself. What we need are the best people, regardless of their gender.
Surely the more representative it is of the people it represents the better. Margaret Thatcher had one woman in her cabinet. Were there no women with the ability of men to hold one of the other 23 positions?
ROFL
Labour hasn't had a fulltime woman leader ever, Even the fking DUP has got there.
Those old 80s anthems just dont work the way they used to.
My theory is that Reform are still taboo for many right wingers, but a merger with the Tories would detoxify them. It’s a tale as old as time.
So pronouncing that current toxicity means you can’t simply add up the bloc numbers is perhaps premature.
Thatcher managed to kill off the National Front and absorb their voters in 1979 simply by making an immigration pledge, and passing the 1981 British Nationality Act.
Practical politics. Today, they'd be told "we don't want any of your votes", and so they wouldn't get any of their votes.
Which is what Dave did in 2007 to 2010. Possibly with the Thatcher approach in mind.
Trouble is that something that worked for Thatcher became a millstone for the governments of Cameron and all his successors. Not sure why, but I suspect it's important.
Initial suspicions are either that immigration fears are dampened down massively when people feel better off or that squeezing immigration was just easier in the 1980s than the 2020s because of the shape of British demographics.
I think it's the latter.
It's very hard to make a highly globalised economy like ours, based on services, work without high levels of immigration, particularly since for low end services there are millions of jobs we all depend upon yet are low pay for long hours. People don't want to pay much more money for all those and, even if they did, it's not clear if many Brits would do the work anyway.
If we stopped it all immigration would certainly go "down" but social care, health, some universities, and many food supply chains would also go down.
What is the solution?
'Low pay for long hours' and people won't do it. Switch the domain, and think about being CEO of a large company, or in the top level of banking. The message we hear constantly is that they are worth their millions because (a) it's the going rate and (b) you have to pay to get the talent.
I don't argue with that, but goose, gander. We are a free market. You discover what is the right pay by what pay attracts about the right number of good applicants, not by pre-ordaining that this job has to be low paid and importing cheap labour.
It's strange how capitalism/free marketeers/better off people forget their own principles when it is about other people.
Only because they can get enough benefits to not be cold and hungry.
That's the basic ground rule of wealthy western societies, it's not something that is a unique UK issue, so it doesn't change the general picture, except that it sets a minimum well above benefits people who work have to be paid if you want applicants.
Benefits should be limited only to UK citizens. If companies want to bring in immigrants, they’ll need to pay them enough to live without any recourse to public funds.
Indeed: when my wife came to the UK on a visa, it had the words "not entitled in benefits" (or similar) printed on it. (The exception being, I guess, the NHS.)
However... If an immigrant on a visa is paying National Insurance, are they "saving" for a pension, in the same way a Brit is?
Another reason to ditch the monarchy, it subverts democracy/the will of the people.
Sir Keir Starmer might be forced to keep two hereditary peers because of their links to the King.
The Prime Minister has pledged to remove hereditary peers from the House of Lords by making all those aged 80 and above step down.
The House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill will remove their right to sit and vote in Parliament’s upper chamber after officials criticised the “outdated and indefensible” presence of those who were there solely by right of birth.
It is considered the first step in Sir Keir’s efforts to modernise the Lords and make it “fit for the 21st century”.
However, of the 92 remaining hereditary peers, the roles of the Earl Marshal and the Lord Great Chamberlain are likely to be exempt because of the constitutional role they play on state occasions, sources admitted.
The Earl Marshal is a hereditary office that requires him to organise major ceremonial occasions.
No it doesn't, he had no manifesto commitment to remove the monarchy or the Earl Marshal and Lord Great Chamberlain.
Indeed Tories should oppose all this act of constitutional vandalism, Labour may have had a manifesto commitment to remove the remaining hereditary peers, the Tories didn't
.....Much of it done by Johnson and Truss. Interestingly I count 25 women in the shot and 18 men. That rebalance is one of the great advances of this parliament and something that hints the country might be moving forward on several fronts
Why are people with different genitals a "great advance"? It is neither an advance nor a retreat in itself. What we need are the best people, regardless of their gender.
A roughly even distribution is an indicator that you may indeed be getting the best people. Assuming that talent is equally spread across the genders, then a group that consisted mainly of one gender would be very unlikely to have the best available talent. Statistics and logic, innit?
Or you may be getting a random or representative sample or the most X for any X not gender or race linked - the greediest, most stupid etc.
Well, yes, hence the "may" in my post. You may be getting the best people if you have a roughly equal distribution across the genders, but you almost certainly aren't if you don't.
It won't and if he gets through COVID relatively unscathed at over 80 he can use that to boost his health status claims
Didn't think of that, but that's a good point too.
I think he is too big at 2.6 now for the nomination, we basically have heard via social media that he's told Pelosi where to go.
I fear that you're right. There's too much of a temptation to assume that the Democrats are somehow collectively capable of taking the blindingly obvious course necessary to stay in the game and factor that in to the odds, and I think the 2.6 reflects that.
The problem is that there is no mechanism to force him to go if he doesn’t want to. He can just say “nah, I’m staying in” and there is absolutely nothing anyone can do about it. Even if the whole Democratic establishment turns on him and tells him it’s a bad idea.
I still think there’s a chance they do get him to bow out (based on current media reports), but it is going to be a close run thing and the longer he clings on the more unedifying and difficult it becomes to avoid political damage. The best way would have been for a period of reflection after the debate followed by a calm handover. As it is he’s being dragged out kicking and screaming, and it’s not very edifying.
There is a mechanism, in the constitution. The 25th Amendment, Article 4.
The problem is it requires Kamala to wield the knife herself, and the Cabinet to agree with her. No hiding spot to let someone else do it.
25 is kicking off a civil war in the Democrat Party. Not to mention the legal fun that will ensue. Which will go all the way to the Supreme Court. Who will probably rule that the 25th Amendment only works if the Speaker of the House does 25 hand stand pushups or something.
47% voted for Tories or Brexit Party in 2019 in Britain. In 2017 the figure was 45.4% (with UKIP instead of Brexit).
That was before Brexit was officially recognised to be rubbish. In my opinion it's destroyed both Reform and the Tories chances of redemption within the next several decades if at all.
Tory govt nailed on 2029
Reform Tory coalition at best, if Reform will entertain it.
I think post 2029 will be a Tory - Labour coalition with a small majority thay relies on Libdem confidence and supply to get things through.
I'm not sure the voting public are ready to accept (or will accept) German-style Grand Coalitions.
If the result means that a Labour - Tory coalition is the only viable way of forming a government, they may have to.
What sort of seat counts are you envisioning to make that happen?
My theory is that Reform are still taboo for many right wingers, but a merger with the Tories would detoxify them. It’s a tale as old as time.
So pronouncing that current toxicity means you can’t simply add up the bloc numbers is perhaps premature.
Thatcher managed to kill off the National Front and absorb their voters in 1979 simply by making an immigration pledge, and passing the 1981 British Nationality Act.
Practical politics. Today, they'd be told "we don't want any of your votes", and so they wouldn't get any of their votes.
Which is what Dave did in 2007 to 2010. Possibly with the Thatcher approach in mind.
Trouble is that something that worked for Thatcher became a millstone for the governments of Cameron and all his successors. Not sure why, but I suspect it's important.
Initial suspicions are either that immigration fears are dampened down massively when people feel better off or that squeezing immigration was just easier in the 1980s than the 2020s because of the shape of British demographics.
I think it's the latter.
It's very hard to make a highly globalised economy like ours, based on services, work without high levels of immigration, particularly since for low end services there are millions of jobs we all depend upon yet are low pay for long hours. People don't want to pay much more money for all those and, even if they did, it's not clear if many Brits would do the work anyway.
If we stopped it all immigration would certainly go "down" but social care, health, some universities, and many food supply chains would also go down.
What is the solution?
The other issue is that there are now low millions of people living in this country with strong connections back to their countries of origin, whether that is the subcontinent or many parts of Africa. They often want to bring spouses, parents and family members for education or otherwise. That base makes reducing immigration to 1980s levels almost impossible without taking the flack for splitting up families and cases that will generate considerable sympathy on an individual basis.
I think that we have to accept that the consequence of past immigration is more immigration in future and recalibrate our expectations accordingly.
Without immigration, we get a falling population and one that is increasingly old, frail and unable to work. If we really want to reduce immigration, we have to work very hard to:
(1) make emigration less of a compelling need in the first place. That means tackling the effects of severe climate change in many parts of the world, finding equitable solutions to regional conflicts and building the economies of countries in Africa and much of Asia.
(2) finding ways to incentivise more women in the UK to have babies.
In other words, we have to do a lot of incredibly difficult, expensive and time-consuming things. It's the work of decades. And that's only if there is the will to do it in the first place, which there very clearly isn't.
3) Mechanisation.
But that would mean Britain would have to stop spending on property and start spending on productive capital.
There was a somewhat hilarious BBC interview with some green house farmers, a little while back. Having to reduce business due to lack of workers. Not a single worker was seen, in the working greenhouses. Almost as if they were hiding something.
It won't and if he gets through COVID relatively unscathed at over 80 he can use that to boost his health status claims
Didn't think of that, but that's a good point too.
I think he is too big at 2.6 now for the nomination, we basically have heard via social media that he's told Pelosi where to go.
I fear that you're right. There's too much of a temptation to assume that the Democrats are somehow collectively capable of taking the blindingly obvious course necessary to stay in the game and factor that in to the odds, and I think the 2.6 reflects that.
The problem is that there is no mechanism to force him to go if he doesn’t want to. He can just say “nah, I’m staying in” and there is absolutely nothing anyone can do about it. Even if the whole Democratic establishment turns on him and tells him it’s a bad idea.
I still think there’s a chance they do get him to bow out (based on current media reports), but it is going to be a close run thing and the longer he clings on the more unedifying and difficult it becomes to avoid political damage. The best way would have been for a period of reflection after the debate followed by a calm handover. As it is he’s being dragged out kicking and screaming, and it’s not very edifying.
There is a mechanism, in the constitution. The 25th Amendment, Article 4.
The problem is it requires Kamala to wield the knife herself, and the Cabinet to agree with her. No hiding spot to let someone else do it.
25 is kicking off a civil war in the Democrat Party. Not to mention the legal fun that will ensue. Which will go all the way to the Supreme Court. Who will probably rule that the 25th Amendment only works if the Speaker of the House does 25 hand stand pushups or something.
It's achievable by other methods. Resignation, non cooperation over the autocue, persuade his doctor to diagnose something.
The quote about Harris shows just how badly Biden has dealt with his relationship with his VP.
I am sure this will all come out in the fullness of time but it feels like he never really has trusted or believed in her. I think her reputation has suffered for that. There may be reasons he thinks she can’t win or that she has done something to aggrieve him (is that debate comment still annoying him and Jill?) but as a sitting President who pledged to be a bridge to a new generation it was incumbent on him to keep her close and to support her and push her forward.
If Biden can’t win then he should let her - the woman he chose to be his second in command - have a go. That’s all there is to it.
47% voted for Tories or Brexit Party in 2019 in Britain. In 2017 the figure was 45.4% (with UKIP instead of Brexit).
That was before Brexit was officially recognised to be rubbish. In my opinion it's destroyed both Reform and the Tories chances of redemption within the next several decades if at all.
Tory govt nailed on 2029
Now you're almost French by marriage I'd have thought your somewhat isolationist views might nave tempered. Have you thought about the possibilities of twinning Ludlow with Versailles?
The LibDems are the least scrupulous party of the mainstream in GB, perhaps because they feel so sure they're right and the system is unfair that they have to manipulate it in any way they can? The level of misleading leaflets (espcially in quoting polls. sometimes omitting the Y-axis or relating to a different area) completely dwarfs what the other main parties offer, though none of the parties are squeaky clean. It's quite successful at a local level and they're hard to dislike in any other way so they get away with it. But arguably there are invisible drawbacks in reluctance to give way even when they are clearly the main local alternative to the Tories,
Oh come off it Nick. You should have seen some of the bar charts Lab and the Tories put out in Guildford at this election. Lab trying to claim it was neck and neck between them and the Tories. Tories did similarly. On polling day there was a good morning leaflet with two bars of equal length for the Tories and Labour with the LDs hardly registering and no reference as to where that came from at all and we can't think of anything it can possibly represent.
And the result was?
Oh and I remember Lab doing a bar chart and only Lab can win here and a vote for the LDs is a wasted vote in a Euro election with PR!!! Unscrupulous?
I've only experienced the LibDems seriously in 3 constituencies - Broxtowe (where objectively they were and are a distant 3rd), Godalming and Ash (where objectively they're 2nd and challenging for 1st) and Didcot and Wantage (where they've been 2nd for a while). In all three they've played the "only we can win here" card, but in G&A more mildly ("so we'd like to borrow your vote"), as they included Labour as junior partners in coalition, and in return the Labour vote at GEs has sunk to 5%. There's a case for saying that being less unscrupulous pays off.
Obviously the real villain of the piece is the electoral system. But the way it's played has subtle effects on later cooperation.
I have only ever been in LD/Tory battles so obviously we have used it a lot. I have only ever been honest, but admittedly that has been easy because I haven't had to manipulate as the message was true because of where I was. I have to say (and this might me being biased here) that the LD manipulation is usually quite clever i.e. true but misleading, as opposed to an outright lie as we were getting in Guildford by both the Tories and Labour. For example in Suffolk Coastal the LD leaflet identified us as the challengers based upon the last local election results in wards in the constituency (not sure if it used gains or overall). Perfectly factual. The Greens could have made a similar slightly different claim. We came 4th and they came 5th in the end in the GE.. Not lying, but relevant? No.
@NickPalmer if you ever speak to anyone involved in the Labour campaign in Guildford I would love to know what was going through their minds? I accept locals will want to campaign locally but why did they spend so much on massive bus adverts and why was the candidate apparently working it full time and not in Aldershot and why all the misleading stuff. It is not like they even tried in reality. They didn't take advantage of the free addressed Royal Mail delivery. Just a bog standard one and outside of a very, very small area they didn't do anything. Those working it seemed hell bent on returning a Tory to Guildford.
As a Lib Dem activist and sometime candidate who, as well as being involved in campaigns against the Tories across Oxfordshire and other parts of the country, has also faced Labour in a number of elections, I find the claim coming from a Labour activist that the Lib Dems 'feel so sure they're right' strikingly lacking in self-awareness. To me, one of the defining characteristics of the Labour Party is a certainty that their position, whatever it may be at the time, is unchallengeably correct.
It won't and if he gets through COVID relatively unscathed at over 80 he can use that to boost his health status claims
Didn't think of that, but that's a good point too.
I think he is too big at 2.6 now for the nomination, we basically have heard via social media that he's told Pelosi where to go.
I fear that you're right. There's too much of a temptation to assume that the Democrats are somehow collectively capable of taking the blindingly obvious course necessary to stay in the game and factor that in to the odds, and I think the 2.6 reflects that.
The problem is that there is no mechanism to force him to go if he doesn’t want to. He can just say “nah, I’m staying in” and there is absolutely nothing anyone can do about it. Even if the whole Democratic establishment turns on him and tells him it’s a bad idea.
I still think there’s a chance they do get him to bow out (based on current media reports), but it is going to be a close run thing and the longer he clings on the more unedifying and difficult it becomes to avoid political damage. The best way would have been for a period of reflection after the debate followed by a calm handover. As it is he’s being dragged out kicking and screaming, and it’s not very edifying.
There is a mechanism, in the constitution. The 25th Amendment, Article 4.
The problem is it requires Kamala to wield the knife herself, and the Cabinet to agree with her. No hiding spot to let someone else do it.
25 is kicking off a civil war in the Democrat Party. Not to mention the legal fun that will ensue. Which will go all the way to the Supreme Court. Who will probably rule that the 25th Amendment only works if the Speaker of the House does 25 hand stand pushups or something.
It's achievable by other methods. Resignation, non cooperation over the autocue, persuade his doctor to diagnose something.
All of which involve high jinks that will kick off legal action - except for resignation. Which might well not work.
47% voted for Tories or Brexit Party in 2019 in Britain. In 2017 the figure was 45.4% (with UKIP instead of Brexit).
That was before Brexit was officially recognised to be rubbish. In my opinion it's destroyed both Reform and the Tories chances of redemption within the next several decades if at all.
