Categories
I am speechless, utterly speechless – politicalbetting.com
I am speechless, utterly speechless – politicalbetting.com
An incredible claim in Sir Anthony Seldon's biography of Liz Truss:She, according to the book, considered "stopping cancer treatment on the NHS" as a way of filling the financial blackholeAn adviser is said to have replied, "is she being serious?”https://t.co/xRhY7kDbr2 pic.twitter.com/8zDJfJrlio
0
Comments
(An Alan Partridge quote for the morning, no less)
I did Twelfth Night at School. It was pretty good.
Biden also to campaign with her in Pennsylvania next week.
On topic, why are you shocked? Truss is incredibly stupid and has no empathy at all. You can just imagine she would think shoring up her position as PM to reverse a disaster she had caused would be more important than a load of people she didn't know and she would assume would die anyway soon.
It gives me great reassurance that if Starmer comes up with some truly idiotic economic policies the markets will put him back in his box.
For the record I also preferred Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad to Friends and Sex and the City.
Anyone who pointed out that Thatcher first stabilised the public finances by putting up taxes such as VAT was shouted down.
She was also willing to listen to reasoned advice as long as it was based on facts and evidence, even if it wasn't what she intended to do to start with.
Liz Truss, by contrast, was completely ignorant of every brief she ever had in government, never bothered to learn a subject before she threw herself bodily into it, and appears to have been extremely lazy and ill prepared for everything she did (remember the Rostov fiasco? Or the cheese nonsense)?
Anyone comparing Truss to Thatcher has not bothered to look hard enough at what Truss was really like.
So the numbers fit. But the story sounds ridiculous. How would you go about stopping it ?
No diagnosis ?
That would mean letting people die of easy and relatively cheap to treat cancers.
No treatment also means no research; goodbye another sector of the Pharma industry.
No palliative care ? Really ?
It would be far easier, be about as ethical - and save far more money - to just bring in a blanket euthanasia policy for the sick elderly.
I guess it's just about possible that she raised it as a metaphorical prompt to think the unthinkable, without meaning it literally. Which would be very odd, but just about believable.
But as a serious suggestion ? I call BS.
Damn it, they're everywhere.
https://x.com/megynkelly/status/1828126826905899515
Early Thatcher- tax rises to balance the budget, pragmatism about giving unions what they demanded, the Single Market- that was all ancient history for aged squares.
F1: Sargeant out, Colapinto in:
https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article/breaking-f2-racer-colapinto-replaces-sargeant-at-williams-for-rest-of-2024.2CghqWgB0vxJoZK8wWoMPj
I've seen a few comments hoping that anyone he makes contact with doesn't suffer death threats, as apparently happened in F2.
Thatcher wanted it to be a moral campaign, Norman Fowler wanted it to be a practical campaign.
The cabinet outvoted Thatcher and she accepted it and backed the policy both publicly and privately.
I cannot see Liz Truss doing that.
But I don't think I've seen such negativity over a newly-signed driver since Marzipan signed for Haas. In the latter case, the negative ninnies were correct.
The first reason is it’s essentially unconstitutional. The PM is supposed to be the person who commands the confidence of the majority of the House. Truss didn’t. (Neither did Corbyn have the confidence of his Parliamentary party but failed to get a majority even against TMay).
The second reason is that people who pay however much it costs to join a political party (any party) tend to represent a narrow part of public opinion.
If he'd made the crash a few laps earlier then the same result would've happened, without the controversial/wrong decision on the restart. Mercedes did get the strategy wrong.
Mr. Jessop, someone I know elsewhere suggested that Sargeant would be axed and replaced with Antonelli, which would seem to make more sense.
Just musing about whether or not the story is in the slightest bit credible.
It's a chance to put the story to bed once and for all. I'm sure he'll be very grateful.
Going back to Thatcher, hardly anyone holds a candle for the Community Charge now.
Witness the way she's behaved since she left No. 10.
I mean, look at PB…
*the professionals are often just as bad, on the other hand.
We are suffering now from the mendacious campaign run by both major parties, both the Tories unfunded NI cuts, and the pledges on Triple Lock, income tax etc. Neither party was being realistic and stupid to tie the hands of the next CoE. It means that they are left fiddling with added complexity rather than the straightforward.
There is a Truss side.
And there is the right side.
Spent a decade practising law, then worked for ABC, Fox, and NBC news channels, now has a daily show on SiriusXM
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megyn_Kelly
Megyn Kelly freaks out over column calling Kamala Harris’s husband a ‘sex symbol’
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/megyn-kelly-kamala-harris-doug-emhoff-b2602421.html
She should leave it to the master.
The mind boggles as to what might have happened if such a policy had been announced. At the very least I would have expected large spontaneous demonstrations at no 10.