Tory govt nailed on 2029
Reform Tory coalition at best, if Reform will entertain it.
I think post 2029 will be a Tory - Labour coalition with a small majority thay relies on Libdem confidence and supply to get things through.
I'm not sure the voting public are ready to accept (or will accept) German-style Grand Coalitions.
If the result means that a Labour - Tory coalition is the only viable way of forming a government, they may have to.
What sort of seat counts are you envisioning to make that happen?
Labour losing a lot. Tories winning some. Big rises for Reform and sundry left wing parties from disillusioned Labour voters.
The Isle of Man buses were magnificent - Mercedes Benz, comfortable, big, smooth and perfectly flexible to drive round small villages and down relatively narrow lanes. Perhaps we should do Germany a favour and do a bulk order for 50,000 buses.
Seriously, buses in London are vital - the routes (often historical) need to be re-thought to cover where people really are and where they want to go now but that's a long term job. The big problem is drivers who think they are at Le Mans or Silverstone and are so obsessed with keeping to timetable they don't give the elderly and the semi-mobile a chance to sit down before they lurch away from the stop. The other problem is the different levels inside the bus which aren't helpful to older passengers.
We also have the hardy perennial of wheelchair vs pushchair (I've seen people nearly come to blows).
I was told by a driver that the lurching away from a stop was a condition of older buses, combined poor maintenance. He liked driving the Boris buses because the power train didn't do that.
Hence the argument for investing in new stock - I must confess the newer hybrid buses in London such as on route 366 are a much better experience but presumably cost pressures mean whole fleets can't be renewed at once.
Scrapping perfectly serviceable buses is the most environmentally unfriendly thing you can do.
Build/demolish is a huge proportion of environmental footprint.
That needs to be calculated in each case.
For motor vehicles, the operating life is predominant - especially for things like buses that do hundreds of thousands of miles at a rate of about 35k per annum in London.
For private electric vehicles, the emissions breakeven point these days compared to ICE is at something like 20k miles. Somewhat dependent on electricity supply - but that is progressively decarbonising as we know.
Amused to see Starmer is meeting European leaders at Blenheim Palace. The War of the Spanish Succession was of course a great example of European cooperation... but I am not sure what Macron will make of it
One of Dave's best acts as Foreign Secretary was to choose Blenheim Palace as the location.
Any party that decides to change the Eurostar terminus from St. Pancras back to Waterloo station will win my vote for life.
Bugger that last for a game of commuters on the Tube. It's bad enough not having direct connections with Eurostar from the north *in the same station* without having that added as well.
I say that as somebody who is from Sheffield and uses St Pancras a lot.
Plus, hang on, you use the Tube? You utter peasant, use Uber Luxury, that's the way to travel in London.
I went from St Pancras to Nottingham yesterday. It’s a strange experience, travelling via our most glamorous railway terminal to some of the least glamorous destinations in the country.
The mobile reception on the East Midlands mainline is shit too.
The long journey also gave me the opportunity to read the Economist for the first time in ages. I’d forgotten what a weirdly patronising and self-conscious title it is. It’s like what EdExcel would publish if they did a “magazine” to help A Level students with their Politics and Economics. The tone throughout is “educational”.
Once you realise that it’s written mostly by a bunch of twentysomething arts graduates with a very tight style guide, it all starts to make sense.
It's also rather good; better than any other British newspaper. Yes, it's not perfect, but that still leaves plenty of room to be better than the others.
And it's coverage of science (a couple of key stories each week, snappily told) is about the best in the mainstream media. Way better than New Scientist, which has fallen a long way in its desire to be popular and relevant.
Sometimes, the non-specialist writer with the discipline of a tight style guide is what you need.
(Having just realised that I haven't seen Horizon for a while, the BBC don't seem to have made new episodes for a couple of years now. What the heck is that about?)
A little over a decade ago, I met a New Scientist journalist on a Scottish hill. We chatted for a while; and I said I used to religiously read it, but I did not any more. When he asked why, I said it had dumbed down too much, and gone too sensational. He sighed and agreed, then gave a pleasant rant about the publication...
A neighbour used to work at the Economist. Identical views on the changes there....
You should see what has happened to the IET magazine since the IEE merged with some other institution and became IET.
My uni's library had an archive of Byte magazines going back to the late 1970s. They were a treasure trove of computing knowledge; as a new concept came along, the magazine would have articles explaining it in a clear and concise manner. Whether that was RISC versus CISC chips, new OSs, or even things like Object-Orientated Programming. Some of those articles were better than books for getting to know a topic. Many articles perfectly caught the fine line between explaining a topic well without dumbing down.
I can't believe the magazine stopped being published over 25 years ago. I still miss it.
The LibDems are the least scrupulous party of the mainstream in GB, perhaps because they feel so sure they're right and the system is unfair that they have to manipulate it in any way they can? The level of misleading leaflets (espcially in quoting polls. sometimes omitting the Y-axis or relating to a different area) completely dwarfs what the other main parties offer, though none of the parties are squeaky clean. It's quite successful at a local level and they're hard to dislike in any other way so they get away with it. But arguably there are invisible drawbacks in reluctance to give way even when they are clearly the main local alternative to the Tories,
Not carrying any bitterness that the LDs chose the Tories in 2010. Oh no, not at all. ;-)
... or indeed any bitterness that the seat in which the OP campaigned long and hard at the GE, and which he claimed was terribly close between Labour and the LDs, in reality was won comfortably by the latter, with the third-placed Labour vote down on 2019, slightly ahead of RefUK?
Yes, yes, it's all politics and aren't the Liberal Democrats nasty and unscrupulous?
Seriously?
Ed Davey and the LDs played a system they neither like nor want nor does them any favours for maximum advantage and all we now hear is moaning from the "losers" including an activist for a Party which won over 400 seats.
Labour has occasionally "talked" about change to the electoral system - usually when they've been on the wrong end of an election defeat. We may now hear the Conservatives begin to "think aloud" about PR. Neither is sincere - the duopoly has survived fairly comfortably - 58% of the vote has got the two parties 84% of the seats in England, Scotland and Wales so the current system works fine for both Conservative and Labour and for that reason alone there'll be no change until one or both of them is decisively defeated.
Farage and Davey can shout into the dark calling for PR but it will get them nowhere.
As for the "let's add Reform and the Conservatives and call it a single bloc" - that was widely derided on here months ago by the more thoughtful commentators and analysts. There was never any polling evidence of a direct transfer - at most a third of Reform voters would support a Conservative in the absence of a Reform candidate.
The Conservatives lost votes to Reform, to Labour and in some places to the Liberal Democrats and the Greens and also suffered considerable abstention (as did Labour). Until we get more definitive research on what happened to the Conservative vote and why 47% of the 2019 vote disappeared, we're speculating. We can all have our pet theories and I suspect the answer will vary from region to region and even from seat to seat.
I wouldn't disagree with anything you've written here but...
Doing a ton of analysis I am sure is valuable and will yield some insights, but really - what is it really going to reveal? Some small tweak of messaging around housing or the environment or immigration that would bring back a few voters? They were just unpopular and the electorate were determined to give them a punishement beating.
And over-analysis always runs the risk that you end up fighting the last war.
Politics is often about momentum (the Tories have none) and a big idea over the longer term (the Tories have to find one). If I was running this (I wouldn't want to) then merging with Reform (aka "New Tory" or Conservative+) has the potential to deliver momentum (but not without risk).
In terms of the big idea, if we can all agree that the Empire 2.0 project is dead, then we have to decide who to hitch our wagon to.
I'd look to get back into the EU but that's not going to wash with Conservative+
So that leaves the US, and specifically Trump and Project 2025. The Project 2025 stuff leaves me utterly cold (Project Handmaid might be a better title) and I would fight it tooth and nail, but for Conservative+ and US-backing some sort of 'Project 2029' might yield strong results:
- return to family values and what the US calls under the Orwellian phrase 'headship' (strong male head of the family, women very much in supporting/child-rearing role) - massive bonfire of eco-laws - pun very much intended - DoJ under direct parliamentary control - a version of unitary executive theory to attenuate the 'enemies of the people' judges - extreme anti-immigration (read John Lanchester's 'The Wall' for ideas on how a Net Zero Immigration policy would have to work)
You get the idea.
Just typing all this makes me feel extremely queasy. It's a dystopian wishlist. But there must be conversations like this going on, Truss and JRM have the time and contacts to work in the background to make it happen.
Be interested to get others' opinions. I hope everyone else is as queasy as I am reading this...
First, thanks for the thoughtful response and please feel free to contribute a little more. I don't think you're the only "Bookseller" in these parts.
You're not wrong would be my simplistic response.
It is the fundamental question with which we've struggled since 1945 - what is or should be Britain's place in the world?
MacMillan and Heath decided Europe was the political and economic future and that was the prevailing belief in Government from 1956 to 2016. Yet our membership of the EU was often half hearted and rebate obsessed - yes, we enjoyed free trade (and in truth most would happily sign up to the old "Common Market" now) but Europe wanted monetary and eventually political union. We didn't want to be a part of Europe so we choose to be apart from Europe.
I don't know what "Global Britain" was meant to be in 2016 and I still don't know. Clearly, trying to resurrect some kind of post-Imperial relationship with Canada, Australia and New Zealand (why not South Africa or India?) doesn't work - these countries have other geo-strategic concerns.
We're then dead in the water - I argued for framing a new EFTA as an economic counterweight to the EU bringing in countries like Switzerland, Norway and others but that went nowhere.
If we try to re-engage with the EU we're going to have to swallow a double portion of humble pie with a side order of humiliation (it may be the EU is entering a more pragmatic phase as leaders change) but that's an option. We can hope the Democrats prevail in November but even if they do the pull of the Pacific and China will still be there.
It won't and if he gets through COVID relatively unscathed at over 80 he can use that to boost his health status claims
Didn't think of that, but that's a good point too.
I think he is too big at 2.6 now for the nomination, we basically have heard via social media that he's told Pelosi where to go.
I fear that you're right. There's too much of a temptation to assume that the Democrats are somehow collectively capable of taking the blindingly obvious course necessary to stay in the game and factor that in to the odds, and I think the 2.6 reflects that.
The problem is that there is no mechanism to force him to go if he doesn’t want to. He can just say “nah, I’m staying in” and there is absolutely nothing anyone can do about it. Even if the whole Democratic establishment turns on him and tells him it’s a bad idea.
I still think there’s a chance they do get him to bow out (based on current media reports), but it is going to be a close run thing and the longer he clings on the more unedifying and difficult it becomes to avoid political damage. The best way would have been for a period of reflection after the debate followed by a calm handover. As it is he’s being dragged out kicking and screaming, and it’s not very edifying.
There is a mechanism, in the constitution. The 25th Amendment, Article 4.
The problem is it requires Kamala to wield the knife herself, and the Cabinet to agree with her. No hiding spot to let someone else do it.
25 is kicking off a civil war in the Democrat Party. Not to mention the legal fun that will ensue. Which will go all the way to the Supreme Court. Who will probably rule that the 25th Amendment only works if the Speaker of the House does 25 hand stand pushups or something.
It's achievable by other methods. Resignation, non cooperation over the autocue, persuade his doctor to diagnose something.
All of which involve high jinks that will kick off legal action - except for resignation. Which might well not work.
You can't usually sue people for resigning and you don't look great complaining you are helpless without being propped up.
The Isle of Man buses were magnificent - Mercedes Benz, comfortable, big, smooth and perfectly flexible to drive round small villages and down relatively narrow lanes. Perhaps we should do Germany a favour and do a bulk order for 50,000 buses.
Seriously, buses in London are vital - the routes (often historical) need to be re-thought to cover where people really are and where they want to go now but that's a long term job. The big problem is drivers who think they are at Le Mans or Silverstone and are so obsessed with keeping to timetable they don't give the elderly and the semi-mobile a chance to sit down before they lurch away from the stop. The other problem is the different levels inside the bus which aren't helpful to older passengers.
We also have the hardy perennial of wheelchair vs pushchair (I've seen people nearly come to blows).
I was told by a driver that the lurching away from a stop was a condition of older buses, combined poor maintenance. He liked driving the Boris buses because the power train didn't do that.
Hence the argument for investing in new stock - I must confess the newer hybrid buses in London such as on route 366 are a much better experience but presumably cost pressures mean whole fleets can't be renewed at once.
Scrapping perfectly serviceable buses is the most environmentally unfriendly thing you can do.
Build/demolish is a huge proportion of environmental footprint.
That needs to be calculated in each case.
For motor vehicles, the operating life is predominant - especially for things like buses that do hundreds of thousands of miles at a rate of about 35k per annum in London.
For private electric vehicles, the emissions breakeven point these days compared to ICE is at something like 20k miles. Somewhat dependent on electricity supply - but that is progressively decarbonising as we know.
Also, buses go through expensive and massive teardowns every few years. From what I understand the cost of these is a substantial proportion of the value of a new bus.
The original plan for the Boris buses was (as with nearly all introductions of new vehicles) to roll them out, gradually, route by route.
.....Much of it done by Johnson and Truss. Interestingly I count 25 women in the shot and 18 men. That rebalance is one of the great advances of this parliament and something that hints the country might be moving forward on several fronts
Why are people with different genitals a "great advance"? It is neither an advance nor a retreat in itself. What we need are the best people, regardless of their gender.
Surely the more representative it is of the people it represents the better. Margaret Thatcher had one woman in her cabinet. Were there no women with the ability of men to hold one of the other 23 positions?
ROFL
Labour hasn't had a fulltime woman leader ever, Even the fking DUP has got there.
Those old 80s anthems just dont work the way they used to.
Remind me what happened to the three Conservative female Prime Ministers.
Were they rejected by the electorate in a free and fair election? No, they were thrown out by the Conservative Parliamentary Party.
.....Much of it done by Johnson and Truss. Interestingly I count 25 women in the shot and 18 men. That rebalance is one of the great advances of this parliament and something that hints the country might be moving forward on several fronts
Why are people with different genitals a "great advance"? It is neither an advance nor a retreat in itself. What we need are the best people, regardless of their gender.
Surely the more representative it is of the people it represents the better. Margaret Thatcher had one woman in her cabinet. Were there no women with the ability of men to hold one of the other 23 positions?
ROFL
Labour hasn't had a fulltime woman leader ever, Even the fking DUP has got there.
Those old 80s anthems just dont work the way they used to.
Remind me what happened to the three Conservative female Prime Ministers.
Were they rejected by the electorate in a free and fair election? No, they were thrown out by the Conservative Parliamentary Party.
Amused to see Starmer is meeting European leaders at Blenheim Palace. The War of the Spanish Succession was of course a great example of European cooperation... but I am not sure what Macron will make of it
One of Dave's best acts as Foreign Secretary was to choose Blenheim Palace as the location.
Any party that decides to change the Eurostar terminus from St. Pancras back to Waterloo station will win my vote for life.
Bugger that last for a game of commuters on the Tube. It's bad enough not having direct connections with Eurostar from the north *in the same station* without having that added as well.
I say that as somebody who is from Sheffield and uses St Pancras a lot.
Plus, hang on, you use the Tube? You utter peasant, use Uber Luxury, that's the way to travel in London.
I went from St Pancras to Nottingham yesterday. It’s a strange experience, travelling via our most glamorous railway terminal to some of the least glamorous destinations in the country.
The mobile reception on the East Midlands mainline is shit too.
The long journey also gave me the opportunity to read the Economist for the first time in ages. I’d forgotten what a weirdly patronising and self-conscious title it is. It’s like what EdExcel would publish if they did a “magazine” to help A Level students with their Politics and Economics. The tone throughout is “educational”.
Once you realise that it’s written mostly by a bunch of twentysomething arts graduates with a very tight style guide, it all starts to make sense.
It's also rather good; better than any other British newspaper. Yes, it's not perfect, but that still leaves plenty of room to be better than the others.
And it's coverage of science (a couple of key stories each week, snappily told) is about the best in the mainstream media. Way better than New Scientist, which has fallen a long way in its desire to be popular and relevant.
Sometimes, the non-specialist writer with the discipline of a tight style guide is what you need.
(Having just realised that I haven't seen Horizon for a while, the BBC don't seem to have made new episodes for a couple of years now. What the heck is that about?)
A little over a decade ago, I met a New Scientist journalist on a Scottish hill. We chatted for a while; and I said I used to religiously read it, but I did not any more. When he asked why, I said it had dumbed down too much, and gone too sensational. He sighed and agreed, then gave a pleasant rant about the publication...
A neighbour used to work at the Economist. Identical views on the changes there....
You should see what has happened to the IET magazine since the IEE merged with some other institution and became IET.
My uni's library had an archive of Byte magazines going back to the late 1970s. They were a treasure trove of computing knowledge; as a new concept came along, the magazine would have articles explaining it in a clear and concise manner. Whether that was RISC versus CISC chips, new OSs, or even things like Object-Orientated Programming. Some of those articles were better than books for getting to know a topic. Many articles perfectly caught the fine line between explaining a topic well without dumbing down.
I can't believe the magazine stopped being published over 25 years ago. I still miss it.
Yep. Loved Byte. And my memory is the issues were really thick. A solid wedge of a magazine. And a lot was adverts for the one thousand different companies introducing their new personal computer.
It won't and if he gets through COVID relatively unscathed at over 80 he can use that to boost his health status claims
Didn't think of that, but that's a good point too.
I think he is too big at 2.6 now for the nomination, we basically have heard via social media that he's told Pelosi where to go.
I fear that you're right. There's too much of a temptation to assume that the Democrats are somehow collectively capable of taking the blindingly obvious course necessary to stay in the game and factor that in to the odds, and I think the 2.6 reflects that.
The problem is that there is no mechanism to force him to go if he doesn’t want to. He can just say “nah, I’m staying in” and there is absolutely nothing anyone can do about it. Even if the whole Democratic establishment turns on him and tells him it’s a bad idea.
I still think there’s a chance they do get him to bow out (based on current media reports), but it is going to be a close run thing and the longer he clings on the more unedifying and difficult it becomes to avoid political damage. The best way would have been for a period of reflection after the debate followed by a calm handover. As it is he’s being dragged out kicking and screaming, and it’s not very edifying.
There is a mechanism, in the constitution. The 25th Amendment, Article 4.
The problem is it requires Kamala to wield the knife herself, and the Cabinet to agree with her. No hiding spot to let someone else do it.
25 is kicking off a civil war in the Democrat Party. Not to mention the legal fun that will ensue. Which will go all the way to the Supreme Court. Who will probably rule that the 25th Amendment only works if the Speaker of the House does 25 hand stand pushups or something.
It's achievable by other methods. Resignation, non cooperation over the autocue, persuade his doctor to diagnose something.
All of which involve high jinks that will kick off legal action - except for resignation. Which might well not work.
You can't usually sue people for resigning and you don't look great complaining you are helpless without being propped up.
Amused to see Starmer is meeting European leaders at Blenheim Palace. The War of the Spanish Succession was of course a great example of European cooperation... but I am not sure what Macron will make of it
One of Dave's best acts as Foreign Secretary was to choose Blenheim Palace as the location.
Any party that decides to change the Eurostar terminus from St. Pancras back to Waterloo station will win my vote for life.
Bugger that last for a game of commuters on the Tube. It's bad enough not having direct connections with Eurostar from the north *in the same station* without having that added as well.
I say that as somebody who is from Sheffield and uses St Pancras a lot.
Plus, hang on, you use the Tube? You utter peasant, use Uber Luxury, that's the way to travel in London.
I went from St Pancras to Nottingham yesterday. It’s a strange experience, travelling via our most glamorous railway terminal to some of the least glamorous destinations in the country.
The mobile reception on the East Midlands mainline is shit too.
The long journey also gave me the opportunity to read the Economist for the first time in ages. I’d forgotten what a weirdly patronising and self-conscious title it is. It’s like what EdExcel would publish if they did a “magazine” to help A Level students with their Politics and Economics. The tone throughout is “educational”.
Once you realise that it’s written mostly by a bunch of twentysomething arts graduates with a very tight style guide, it all starts to make sense.
It's also rather good; better than any other British newspaper. Yes, it's not perfect, but that still leaves plenty of room to be better than the others.
And it's coverage of science (a couple of key stories each week, snappily told) is about the best in the mainstream media. Way better than New Scientist, which has fallen a long way in its desire to be popular and relevant.
Sometimes, the non-specialist writer with the discipline of a tight style guide is what you need.
(Having just realised that I haven't seen Horizon for a while, the BBC don't seem to have made new episodes for a couple of years now. What the heck is that about?)
A little over a decade ago, I met a New Scientist journalist on a Scottish hill. We chatted for a while; and I said I used to religiously read it, but I did not any more. When he asked why, I said it had dumbed down too much, and gone too sensational. He sighed and agreed, then gave a pleasant rant about the publication...
A neighbour used to work at the Economist. Identical views on the changes there....
You should see what has happened to the IET magazine since the IEE merged with some other institution and became IET.
My uni's library had an archive of Byte magazines going back to the late 1970s. They were a treasure trove of computing knowledge; as a new concept came along, the magazine would have articles explaining it in a clear and concise manner. Whether that was RISC versus CISC chips, new OSs, or even things like Object-Orientated Programming. Some of those articles were better than books for getting to know a topic. Many articles perfectly caught the fine line between explaining a topic well without dumbing down.
I can't believe the magazine stopped being published over 25 years ago. I still miss it.
Yep. Loved Byte. And my memory is the issues were really thick. A solid wedge of a magazine. And a lot was adverts for the one thousand different companies introducing their new personal computer.
Archive.org has a chunk of them with easy access terms.
47% voted for Tories or Brexit Party in 2019 in Britain. In 2017 the figure was 45.4% (with UKIP instead of Brexit).
That was before Brexit was officially recognised to be rubbish. In my opinion it's destroyed both Reform and the Tories chances of redemption within the next several decades if at all.
Tory govt nailed on 2029
Now you're almost French by marriage I'd have thought your somewhat isolationist views might nave tempered. Have you thought about the possibilities of twinning Ludlow with Versailles?
Well I spent a week round the vicinity of Versailles. The wedding was in a chateau that her dad owns as he's a comte ( not easy to say with an Ulster accent ). However all the in-laws were getting worked up about the 2nd round election so best to smile sweetly and agree with everyone.
It was of course a relief to get back to the real world instead of endless pastries and vins cremants, On a positive note I am meeting a friend on Monday who is treasurer of the Ludlow Arts we shall have long discussion on Franz Kafka and his impact on Peppa Pig over several pints.
Amused to see Starmer is meeting European leaders at Blenheim Palace. The War of the Spanish Succession was of course a great example of European cooperation... but I am not sure what Macron will make of it
One of Dave's best acts as Foreign Secretary was to choose Blenheim Palace as the location.
Any party that decides to change the Eurostar terminus from St. Pancras back to Waterloo station will win my vote for life.
Bugger that last for a game of commuters on the Tube. It's bad enough not having direct connections with Eurostar from the north *in the same station* without having that added as well.
I say that as somebody who is from Sheffield and uses St Pancras a lot.
Plus, hang on, you use the Tube? You utter peasant, use Uber Luxury, that's the way to travel in London.
If you want to take 3/5 times longer than the Tube would take...
But I don't have to deal with the germ ridden great unwashed.
Or wheelchair users (see end of previous thread).
Or many elderly.
PB often has a disturbing tendency to forget those folk (and PBers to forget their own likely future).
As for buses, if Lothian Buses can have two wheelchair/buggy spaces and a quick-acting ramp ... But I forget. It interferes with the free market to have such socialist crap as municipal buses and disabled access. Apparently.
Blind forner colleague of mine said the most important thing is having a regular set of drivers on his service. They knew to look out for him, took notes of when he wasn't at the stop in case something had gone wrong, told him when the route would be diverted for roadworks etc
That's interesting, but it's second best imo.
Why should a service require an exceptional or regular set of drivers to make it possible for eg visually impaired to use it? And I have friends with similar accounts, and agree that regular staff help. But equally services with poor sets of drivers may get a poor service all the time.
What we need is a good service, which will deliver the benefits to everyone - not just those who have a regular journey with regular staff. Irregular travellers also deserve a service which is adequate.
My theory is that Reform are still taboo for many right wingers, but a merger with the Tories would detoxify them. It’s a tale as old as time.
So pronouncing that current toxicity means you can’t simply add up the bloc numbers is perhaps premature.
Thatcher managed to kill off the National Front and absorb their voters in 1979 simply by making an immigration pledge, and passing the 1981 British Nationality Act.
Practical politics. Today, they'd be told "we don't want any of your votes", and so they wouldn't get any of their votes.
Which is what Dave did in 2007 to 2010. Possibly with the Thatcher approach in mind.
Trouble is that something that worked for Thatcher became a millstone for the governments of Cameron and all his successors. Not sure why, but I suspect it's important.
Initial suspicions are either that immigration fears are dampened down massively when people feel better off or that squeezing immigration was just easier in the 1980s than the 2020s because of the shape of British demographics.
I think it's the latter.
It's very hard to make a highly globalised economy like ours, based on services, work without high levels of immigration, particularly since for low end services there are millions of jobs we all depend upon yet are low pay for long hours. People don't want to pay much more money for all those and, even if they did, it's not clear if many Brits would do the work anyway.
If we stopped it all immigration would certainly go "down" but social care, health, some universities, and many food supply chains would also go down.
What is the solution?
'Low pay for long hours' and people won't do it. Switch the domain, and think about being CEO of a large company, or in the top level of banking. The message we hear constantly is that they are worth their millions because (a) it's the going rate and (b) you have to pay to get the talent.
I don't argue with that, but goose, gander. We are a free market. You discover what is the right pay by what pay attracts about the right number of good applicants, not by pre-ordaining that this job has to be low paid and importing cheap labour.
It's strange how capitalism/free marketeers/better off people forget their own principles when it is about other people.
Only because they can get enough benefits to not be cold and hungry.
That's the basic ground rule of wealthy western societies, it's not something that is a unique UK issue, so it doesn't change the general picture, except that it sets a minimum well above benefits people who work have to be paid if you want applicants.
Benefits should be limited only to UK citizens. If companies want to bring in immigrants, they’ll need to pay them enough to live without any recourse to public funds.
Indeed: when my wife came to the UK on a visa, it had the words "not entitled in benefits" (or similar) printed on it. (The exception being, I guess, the NHS.)
However... If an immigrant on a visa is paying National Insurance, are they "saving" for a pension, in the same way a Brit is?
Careful now. Everyone was getting along so nicely.
Particularly on the issue of the ECHR . I think he’s had a very good start to his premiership .
He is certainly a refreshing change and is conducting himself well. But (and I do not say this to diminish the fact that his change of style has been really welcome) of course we are still in the honeymoon. The real tests are still to come.
.....Much of it done by Johnson and Truss. Interestingly I count 25 women in the shot and 18 men. That rebalance is one of the great advances of this parliament and something that hints the country might be moving forward on several fronts
Why are people with different genitals a "great advance"? It is neither an advance nor a retreat in itself. What we need are the best people, regardless of their gender.
Surely the more representative it is of the people it represents the better. Margaret Thatcher had one woman in her cabinet. Were there no women with the ability of men to hold one of the other 23 positions?
ROFL
Labour hasn't had a fulltime woman leader ever, Even the fking DUP has got there.
Those old 80s anthems just dont work the way they used to.
Remind me what happened to the three Conservative female Prime Ministers.
Were they rejected by the electorate in a free and fair election? No, they were thrown out by the Conservative Parliamentary Party.
Amused to see Starmer is meeting European leaders at Blenheim Palace. The War of the Spanish Succession was of course a great example of European cooperation... but I am not sure what Macron will make of it
One of Dave's best acts as Foreign Secretary was to choose Blenheim Palace as the location.
Any party that decides to change the Eurostar terminus from St. Pancras back to Waterloo station will win my vote for life.
Bugger that last for a game of commuters on the Tube. It's bad enough not having direct connections with Eurostar from the north *in the same station* without having that added as well.
I say that as somebody who is from Sheffield and uses St Pancras a lot.
Plus, hang on, you use the Tube? You utter peasant, use Uber Luxury, that's the way to travel in London.
I went from St Pancras to Nottingham yesterday. It’s a strange experience, travelling via our most glamorous railway terminal to some of the least glamorous destinations in the country.
The mobile reception on the East Midlands mainline is shit too.
The long journey also gave me the opportunity to read the Economist for the first time in ages. I’d forgotten what a weirdly patronising and self-conscious title it is. It’s like what EdExcel would publish if they did a “magazine” to help A Level students with their Politics and Economics. The tone throughout is “educational”.
Once you realise that it’s written mostly by a bunch of twentysomething arts graduates with a very tight style guide, it all starts to make sense.
It's also rather good; better than any other British newspaper. Yes, it's not perfect, but that still leaves plenty of room to be better than the others.
And it's coverage of science (a couple of key stories each week, snappily told) is about the best in the mainstream media. Way better than New Scientist, which has fallen a long way in its desire to be popular and relevant.
Sometimes, the non-specialist writer with the discipline of a tight style guide is what you need.
(Having just realised that I haven't seen Horizon for a while, the BBC don't seem to have made new episodes for a couple of years now. What the heck is that about?)
A little over a decade ago, I met a New Scientist journalist on a Scottish hill. We chatted for a while; and I said I used to religiously read it, but I did not any more. When he asked why, I said it had dumbed down too much, and gone too sensational. He sighed and agreed, then gave a pleasant rant about the publication...
A neighbour used to work at the Economist. Identical views on the changes there....
You should see what has happened to the IET magazine since the IEE merged with some other institution and became IET.
My uni's library had an archive of Byte magazines going back to the late 1970s. They were a treasure trove of computing knowledge; as a new concept came along, the magazine would have articles explaining it in a clear and concise manner. Whether that was RISC versus CISC chips, new OSs, or even things like Object-Orientated Programming. Some of those articles were better than books for getting to know a topic. Many articles perfectly caught the fine line between explaining a topic well without dumbing down.
I can't believe the magazine stopped being published over 25 years ago. I still miss it.
Yes, yes, it's all politics and aren't the Liberal Democrats nasty and unscrupulous?
Seriously?
Ed Davey and the LDs played a system they neither like nor want nor does them any favours for maximum advantage and all we now hear is moaning from the "losers" including an activist for a Party which won over 400 seats.
Labour has occasionally "talked" about change to the electoral system - usually when they've been on the wrong end of an election defeat. We may now hear the Conservatives begin to "think aloud" about PR. Neither is sincere - the duopoly has survived fairly comfortably - 58% of the vote has got the two parties 84% of the seats in England, Scotland and Wales so the current system works fine for both Conservative and Labour and for that reason alone there'll be no change until one or both of them is decisively defeated.
Farage and Davey can shout into the dark calling for PR but it will get them nowhere.
As for the "let's add Reform and the Conservatives and call it a single bloc" - that was widely derided on here months ago by the more thoughtful commentators and analysts. There was never any polling evidence of a direct transfer - at most a third of Reform voters would support a Conservative in the absence of a Reform candidate.
The Conservatives lost votes to Reform, to Labour and in some places to the Liberal Democrats and the Greens and also suffered considerable abstention (as did Labour). Until we get more definitive research on what happened to the Conservative vote and why 47% of the 2019 vote disappeared, we're speculating. We can all have our pet theories and I suspect the answer will vary from region to region and even from seat to seat.
I wouldn't disagree with anything you've written here but...
Doing a ton of analysis I am sure is valuable and will yield some insights, but really - what is it really going to reveal? Some small tweak of messaging around housing or the environment or immigration that would bring back a few voters? They were just unpopular and the electorate were determined to give them a punishement beating.
And over-analysis always runs the risk that you end up fighting the last war.
Politics is often about momentum (the Tories have none) and a big idea over the longer term (the Tories have to find one). If I was running this (I wouldn't want to) then merging with Reform (aka "New Tory" or Conservative+) has the potential to deliver momentum (but not without risk).
In terms of the big idea, if we can all agree that the Empire 2.0 project is dead, then we have to decide who to hitch our wagon to.