He's now claiming he won California but a false result was entered.
https://x.com/harris_wins/status/1828605704405688478
Anyone who can go viral talking of guttering is a star:
https://x.com/Tim_Walz/status/1828550176488722635?t=Qmwdmn8hoC7uhILd5571kQ&s=19
Cameron knew he would be a disaster.
Nadine still pines for him.
Cameron was right. The party hasn't caught up yet.
Republican politicians don't want him, know he is a liability, but the people who vote in the primaries want him for some reason.
Truss was cosplaying Thatcher.
Trump is cosplaying what, exactly???
Just as Labour might legislate significant planning reform this year.
Some of the plot twists were pretty unbelievable.
There was the notorious episode with the fly.
The female characters, as usual in these shows, are basically just a kind of nagging chorus at the back while the men get on with the serious business of drug dealing and murder.
But overall yes it was amazing.
https://x.com/DougJBalloon/status/1828611337783595071
...Nearly all of the administrators who have taken the side of my narcissistic sociopath coworker are liberals. Some work in DEI. Many give their pronouns. They all listen to NPR. The whole nine.
So why do they take the side of a narcissistic sociopath with a long history of abuse and harassment? Part of it is that they believe in the principle of both sides.
I was once at a meeting with one where the sociopath told a series of lies that the administrated nodded along with and expressed sympathy for. After the meeting, I asked the administrator why he had had gone a long with a series of things I had told him earlier were false.
He answered that it was because he was trained in a kind of a conflict resolution technique where you “affirmed” (his words) everything anyone said. I asked him if he thought that was appropriate with someone who was a pathological liar.
He said he had never thought about it but that maybe it wasn’t. That’s how deep the bothsiding ran, it was literally part of the process that this administrator ran on every conflict, regardless of the facts and the personalities involved.
Another reason the administration takes the sociopath’s side is that they don’t feel they can do anything about him. So it’s easier to decide he’s not really as bad as we say..
The biggest problem we have is we don't have MPs of the calibre of her and her cabinet in politics anymore.
I'm genuinely shocked that he missed creating that phrase; what a second-rater, eh?
Liz Truss is such a fruitloop that it is *exactly* the kind of thing she would try and do. That it is inconceivable in the UK, utterly impractical politically, and impossible due to no mechanism existing all being entirely irrelevant.
If it was 1961 LT would fly to the moon by fiat; she would simply issue a press release containing an Executive Decision that it she had done it.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/08/27/sexist-assault-asian-women-traditional-dress-makeup/
The TV licence is effectively a poll tax, as are many bills and basic subscriptions, but it doesn't wash when it gets substantial.
Watched first five seasons of 24 and then gave up when it got very silly and the twists became predictable.
It's an interesting discussion - not Truss of course - but the truth that Margaret Thatcher of all people introduced tax rises (VAT) in 1981 while reducing direct taxation (income tax cut from 33% to 30%) as well as maintaining and even extending the draconian spending cuts forced on Healey by the IMF.
Reducing the deficit is too often portrayed simply as cutting spending with cutting taxes argued by the Lafferites as a rationale for economic growth (basically Truss/Kwarteng).
Given the latter won't fly in the 2020s, we have the former. The scope of VAT has changed since its initial introduction as a "luxury goods tax" (extending into Services now of course). Its issues for those having to act as unpaid tax collectors for the Government are well known and perhaps it's time to stop calling a spade a garden implement and have a proper discussion about its scope and value.
If Howe (and even Osborne) saw the benefit of raising VAT could we see 25% VAT in the near future?
Getting the balance right between tax increases (which nobody likes) and spending cuts (which nobody likes) is why Chancellors are rarely popular political figures - Rishi Sunak (who apparently one or two miss having as Prime Minister, there's always someone who yearns for the "good old days") achieved popularitym by throwing money like confetti and is a big part of where we are now.
The post reeks of : "I really don't like this guy, and anyone who doesn't agree with me about him is a LIBERAL!!!!!"
It might just be that the 'bothsiding' is happening because he is in the wrong, not his target.
Yes, I am, in a way, bothsiding this.
I'm not sure how you'd quantity that, though, or deprioritise over a childhood or mainstream working adult cancer because you then start to go against the hypocratic oath.
It did all get a little silly towards the end though, as so often happens with popular shows.
It's a bit like cutting taxes for bankers to make them work harder.
To see how deluded and frankly stark raving bonkers Truss had to be to propose this thinking she and her government could make it happen. How? Which lever in Downing Street is she going to pull to stop treatment in hundreds of hospitals across the country?
And I think you're wrong about the female characters, Skyler in particular, in the later series.
Granted they tend to be backgrounded, but that's after all fairly close to the reality of the criminal world.
In any event, they made up for it with Kim Wexler, in Better Call Saul.
If Labour wants to raise taxes further they should do the same, freeze the thresholds money in part to cut NI rates to reduce the disincentive on working while keeping the rest of the money as a tax rise.