I'd look to get back into the EU but that's not going to wash with Conservative+
So that leaves the US, and specifically Trump and Project 2025. The Project 2025 stuff leaves me utterly cold (Project Handmaid might be a better title) and I would fight it tooth and nail, but for Conservative+ and US-backing some sort of 'Project 2029' might yield strong results:
- return to family values and what the US calls under the Orwellian phrase 'headship' (strong male head of the family, women very much in supporting/child-rearing role) - massive bonfire of eco-laws - pun very much intended - DoJ under direct parliamentary control - a version of unitary executive theory to attenuate the 'enemies of the people' judges - extreme anti-immigration (read John Lanchester's 'The Wall' for ideas on how a Net Zero Immigration policy would have to work)
You get the idea.
Just typing all this makes me feel extremely queasy. It's a dystopian wishlist. But there must be conversations like this going on, Truss and JRM have the time and contacts to work in the background to make it happen.
Be interested to get others' opinions. I hope everyone else is as queasy as I am reading this...
First, thanks for the thoughtful response and please feel free to contribute a little more. I don't think you're the only "Bookseller" in these parts.
You're not wrong would be my simplistic response.
It is the fundamental question with which we've struggled since 1945 - what is or should be Britain's place in the world?
MacMillan and Heath decided Europe was the political and economic future and that was the prevailing belief in Government from 1956 to 2016. Yet our membership of the EU was often half hearted and rebate obsessed - yes, we enjoyed free trade (and in truth most would happily sign up to the old "Common Market" now) but Europe wanted monetary and eventually political union. We didn't want to be a part of Europe so we choose to be apart from Europe.
I don't know what "Global Britain" was meant to be in 2016 and I still don't know. Clearly, trying to resurrect some kind of post-Imperial relationship with Canada, Australia and New Zealand (why not South Africa or India?) doesn't work - these countries have other geo-strategic concerns.
We're then dead in the water - I argued for framing a new EFTA as an economic counterweight to the EU bringing in countries like Switzerland, Norway and others but that went nowhere.
If we try to re-engage with the EU we're going to have to swallow a double portion of humble pie with a side order of humiliation (it may be the EU is entering a more pragmatic phase as leaders change) but that's an option. We can hope the Democrats prevail in November but even if they do the pull of the Pacific and China will still be there.
The idea we are 'dead in the water' is clearly rubbish.Our GDP growth has put us ahead of France and Italy since Brexit and our exports to the EU have increased in line with inflation - so no reduction as was claimed by the project fear. We are doing considerably better outside the EU than many countries inside.
Personally I agree with you about the desirability of EFTA/EEA membership - mostly for the freedom of movement - but it is certainly not essential.
Amused to see Starmer is meeting European leaders at Blenheim Palace. The War of the Spanish Succession was of course a great example of European cooperation... but I am not sure what Macron will make of it
One of Dave's best acts as Foreign Secretary was to choose Blenheim Palace as the location.
Any party that decides to change the Eurostar terminus from St. Pancras back to Waterloo station will win my vote for life.
Bugger that last for a game of commuters on the Tube. It's bad enough not having direct connections with Eurostar from the north *in the same station* without having that added as well.
I say that as somebody who is from Sheffield and uses St Pancras a lot.
Plus, hang on, you use the Tube? You utter peasant, use Uber Luxury, that's the way to travel in London.
I went from St Pancras to Nottingham yesterday. It’s a strange experience, travelling via our most glamorous railway terminal to some of the least glamorous destinations in the country.
The mobile reception on the East Midlands mainline is shit too.
The long journey also gave me the opportunity to read the Economist for the first time in ages. I’d forgotten what a weirdly patronising and self-conscious title it is. It’s like what EdExcel would publish if they did a “magazine” to help A Level students with their Politics and Economics. The tone throughout is “educational”.
Once you realise that it’s written mostly by a bunch of twentysomething arts graduates with a very tight style guide, it all starts to make sense.
It's also rather good; better than any other British newspaper. Yes, it's not perfect, but that still leaves plenty of room to be better than the others.
And it's coverage of science (a couple of key stories each week, snappily told) is about the best in the mainstream media. Way better than New Scientist, which has fallen a long way in its desire to be popular and relevant.
Sometimes, the non-specialist writer with the discipline of a tight style guide is what you need.
(Having just realised that I haven't seen Horizon for a while, the BBC don't seem to have made new episodes for a couple of years now. What the heck is that about?)
A little over a decade ago, I met a New Scientist journalist on a Scottish hill. We chatted for a while; and I said I used to religiously read it, but I did not any more. When he asked why, I said it had dumbed down too much, and gone too sensational. He sighed and agreed, then gave a pleasant rant about the publication...
A neighbour used to work at the Economist. Identical views on the changes there....
You should see what has happened to the IET magazine since the IEE merged with some other institution and became IET.
My uni's library had an archive of Byte magazines going back to the late 1970s. They were a treasure trove of computing knowledge; as a new concept came along, the magazine would have articles explaining it in a clear and concise manner. Whether that was RISC versus CISC chips, new OSs, or even things like Object-Orientated Programming. Some of those articles were better than books for getting to know a topic. Many articles perfectly caught the fine line between explaining a topic well without dumbing down.
I can't believe the magazine stopped being published over 25 years ago. I still miss it.
Yep. Loved Byte. And my memory is the issues were really thick. A solid wedge of a magazine. And a lot was adverts for the one thousand different companies introducing their new personal computer.
Archive.org has a chunk of them with easy access terms.
I still have a box of those, including the original Smalltalk edition.
The Isle of Man buses were magnificent - Mercedes Benz, comfortable, big, smooth and perfectly flexible to drive round small villages and down relatively narrow lanes. Perhaps we should do Germany a favour and do a bulk order for 50,000 buses.
Seriously, buses in London are vital - the routes (often historical) need to be re-thought to cover where people really are and where they want to go now but that's a long term job. The big problem is drivers who think they are at Le Mans or Silverstone and are so obsessed with keeping to timetable they don't give the elderly and the semi-mobile a chance to sit down before they lurch away from the stop. The other problem is the different levels inside the bus which aren't helpful to older passengers.
We also have the hardy perennial of wheelchair vs pushchair (I've seen people nearly come to blows).
I was told by a driver that the lurching away from a stop was a condition of older buses, combined poor maintenance. He liked driving the Boris buses because the power train didn't do that.
Hence the argument for investing in new stock - I must confess the newer hybrid buses in London such as on route 366 are a much better experience but presumably cost pressures mean whole fleets can't be renewed at once.
Scrapping perfectly serviceable buses is the most environmentally unfriendly thing you can do.
Build/demolish is a huge proportion of environmental footprint.
That needs to be calculated in each case.
For motor vehicles, the operating life is predominant - especially for things like buses that do hundreds of thousands of miles at a rate of about 35k per annum in London.
For private electric vehicles, the emissions breakeven point these days compared to ICE is at something like 20k miles. Somewhat dependent on electricity supply - but that is progressively decarbonising as we know.
That's actually very misleading - it's comparing new ICE to new EV, where the only difference is the additional carbon emissions from manufacturing which aren't very great.
The relevant comparison is existent ICE vs new EV. It's massively better for the environment for me to keep driving my existing ICE car until it dies than to scrap it prematurely and replace it with a EV - I'd have to check the stats but something like a third of the entire emissions from a car come from its production, so if it's anywhere past halfway through it's lifespan it's going to produce less emissions to run it to death than to build a replacement car.
This is even more true for vehicles on low usage cycles - e.g. Mrs Prole's car, which now only does about 3000 miles a year, and will fairly obviously die of corrosion before the mechanical bits go bang (it's already done 115k miles in a previous life, so it's not been completely wasted).
My theory is that Reform are still taboo for many right wingers, but a merger with the Tories would detoxify them. It’s a tale as old as time.
So pronouncing that current toxicity means you can’t simply add up the bloc numbers is perhaps premature.
Thatcher managed to kill off the National Front and absorb their voters in 1979 simply by making an immigration pledge, and passing the 1981 British Nationality Act.
Practical politics. Today, they'd be told "we don't want any of your votes", and so they wouldn't get any of their votes.
Which is what Dave did in 2007 to 2010. Possibly with the Thatcher approach in mind.
Trouble is that something that worked for Thatcher became a millstone for the governments of Cameron and all his successors. Not sure why, but I suspect it's important.
Initial suspicions are either that immigration fears are dampened down massively when people feel better off or that squeezing immigration was just easier in the 1980s than the 2020s because of the shape of British demographics.
I think it's the latter.
It's very hard to make a highly globalised economy like ours, based on services, work without high levels of immigration, particularly since for low end services there are millions of jobs we all depend upon yet are low pay for long hours. People don't want to pay much more money for all those and, even if they did, it's not clear if many Brits would do the work anyway.
If we stopped it all immigration would certainly go "down" but social care, health, some universities, and many food supply chains would also go down.
What is the solution?
'Low pay for long hours' and people won't do it. Switch the domain, and think about being CEO of a large company, or in the top level of banking. The message we hear constantly is that they are worth their millions because (a) it's the going rate and (b) you have to pay to get the talent.
I don't argue with that, but goose, gander. We are a free market. You discover what is the right pay by what pay attracts about the right number of good applicants, not by pre-ordaining that this job has to be low paid and importing cheap labour.
It's strange how capitalism/free marketeers/better off people forget their own principles when it is about other people.
Only because they can get enough benefits to not be cold and hungry.
That's the basic ground rule of wealthy western societies, it's not something that is a unique UK issue, so it doesn't change the general picture, except that it sets a minimum well above benefits people who work have to be paid if you want applicants.
Benefits should be limited only to UK citizens. If companies want to bring in immigrants, they’ll need to pay them enough to live without any recourse to public funds.
Indeed: when my wife came to the UK on a visa, it had the words "not entitled in benefits" (or similar) printed on it. (The exception being, I guess, the NHS.)
However... If an immigrant on a visa is paying National Insurance, are they "saving" for a pension, in the same way a Brit is?
Yes they would be saving for a pension.
The ‘problem’ benefits are mostly tax credits and housing benefit, which act as a significant pull factor for unskilled labour. This was an issue under EU law, whereby EU citizens were entitled to these benefits.
The Isle of Man buses were magnificent - Mercedes Benz, comfortable, big, smooth and perfectly flexible to drive round small villages and down relatively narrow lanes. Perhaps we should do Germany a favour and do a bulk order for 50,000 buses.
Seriously, buses in London are vital - the routes (often historical) need to be re-thought to cover where people really are and where they want to go now but that's a long term job. The big problem is drivers who think they are at Le Mans or Silverstone and are so obsessed with keeping to timetable they don't give the elderly and the semi-mobile a chance to sit down before they lurch away from the stop. The other problem is the different levels inside the bus which aren't helpful to older passengers.
We also have the hardy perennial of wheelchair vs pushchair (I've seen people nearly come to blows).
I was told by a driver that the lurching away from a stop was a condition of older buses, combined poor maintenance. He liked driving the Boris buses because the power train didn't do that.
Hence the argument for investing in new stock - I must confess the newer hybrid buses in London such as on route 366 are a much better experience but presumably cost pressures mean whole fleets can't be renewed at once.
Scrapping perfectly serviceable buses is the most environmentally unfriendly thing you can do.
Build/demolish is a huge proportion of environmental footprint.
That needs to be calculated in each case.
For motor vehicles, the operating life is predominant - especially for things like buses that do hundreds of thousands of miles at a rate of about 35k per annum in London.
For private electric vehicles, the emissions breakeven point these days compared to ICE is at something like 20k miles. Somewhat dependent on electricity supply - but that is progressively decarbonising as we know.
That's actually very misleading - it's comparing new ICE to new EV, where the only difference is the additional carbon emissions from manufacturing which aren't very great.
The relevant comparison is existent ICE vs new EV. It's massively better for the environment for me to keep driving my existing ICE car until it dies than to scrap it prematurely and replace it with a EV - I'd have to check the stats but something like a third of the entire emissions from a car come from its production, so if it's anywhere past halfway through it's lifespan it's going to produce less emissions to run it to death than to build a replacement car.
This is even more true for vehicles on low usage cycles - e.g. Mrs Prole's car, which now only does about 3000 miles a year, and will fairly obviously die of corrosion before the mechanical bits go bang (it's already done 115k miles in a previous life, so it's not been completely wasted).
One third is very, very high. More like 10% for most cars.
Yes, yes, it's all politics and aren't the Liberal Democrats nasty and unscrupulous?
Seriously?
Ed Davey and the LDs played a system they neither like nor want nor does them any favours for maximum advantage and all we now hear is moaning from the "losers" including an activist for a Party which won over 400 seats.
Labour has occasionally "talked" about change to the electoral system - usually when they've been on the wrong end of an election defeat. We may now hear the Conservatives begin to "think aloud" about PR. Neither is sincere - the duopoly has survived fairly comfortably - 58% of the vote has got the two parties 84% of the seats in England, Scotland and Wales so the current system works fine for both Conservative and Labour and for that reason alone there'll be no change until one or both of them is decisively defeated.
Farage and Davey can shout into the dark calling for PR but it will get them nowhere.
As for the "let's add Reform and the Conservatives and call it a single bloc" - that was widely derided on here months ago by the more thoughtful commentators and analysts. There was never any polling evidence of a direct transfer - at most a third of Reform voters would support a Conservative in the absence of a Reform candidate.
The Conservatives lost votes to Reform, to Labour and in some places to the Liberal Democrats and the Greens and also suffered considerable abstention (as did Labour). Until we get more definitive research on what happened to the Conservative vote and why 47% of the 2019 vote disappeared, we're speculating. We can all have our pet theories and I suspect the answer will vary from region to region and even from seat to seat.
I wouldn't disagree with anything you've written here but...
Doing a ton of analysis I am sure is valuable and will yield some insights, but really - what is it really going to reveal? Some small tweak of messaging around housing or the environment or immigration that would bring back a few voters? They were just unpopular and the electorate were determined to give them a punishement beating.
And over-analysis always runs the risk that you end up fighting the last war.
Politics is often about momentum (the Tories have none) and a big idea over the longer term (the Tories have to find one). If I was running this (I wouldn't want to) then merging with Reform (aka "New Tory" or Conservative+) has the potential to deliver momentum (but not without risk).
In terms of the big idea, if we can all agree that the Empire 2.0 project is dead, then we have to decide who to hitch our wagon to.
I'd look to get back into the EU but that's not going to wash with Conservative+
So that leaves the US, and specifically Trump and Project 2025. The Project 2025 stuff leaves me utterly cold (Project Handmaid might be a better title) and I would fight it tooth and nail, but for Conservative+ and US-backing some sort of 'Project 2029' might yield strong results:
- return to family values and what the US calls under the Orwellian phrase 'headship' (strong male head of the family, women very much in supporting/child-rearing role) - massive bonfire of eco-laws - pun very much intended - DoJ under direct parliamentary control - a version of unitary executive theory to attenuate the 'enemies of the people' judges - extreme anti-immigration (read John Lanchester's 'The Wall' for ideas on how a Net Zero Immigration policy would have to work)
You get the idea.
Just typing all this makes me feel extremely queasy. It's a dystopian wishlist. But there must be conversations like this going on, Truss and JRM have the time and contacts to work in the background to make it happen.
Be interested to get others' opinions. I hope everyone else is as queasy as I am reading this...
First, thanks for the thoughtful response and please feel free to contribute a little more. I don't think you're the only "Bookseller" in these parts.
You're not wrong would be my simplistic response.
It is the fundamental question with which we've struggled since 1945 - what is or should be Britain's place in the world?
MacMillan and Heath decided Europe was the political and economic future and that was the prevailing belief in Government from 1956 to 2016. Yet our membership of the EU was often half hearted and rebate obsessed - yes, we enjoyed free trade (and in truth most would happily sign up to the old "Common Market" now) but Europe wanted monetary and eventually political union. We didn't want to be a part of Europe so we choose to be apart from Europe.
I don't know what "Global Britain" was meant to be in 2016 and I still don't know. Clearly, trying to resurrect some kind of post-Imperial relationship with Canada, Australia and New Zealand (why not South Africa or India?) doesn't work - these countries have other geo-strategic concerns.
We're then dead in the water - I argued for framing a new EFTA as an economic counterweight to the EU bringing in countries like Switzerland, Norway and others but that went nowhere.
If we try to re-engage with the EU we're going to have to swallow a double portion of humble pie with a side order of humiliation (it may be the EU is entering a more pragmatic phase as leaders change) but that's an option. We can hope the Democrats prevail in November but even if they do the pull of the Pacific and China will still be there.
The idea we are 'dead in the water' is clearly rubbish.Our GDP growth has put us ahead of France and Italy since Brexit and our exports to the EU have increased in line with inflation - so no reduction as was claimed by the project fear. We are doing considerably better outside the EU than many countries inside.
Personally I agree with you about the desirability of EFTA/EEA membership - mostly for the freedom of movement - but it is certainly not essential.
Yes, I wasn't implying a measure of economic performance. It's more fundamental than that - what should Britain's role be in the world?
There will always be a relationship with Europe - geography dictates that. There will always be a relationship with America - language dictates that. NATO has, for 80 years, been the cornerstone of our security relationship. The issue seems to be whether a Trump/Vance administration will seek to continue that - we can't directly control that but if America no longer sees the collective defence of Europe as being in its best interests, what replaces it and how?
We have chosen to sit apart from the EU - to be fair, so have Switzerland and Norway so we're not alone. That's a definition of the economic and political relationship but doesn't need to define the security/defence relationship and it's perfectly possible to be outside the EU but part of a European defence framework.
.....Much of it done by Johnson and Truss. Interestingly I count 25 women in the shot and 18 men. That rebalance is one of the great advances of this parliament and something that hints the country might be moving forward on several fronts
Why are people with different genitals a "great advance"? It is neither an advance nor a retreat in itself. What we need are the best people, regardless of their gender.
Surely the more representative it is of the people it represents the better. Margaret Thatcher had one woman in her cabinet. Were there no women with the ability of men to hold one of the other 23 positions?
ROFL
Labour hasn't had a fulltime woman leader ever, Even the fking DUP has got there.
Those old 80s anthems just dont work the way they used to.
Remind me what happened to the three Conservative female Prime Ministers.
Were they rejected by the electorate in a free and fair election? No, they were thrown out by the Conservative Parliamentary Party.
So was Johnson. What's your point?
If you can't figure that out I'm not going to help you.
47% voted for Tories or Brexit Party in 2019 in Britain. In 2017 the figure was 45.4% (with UKIP instead of Brexit).
That was before Brexit was officially recognised to be rubbish. In my opinion it's destroyed both Reform and the Tories chances of redemption within the next several decades if at all.
Tory govt nailed on 2029
Now you're almost French by marriage I'd have thought your somewhat isolationist views might nave tempered. Have you thought about the possibilities of twinning Ludlow with Versailles?
Well I spent a week round the vicinity of Versailles. The wedding was in a chateau that her dad owns as he's a comte ( not easy to say with an Ulster accent ). However all the in-laws were getting worked up about the 2nd round election so best to smile sweetly and agree with everyone.
It was of course a relief to get back to the real world instead of endless pastries and vins cremants, On a positive note I am meeting a friend on Monday who is treasurer of the Ludlow Arts we shall have long discussion on Franz Kafka and his impact on Peppa Pig over several pints.
My theory is that Reform are still taboo for many right wingers, but a merger with the Tories would detoxify them. It’s a tale as old as time.
So pronouncing that current toxicity means you can’t simply add up the bloc numbers is perhaps premature.
Thatcher managed to kill off the National Front and absorb their voters in 1979 simply by making an immigration pledge, and passing the 1981 British Nationality Act.
Practical politics. Today, they'd be told "we don't want any of your votes", and so they wouldn't get any of their votes.
Which is what Dave did in 2007 to 2010. Possibly with the Thatcher approach in mind.
Trouble is that something that worked for Thatcher became a millstone for the governments of Cameron and all his successors. Not sure why, but I suspect it's important.
Initial suspicions are either that immigration fears are dampened down massively when people feel better off or that squeezing immigration was just easier in the 1980s than the 2020s because of the shape of British demographics.
I think it's the latter.
It's very hard to make a highly globalised economy like ours, based on services, work without high levels of immigration, particularly since for low end services there are millions of jobs we all depend upon yet are low pay for long hours. People don't want to pay much more money for all those and, even if they did, it's not clear if many Brits would do the work anyway.
If we stopped it all immigration would certainly go "down" but social care, health, some universities, and many food supply chains would also go down.
What is the solution?
'Low pay for long hours' and people won't do it. Switch the domain, and think about being CEO of a large company, or in the top level of banking. The message we hear constantly is that they are worth their millions because (a) it's the going rate and (b) you have to pay to get the talent.
I don't argue with that, but goose, gander. We are a free market. You discover what is the right pay by what pay attracts about the right number of good applicants, not by pre-ordaining that this job has to be low paid and importing cheap labour.
It's strange how capitalism/free marketeers/better off people forget their own principles when it is about other people.
Only because they can get enough benefits to not be cold and hungry.
That's the basic ground rule of wealthy western societies, it's not something that is a unique UK issue, so it doesn't change the general picture, except that it sets a minimum well above benefits people who work have to be paid if you want applicants.
Benefits should be limited only to UK citizens. If companies want to bring in immigrants, they’ll need to pay them enough to live without any recourse to public funds.
Indeed: when my wife came to the UK on a visa, it had the words "not entitled in benefits" (or similar) printed on it. (The exception being, I guess, the NHS.)
However... If an immigrant on a visa is paying National Insurance, are they "saving" for a pension, in the same way a Brit is?
Yes they would be saving for a pension.
The ‘problem’ benefits are mostly tax credits and housing benefit, which act as a significant pull factor for unskilled labour. This was an issue under EU law, whereby EU citizens were entitled to these benefits.
There have been no new claims available for tax credits since 2018. All legacy claims will be integrated into UC by next financial year. The list of triggers for migration onto UC means there are only a small proportion on tax credits left. Housing benefit is also rolled into UC.
47% voted for Tories or Brexit Party in 2019 in Britain. In 2017 the figure was 45.4% (with UKIP instead of Brexit).
That was before Brexit was officially recognised to be rubbish. In my opinion it's destroyed both Reform and the Tories chances of redemption within the next several decades if at all.
Tory govt nailed on 2029
Now you're almost French by marriage I'd have thought your somewhat isolationist views might nave tempered. Have you thought about the possibilities of twinning Ludlow with Versailles?
Well I spent a week round the vicinity of Versailles. The wedding was in a chateau that her dad owns as he's a comte ( not easy to say with an Ulster accent ). However all the in-laws were getting worked up about the 2nd round election so best to smile sweetly and agree with everyone.
It was of course a relief to get back to the real world instead of endless pastries and vins cremants, On a positive note I am meeting a friend on Monday who is treasurer of the Ludlow Arts we shall have long discussion on Franz Kafka and his impact on Peppa Pig over several pints.
Mmm, that "48% of the population ranked Reform fifth place or lower" stat should set alarm bells ringing for anybody suggesting the Tories ought to move that way.
Yes and no. As someone on the right I would never vote Green, Lib Dems or Labour. Who goes bottom in that ranking is pretty random. On the left side of things there are more options, and so it would be remarkable for any one of them to get so many bottom places. Probably the Greens should get more bottom place votes, but they seem to trade on a name that's a lot of the more cuddly than their reality.
If you're from the left, the you'll probably put Reform bottom as the Tories are much further left than Reform, so if the country was roughly split 50—50 left right Reform gets about half of all last places.
Also Farage's comments on Ukraine did immense damage - it cost Reform >5% voteshare (they dropped from polling 20%ish to 15%ish virtually instantly), My parents were probably going to vote Reform until that happened, afterwards no chance.
This gives an opportunity to the Tories to go after people who would support Reform on policy - Net Zero Migration, Tax Cuts, anti-Woke, anti-Net Zero but we're utterly turned off over Ukraine. Reform are dumb in other ways too - e.g. cutting taxes by moving income tax thresholds, when "spending" the same to lower rates was more likely to have positive "Laffer" effects.
The Tories were shafted because they drove away all sides of their electoral coalition. They used right sounding language to repell the Lib-Dems, without doing a single actual right leaning thing (they never intended Rwanda to work, it was just a pathetic wedge issue - hence they kept passing legislation that their advisors told them would be struck down in the courts). They raised taxes that should have been abolished,again driving voters from their right flank (it was the NI rises to pay for social care when I decided my vote definitely wasn't coming their way). They cheerfully imported millions of low skilled immigrants without even making any effort to close the obvious scams like the fake healthcare recruitment firms or the bottom end "students" bringing their families to do "business studies" courses they somehow forget to attend.
Of course there are votes for them in going right, competently - it's probably the only route that doesn't send them to electoral oblivion; trying to be a nastier take on the Lib Dems only works if all the space to the right of them is unoccupied.
The main question is where next for Reform. I reckon if they gave me the equivalent of an "Alistair Campbell" brief*, I could win them the next election. They need to become presentable, lose some of the more fruity fruitcakes, tidy up their policy offer to be more coherent, shut up about Ukraine and build a ground game in the red wall. Once Labour's honeymoon drops off (which won't take long) they have a chance to hold the balance of power.
*Alas for all concerned I don't actually want the job - I've a engineering business to run, and can't just drop that to become a political organiser.
Reform's advantage and disadvantage is Nigel Farage. His fame drastically increased Reform's appeal but his politics and cargo-cult Republicanism (what I call "Anglosphere patriotism") put a cap on it. Until somebody else can replace him (and there isn't one) then they are stuck. I desperately want Lee Anderson to punch him in the face, steal his lunch money and send him home from school crying to his mother, but he won't. This is because I think Anderson cares about the working class and Farage doesn't. But until he does they are stuck.
.....Much of it done by Johnson and Truss. Interestingly I count 25 women in the shot and 18 men. That rebalance is one of the great advances of this parliament and something that hints the country might be moving forward on several fronts
Why are people with different genitals a "great advance"? It is neither an advance nor a retreat in itself. What we need are the best people, regardless of their gender.
Surely the more representative it is of the people it represents the better. Margaret Thatcher had one woman in her cabinet. Were there no women with the ability of men to hold one of the other 23 positions?
ROFL
Labour hasn't had a fulltime woman leader ever, Even the fking DUP has got there.
Those old 80s anthems just dont work the way they used to.
Remind me what happened to the three Conservative female Prime Ministers.
Were they rejected by the electorate in a free and fair election? No, they were thrown out by the Conservative Parliamentary Party.
So was Johnson. What's your point?
If you can't figure that out I'm not going to help you.
Harsh
The point is you don't have one. There is no reason not to think these women were not both appointed and sacked on their merits. Just like Johnson, Blair, Kennedy...
My theory is that Reform are still taboo for many right wingers, but a merger with the Tories would detoxify them. It’s a tale as old as time.
So pronouncing that current toxicity means you can’t simply add up the bloc numbers is perhaps premature.
Thatcher managed to kill off the National Front and absorb their voters in 1979 simply by making an immigration pledge, and passing the 1981 British Nationality Act.
Practical politics. Today, they'd be told "we don't want any of your votes", and so they wouldn't get any of their votes.
Which is what Dave did in 2007 to 2010. Possibly with the Thatcher approach in mind.
Trouble is that something that worked for Thatcher became a millstone for the governments of Cameron and all his successors. Not sure why, but I suspect it's important.
Initial suspicions are either that immigration fears are dampened down massively when people feel better off or that squeezing immigration was just easier in the 1980s than the 2020s because of the shape of British demographics.
I think it's the latter.
It's very hard to make a highly globalised economy like ours, based on services, work without high levels of immigration, particularly since for low end services there are millions of jobs we all depend upon yet are low pay for long hours. People don't want to pay much more money for all those and, even if they did, it's not clear if many Brits would do the work anyway.
If we stopped it all immigration would certainly go "down" but social care, health, some universities, and many food supply chains would also go down.
What is the solution?
'Low pay for long hours' and people won't do it. Switch the domain, and think about being CEO of a large company, or in the top level of banking. The message we hear constantly is that they are worth their millions because (a) it's the going rate and (b) you have to pay to get the talent.
I don't argue with that, but goose, gander. We are a free market. You discover what is the right pay by what pay attracts about the right number of good applicants, not by pre-ordaining that this job has to be low paid and importing cheap labour.
It's strange how capitalism/free marketeers/better off people forget their own principles when it is about other people.
Only because they can get enough benefits to not be cold and hungry.
That's the basic ground rule of wealthy western societies, it's not something that is a unique UK issue, so it doesn't change the general picture, except that it sets a minimum well above benefits people who work have to be paid if you want applicants.
Benefits should be limited only to UK citizens. If companies want to bring in immigrants, they’ll need to pay them enough to live without any recourse to public funds.
Indeed: when my wife came to the UK on a visa, it had the words "not entitled in benefits" (or similar) printed on it. (The exception being, I guess, the NHS.)
However... If an immigrant on a visa is paying National Insurance, are they "saving" for a pension, in the same way a Brit is?
Yes they would be saving for a pension.
The ‘problem’ benefits are mostly tax credits and housing benefit, which act as a significant pull factor for unskilled labour. This was an issue under EU law, whereby EU citizens were entitled to these benefits.
There have been no new claims available for tax credits since 2018. All legacy claims will be integrated into UC by next financial year. The list of triggers for migration onto UC means there are only a small proportion on tax credits left. Housing benefit is also rolled into UC.
Yes the UC basically is the same benefits under a different metholology.
As well as unskilled Labour they also attract unskilled non-labour.
.....Much of it done by Johnson and Truss. Interestingly I count 25 women in the shot and 18 men. That rebalance is one of the great advances of this parliament and something that hints the country might be moving forward on several fronts
Why are people with different genitals a "great advance"? It is neither an advance nor a retreat in itself. What we need are the best people, regardless of their gender.
Surely the more representative it is of the people it represents the better. Margaret Thatcher had one woman in her cabinet. Were there no women with the ability of men to hold one of the other 23 positions?
ROFL
Labour hasn't had a fulltime woman leader ever, Even the fking DUP has got there.
Those old 80s anthems just dont work the way they used to.
Remind me what happened to the three Conservative female Prime Ministers.
Were they rejected by the electorate in a free and fair election? No, they were thrown out by the Conservative Parliamentary Party.
So was Johnson. What's your point?
If you can't figure that out I'm not going to help you.
Harsh
The point is you don't have one. There is no reason not to think these women were not both appointed and sacked on their merits. Just like Johnson, Blair, Kennedy...
Margaret Thatcher, arguably the most successful leader of the Conservative Party, winner of three elections, unceremoniously dumped because she got a little unpopular.
"On their merits"? Seriously.
Three female leaders, all three removed by the Parliamentary Party rather than go to the electorate.
Another reason to ditch the monarchy, it subverts democracy/the will of the people.
Sir Keir Starmer might be forced to keep two hereditary peers because of their links to the King.
The Prime Minister has pledged to remove hereditary peers from the House of Lords by making all those aged 80 and above step down.
The House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill will remove their right to sit and vote in Parliament’s upper chamber after officials criticised the “outdated and indefensible” presence of those who were there solely by right of birth.
It is considered the first step in Sir Keir’s efforts to modernise the Lords and make it “fit for the 21st century”.
However, of the 92 remaining hereditary peers, the roles of the Earl Marshal and the Lord Great Chamberlain are likely to be exempt because of the constitutional role they play on state occasions, sources admitted.
The Earl Marshal is a hereditary office that requires him to organise major ceremonial occasions.
Do we need the Earl Marshal to be the Earl Marshal though? Surely there must be at least one other person capable of organising a piss-up in a brewery, despite the evidence of the last several years.
The LibDems are the least scrupulous party of the mainstream in GB, perhaps because they feel so sure they're right and the system is unfair that they have to manipulate it in any way they can? The level of misleading leaflets (espcially in quoting polls. sometimes omitting the Y-axis or relating to a different area) completely dwarfs what the other main parties offer, though none of the parties are squeaky clean. It's quite successful at a local level and they're hard to dislike in any other way so they get away with it. But arguably there are invisible drawbacks in reluctance to give way even when they are clearly the main local alternative to the Tories,
Oh come off it Nick. You should have seen some of the bar charts Lab and the Tories put out in Guildford at this election. Lab trying to claim it was neck and neck between them and the Tories. Tories did similarly. On polling day there was a good morning leaflet with two bars of equal length for the Tories and Labour with the LDs hardly registering and no reference as to where that came from at all and we can't think of anything it can possibly represent.
And the result was?
Oh and I remember Lab doing a bar chart and only Lab can win here and a vote for the LDs is a wasted vote in a Euro election with PR!!! Unscrupulous?
I've only experienced the LibDems seriously in 3 constituencies - Broxtowe (where objectively they were and are a distant 3rd), Godalming and Ash (where objectively they're 2nd and challenging for 1st) and Didcot and Wantage (where they've been 2nd for a while). In all three they've played the "only we can win here" card, but in G&A more mildly ("so we'd like to borrow your vote"), as they included Labour as junior partners in coalition, and in return the Labour vote at GEs has sunk to 5%. There's a case for saying that being less unscrupulous pays off.
Obviously the real villain of the piece is the electoral system. But the way it's played has subtle effects on later cooperation.
I have only ever been in LD/Tory battles so obviously we have used it a lot. I have only ever been honest, but admittedly that has been easy because I haven't had to manipulate as the message was true because of where I was. I have to say (and this might me being biased here) that the LD manipulation is usually quite clever i.e. true but misleading, as opposed to an outright lie as we were getting in Guildford by both the Tories and Labour. For example in Suffolk Coastal the LD leaflet identified us as the challengers based upon the last local election results in wards in the constituency (not sure if it used gains or overall). Perfectly factual. The Greens could have made a similar slightly different claim. We came 4th and they came 5th in the end in the GE.. Not lying, but relevant? No.
@NickPalmer if you ever speak to anyone involved in the Labour campaign in Guildford I would love to know what was going through their minds? I accept locals will want to campaign locally but why did they spend so much on massive bus adverts and why was the candidate apparently working it full time and not in Aldershot and why all the misleading stuff. It is not like they even tried in reality. They didn't take advantage of the free addressed Royal Mail delivery. Just a bog standard one and outside of a very, very small area they didn't do anything. Those working it seemed hell bent on returning a Tory to Guildford.
A couple of days before Polling Day, I got shouted at by an elderly gentleman in my own ward when leafleting. He went on about us lying on our bar chart.
I did ask if he had an issue with the scale, but he said no: the numbers we were using were an outright lie.
We'd published the Rallings & Thrasher notionals for the new constituency as per the Parliament website, and this gentleman was adamant that these were just us taking some random figures, because "you can get different ones from different sites, can't you!?" and apparently other notional figures had Labour in second.
I think this was based on a Labour leaflet from earlier in the campaign which he'd misinterpreted from a bar chart (without numbers on the bar or chart) claiming that Labour had about a 33% chance of winning and fractionally higher than the LDs, around which Nick had put a commentary on the constituency having changed hugely since the last election [spoiler: the notionals were statistically all-but-identical to the former constituency, but we'd switched to using the notionals early in the campaign, anyway].
But I was called a liar and a "bloody idiot" due to our bar chart using the official notional figures.
My theory is that Reform are still taboo for many right wingers, but a merger with the Tories would detoxify them. It’s a tale as old as time.
So pronouncing that current toxicity means you can’t simply add up the bloc numbers is perhaps premature.
Thatcher managed to kill off the National Front and absorb their voters in 1979 simply by making an immigration pledge, and passing the 1981 British Nationality Act.
Practical politics. Today, they'd be told "we don't want any of your votes", and so they wouldn't get any of their votes.
Which is what Dave did in 2007 to 2010. Possibly with the Thatcher approach in mind.
Trouble is that something that worked for Thatcher became a millstone for the governments of Cameron and all his successors. Not sure why, but I suspect it's important.
Initial suspicions are either that immigration fears are dampened down massively when people feel better off or that squeezing immigration was just easier in the 1980s than the 2020s because of the shape of British demographics.
I think it's the latter.
It's very hard to make a highly globalised economy like ours, based on services, work without high levels of immigration, particularly since for low end services there are millions of jobs we all depend upon yet are low pay for long hours. People don't want to pay much more money for all those and, even if they did, it's not clear if many Brits would do the work anyway.
If we stopped it all immigration would certainly go "down" but social care, health, some universities, and many food supply chains would also go down.
What is the solution?
'Low pay for long hours' and people won't do it. Switch the domain, and think about being CEO of a large company, or in the top level of banking. The message we hear constantly is that they are worth their millions because (a) it's the going rate and (b) you have to pay to get the talent.
I don't argue with that, but goose, gander. We are a free market. You discover what is the right pay by what pay attracts about the right number of good applicants, not by pre-ordaining that this job has to be low paid and importing cheap labour.
It's strange how capitalism/free marketeers/better off people forget their own principles when it is about other people.
Only because they can get enough benefits to not be cold and hungry.
That's the basic ground rule of wealthy western societies, it's not something that is a unique UK issue, so it doesn't change the general picture, except that it sets a minimum well above benefits people who work have to be paid if you want applicants.
Benefits should be limited only to UK citizens. If companies want to bring in immigrants, they’ll need to pay them enough to live without any recourse to public funds.
Indeed: when my wife came to the UK on a visa, it had the words "not entitled in benefits" (or similar) printed on it. (The exception being, I guess, the NHS.)
However... If an immigrant on a visa is paying National Insurance, are they "saving" for a pension, in the same way a Brit is?
Yes they would be saving for a pension.
The ‘problem’ benefits are mostly tax credits and housing benefit, which act as a significant pull factor for unskilled labour. This was an issue under EU law, whereby EU citizens were entitled to these benefits.
There have been no new claims available for tax credits since 2018. All legacy claims will be integrated into UC by next financial year. The list of triggers for migration onto UC means there are only a small proportion on tax credits left. Housing benefit is also rolled into UC.
Ah yes it’s all rolled into UC now, my bad. Been away too long!
Another reason to ditch the monarchy, it subverts democracy/the will of the people.
Sir Keir Starmer might be forced to keep two hereditary peers because of their links to the King.
The Prime Minister has pledged to remove hereditary peers from the House of Lords by making all those aged 80 and above step down.
The House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill will remove their right to sit and vote in Parliament’s upper chamber after officials criticised the “outdated and indefensible” presence of those who were there solely by right of birth.
It is considered the first step in Sir Keir’s efforts to modernise the Lords and make it “fit for the 21st century”.
However, of the 92 remaining hereditary peers, the roles of the Earl Marshal and the Lord Great Chamberlain are likely to be exempt because of the constitutional role they play on state occasions, sources admitted.
The Earl Marshal is a hereditary office that requires him to organise major ceremonial occasions.
Do we need the Earl Marshal to be the Earl Marshal though? Surely there must be at least one other person capable of organising a piss-up in a brewery, despite the evidence of the last several years.
This is a balls out fallacy. There's hereditary roles which are independent of belonging to HOL. Being king is a relevant example.
The Isle of Man buses were magnificent - Mercedes Benz, comfortable, big, smooth and perfectly flexible to drive round small villages and down relatively narrow lanes. Perhaps we should do Germany a favour and do a bulk order for 50,000 buses.
Seriously, buses in London are vital - the routes (often historical) need to be re-thought to cover where people really are and where they want to go now but that's a long term job. The big problem is drivers who think they are at Le Mans or Silverstone and are so obsessed with keeping to timetable they don't give the elderly and the semi-mobile a chance to sit down before they lurch away from the stop. The other problem is the different levels inside the bus which aren't helpful to older passengers.
We also have the hardy perennial of wheelchair vs pushchair (I've seen people nearly come to blows).
I was told by a driver that the lurching away from a stop was a condition of older buses, combined poor maintenance. He liked driving the Boris buses because the power train didn't do that.
Hence the argument for investing in new stock - I must confess the newer hybrid buses in London such as on route 366 are a much better experience but presumably cost pressures mean whole fleets can't be renewed at once.
Scrapping perfectly serviceable buses is the most environmentally unfriendly thing you can do.
Build/demolish is a huge proportion of environmental footprint.
That needs to be calculated in each case.
For motor vehicles, the operating life is predominant - especially for things like buses that do hundreds of thousands of miles at a rate of about 35k per annum in London.
For private electric vehicles, the emissions breakeven point these days compared to ICE is at something like 20k miles. Somewhat dependent on electricity supply - but that is progressively decarbonising as we know.
That's actually very misleading - it's comparing new ICE to new EV, where the only difference is the additional carbon emissions from manufacturing which aren't very great.
The relevant comparison is existent ICE vs new EV. It's massively better for the environment for me to keep driving my existing ICE car until it dies than to scrap it prematurely and replace it with a EV - I'd have to check the stats but something like a third of the entire emissions from a car come from its production, so if it's anywhere past halfway through it's lifespan it's going to produce less emissions to run it to death than to build a replacement car.
This is even more true for vehicles on low usage cycles - e.g. Mrs Prole's car, which now only does about 3000 miles a year, and will fairly obviously die of corrosion before the mechanical bits go bang (it's already done 115k miles in a previous life, so it's not been completely wasted).
I think for buses the argument is fairly clear cut. 12 year old Boris Buses for example continue to do high mileages and would do so for another decade or more, so the balance is fairly clear cut.
The changes are also required because of rapid-change emissions targets imposed for 2028 and 2030 by the Government run by Boris, or his predecessor !
For vehicles, I think the case of old ICE vehicle vs new Electric vehicle is increasingly an edge case. Only around 20% of cars in the UK are more than 13 years old, for example.
Vehicles with low usage cycles (like mine - all the 6s, 6 year old Euro 6 diesel estate doing 60mpg, <5000 miles per annum) are a relatively small amount in terms of overall emissions, and will also gradually work their way out.
The LibDems are the least scrupulous party of the mainstream in GB, perhaps because they feel so sure they're right and the system is unfair that they have to manipulate it in any way they can? The level of misleading leaflets (espcially in quoting polls. sometimes omitting the Y-axis or relating to a different area) completely dwarfs what the other main parties offer, though none of the parties are squeaky clean. It's quite successful at a local level and they're hard to dislike in any other way so they get away with it. But arguably there are invisible drawbacks in reluctance to give way even when they are clearly the main local alternative to the Tories,
Oh come off it Nick. You should have seen some of the bar charts Lab and the Tories put out in Guildford at this election. Lab trying to claim it was neck and neck between them and the Tories. Tories did similarly. On polling day there was a good morning leaflet with two bars of equal length for the Tories and Labour with the LDs hardly registering and no reference as to where that came from at all and we can't think of anything it can possibly represent.
And the result was?
Oh and I remember Lab doing a bar chart and only Lab can win here and a vote for the LDs is a wasted vote in a Euro election with PR!!! Unscrupulous?
I've only experienced the LibDems seriously in 3 constituencies - Broxtowe (where objectively they were and are a distant 3rd), Godalming and Ash (where objectively they're 2nd and challenging for 1st) and Didcot and Wantage (where they've been 2nd for a while). In all three they've played the "only we can win here" card, but in G&A more mildly ("so we'd like to borrow your vote"), as they included Labour as junior partners in coalition, and in return the Labour vote at GEs has sunk to 5%. There's a case for saying that being less unscrupulous pays off.
Obviously the real villain of the piece is the electoral system. But the way it's played has subtle effects on later cooperation.
I have only ever been in LD/Tory battles so obviously we have used it a lot. I have only ever been honest, but admittedly that has been easy because I haven't had to manipulate as the message was true because of where I was. I have to say (and this might me being biased here) that the LD manipulation is usually quite clever i.e. true but misleading, as opposed to an outright lie as we were getting in Guildford by both the Tories and Labour. For example in Suffolk Coastal the LD leaflet identified us as the challengers based upon the last local election results in wards in the constituency (not sure if it used gains or overall). Perfectly factual. The Greens could have made a similar slightly different claim. We came 4th and they came 5th in the end in the GE.. Not lying, but relevant? No.
@NickPalmer if you ever speak to anyone involved in the Labour campaign in Guildford I would love to know what was going through their minds? I accept locals will want to campaign locally but why did they spend so much on massive bus adverts and why was the candidate apparently working it full time and not in Aldershot and why all the misleading stuff. It is not like they even tried in reality. They didn't take advantage of the free addressed Royal Mail delivery. Just a bog standard one and outside of a very, very small area they didn't do anything. Those working it seemed hell bent on returning a Tory to Guildford.
A couple of days before Polling Day, I got shouted at by an elderly gentleman in my own ward when leafleting. He went on about us lying on our bar chart.
I did ask if he had an issue with the scale, but he said no: the numbers we were using were an outright lie.
We'd published the Rallings & Thrasher notionals for the new constituency as per the Parliament website, and this gentleman was adamant that these were just us taking some random figures, because "you can get different ones from different sites, can't you!?" and apparently other notional figures had Labour in second.
I think this was based on a Labour leaflet from earlier in the campaign which he'd misinterpreted from a bar chart (without numbers on the bar or chart) claiming that Labour had about a 33% chance of winning and fractionally higher than the LDs, around which Nick had put a commentary on the constituency having changed hugely since the last election [spoiler: the notionals were statistically all-but-identical to the former constituency, but we'd switched to using the notionals early in the campaign, anyway].
But I was called a liar and a "bloody idiot" due to our bar chart using the official notional figures.
@Andy_Cooke - Andy I sent you a private message, I think yesterday. Did you see it?
Mmm, that "48% of the population ranked Reform fifth place or lower" stat should set alarm bells ringing for anybody suggesting the Tories ought to move that way.
Yes and no. As someone on the right I would never vote Green, Lib Dems or Labour. Who goes bottom in that ranking is pretty random. On the left side of things there are more options, and so it would be remarkable for any one of them to get so many bottom places. Probably the Greens should get more bottom place votes, but they seem to trade on a name that's a lot of the more cuddly than their reality.
If you're from the left, the you'll probably put Reform bottom as the Tories are much further left than Reform, so if the country was roughly split 50—50 left right Reform gets about half of all last places.
Also Farage's comments on Ukraine did immense damage - it cost Reform >5% voteshare (they dropped from polling 20%ish to 15%ish virtually instantly), My parents were probably going to vote Reform until that happened, afterwards no chance.
This gives an opportunity to the Tories to go after people who would support Reform on policy - Net Zero Migration, Tax Cuts, anti-Woke, anti-Net Zero but we're utterly turned off over Ukraine. Reform are dumb in other ways too - e.g. cutting taxes by moving income tax thresholds, when "spending" the same to lower rates was more likely to have positive "Laffer" effects.
The Tories were shafted because they drove away all sides of their electoral coalition. They used right sounding language to repell the Lib-Dems, without doing a single actual right leaning thing (they never intended Rwanda to work, it was just a pathetic wedge issue - hence they kept passing legislation that their advisors told them would be struck down in the courts). They raised taxes that should have been abolished,again driving voters from their right flank (it was the NI rises to pay for social care when I decided my vote definitely wasn't coming their way). They cheerfully imported millions of low skilled immigrants without even making any effort to close the obvious scams like the fake healthcare recruitment firms or the bottom end "students" bringing their families to do "business studies" courses they somehow forget to attend.
Of course there are votes for them in going right, competently - it's probably the only route that doesn't send them to electoral oblivion; trying to be a nastier take on the Lib Dems only works if all the space to the right of them is unoccupied.
The main question is where next for Reform. I reckon if they gave me the equivalent of an "Alistair Campbell" brief*, I could win them the next election. They need to become presentable, lose some of the more fruity fruitcakes, tidy up their policy offer to be more coherent, shut up about Ukraine and build a ground game in the red wall. Once Labour's honeymoon drops off (which won't take long) they have a chance to hold the balance of power.
*Alas for all concerned I don't actually want the job - I've a engineering business to run, and can't just drop that to become a political organiser.
Reform's advantage and disadvantage is Nigel Farage. His fame drastically increased Reform's appeal but his politics and cargo-cult Republicanism (what I call "Anglosphere patriotism") put a cap on it. Until somebody else can replace him (and there isn't one) then they are stuck. I desperately want Lee Anderson to punch him in the face, steal his lunch money and send him home from school crying to his mother, but he won't. This is because I think Anderson cares about the working class and Farage doesn't. But until he does they are stuck.
What makes you think Nigel Farage does not care about his working class constituents? In unrelated news...
England not hanging around, 86/1 after an hour and 12 ovs - that after Crawley was out for a duck in the first over.
Feels like England quite like playing 3 day test matches and enjoying the extra days off with family, the golf course, etc. Not good for ticket receipts at the grounds though.
Yes, yes, it's all politics and aren't the Liberal Democrats nasty and unscrupulous?
Seriously?
Ed Davey and the LDs played a system they neither like nor want nor does them any favours for maximum advantage and all we now hear is moaning from the "losers" including an activist for a Party which won over 400 seats.
Labour has occasionally "talked" about change to the electoral system - usually when they've been on the wrong end of an election defeat. We may now hear the Conservatives begin to "think aloud" about PR. Neither is sincere - the duopoly has survived fairly comfortably - 58% of the vote has got the two parties 84% of the seats in England, Scotland and Wales so the current system works fine for both Conservative and Labour and for that reason alone there'll be no change until one or both of them is decisively defeated.
Farage and Davey can shout into the dark calling for PR but it will get them nowhere.
As for the "let's add Reform and the Conservatives and call it a single bloc" - that was widely derided on here months ago by the more thoughtful commentators and analysts. There was never any polling evidence of a direct transfer - at most a third of Reform voters would support a Conservative in the absence of a Reform candidate.
The Conservatives lost votes to Reform, to Labour and in some places to the Liberal Democrats and the Greens and also suffered considerable abstention (as did Labour). Until we get more definitive research on what happened to the Conservative vote and why 47% of the 2019 vote disappeared, we're speculating. We can all have our pet theories and I suspect the answer will vary from region to region and even from seat to seat.
I wouldn't disagree with anything you've written here but...
Doing a ton of analysis I am sure is valuable and will yield some insights, but really - what is it really going to reveal? Some small tweak of messaging around housing or the environment or immigration that would bring back a few voters? They were just unpopular and the electorate were determined to give them a punishement beating.
And over-analysis always runs the risk that you end up fighting the last war.
Politics is often about momentum (the Tories have none) and a big idea over the longer term (the Tories have to find one). If I was running this (I wouldn't want to) then merging with Reform (aka "New Tory" or Conservative+) has the potential to deliver momentum (but not without risk).
In terms of the big idea, if we can all agree that the Empire 2.0 project is dead, then we have to decide who to hitch our wagon to.
I'd look to get back into the EU but that's not going to wash with Conservative+
So that leaves the US, and specifically Trump and Project 2025. The Project 2025 stuff leaves me utterly cold (Project Handmaid might be a better title) and I would fight it tooth and nail, but for Conservative+ and US-backing some sort of 'Project 2029' might yield strong results:
- return to family values and what the US calls under the Orwellian phrase 'headship' (strong male head of the family, women very much in supporting/child-rearing role) - massive bonfire of eco-laws - pun very much intended - DoJ under direct parliamentary control - a version of unitary executive theory to attenuate the 'enemies of the people' judges - extreme anti-immigration (read John Lanchester's 'The Wall' for ideas on how a Net Zero Immigration policy would have to work)
You get the idea.
Just typing all this makes me feel extremely queasy. It's a dystopian wishlist. But there must be conversations like this going on, Truss and JRM have the time and contacts to work in the background to make it happen.
Be interested to get others' opinions. I hope everyone else is as queasy as I am reading this...
First, thanks for the thoughtful response and please feel free to contribute a little more. I don't think you're the only "Bookseller" in these parts.
You're not wrong would be my simplistic response.
It is the fundamental question with which we've struggled since 1945 - what is or should be Britain's place in the world?
MacMillan and Heath decided Europe was the political and economic future and that was the prevailing belief in Government from 1956 to 2016. Yet our membership of the EU was often half hearted and rebate obsessed - yes, we enjoyed free trade (and in truth most would happily sign up to the old "Common Market" now) but Europe wanted monetary and eventually political union. We didn't want to be a part of Europe so we choose to be apart from Europe.
I don't know what "Global Britain" was meant to be in 2016 and I still don't know. Clearly, trying to resurrect some kind of post-Imperial relationship with Canada, Australia and New Zealand (why not South Africa or India?) doesn't work - these countries have other geo-strategic concerns.
We're then dead in the water - I argued for framing a new EFTA as an economic counterweight to the EU bringing in countries like Switzerland, Norway and others but that went nowhere.
If we try to re-engage with the EU we're going to have to swallow a double portion of humble pie with a side order of humiliation (it may be the EU is entering a more pragmatic phase as leaders change) but that's an option. We can hope the Democrats prevail in November but even if they do the pull of the Pacific and China will still be there.
The idea we are 'dead in the water' is clearly rubbish.Our GDP growth has put us ahead of France and Italy since Brexit and our exports to the EU have increased in line with inflation - so no reduction as was claimed by the project fear. We are doing considerably better outside the EU than many countries inside.
Personally I agree with you about the desirability of EFTA/EEA membership - mostly for the freedom of movement - but it is certainly not essential.
Yes, I wasn't implying a measure of economic performance. It's more fundamental than that - what should Britain's role be in the world?
There will always be a relationship with Europe - geography dictates that. There will always be a relationship with America - language dictates that. NATO has, for 80 years, been the cornerstone of our security relationship. The issue seems to be whether a Trump/Vance administration will seek to continue that - we can't directly control that but if America no longer sees the collective defence of Europe as being in its best interests, what replaces it and how?
We have chosen to sit apart from the EU - to be fair, so have Switzerland and Norway so we're not alone. That's a definition of the economic and political relationship but doesn't need to define the security/defence relationship and it's perfectly possible to be outside the EU but part of a European defence framework.
Indeed and we are and should continue to be. Though I do think the biggest threat to that right now is not the UK outside the EU but some of the members inside it - Hungary and France being two that immediately spring to mind, the former in actuality and the latter potentially.
Another reason to ditch the monarchy, it subverts democracy/the will of the people.
Sir Keir Starmer might be forced to keep two hereditary peers because of their links to the King.
The Prime Minister has pledged to remove hereditary peers from the House of Lords by making all those aged 80 and above step down.
The House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill will remove their right to sit and vote in Parliament’s upper chamber after officials criticised the “outdated and indefensible” presence of those who were there solely by right of birth.
It is considered the first step in Sir Keir’s efforts to modernise the Lords and make it “fit for the 21st century”.
However, of the 92 remaining hereditary peers, the roles of the Earl Marshal and the Lord Great Chamberlain are likely to be exempt because of the constitutional role they play on state occasions, sources admitted.
The Earl Marshal is a hereditary office that requires him to organise major ceremonial occasions.
It won't and if he gets through COVID relatively unscathed at over 80 he can use that to boost his health status claims
Didn't think of that, but that's a good point too.
I think he is too big at 2.6 now for the nomination, we basically have heard via social media that he's told Pelosi where to go.
I fear that you're right. There's too much of a temptation to assume that the Democrats are somehow collectively capable of taking the blindingly obvious course necessary to stay in the game and factor that in to the odds, and I think the 2.6 reflects that.
The problem is that there is no mechanism to force him to go if he doesn’t want to. He can just say “nah, I’m staying in” and there is absolutely nothing anyone can do about it. Even if the whole Democratic establishment turns on him and tells him it’s a bad idea.
I still think there’s a chance they do get him to bow out (based on current media reports), but it is going to be a close run thing and the longer he clings on the more unedifying and difficult it becomes to avoid political damage. The best way would have been for a period of reflection after the debate followed by a calm handover. As it is he’s being dragged out kicking and screaming, and it’s not very edifying.
There is a mechanism, in the constitution. The 25th Amendment, Article 4.
The problem is it requires Kamala to wield the knife herself, and the Cabinet to agree with her. No hiding spot to let someone else do it.
Except it pretty obvious that dilapidated and diminished as he is, Biden is not without capacity. And its a mechanism potentially subject to the whims of Trump's appointees on the SC.
Only those wishing to see a complete shit show are advocating that route.
Amused to see Starmer is meeting European leaders at Blenheim Palace. The War of the Spanish Succession was of course a great example of European cooperation... but I am not sure what Macron will make of it
One of Dave's best acts as Foreign Secretary was to choose Blenheim Palace as the location.
Any party that decides to change the Eurostar terminus from St. Pancras back to Waterloo station will win my vote for life.
Bugger that last for a game of commuters on the Tube. It's bad enough not having direct connections with Eurostar from the north *in the same station* without having that added as well.
I say that as somebody who is from Sheffield and uses St Pancras a lot.
Plus, hang on, you use the Tube? You utter peasant, use Uber Luxury, that's the way to travel in London.
To my slightly off-kilter way of thinking, there's nothing more interesting and futuristic than using the Tube in London.
My theory is that Reform are still taboo for many right wingers, but a merger with the Tories would detoxify them. It’s a tale as old as time.
So pronouncing that current toxicity means you can’t simply add up the bloc numbers is perhaps premature.
Thatcher managed to kill off the National Front and absorb their voters in 1979 simply by making an immigration pledge, and passing the 1981 British Nationality Act.
Practical politics. Today, they'd be told "we don't want any of your votes", and so they wouldn't get any of their votes.
Which is what Dave did in 2007 to 2010. Possibly with the Thatcher approach in mind.
Trouble is that something that worked for Thatcher became a millstone for the governments of Cameron and all his successors. Not sure why, but I suspect it's important.
Initial suspicions are either that immigration fears are dampened down massively when people feel better off or that squeezing immigration was just easier in the 1980s than the 2020s because of the shape of British demographics.
I think it's the latter.
It's very hard to make a highly globalised economy like ours, based on services, work without high levels of immigration, particularly since for low end services there are millions of jobs we all depend upon yet are low pay for long hours. People don't want to pay much more money for all those and, even if they did, it's not clear if many Brits would do the work anyway.
If we stopped it all immigration would certainly go "down" but social care, health, some universities, and many food supply chains would also go down.
What is the solution?
We are also going to need a lot more builders if we want to build more homes and improve infrastructure.
The basic problem is that the world has never been wealthier but that wealth is concentrated in the hands of a relatively small number of people and corporations. It's just sitting there doing next to nothing. Until we tackle that, discontent is only going to grow.
Productivity (along with quality) has been a core issue in UK housebuilding since the 1990s, at least. You can go back to at least The Egan Report, Rethinking Construction, done for Prezza when he was running the ODPM under Blair.
There are solutions around - for example Persimmon are in the middle of building a house factory at Loughborough which will create around 100 extra jobs, for a capacity of 5000-7000 houses a year, under their Space4 operation. It's not simple maths, as they make modules like SIPS for walls and roof cassettes, but it shows what can be done - transferring a lot of work to a controlled environment. On stream in 2025.
"No one has had a full beard in American politics since the late 19th century. The last time facial hair was an issue in that realm was in 1968, when allies of Democratic candidate Eugene McCarthy urged his hippie supporters to “get clean for Gene” and trim their hirsute display of defiance, in order to try to appeal to the calls for law and order from the other side.
Vance’s beard is a whole other level of symbolic meaning. It makes him look, above all, like a Civil War general — from either side — right out of one of Matthew Brady’s famous photographs. Or it could be the beard of a pre-modern American president, presiding over America at a time when Christianity and traditional mores held sway. Or is it a hint of the countercultural type, a hippie for all seasons, after all?"
Question: will lords now be eligible to stand for election?
Lords can already stand for election to the Commons if they renounce their right to sit in the Lords, so presumably the answer will be yes, now that the latter decision is being made for them. It came up during the speculation around David Cameron being able to take over as Prime Minister from Rishi.
Another reason to ditch the monarchy, it subverts democracy/the will of the people.
Sir Keir Starmer might be forced to keep two hereditary peers because of their links to the King.
The Prime Minister has pledged to remove hereditary peers from the House of Lords by making all those aged 80 and above step down.
The House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill will remove their right to sit and vote in Parliament’s upper chamber after officials criticised the “outdated and indefensible” presence of those who were there solely by right of birth.
It is considered the first step in Sir Keir’s efforts to modernise the Lords and make it “fit for the 21st century”.
However, of the 92 remaining hereditary peers, the roles of the Earl Marshal and the Lord Great Chamberlain are likely to be exempt because of the constitutional role they play on state occasions, sources admitted.
The Earl Marshal is a hereditary office that requires him to organise major ceremonial occasions.
No it doesn't, he had no manifesto commitment to remove the monarchy or the Earl Marshal and Lord Great Chamberlain.
Indeed Tories should oppose all this act of constitutional vandalism, Labour may have had a manifesto commitment to remove the remaining hereditary peers, the Tories didn't
The Salisbury-Addison convention applies, the King should shut the eff up or run for election.
He’s worse than that Nazi lover Edward VIII who actually listened to his government.
Amused to see Starmer is meeting European leaders at Blenheim Palace. The War of the Spanish Succession was of course a great example of European cooperation... but I am not sure what Macron will make of it
One of Dave's best acts as Foreign Secretary was to choose Blenheim Palace as the location.
Any party that decides to change the Eurostar terminus from St. Pancras back to Waterloo station will win my vote for life.
Bugger that last for a game of commuters on the Tube. It's bad enough not having direct connections with Eurostar from the north *in the same station* without having that added as well.
I say that as somebody who is from Sheffield and uses St Pancras a lot.
Plus, hang on, you use the Tube? You utter peasant, use Uber Luxury, that's the way to travel in London.
To my slightly off-kilter way of thinking, there's nothing more interesting and futuristic than using the Tube in London.
It used to be. But after the New Labour years it began to deteriorate, and things like growths seeping thru the tunnel walls on the Jubilee Line take the sci-fi edge off it. Some of the lines during hot-weather are quite unpleasant and overcrowding still is a problem at the wrong time.
Another reason to ditch the monarchy, it subverts democracy/the will of the people.
Sir Keir Starmer might be forced to keep two hereditary peers because of their links to the King.
The Prime Minister has pledged to remove hereditary peers from the House of Lords by making all those aged 80 and above step down.
The House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill will remove their right to sit and vote in Parliament’s upper chamber after officials criticised the “outdated and indefensible” presence of those who were there solely by right of birth.
It is considered the first step in Sir Keir’s efforts to modernise the Lords and make it “fit for the 21st century”.
However, of the 92 remaining hereditary peers, the roles of the Earl Marshal and the Lord Great Chamberlain are likely to be exempt because of the constitutional role they play on state occasions, sources admitted.
The Earl Marshal is a hereditary office that requires him to organise major ceremonial occasions.
I don't see any reason why those role holders should continue to have voting rights, or speaking rights, in the Lords.
I can imagine exactly what the King will say to him, with a wink:
"You don't want *me* to retire at 80 as well, do you?"
It's an edge case not worth worrying about imo. It is hard to imagine what difference two votes in the Lords will make. No more will Conservative leaders be able to whistle up hundreds of backwoodsmen to block Labour bills.
Yes, yes, it's all politics and aren't the Liberal Democrats nasty and unscrupulous?
Seriously?
Ed Davey and the LDs played a system they neither like nor want nor does them any favours for maximum advantage and all we now hear is moaning from the "losers" including an activist for a Party which won over 400 seats.
Labour has occasionally "talked" about change to the electoral system - usually when they've been on the wrong end of an election defeat. We may now hear the Conservatives begin to "think aloud" about PR. Neither is sincere - the duopoly has survived fairly comfortably - 58% of the vote has got the two parties 84% of the seats in England, Scotland and Wales so the current system works fine for both Conservative and Labour and for that reason alone there'll be no change until one or both of them is decisively defeated.
Farage and Davey can shout into the dark calling for PR but it will get them nowhere.
As for the "let's add Reform and the Conservatives and call it a single bloc" - that was widely derided on here months ago by the more thoughtful commentators and analysts. There was never any polling evidence of a direct transfer - at most a third of Reform voters would support a Conservative in the absence of a Reform candidate.
The Conservatives lost votes to Reform, to Labour and in some places to the Liberal Democrats and the Greens and also suffered considerable abstention (as did Labour). Until we get more definitive research on what happened to the Conservative vote and why 47% of the 2019 vote disappeared, we're speculating. We can all have our pet theories and I suspect the answer will vary from region to region and even from seat to seat.
I wouldn't disagree with anything you've written here but...
Doing a ton of analysis I am sure is valuable and will yield some insights, but really - what is it really going to reveal? Some small tweak of messaging around housing or the environment or immigration that would bring back a few voters? They were just unpopular and the electorate were determined to give them a punishement beating.
And over-analysis always runs the risk that you end up fighting the last war.
Politics is often about momentum (the Tories have none) and a big idea over the longer term (the Tories have to find one). If I was running this (I wouldn't want to) then merging with Reform (aka "New Tory" or Conservative+) has the potential to deliver momentum (but not without risk).
In terms of the big idea, if we can all agree that the Empire 2.0 project is dead, then we have to decide who to hitch our wagon to.
I'd look to get back into the EU but that's not going to wash with Conservative+
So that leaves the US, and specifically Trump and Project 2025. The Project 2025 stuff leaves me utterly cold (Project Handmaid might be a better title) and I would fight it tooth and nail, but for Conservative+ and US-backing some sort of 'Project 2029' might yield strong results:
- return to family values and what the US calls under the Orwellian phrase 'headship' (strong male head of the family, women very much in supporting/child-rearing role) - massive bonfire of eco-laws - pun very much intended - DoJ under direct parliamentary control - a version of unitary executive theory to attenuate the 'enemies of the people' judges - extreme anti-immigration (read John Lanchester's 'The Wall' for ideas on how a Net Zero Immigration policy would have to work)
You get the idea.
Just typing all this makes me feel extremely queasy. It's a dystopian wishlist. But there must be conversations like this going on, Truss and JRM have the time and contacts to work in the background to make it happen.
Be interested to get others' opinions. I hope everyone else is as queasy as I am reading this...
First, thanks for the thoughtful response and please feel free to contribute a little more. I don't think you're the only "Bookseller" in these parts.
You're not wrong would be my simplistic response.
It is the fundamental question with which we've struggled since 1945 - what is or should be Britain's place in the world?
MacMillan and Heath decided Europe was the political and economic future and that was the prevailing belief in Government from 1956 to 2016. Yet our membership of the EU was often half hearted and rebate obsessed - yes, we enjoyed free trade (and in truth most would happily sign up to the old "Common Market" now) but Europe wanted monetary and eventually political union. We didn't want to be a part of Europe so we choose to be apart from Europe.
I don't know what "Global Britain" was meant to be in 2016 and I still don't know. Clearly, trying to resurrect some kind of post-Imperial relationship with Canada, Australia and New Zealand (why not South Africa or India?) doesn't work - these countries have other geo-strategic concerns.
We're then dead in the water - I argued for framing a new EFTA as an economic counterweight to the EU bringing in countries like Switzerland, Norway and others but that went nowhere.
If we try to re-engage with the EU we're going to have to swallow a double portion of humble pie with a side order of humiliation (it may be the EU is entering a more pragmatic phase as leaders change) but that's an option. We can hope the Democrats prevail in November but even if they do the pull of the Pacific and China will still be there.
Up to a point, Governments can operate without a long-term objective for "place in the world" - the current position of being somewhere in between the EU and the US is a workable approach that copes with 80% of international issues. Obviusly if the US goes for Trump it becomes significantly harder, and the case for working as closely as possible with the EU becomes very strong. Labour's stance is basically to work closely with them where it doesn't require a treaty. The EU isn't without its problems either and drifting to being closely associated with them without rejoining may be the least bad option for the next 10 years.
Comments
Then there is donor/money issue.
And the certainty that if something is done, legal challenges will follow. Complete with a MAGA judge freezing funds "until the matter is resolved" probably.
https://www.nytimes.com
Sir Keir Starmer might be forced to keep two hereditary peers because of their links to the King.
The Prime Minister has pledged to remove hereditary peers from the House of Lords by making all those aged 80 and above step down.
The House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill will remove their right to sit and vote in Parliament’s upper chamber after officials criticised the “outdated and indefensible” presence of those who were there solely by right of birth.
It is considered the first step in Sir Keir’s efforts to modernise the Lords and make it “fit for the 21st century”.
However, of the 92 remaining hereditary peers, the roles of the Earl Marshal and the Lord Great Chamberlain are likely to be exempt because of the constitutional role they play on state occasions, sources admitted.
The Earl Marshal is a hereditary office that requires him to organise major ceremonial occasions.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/07/17/two-hereditary-peers-king-survive-starmer-lords-cull/
Often those with genuine SEND conditions have a dreadful time trying to get diagnosis or assistance because they are honest and don't know how to or want to play the system, and there are so many who do play the system with subjective "disorders" that councils are overwhelmed and crack down on who they can.
The problem is it requires Kamala to wield the knife herself, and the Cabinet to agree with her. No hiding spot to let someone else do it.
I think post 2029 will be a Tory - Labour coalition with a small majority thay relies on Libdem confidence and supply to get things through.
Doing a ton of analysis I am sure is valuable and will yield some insights, but really - what is it really going to reveal? Some small tweak of messaging around housing or the environment or immigration that would bring back a few voters? They were just unpopular and the electorate were determined to give them a punishement beating.
And over-analysis always runs the risk that you end up fighting the last war.
Politics is often about momentum (the Tories have none) and a big idea over the longer term (the Tories have to find one). If I was running this (I wouldn't want to) then merging with Reform (aka "New Tory" or Conservative+) has the potential to deliver momentum (but not without risk).
In terms of the big idea, if we can all agree that the Empire 2.0 project is dead, then we have to decide who to hitch our wagon to.
I'd look to get back into the EU but that's not going to wash with Conservative+
So that leaves the US, and specifically Trump and Project 2025. The Project 2025 stuff leaves me utterly cold (Project Handmaid might be a better title) and I would fight it tooth and nail, but for Conservative+ and US-backing some sort of 'Project 2029' might yield strong results:
- return to family values and what the US calls under the Orwellian phrase 'headship' (strong male head of the family, women very much in supporting/child-rearing role)
- massive bonfire of eco-laws - pun very much intended
- DoJ under direct parliamentary control - a version of unitary executive theory to attenuate the 'enemies of the people' judges
- extreme anti-immigration (read John Lanchester's 'The Wall' for ideas on how a Net Zero Immigration policy would have to work)
You get the idea.
Just typing all this makes me feel extremely queasy. It's a dystopian wishlist. But there must be conversations like this going on, Truss and JRM have the time and contacts to work in the background to make it happen.
Be interested to get others' opinions. I hope everyone else is as queasy as I am reading this...
I also agree with the people arguing about using the 25th - but I think that would sink Kamala as a future unity candidate because the Biden team will destroy her future.
E.g - I am sure that I have heard that pledged delegates are forbidden from voting for another candidate unless released, and that is a legal requirement not a persuasive or party based one.
Labour hasn't had a fulltime woman leader ever, Even the fking DUP has got there.
Those old 80s anthems just dont work the way they used to.
However... If an immigrant on a visa is paying National Insurance, are they "saving" for a pension, in the same way a Brit is?
Indeed Tories should oppose all this act of constitutional vandalism, Labour may have had a manifesto commitment to remove the remaining hereditary peers, the Tories didn't
I am sure this will all come out in the fullness of time but it feels like he never really has trusted or believed in her. I think her reputation has suffered for that. There may be reasons he thinks she can’t win or that she has done something to aggrieve him (is that debate comment still annoying him and Jill?) but as a sitting President who pledged to be a bridge to a new generation it was incumbent on him to keep her close and to support her and push her forward.
If Biden can’t win then he should let her - the woman he chose to be his second in command - have a go. That’s all there is to it.
For motor vehicles, the operating life is predominant - especially for things like buses that do hundreds of thousands of miles at a rate of about 35k per annum in London.
For private electric vehicles, the emissions breakeven point these days compared to ICE is at something like 20k miles. Somewhat dependent on electricity supply - but that is progressively decarbonising as we know.
https://www.cotes.com/blog/greenhouse-gas-emissions-from-ev-vs-ice-vehicles
I can't believe the magazine stopped being published over 25 years ago. I still miss it.
You're not wrong would be my simplistic response.
It is the fundamental question with which we've struggled since 1945 - what is or should be Britain's place in the world?
MacMillan and Heath decided Europe was the political and economic future and that was the prevailing belief in Government from 1956 to 2016. Yet our membership of the EU was often half hearted and rebate obsessed - yes, we enjoyed free trade (and in truth most would happily sign up to the old "Common Market" now) but Europe wanted monetary and eventually political union. We didn't want to be a part of Europe so we choose to be apart from Europe.
I don't know what "Global Britain" was meant to be in 2016 and I still don't know. Clearly, trying to resurrect some kind of post-Imperial relationship with Canada, Australia and New Zealand (why not South Africa or India?) doesn't work - these countries have other geo-strategic concerns.
We're then dead in the water - I argued for framing a new EFTA as an economic counterweight to the EU bringing in countries like Switzerland, Norway and others but that went nowhere.
If we try to re-engage with the EU we're going to have to swallow a double portion of humble pie with a side order of humiliation (it may be the EU is entering a more pragmatic phase as leaders change) but that's an option. We can hope the Democrats prevail in November but even if they do the pull of the Pacific and China will still be there.
The original plan for the Boris buses was (as with nearly all introductions of new vehicles) to roll them out, gradually, route by route.
Were they rejected by the electorate in a free and fair election? No, they were thrown out by the Conservative Parliamentary Party.
Particularly on the issue of the ECHR . I think he’s had a very good start to his premiership .
It was of course a relief to get back to the real world instead of endless pastries and vins cremants, On a positive note I am meeting a friend on Monday who is treasurer of the Ludlow Arts we shall have long discussion on Franz Kafka and his impact on Peppa Pig over several pints.
I assume you missed the big event. ?
https://www.ludlowfringe.co.uk/whats-on
Never mind theres always next year.
Why should a service require an exceptional or regular set of drivers to make it possible for eg visually impaired to use it? And I have friends with similar accounts, and agree that regular staff help. But equally services with poor sets of drivers may get a poor service all the time.
What we need is a good service, which will deliver the benefits to everyone - not just those who have a regular journey with regular staff. Irregular travellers also deserve a service which is adequate.
It is just a basic legal requirement.
https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1981-08/mode/2up
I rather treasure it. At the time it all seemed so weird!
Personally I agree with you about the desirability of EFTA/EEA membership - mostly for the freedom of movement - but it is certainly not essential.
Jerry Pournelle is archived on his own website:
https://www.jerrypournelle.com/
And Steve Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar is still going in another form.
https://circuitcellar.com/
The relevant comparison is existent ICE vs new EV. It's massively better for the environment for me to keep driving my existing ICE car until it dies than to scrap it prematurely and replace it with a EV - I'd have to check the stats but something like a third of the entire emissions from a car come from its production, so if it's anywhere past halfway through it's lifespan it's going to produce less emissions to run it to death than to build a replacement car.
This is even more true for vehicles on low usage cycles - e.g. Mrs Prole's car, which now only does about 3000 miles a year, and will fairly obviously die of corrosion before the mechanical bits go bang (it's already done 115k miles in a previous life, so it's not been completely wasted).
The ‘problem’ benefits are mostly tax credits and housing benefit, which act as a significant pull factor for unskilled labour. This was an issue under EU law, whereby EU citizens were entitled to these benefits.
@Samfr
Something I discovered writing this post:
Of the 24 MPs who joined the "New Conservatives" group founded by Danny Kruger and Miriam Cates - 21 lost their seats in the election.
Just Kruger, Gareth Bacon, and John Hayes (who is very much not new) left.
There will always be a relationship with Europe - geography dictates that. There will always be a relationship with America - language dictates that. NATO has, for 80 years, been the cornerstone of our security relationship. The issue seems to be whether a Trump/Vance administration will seek to continue that - we can't directly control that but if America no longer sees the collective defence of Europe as being in its best interests, what replaces it and how?
We have chosen to sit apart from the EU - to be fair, so have Switzerland and Norway so we're not alone. That's a definition of the economic and political relationship but doesn't need to define the security/defence relationship and it's perfectly possible to be outside the EU but part of a European defence framework.
Was this the moment he proposed to the Comtes daughjter or was it over a quiet dinner for two at Maxime's?
All legacy claims will be integrated into UC by next financial year. The list of triggers for migration onto UC means there are only a small proportion on tax credits left.
Housing benefit is also rolled into UC.
These days young folk prefer dining al fresco on wholesome vegan food. It's why theyre all miserable sods.
The point is you don't have one. There is no reason not to think these women were not both appointed and sacked on their merits. Just like Johnson, Blair, Kennedy...
As well as unskilled Labour they also attract unskilled non-labour.
"On their merits"? Seriously.
Three female leaders, all three removed by the Parliamentary Party rather than go to the electorate.
Add in those entitied to vote who didn't and Liblabcon between them got just 41.6% of the electorate to vote for them
I did ask if he had an issue with the scale, but he said no: the numbers we were using were an outright lie.
We'd published the Rallings & Thrasher notionals for the new constituency as per the Parliament website, and this gentleman was adamant that these were just us taking some random figures, because "you can get different ones from different sites, can't you!?" and apparently other notional figures had Labour in second.
I think this was based on a Labour leaflet from earlier in the campaign which he'd misinterpreted from a bar chart (without numbers on the bar or chart) claiming that Labour had about a 33% chance of winning and fractionally higher than the LDs, around which Nick had put a commentary on the constituency having changed hugely since the last election [spoiler: the notionals were statistically all-but-identical to the former constituency, but we'd switched to using the notionals early in the campaign, anyway].
But I was called a liar and a "bloody idiot" due to our bar chart using the official notional figures.
Forgot about the cricket, and it turns out England have just reached 50 in faster time than ever before in a test match.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/live/c8001egxxg7t#LiveReporting
England not hanging around, 86/1 after an hour and 12 ovs - that after Crawley was out for a duck in the first over.
Probably won't manage that, to be fair.
The changes are also required because of rapid-change emissions targets imposed for 2028 and 2030 by the Government run by Boris, or his predecessor !
For vehicles, I think the case of old ICE vehicle vs new Electric vehicle is increasingly an edge case. Only around 20% of cars in the UK are more than 13 years old, for example.
Vehicles with low usage cycles (like mine - all the 6s, 6 year old Euro 6 diesel estate doing 60mpg, <5000 miles per annum) are a relatively small amount in terms of overall emissions, and will also gradually work their way out.
Are you MP for Milwaukee now, Nigel?
Farage defends jetting over to Wisconsin to see his friend Donald Trump at the Republican convention just two weeks after being elected to represent Clacton (which is 4,000 miles away)
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13646867/Are-MP-Milwaukee-Nigel-Farage-defends-jetting-Wisconsin-friend-Donald-Trump-Republican-convention-just-two-weeks-elected-represent-Clacton-4-000-miles-away.html
"Comical Ken and Captain Kelly"
https://www.postofficescandal.uk/post/comical-ken-and-captain-kelly/
This was the previous day's report of Andy Dunk's second appearance.
"Andy Dunks' big problem"
https://www.postofficescandal.uk/post/andy-dunks-big-problem/
I can imagine exactly what the King will say to him, with a wink:
"You don't want *me* to retire at 80 as well, do you?"
And its a mechanism potentially subject to the whims of Trump's appointees on the SC.
Only those wishing to see a complete shit show are advocating that route.
Have you forgotten not so long ago this team scored 506/4 from 75 overs on the first day of a test?
https://www.skysports.com/cricket/news/12040/12759313/england-produce-record-breaking-display-of-batting-on-day-one-of-first-test-against-pakistan
There are solutions around - for example Persimmon are in the middle of building a house factory at Loughborough which will create around 100 extra jobs, for a capacity of 5000-7000 houses a year, under their Space4 operation. It's not simple maths, as they make modules like SIPS for walls and roof cassettes, but it shows what can be done - transferring a lot of work to a controlled environment. On stream in 2025.
https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/news/persimmons-timber-frame-arm-to-double-capacity-with-new-factory-82083
https://unherd.com/2024/07/why-liberals-envy-jd-vance/
"No one has had a full beard in American politics since the late 19th century. The last time facial hair was an issue in that realm was in 1968, when allies of Democratic candidate Eugene McCarthy urged his hippie supporters to “get clean for Gene” and trim their hirsute display of defiance, in order to try to appeal to the calls for law and order from the other side.
Vance’s beard is a whole other level of symbolic meaning. It makes him look, above all, like a Civil War general — from either side — right out of one of Matthew Brady’s famous photographs. Or it could be the beard of a pre-modern American president, presiding over America at a time when Christianity and traditional mores held sway. Or is it a hint of the countercultural type, a hippie for all seasons, after all?"
He’s worse than that Nazi lover Edward VIII who actually listened to his government.
Westminster Tube station is still rather spectacular tho: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqZFQt94TcQ
https://x.com/RBR_Daily/status/1813607042688643383